The acting sheriff in western Iowa’s Crawford County is calling the deaths of a mother and her infant daughter a case of murder suicide. Mike Bremser says a neighbor found the bodies of 33 year old Shannon Elizabeth Steinbach and her four-month old daughter Hope Monday night in the family’s home in Schleswig. "Unless anything out of the ordinary is found during the autopsies, we believe that the case is indeed a murder-suicide," Bremser said.

Steinbach’s husband, Mark, had called the neighbor after Shannon had failed to pick him up from work. The couple’s other child, a four year old, was at the home of Mark’s parents at the time. Bremser says it appears Shannon Steinbach drowned her baby in an upstairs bathtub and then hung herself in the basement. "There was no note found at the scene, so we really don’t have any indication of why this happened," Bremser said.