Teenager Who Smothered Step Siblings To Death Was Saving Them From 'Chores'; Convicted

A southeastern Indiana teenager was convicted Friday for suffocating his young siblings to death months apart in 2017 when he was just 13-year-old.

Nicklas Kedrowitz, now 17, was convicted of two counts of murder for killing his 23-month-old half-sister, Desiree McCartney, and his 11-month-old stepbrother, Nathaniel Ritz, Associated Press reported.

Horowitz is expected to face up to 65 years in prison for each murder when he is sentenced on Nov. 10.

Kedrowitz was arrested in 2018 after McCartney was found dead in May 2017, and Nathaniel was found dead in July at the family's home in Osgood, about 60 miles southeast of Indianapolis. Kedrowitz told deputies that he put a towel over Desiree's head and a blanket over Ritz's head in an attempt to suffocate them.

A coroner ruled their deaths as homicides and the exact reasons were determined as asphyxiation, WRTV reported. Kedrowitz told deputies that he committed the murders because he sought to save his siblings from "hell and the chains of fire," the outlet reported, citing court documents.

Kedrowitz apparently told deputies that he didn't want the children to suffer as much as he did. When the investigators asked what the "hell" was, Kedrowitz replied "chores," before asking the investigators if they had seen the list of daily chores he was assigned, News-Press Now reported, citing the suspect's arrest affidavit.

Ripley County Prosecuting Attorney Ric Hertel said Kedrowitz's case passed through several stages to get to this point including hearings to determine Kedrowitz's competency to be tried at an adult court, according to WLWT.com.

An uncle of the suspect told investigators that a day before Ritz’s death, Kedrowitz's father had bloodied the teen's nose. The prosecutor said in court that shortly before McCartney's death, Kedrowitz squeezed a kitten so hard that its insides came out, and he told relatives that it had scratched him.

Neighbor Becky Horn told WLWT-TV that the children's deaths shocked the community. "Our whole street, we were in tears for weeks over this," Horn said.