GUILDERLAND — Friday afternoon, State Police released the names of the two adults who had been found dead, with their children, in their Westmere home by a relative on Wednesday afternoon. They identified the adult victims as Jin Feng Chen, 39, and Hai Yan Li, 38. The names of the couple's slain children were not released because of their ages, police said.

The boys, ages 7 and 10, were students at Guilderland Elementary School.

No further details were released.

At a press conference on Thursday morning, with Guilderland Police Chief Carol Lawlor; Scott Coburn, New York State Police captain; and Albany County District Attorney David Soares, questions about motive and suspects were not answered.

Soares addressed the score of press by saying, “This is not an occasion that anyone looks forward to, but we want to assure people that anything that can be done, is being done.”

The active investigation is being led by the New York State Police, in conjunction with the Guilderland Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Soares said there are more than 50 law enforcement officers working on the case.

Soares said the relationship among the victims was still being investigated, but he did confirm that the children were students at the Guilderland Elementary School.

Marie Wiles, the superintendent of the Guilderland School District, said that grief counseling was made available to students at the school as early as 7:30 a.m. on Thursday.

In response to media questions at the conference, Soares said he was not offended by the volume and content, but that he could not provide much information.

He would not comment on a motive, a murder weapon, or how long the victims had been deceased by the time police arrived.

Autopsies on two of the bodies were being conducted in Albany at 1 p.m. Thursday, although Soares would not comment on which two.

The investigation has been hindered by communication problems.

“This is a unique set of circumstances because we usually don’t have this language barrier,” said Soares.

Initially, it was thought that relatives of the victims were speaking Cantonese, and then the language was identified as Mandarin, but, said Soares, interpreters have now indicated that it might be an entirely separate language, with components of Cantonese.

Although Soares did not indicate that a suspect had been identified or located, he said “preliminary findings indicate that this is not an incidence where neighbors should live in fear.”

While he said he understood the concern of the community, he also said, “You have the collective wisdom and knowledge of 50 or so law enforcement officers telling you not to worry.”

The district attorney said he did not want to disclose any details about the murders that might cause public speculation, because he wants to be sure that people being questioned or coming forward with information are credible.

“Anyone with information about the family or anything they may have observed on Wednesday should contact law enforcement,” said Soares. “We are looking for details that aren’t known to the public.”

He stated that he was not concerned with any “collateral” issues and urged people to come forward without fear of circumstances, particularly those who may fear immigration issues.

“Regardless of culture, we want justice,” said Soares. “That’s what we’re hoping to achieve.”

Coburn cleared up some misinformation that had been spread on Wednesday in the absence of official comments.

Neighbors had said there were three children living in the house, and that a young boy was observed on Wednesday afternoon in the front yard, acting distressed.

Coburn said Thursday that there was no third child living in the house, and that the girl that neighbors may have assumed was living there was a friend or a niece, and had been located alive.

The person seen on the property on Wednesday when police arrived was not a young boy, but a middle-aged Asian woman, the sister of one of the adult victims.

The original call for assistance to the house had been made by a relative, Coburn said.

“It is always shocking to the system when children are involved,” Soares said.. “It draws you in emotionally, but it also gives you that extra motivation to seek justice.”

Coburn said the public should call 1-800-GIVE-TIP with information; the phone line will be open 24 hours a day.

“These are not the kind of acts that happen in a wonderful place like Guilderland,” said Soares, while urging people to be patient as the investigation unfolds.

“In a television show, you have a crime within five minutes and a confession 55 minutes later,” he said. “This is reality and we are in the infancy stages of this investigation.”

Neighbors in the dark

As darkness fell on Wednesday night, news crews kept an eerie vigil across the street from the small green house at 1846 Western Ave. Traffic roared along the four-lane highway, Guilderland’s major thoroughfare; headlights shone on yellow-crime-scene tape that cordoned off the house and its two neighbors.

Four dead bodies were inside the house, police said, releasing few other details. A search warrant was needed, and news of the deceased would have to wait till Thursday after family had been notified, they said.

Police were first called at around 2 p.m., Guilderland Police Captain Curtis Cox told the press at about 3:30 p.m. In addition to Guilderland Police, State Police and the FBI are involved in the investigation, Cox said, noting it was protocol to call the federal agency for “significant cases like this.”

No suspect had been arrested as of 8 p.m. although police said they had leads. “We don’t have any reason to believe anybody would be in danger,” Cox said in the afternoon. He also said there was “a language barrier.”

Lawlor said on Wednesday night that Chinese language interpreters had been called on, though she could not say for which dialect. She and State Police Captain Scott Coburn are leading the investigation jointly, she said, while a man in a State Police forensics van began to pull on his white hazmat suit in front of the house.

Lawlor and Coburn hadn’t been inside the home and declined to describe known details of the scene inside.

“We won’t know until we process the scene,” Coburn said of whether the killer was among those dead.

The owners of the property at 1846 Western Ave. are listed in the Guilderland assessment roll as Jin Feng Chen and Kam Ping Lo; the roll shows they own the adjacent house as well at number 1848. Deeds from Albany County show they've owned 1846 since 2008 and owned 1848 since 2010. The assessment roll lists them as living at a Highwood Circle address, which is nearby in Guilderland.

Rosalyn Kowalski, who lives two doors west of the green house, next to 1848, told The Enterprise she’d returned home from a hair appointment at about 2:30 p.m. and was blocked by all the police vehicles.

“I shouted, ‘I live here. I need to get in,’” she recalled.

She got in, but couldn’t get any answers.

Kowalski, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1969, was concerned because she knows the children who live in the green house at 1846 Western Ave. For two years, they had lived in the house directly next door to her, she said, and then moved one house further east. The children, she said, are named Ed, Vincent, and Michelle and are aged 12, 10, and 7. (At Thursday's press conference, however, Coburn said the girl did not live at 1846 Western Ave.; she was a niece or friend who visited often, and she was safe. Two boys, ages 7 and 10, are dead, Lawlor said on Thursday, without releasing names.)

Kowalski described the family as “Oriental” and said the adults didn’t speak English. “The kids went to the Guilderland schools and spoke English perfectly,” she said.

They would frequently come to her home to play with the dogs she and her husband, Thomas Kowalski, own — a border collie named Mitzie and an Australian shepherd named Mickey.

“They love the dogs. They played ball with them,” she said. “They’re adorable.”

She concluded by saying, “When I came home, there was a little kid, sitting in the yard, rocking back and forth, beating the ground.”  She said someone put a tarp around him. (At Thursday's press conference, however, Coburn said the person who looked distressed in front of the house was actually a middle-aged woman, a relative of one of the residents.)

The street, once lined with the small, neatly kept homes, now has businesses interspersed with the residences — a lawyer’s office, a hair salon, and a dentist occupy spaces that were once homes.

The neighborhood has “changed a lot” in the 63 years that Marie Cavanaugh has lived there, she said. Cavanaugh came to her home, at 1838 Western Ave., as a young bride. “There are a lot of businesses now,” she said, but no big supermarket as their once was just down the street.

She didn’t know the residents of 1846. “A lot of people lived there,” she said of the rental property.

“This is terrible,” she said of the homicides. “I can’t believe this happened.”

Usually, Cavanaugh said, “This is a quiet neighborhood.”

The petite woman in a bathrobe who answered the door at 1836 Western Avenue agreed it was “a quiet, lovely neighborhood.” She, too, was unacquainted with the family at 1846.

Staff at businesses in the nearby strip mall were unfamiliar with the family, too. The woman tending to the shoe-repair shop had on television news, picturing the house at 1846 Western Ave.

“They kept to themselves,” said a resident of 1839 Western Ave., across the street from the green house, who has lived in the neighborhood for 43 years, as his parents had before him. “It changed a lot when Crossgates Mall came in,” he said. “Nobody knows anybody personally. You just wave hi.”

Did he wave to his neighbors at 1846 Western Avenue? No, he said. “They kept quiet.”

Robert Crounse, who lives at 1841 Western Ave. in a tidy white brick house that has an entrance flanked with pots of flowers, also called it “a quiet neighborhood.”

He’s 52 now and grew up in the neighborhood. “I grew up right next door to where it happened,” he said.

He didn’t know the residents of the green house across the street from him. “They didn’t speak English,” he said.  “We would see the kids get on the school bus.”

A white car parked on the lawn Wednesday night was parked there around 11:30 p.m. every night before, said Carolyn Phillips, who said she’s lived directly across the street for her entire life.

Phillips, 49, was walking down the sidewalk in front of her house, watching the scene.

She said her neighbors at 1846 Western Ave. had a Christmas party last year.

“They were quiet. There wasn’t a lot of noise,” she said. “That’s what strikes me, why?”

Neighbors from the residential streets that crisscross Western Avenue in Westmere walked by 1846 to look at the scene, too, and to try to find out what they could on Wednesday night. Three women who live on nearby York Road chatted on the corner.

Abbe Levine said she had walked down with her 10-year-old granddaughter who had been sent a text message that her classmate was dead. “We walked down here, hoping we’d find out it wasn’t true,” said Levine. “She was in tears. She went back.”

Levine was unable to find out who was dead.

Another York Street resident, Colleen Pariseau, said, “Nothing like this ever happens here. Usually you watch this stuff on T.V. It’s happening right here, so we walked down here.”

“Guilderland is a small town. These are our neighbors. Everyone’s upset,” Levine said.

The trio noted that rumors were spreading rapidly on social media.

“I hope the school will offer grief counseling,” she said.

Marie Wiles, the superintendent of the Guilderland schools, told The Enterprise Wednesday night, “The reality is we don’t know more than you do. We know something very bad happened in that house.”

Wiles said she had been in contact with the Guilderland Police and they would inform her as soon as they could.

“We’re going to be hopeful but are making plans for the worst to be able to offer support to students and staff,” she said.

Wiles noted that Guilderland’s program for foreign students teaches students with 30 different languages, helping them to learn English as a second language.

“We have no conclusion,” she said. “We need to wait.”

— Marcello Iaia contributed to this story

Corrected on May 2, 2018: The age of the elder Chen son was corrected from 12 to 10.