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Indiana teenager Nickalas Kedrowitz was sentenced to 100 years in prison after being found guilty of killing his young siblings in 2017, when he was 13 years old.
In August 2021, a Ripley County jury found Kedrowitz guilty of the May 2017 killing of Desiree McCartney, his half-sister who was less than 2 years old, and the July 2017 killing of Nathaniel Ritz, his 11-month-old stepbrother, the Associated Press reported.
Ric Hertel, a prosecuting attorney for the county, said in a WLWT-TV report that Kedrowitz admitted to suffocating McCartney with a towel after she got out of the bathtub and to suffocating Ritz with a blanket. The two children died only 90 days apart. Hertel added that Kedrowitz said he was "freeing his siblings from hell."
Cincinnati's WKRC-TV similarly reported the teen said he "set [McCartney] free to heaven" when he killed her. According to the report, child services had removed Kedrowitz from the house in Osgood, Indiana, after McCartney's death, and it is unclear why and how he had returned to kill Ritz.
According to a 2018 affidavit, Kedrowitz said "he didn't want them to have to live in the hell that he did" when confessing to the killings. When Kedrowitz was asked specifically what this "hell" he referred to was, he said "chores," the AP reported.
Despite Kedrowitz's young age, he was tried and convicted as an adult. The AP reported the judge gave him a 50-year sentence for each killing and ordered they be served consecutively, adding up to 100 years.
WKRC reported the teen's defense made the case that he had been dealing with serious mental health issues and never got the help he needed. According to the news outlet, Candice Barker, a relative of McCartney's, said in an affidavit that Kedrowitz had "issues with his temper and was self-centered," citing a September 2017 incident in which he mutilated a kitten in her basement to the point of almost killing it.
Barker said she found the cat with its insides hanging out of it and a "puncture-like" wound on its head. According to the affidavit, Kedrowitz got angry and started squeezing the cat after it scratched him. Another kitten was also found with a similar wound, WKRC added.
The affidavit was read for a court-ordered competency evaluation conducted by two medical professionals in 2018, WKRC reported. They decided Kedrowitz was competent to stand trial.
After the sentencing hearing, Hertel told reporters he agreed with the sentencing decision.
"This wasn't some sort of heat of passion, one killing and then minutes or hours or even days later [another killing,]" he said. "We're talking months here, so we think that the consecutive part of the sentence was warranted and appropriate in this circumstance."
