Headscratchers / The Curse of La Llorona

• Nobody explains why Patricia is a suspect in her children's deaths, since she was presumably in jail and they were in an orphanage when they died. Eventually they free her saying there was "insufficient evidence" but what evidence was there at all in the first place?
  • Considering the circumstances, the police likely assumed that she must be involved somehow, even if they don't yet know how. There would likely have been signs of a struggle, and their already-unstable mother who appeared to have been abusing them would be the obvious suspect of what is clearly foul play. They may also have felt pressured to look like they were on top of the investigation considering how such a terrible situation (two young children abducted from an orphanage and murdered) would affect the community and have people panicking. It does seem like they release her pretty quickly after questioning her once Anna fails to get any additional information out of her, especially since they acknowledge from the start that she has a strong alibi with multiple witnesses.

• Why doesn't Rafael fix the firetree seed line after Sam breaks it?

• Anna takes her kids in the car to a crime scene, ostensibly because they wouldn't be safe home alone — and then leaves them there in the car for half an hour, standing about 100 yards away, in a dark and creepy place at night, downtown. (It goes as well as you might expect for a horror movie)

• It's never explained why La Llorona has poltergeist powers, including rolling down car windows. Also, we later see that she has no issue blowing open, shutting, and even locking windows and doors.

• Rafael initially tells Anna that he cannot help them, and relents after they beg; yet, he's fully stocked on multiple specifically anti-Llorona materials, such as a firetree cross, firetree seeds, and Llorona tears — materials he'd have to go well out of his way to get if he wasn't already interested in Llorona-fighting professionally.
  • Presumably he refused to get involved out of self interest to not be haunted or attacked himself.

• Anna is a presumably Latina woman, in Los Angeles, in the 70s, at the peak of the Chicano movement, and yet seems to have zero cultural knowledge.