Tulsa's 31st Homicide Under Investigation

Tulsa Police are looking into what could be the city's 31st homicide of the year. A man found his 81-year-old father dead in his home in the 500 block of South 97th East Place late Sunday night.

Monday, May 22nd 2006, 2:43 pm

By: News On 6

Tulsa Police are looking into what could be the city's 31st homicide of the year. A man found his 81-year-old father dead in his home in the 500 block of South 97th East Place late Sunday night. Tulsa Police say the scene is suspicious.

News on 6 reporter Jennifer Loren talked to the man's neighbors who say they don't know why anyone would do this.

Tulsa Police say they've been called out to the house several times in the last few of years, once for a stolen car and twice for burglaries. But this last time they found 81-year-old Francisco Valenzuela dead.

Neighbors say Valenzuela had been burglarized in the past. Police confirm, just two months ago, they took a report that someone stole a rifle and a shotgun from Valenzuela's home. That left neighbors concerned, but they say they never thought those crimes would lead to murder.

Neighbor Rosa Ramos: "And we were kind of concerned cause I got kids, you know. Now this happened. It's kind of weird."

Detectives are being very tight-lipped about his death. They will only confirm that Valenzuela's son found him dead at about 10 o'clock Sunday night and it looks suspicious. Neighbors say there were people at his house this weekend. But they say that's not unusual. "He'll have like four or five trucks parked around his house and they would drink. They'd have the music loud.â€

Ramos says Valenzuela hung out with younger people, many of them in their twenties and thirties. But she says they never bothered her family or anyone else that she knew of. She says she doesn't know who would do this. "We never had any problems with him and all and I'm really sorry about what happened to him, you know."

Tulsa Police did find a broken window in the bedroom of the house. But again, they won't say if that plays into their suspicions of foul play.

There are several unknowns in this case. One reason Tulsa Police are being tight-lipped is because they're waiting for the medical examiner to release a cause of death.