Indiana teenager receives heavy sentence for murders of baby sister and brother
A teenager in the US state of Indiana has been sentenced to serve two consecutive 50-year prison terms for suffocating his baby stepbrother and half-sister to death in 2017, when he was just 13 years old. The judge who announced the sentence on Tuesday had insisted that the case against Nickalas Kedrowitz be tried in an adult court.
While the teen’s attorney had insisted his client had untreated mental health problems, Ripley County Prosecutor Richard Hertel pointed out that Kedrowitz had committed the crimes months apart, dismissing the notion that he had murdered his siblings in the “heat of passion.”
Kedrowitz was convicted in August of murdering 11-month-old Nathaniel Ritz and 23-month-old Desiree McCartney in July 2017 and May 2017 respectively, at the family’s home in Osgood, Indiana. He was arrested in August 2018 and reportedly told detectives he was “freeing his siblings from hell and the chains of fire,” confessing to using a towel to suffocate his half-sister and a blanket to smother his stepbrother.
Questioned by investigators about what exactly the “hell” in question was, Kedrowitz answered “chores,” urging the authorities to look at the list of daily chores he was expected to complete. It’s not clear if they ever saw the list.
The teen’s uncle apparently told investigators that Ritz’s father had attacked Kedrowitz the day before he suffocated the infant boy, leaving the 13-year-old with a bloody nose. Shortly before killing his half-sister, the teen reportedly squeezed a kitten to death for allegedly scratching him.
According to an affidavit from Indiana state police, Kedrowitz told investigators he had “had a conversation with God about [his siblings’ deaths]but he could not talk about it because he had promised God he wouldn’t tell anyone.”
Kedrowitz’s own father is in prison on unrelated charges, while his mother cooperated with the investigation into her infant children’s deaths.
