Mother In W. Dade Triple Murder To Be Laid To Rest
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Services will be held Friday for a woman whose body, along with those of her two daughters, was found in a closet in a Northwest Miami-Dade home.
A viewing will be held for Gladys Sierra from noon to 3 p.m. at the Vior Funeral Home on NW 37th Avenue in Miami. Her body will then be taken to the Caballero Rivero Woodlawn South Cemetery in Kendal where it will be laid to rest.
Funeral services for Sierra's two daughters were held last week.
Last week, bond was denied to Sierra's estranged husband, 28-year old Alberto Sierra, who is charged with three counts of first degree murder, one count of sexual battery of an adult and one count of sexual battery of a child.
Sierra has confessed to the murders, according to police.
According to Sierra's arrest affidavit, on November 10th he went with Gladys and her two daughters, four-year-old Daniela and six-year-old Julia, to the Mall of the Americas on West Flagler Street. While there the couple got into an argument.
Odalys Machado said her sister Gladys had been dating another man since she became estranged from Sierra.
Sierra reportedly pulled a knife and Gladys "sustained injuries as a result of the argument," according to the report.
He then drove them to a home Gladys and girls had recently moved into at 7310 NW 4th Street. He allegedly forced them into the house and locked the girls in a bedroom. Sierra then took Gladys to the master bedroom.
"At that time he used a plastic bag to asphyxiate Gladys and after that he sexually assaulted her," said police spokeswoman Lt. Rosanna Cordero-Stutz.
He then went to the bedroom where the girls were, let one older one out and suffocated her with a plastic bag.
"He asphyxiated one of them also with a plastic bag then he went back into the bedroom where he had left the youngest child and asphyxiated her with a plastic bag then he returned to the oldest girl and raped her as well," said Cordero-Stutz.
A neighbor complained of a foul odor coming from the home a few days later and found Gladys body in a closet next to her two girls.
Cordero-Stutz said there was no evidence that Sierra had been taking drugs. She also said that more charges against Sierra are possible. She said detectives are "still working hard to put the total case together."
Sierra is expected to come before a judge again within the next 21 days.
Gladys Sierra's 6-year-old son was safe with his grandmother at the time of the murders.
Records show Sierra was released from jail on June 22, after serving 364 days.
Sierra has an arrest record dating back to 2005 that includes arrests for assault with a deadly weapon, selling cocaine and the illegal possession of weapons by a convicted felon.
CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald reported that in 2010 he was arrested for domestic battery after he reportedly bit Sierra on the forearm and stole her gun.
A similar allegation surfaced from Michael Padrino, who is Sierra's previous husband and the father of the girls.
In a letter to the judge in the custody case in October, 2011, Padrino said he felt his children's lives were in danger. He based that after one of his daughters reportedly told a state child welfare worker that Sierra had bitten her on the arm.
But the judge refused to grant Padrino full custody of the children, saying that while the Department of Children and Families had removed the children from Sierra's home during an investigation, the agency later returned them to the home.
