Boston Police officers making a forced entry into a Roslindale home found two murdered children in what a Suffolk County prosecutor described as “a most gruesome scene” during opening statements today in their mother’s double-murder trial.

Assistant District Attorney Audrey Mark told a Superior Court jury that Boston Police were called to 4 Maynard St. to check on the well-being of ANGELA VASQUEZ (D.O.B. 3/15/76) on the evening of July 29, 2007. When no one responded to their knocks on the door, Mark said, the officers pushed in an air conditioner and crawled in through the window.

“As soon as they got into the home,” the prosecutor said, “they knew exactly what they’d discovered.”

Following an “overwhelming foul odor,” the officers made their way upstairs.

“In one bedroom was the decomposing body of the defendant’s 13-year-old daughter, Yasmine Burgos,” Mark said. “Her body was bloated. Her eyes were popping. In a second bedroom, was the decomposing body of the defendant’s 10-year-old son, Dennis Burgos, Jr. … He was in bed next to his mother.”

When emergency medical technicians removed Vasquez from the bed, they saw a knife fall away from her body. She had sustained self-inflicted “scratches,” Mark said, but EMTs saw her eyelids flutter and watched her withdraw from painful stimuli.

“She was whisked away to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for treatment,” Mark told the jury. “Her children were taken to the medical examiner’s office.”

Mark also told jurors that Vasquez was “hysterical, angry, in a rage” over losing her job when she “abruptly stormed out” of her place of work four days earlier. She allegedly began to wonder how she could take care of her children without a steady income.

The prosecutor drew attention to entries in Vasquez’ journal, in which she wrote, “The time has come. It’s time for me to leave. The hard part is the children. No one can take care of them … whoever don’t understand, fuck them.”

Though they did not live with him, Dennis and Yasmine maintained a close relationship with their father, Dennis Burgos, Sr., who asked Vasquez if he could take the kids to a festival on July 29. Vasquez said the children were asleep but that he should come by afterwards.

“If no one answers the door,” Vasquez allegedly told him, “force your way in.”

Dennis Burgos, Sr., did come by late in the day on July 29. No one answered the door. He did not force his way in. Later that evening, Vasquez’ therapist contacted Boston Police after growing suspicious that she was suicidal. It was then that police entered the home and found the children dead.

“You will hear from police officers,” Mark told jurors. “You will hear from crime lab witnesses. You will hear from toxicologists. You will hear from the medical examiner who conducted the autopsies. She will tell you that, primarily due to the level of decomposition, she was unable to determine their cause of death.”

Even without that determination, the medical examiner ruled the deaths of Yasmine Burgos and Dennis Burgos, Jr., to be homicides based on other medical and crime scene evidence.

“This defendant chose – she thought about, contemplated, and made a conscious, deliberate decision – to murder her two children,” Mark said.

Vasquez is represented by attorneys Janice Bassil and Hank Brennan. Prosecution testimony is ongoing before Judge Patrick Brady in courtroom 815 of Suffolk Superior Court.