Modesto slaying victim’s ashes returned to mother after stolen in burglary

Diane Tellez was feeling a lot better Thursday after someone returned an urn with her daughter’s ashes that was stolen during a burglary at her south Modesto home earlier this week.

Tellez’s daughter, 19-year-old Alyxandria Tellez, was killed March 3, 2012, along with two other people in a home on McClure Road, across from Creekside Golf Course in Modesto. She was staying with her boyfriend at the home when the three victims were shot in their sleep.

On Wednesday morning, Tellez was pleading for her daughter’s ashes to be returned. She says everything of value she had was taken, but the loss of her daughter’s ashes was just heartbreaking.

“I said I didn’t care about all the stuff they stole, I just wanted my daughter back,” Tellez said.

That’s what she told a homeless woman she encountered in the neighborhood Wednesday afternoon. Tellez said word-of-mouth in the neighborhood spreads fast, so she explained to the woman what happened and asked if she had any information about the burglary.

The burglary was reported about 1 a.m. Wednesday at the home on Olympia Street, a few blocks west of Crows Landing Road in south Modesto. Multiple items were stolen from the home, including the urn with the ashes, according to Stanislaus County sheriff’s officials.

Tellez says household appliances including a deep fryer, a coffee maker and a blender were stolen, along with collectible coins, clothes, shoes, bedding and even a roll of toilet paper on a bathroom dispenser.

The homeless woman told Tellez that she had heard of someone who had just obtained a silver collectible coin. “The coins were already being sold in the neighborhood,” Tellez said.

So she asked the homeless woman to speak to the person who obtained the silver coin and tell them what happened to her. Tellez’s message was simply to tell whoever broke into her home to return the urn with the ashes.

About 4 p.m. Wednesday, the homeless woman told Tellez that she had heard that the urn had been returned to the home. The woman told Tellez the urn was placed underneath a plastic tarp in her backyard. She said she raced home and found the urn exactly where she was told it would be.

Tellez said her daughter’s body was cremated and her ashes were placed in a box at the crematorium. She had wrapped the box in green gift-wrapping paper and placed her daughter’s photo on the box. When she returned from work Wednesday morning and found her home ransacked, the urn was gone. Not even the photo was left behind.

What she found Wednesday afternoon was the plain brown box with a seal that says, “The Cremated Remains of Alyxandria Tellez.” The wrapping paper was no longer on the box, and neither was her daughter’s photo.

Tellez believes the thief or thieves probably thought they had stolen a wrapped gift. “Then they unwrapped it and found it had no value to them,” she said Thursday.

She said she thinks the rest of her stuff was already being sold in the neighborhood Wednesday, but she’s just happy her daughter’s ashes are home again.

This story was originally published May 7, 2015 at 10:27 AM with the headline "Modesto slaying victim’s ashes returned to mother after stolen in burglary."