Police are investigating the possibility of a murder-suicide in the shooting deaths of a mother and her two young children, whose bodies were found in their Dallas home Friday.
The deaths of 49-year-old Jeanmarie Geis, her 8-year-old son and her 4-year-old daughter come after a series of alleged attacks on the family over the last two weeks, according to police reports. Police said they are now looking into whether those attacks actually occurred.
"We are looking to determine whether or not they were valid offenses and whether they occurred the way they were reported," Lt. Craig Miller said.
Dallas County Medical Examiner rules the gunshot wounds for both children seemed to indicate a homicide, though no official ruling on the death of Mrs. Geis has been made.
Police answering a report of gunfire found the bodies at the family's home around 9 a.m. Friday. Each had been shot once, Miller said. He did not describe where each was wounded.
"We do have some damage to the residence. There's a window broken out, a door opened. ... But we don't know if that's old damage or new damage," he said.
Frank Geis, Jeanmarie Geis' husband, was at a doctor's office at the time of the shootings, Miller said. The husband was questioned and released. "He's been very forthcoming," Miller said, adding that police are not calling him a suspect.
Police said there were at least three disturbance calls involving the dead woman since Dec. 6, when she reported that a gun-wielding man stole her purse and laptop computer outside the real-estate office where she worked with her husband.
Officers had visited the home twice within the past week, responding to a reported home invasion, assault and kidnapping.
On Dec. 13, 51-year-old Frank Geis was interviewed by police after he was apparently assaulted in his home, according to police reports obtained by The Dallas Morning News. His wife told police that two men dressed in black and wearing ski masks and gloves burst into the home around 8:30 a.m. She said they beat her husband with a hammer on the right side of his head.
Frank Geis, however, told police he could not recall anything past 12:30 a.m., according to the police report.
Jeanmarie Geis said that after the assault on her husband, she was kidnapped by the two men. She told police the men tied her up with duct tape and taped her eyes shut.
Later, the men put her in a car and tried to sexually assault her. She told police that when she resisted, they pushed her out of the car and fled the scene, according to police reports.
The next day, she was in her driveway when a man approached her, put a gun to her head and forced her into a car, according to police reports. He made her remove her shirt and rubbed the barrel of the gun across her face, she told police. The man then told her, "You're going to be mine."
Jeanmarie Geis also told police that the man said, "This is for what your sweet daddy did to my family." The woman was the daughter of the late state District Judge Mark Tolle, who presided over some high-profile criminal trials in Dallas.
According to the police reports, Geis escaped from the car. The man chased her and pinned her to the ground but fled again when a nearby garage door opened.
Asked if those previous incidents had been staged, Miller said, "I'm not going to put anything past being a possibility."
The incidents had put the Geis' North Dallas neighborhood on edge.
The neighborhood association sent e-mails to residents that said Jeanmarie Geis "repeatedly said that she was the target, and that they were not interested in her husband." The man had been following her and knew her routine, according to one e-mail.
Frank and Jeanmarie Geis own The Geis Group, a Dallas real estate company.
Jeanmarie Geis' father died last year. Tolle presided over several high-profile criminal cases, including the 1997 trial of Darlie Routier, who was found guilty and sentenced to death for the June 1996 fatal stabbing of her 5-year-old son, Damon.
Judge Terese Tolle, a Dallas County misdemeanor court judge, is Jeanmarie Geis' aunt.
