Woman Charged With Bludgeoning Mother, Grandmother To Death To Rob Them

A 42-year-old woman has been charged with two counts of murder after confessing to beating her mother and grandmother to death with a nightstick at their high-rise apartment in Ventnor, New Jersey.

Heather Barbera was arrested July 11 from Manhattan on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree robbery and third-degree possession of a weapon. She was accused of killing her 67-year-old mother Michelle Gordon and her 87-year-old grandmother Elaine Rosen.

Prosecutors told the Daily Mail the duo was found dead Sunday morning by Barbera’s Uncle. They had multiple blunt impact injuries.

Surveillance video from her Ventnor residency showed her leaving the place July 7. Barbera was on the run from the police for four days before she was finally arrested.

She left the lifeless bodies inside the apartment which had been splattered by blood, and fled the crime scene. Having stolen her mother and grandmother’s cash and credit cards, Barbera first went to Atlantic City and then to New York City while on the run, reported the Daily Mail.

The police said they traced her due to the trail she left behind by using her mother’s credit card. She had used it at the Salisbury Hotel on West 57 th Street on July 11. She then made her way to Times Square, making other purchases along the way.

The police followed the trail and found Barbera near the Port Authority Bus Terminal. She was sitting on steps near the terminal. Shortly after the arrest, she is said to have confessed to the crime, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Barbera was held in protective custody at the Rose M. Singer Center, a women’s facility on Rikers Island, officials said to the Inquirer. She refused to waive an extradition hearing set for Aug. 8 in Manhattan.

Barbera’s uncle, Richard Rosen, was the one who discovered the bodies of his mother and sister lying in a pool of blood inside their condo on the eight-floor in Vassar Square Condominiums on July 8 morning.

“I went because I couldn’t reach them by telephone,” said Rosen. “I kept wondering, ‘Why aren’t they picking up the phone?’"

“It’s unimaginable,” Rosen had said in an earlier interview. “It was horrible. They were both on the floor. There was blood all over. I was hoping they were alive, even though they were dead.”

He told The Inquirer that Barbera, his niece, had been long struggling with emotional problems, adding that he suspected her to be addicted to prescription pills.

“It’s insane. I can’t imagine what happened. I don’t know what drove her to do this. I told my sister not to take her in. She had emotional problems. It was supposed to be temporary, her staying there.” Rosen said to the Daily News.

Barbera, a mother of two, had been separated from her husband. Their children were living with him.

The Daily mail claimed Barbera, in a Facebook post in 2016, had shared a childhood photo where she was sitting on her mother’s lap. The post had the caption: “My mother, my backbone, and little me back in the day — feeling blessed.”

Rosen, Barbera’s uncle, said the burglary was the likely cause for the double homicide citing his niece’s alleged drug abuse.

About the South Jersey court date, he said, “I will be there. I don’t want to confront her. I don’t want to talk to her. I just want to find out what happened.”