Victims of Murder-Suicide Identified

VAN NUYS â€”  Neighbors sometimes saw Amy and Jennifer Anderson, a lesbian couple who lived in a two-story condominium in their Van Nuys complex, playing with their 2-year-old daughter, Mikayla, by the pool.

Many of them were home on Friday afternoon, when authorities say Amy Anderson, 34, shot Mikayla dead and then killed herself. Several neighbors said they did not hear the shots, but heard Jennifer, 26, the toddler’s biological mother, screaming for help when she arrived home from work and found the bodies in an upstairs bedroom about 5:15 p.m.

“We heard her screaming and hollering and it got worse and worse and worse,� said Theresa Guidroz, a neighbor who lives in a nearby condo. “You could hear her screaming, ‘My baby, my baby!’ �

Sgt. Mike Long of the Van Nuys Division of the Los Angeles Police Department said the shootings appeared to have been the result of “a lovers’ quarrel.� Neighbors said that the couple had been having problems and that Jennifer Anderson was preparing to move out.

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office confirmed the identities of the dead woman and the girl. Police said Amy Anderson used a .357 magnum and left behind an angry note addressed to her lover.

The couple had lived in the complex for about two years, neighbors said. Amy, a Los Angeles city animal control officer, often took care of the little girl, whom neighbors described as a beautiful, vivacious child with curly hair and hazel eyes.

“She was one of the cutest kids I’d ever seen,� said a young woman who identified herself only as a friend of Jennifer’s. The woman stood in front of the couple’s deserted stucco condominium Saturday, gazing in disbelief at the Halloween decorations and Winnie-the-Pooh stickers plastered on the porch door.

“I had to come here,� she said, “to believe this was real.�