Ms. Estrada’s body was found by her sister, Alejandra Estrada, who lives across the street in the Oak Hill mobile home park near the town of Hudson Oaks, after she failed to report for her morning shift at a Wendy’s restaurant. The sister would often watch the children in the daytime before leaving for her own shift at night, neighbors said.  She forced open the front door to the aging mobile home, which had been tied shut as usual, and found the youngest child hanging but alive. The others were suspended in a row beside her amid clothing still hanging from a two-by-four piece of wood behind a sheet.  Sheriff Fowler said Ms. Estrada’s legs were buckled, with her feet brushing the floor of the makeshift closet. “She could have stopped this at any time,” he said. No suicide note was found.  María Argélia Martínez, 48, a friend who used to work with Ms. Estrada as a maid, said she stopped by three weeks ago to pray and study the Bible. At the time, Ms. Estrada told her problems were stacking up.  “We knew she was sad, but we didn’t know how large her sadness was,” she said in Spanish. “I told her, ‘Berta, there is always a solution.’ ”  Sheriff Fowler said there was no evidence that Ms. Estrada suffered from serious mental illness other than her recent depression. No medications used to treat mental illness were found in the home, he said.  “She was always smiling. We never saw her do anything bad to the children,” Laura Martínez, 39, a neighbor whose 2-year-old granddaughter used to play with Ms. Estrada’s children, said in Spanish. “She had a lot of patience with the children.”  “I’m a mother, so I can’t understand what passed through her mind in this moment,” Ms. Martínez said. “We’re all in shock.”  In the muddy dirt behind the old brown-and-white trailer, a pink bicycle and a broken stroller were upended in the rain. Relatives gathered Tuesday on the porch of the trailer across the street, staring at the television news trucks assembled along the broken asphalt road.  Sheriff Fowler said the authorities had no prior record of 911 calls at the home, and were not aware of any prior reports of child abuse against the mother. The sheriff said it was difficult for the authorities to deal with this for “the second time.” He said he had helped investigate an incident about a mile away a few years ago in which a mother shot herself and her three children. “My mind cannot get around how all this could happen,” he said. “It’s horrendous.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Mother Hangs 4 Daughters And Herself, Police Say. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
A woman who was said to be struggling with depression apparently hanged her four young daughters in their North Texas mobile home before hanging herself, the authorities said.