Feds: Man charged with killing 3 had been deported twice

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A Guatemalan man who apparently entered the U.S. illegally after being deported twice has been charged with killing an Iowa woman and her two children.

Marvin Oswaldo Escobar-Orellana, 31, made an initial court appearance Thursday in Des Moines, where the judge set his bond at $3 million cash and scheduled his next hearing for July 29. He is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and hasn't entered a plea.

Escobar-Orellana was arrested Tuesday night in the fatal shootings of 29-year-old Rossibeth Flores-Rodriguez and her two children, 11-year-old Grecia Daniela Alvarado-Flores and 5-year-old Ever Jose Mejia-Flores. Police said Escobar-Orellana had been living at the family's Des Moines home, but that investigators found no evidence that he had a personal relationship with them, aside from the living arrangement.

Escobar-Orellana called 911 after the shootings, authorities say. In a criminal complaint, police say that according to an unidentified witness, Escobar-Orellana shot Flores-Rodriguez during an argument and then went inside the family's condo and shot the children, the Des Moines Register reported.

Escobar-Orellana gave investigators a different version of events. He said Flores-Rodriguez killed the children and that he shot her in self-defense, police say in the complaint.

During his hearing, Escobar-Orellana asked the Polk County Associate Judge Becky Goettsch through a Spanish-language interpreter why he was charged with all three killings, when he only killed one person — and that in self-defense. But police say in the complaint that ballistic evidence supports the witness' account of what happened.

Goettsch assigned the public defender's office to represent Escobar-Orellana, but the office hadn't assigned anyone to the case as of late Thursday morning and court...