Mother was found dead in closet
By RANDI ROSSMANN,
Laura Norton AND Glenda Anderson
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
May 12, 2008

The 25-year-old mother of two killed on Mother’s Day was found stuffed in a closet in a two-bedroom Rincon Valley apartment after police were tipped to possible trouble between the woman and her boyfriend.

Police Monday afternoon continued to search for Honorio “Victor” Pantaleon, 30, who is suspected of stabbing his girlfriend — the mother of his two children — before driving north to Ukiah a day later to assault the woman’s mother.

The slain girlfriend, identified by a family member as Patricia Barrales, was quiet, did not talk to neighbors and kept her children, two- and four-year-old boys, inside with her at all times, said property manager Bobby Hopper.

Hopper said the family had lived in the apartment at 6123 Montecito Blvd. complex for two months and that they had been “good quiet tenants.”

But Hopper said the first inklings of trouble at the apartment came Sunday afternoon when Barrales’ mother arrived shortly after 2 p.m. and asked to be let in to check on her daughter.

“The mom came in and wanted in, but I said I couldn’t let anyone in,” Hopper said. “She was crying. She said her daughter’s cell phone was off. She said the husband was abusive.”

Hopper said he called Santa Rosa Police and officers searched the house, but the empty apartment “looked fine.”

“A couple hours later I had a phone call from the nephew,” Hopper said. “He said she was dead in the closet. The police had done a walk through but she was buried under all the toys in the toy chest and they didn’t see her.”

When the police returned at about 9:30 p.m. with the new information, they found her body, he said.

Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Lisa Banayat confirmed that the woman’s body was found in a closet in the apartment, but could not say whether police had been to the apartment earlier in the day. She would not comment further on the case or the information provided by family members.

Banayat said though the suspect has a lengthy criminal history in Lake and Mendocino counties, he has not had any contact with Santa Rosa police.

A brother of the slain woman, Apolinar Barrales, said his sister had celebrated Mother’s Day a day before with her family in Ukiah. Pantaleon was not at the family gathering.

Family members became concerned when Pantaleon dropped off his crying children at his mother’s house in Lake County, Apolinar Barrales said. The children were so she called Patricia Barrales’ mother concerned and Santa Rosa police were ultimately alerted.

Pantaleon was last seen Monday morning, when he allegedly went to Patricia Barrales’ mother’s home and assaulted her with a handgun. The 6:30 a.m. attack was being treated as attempted murder by Mendocino County Sheriff’s officials Monday.

The slain woman’s mother was treated at a local hospital for a cut on her head from being struck with a gun.