D.C. Police have charged 33-year-old Banita Jacks with felony murder in connection with the four bodies found inside her Southeast rowhouse. Police say they are operating under the assumption that the bodies are those of Jacks' four daughters, aged five,six, eleven, and 17.

Jacks faces four counts of premeditated and felony murder. She is expected to be arraigned on Thursday.

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The bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition and had been dead for at least fifteen days, according to D.C.'s chief medical examiner. The state of decomposition has made it difficult to definitively establish the identies of the victims and the cause or causes of death.  Sources say the medical examiner is waiting for results of dental and DNA tests. 

"Depending environmental conditions, decomposition can take place at very different rates over different periods of time. So it’s hard for us to say, and it’s hard for the medical examiner to say, how long these have been in there," said Chief Cathy Lanier on Wednesday. "We talk about advanced decomposition and it makes it much more difficult to determine if there was signs of obvious trauma."

The medical examiner said there are preliminary indications that the eldest daughter suffered stab wounds to the abdomen. The other three girls may have been asphyxiated or poisoned.

"I don’t understand this," said neighbor Harold Jackson. "How can somebody be in there with four dead bodies and don’t nobody know nothing, and family members don’t know nothing. That’s crazy."

The bodies were discovered about 9:30 a.m. by U.S. marshals who were serving an eviction notice at the rowhouse in the 4,200-block of 6th Street, SE. The marshals apparently smelled something upon entering the house, prompting a search which led them to the second floor where they found the bodies.  

Marshals detained Jacks, who had let them into the home. Relatives identified her as the mother of the four girls.

Relatives said Jacks had been living with a man who was the father of two of the children. He died in April of cancer and she had been struggling to raise them, according to relatives.