The three women watched a movie together on a Thursday night in the Bay Area. They had just marked Onam, the big harvest feast from their home state of Kerala, India.

By the next afternoon, two of them were dead. The third was in a police car.

Two California police forces are each working a death case from Friday, August 28. One scene is in Milpitas. The other is in San Jose. They sit about 10 miles apart. The two calls came less than two hours apart. Neither police force has said in public that the cases are tied. The families say they are.

Milpitas police got the first call at 12:01 p.m. A car had hit someone in a parking lot. The lot is at the Mill Creek Apartments on Dixon Landing Road.

Witnesses told police a blue SUV drove off right after. Officers "quickly searched the surrounding area and found a blue SUV," the department said. The SUV matched what the witnesses described. It had damage that fit the crash, police said.

A woman died at the scene. Officers arrested a Milpitas resident who is 32. Police did not put out a name.

The second call came at 1:53 p.m. San Jose police went to the 700 block of Linda Vista Street. The call was for odd circumstances at a home.

Officers found a woman inside. She was not awake and she did not respond. She died there.

The Santa Clara County crime lab and the medical examiner looked at her body. They found at least one stab wound, police said.

San Jose police now call it the city's 17th killing of 2026. They said the victim and the suspect, a woman, knew each other. They have not put out her name. "The motive and circumstances surrounding the event are still under investigation," the department said.

Family members and news outlets in India have named both women who died.

Anjana Hari was 35. She was a teacher. She moved to the United States in 2021. She was from the Thrissur area of Kerala. She leaves a husband and a daughter who is 6.

Ann Mary Mathew was 40. She worked in tech. She had lived in the United States about 10 years. She was from Thiruvananthapuram. She leaves a husband and two girls, ages 10 and 5.

Some headlines have called this case a set of twin murders. That word means two deaths. It does not mean twin sisters. The two women were not sisters. They were friends.

News outlets in Kerala name the woman in jail as Anila, 32, from Kottayam. U.S. police have not named her. No charges have been made public. Spellings of all three names shift from one outlet to the next, so treat any one version with care.

The three families lived near each other for a time. Ann Mary and her family moved out of the Milpitas complex about two months ago, Kerala news outlets report.

People at church say they are stunned. The woman in jail took part in a Syro Malabar Catholic parish in the Bay Area. Friends there said they saw no fight between the three. Some reports in India point to job trouble as a cause. Her own relatives said they knew of no big problem. Police have not backed any of that.

What police have not said is a long list. They have not said which woman died first. They have not said how the two scenes are tied, if at all. They have not said what was used in the stabbing. They have not said if the person they arrested in Milpitas is the same person San Jose calls a suspect.

Both deaths are now called homicides. No court date has been made public.

India's consulate in San Francisco is helping both families send the bodies home. A union minister, Suresh Gopi, said the consulate is working with funeral homes on the paperwork.

San Jose police ask anyone who knows something to call the homicide unit at 408-277-5283.

Two moms are dead. Three girls, ages 10, 6 and 5, lost their moms. A third woman sits in jail while two police forces work the case.

Plenty of families in the Rio Grande Valley have loved ones living far from home. They know the phone call that comes in the middle of the night. Two families in Kerala got that call last week.

A charge is not proof. Everyone is innocent until a court says otherwise.