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Jorge Luis Esquivel was one of several residents on Del Valle Avenue outside San Benito, that woke-up to a murder-suicide early Monday morning.

"I go outside and see a body sitting down in the car," Jorge Luis Esquivel said. "I didn't know what was going on, so what I did was call the property owner's mom, (and) told them, ‘something happened at your house, there's a lot of sheriffs.’ Then I (look from my) back yard, and (saw) my neighbor with a gun wound in his backyard lying down."

Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio said 43-year-old Martin Calderon shot his 43-year-old girlfriend, Leticia Jimenez Trejo, in the neck, sometime between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. Monday.

Family members said the woman had dropped-off her daughter at a friend's house the night before. When she didn’t show-up to pick her up at the scheduled time, and wasn’t picking up calls from her family members, her 21-year-old son decided to go by the house to check on her.

When he asked about his mother, Lucio said the shooter told the young man to call police.

"When we got over there, we found out that the man had shot himself, in the chest and he found the mother had been shot on the side of the neck," Lucio said.

Calderon's family said shortly after the shootings, they found two good-bye letters written by the man. In a letter written in April 2010, Calderon allegedly told his family he was sorry, but since Jimenez Trejo had done him wrong he was going to kill her.

In a second letter Calderon wrote in July 2010, family members tell Action 4 News he asked them not to spend too much money on his funeral, and that he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread in his mother's backyard - the same place he was found dead Monday.

Neighbors claim they had seen the couple argue just like any other couple, but never saw this coming.

"I would see them together….they would fight - you know couples fight,” Esquivel said. “I never saw them getting into it or going at each other."