A killer in the family
Was death of two young kids more than just a tragic coincidence?
When Christina McCartney headed home from work on 1 May 2017, life was normal. She was engaged to Stephen Ritz, and a mum to three kids.
They all lived happily in Osgood, Indiana.
There was more than a decade between her eldest, Nickalas, then 13, and her two younger children – Desiree, 23 months, and Nathaniel, 9 months.
So Christina always had a helping hand from her teenage son.
He’d sing to the little ones, and read them stories. He adored being a big brother.
But as she turned the key in the door that day, everything changed.
Nickalas came out of the bathroom, holding tiny Desiree in his arms, a towel wrapped around her torso.
‘Mum, something’s wrong. She’s not breathing right,’ Nickalas said.
Christina knelt down and tried to rouse her daughter, but the little girl was unresponsive.
Frantic, she gave Desiree CPR.
The emergency services arrived and rushed the toddler to hospital.
But sadly, despite their best efforts, the medics couldn’t save her.
Five days on, Desiree was pronounced dead. Christina was devastated. Her baby girl had died just one month before her second birthday.
An autopsy was unable to determine the cause of her death.
All they could suppose was that her death was related to an unknown medical condition.
Two months passed, and the family tried to come to terms with their tragic loss.
Slowly, they regained some sense of normality.
Then, on 20 July 2017, they sat down to dinner and watched TV.
Afterwards, Christina asked Nickalas to take Nathaniel to bed. But minutes later, Nickalas came running out of Nathaniel’s room.
He told his mum that something wasn’t right with Nathaniel.
‘He ain’t moving,’ he said. Christina watched as history repeated itself.
The emergency services arrived, but baby Nathaniel’s heart had completely stopped.
Her 11-month-old son was rushed to hospital.
In the early hours of the next morning, at 12.12am, he was pronounced dead.
It was a month before Nathaniel’s first birthday.
Again, an autopsy was unable to determine the cause of death.
His devastated mum Christina was left in the dark.
In the space of just two months, she’d lost her two youngest children.
Then, within six weeks, she started to notice a shift in her eldest son’s behaviour.
That summer, his aunt Candice Barker welcomed a new litter of kittens to her home.
They were on the front porch of her house.
But one was later found in the basement, covered in blood. There was a puncture wound to its head, and its
‘Something is wrong, she’s not breathing right’
insides were hanging out. Nickalas was crying. He admitted it’d scratched him, so he’d squeezed it really hard.
And chillingly, when his aunt and uncle took the animal away to end its suffering, Nickalas asked if he could watch.
‘To see the kitten’s brains splatter everywhere,’ he said.
Christina was alarmed. In September 2017, she reported the incident to the police.
She told them her son had ‘mutilated a kitten to the point of almost killing it’.
When questioned about the incident, Candice told the police her nephew had been in fights at school, and often didn’t tell the truth.
That he had a temper like Marvel Comics character the Hulk – who changes from a softly-spoken man to a monster powered by rage. The police ordered that Nickalas have a psychological evaluation.
The following month, the psychologist revealed she believed him to be responsible for the deaths of his younger siblings.
In December 2017, investigators read the report.
It referenced freeing his siblings from
‘Satan’ and ‘hell’.
During a conversation with the police, Nickalas admitted he didn’t want Desiree and Nathaniel to live in the hell he lived in.
They asked what he meant by ‘hell’. ‘Chores,’ he said. He claimed he hadn’t wanted to hurt them.
Then he admitted putting a towel over Desiree’s head and a blanket over Nathaniel’s. Suffocating them… In January 2018, the autopsy reports for both children were amended and their deaths were ruled homicides, caused by asphyxia due to smothering.
Finally, in September 2019, Nickalas Kedrowitz, then 15, was charged with two counts of murder.
With the law in Indiana allowing juveniles as young as 12 to be tried as adults, two doctors found him mentally competent to stand trial.
In August 2021, a jury found Nickalas Kedrowitz, then 17, guilty of murdering 23-month-old Desiree McCartney and 11-monthold Nathaniel Ritz.
In February 2022, Judge Ryan King sentenced the teenager to two consecutive 50-year prison terms, one for each killing.
Following the sentencing, prosecutor Richard Hertel said he was pleased with the outcome.
‘This wasn’t some sort of heat of passion, one killing and then minutes, or hours, or even days later. We’re talking months here,’ he said.
Kedrowitz claimed to be freeing his siblings from hell, but now his mother is living her worst nightmare.
‘I’m grateful for the time I got to spend with my babies, but my heart breaks for the time that I am missing that has been taken from me, by the hands of my own son,’ said Christina McCartney.
She said she is still tormented by thoughts about how they died.
‘What was it like to take that last breath? Did they ask for Mummy? Was my daughter gasping for air?’
Once a busy mum of three, now one child is in prison, the other two gone.
All Christina has left are these terrible questions.
Like the Hulk, he changed into a monster