Natalia Hitchcock, 41, made her first appearance in court on Tuesday to face charges of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter. Its bond was set at $ 1 million.
As she was being led out of the courtroom at the end of the hearing, an apparently distressed Hitchcock turned to her 15-year-old husband, Jeff Hitchcock, and other relatives sitting in the courtroom and told them: “I’m very sorry. I love you guys. “I do not know what happened,” WBAY2 reported.
According to a criminal complaint received by Law & Crime, Hitchcock strangled her youngest son, Oliver, in the family’s apartment in Sheboygan Falls on March 30. She also made apparent suicide attempts by overdosing on Tylenol and stabbing herself in the chest, but survived.
When a police sergeant informed Hitchcock on April 1 that Oliver had died of his injuries at the hospital, he reportedly said calmly, “Well, I guess I got what I was going to do then.”
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Natalia Hitchcock, 41 (left), was charged in Wisconsin with manslaughter and attempted manslaughter after allegedly strangling her eight-year-old son, Oliver (right), to death last month.
Hitchcock made her first appearance in court on Tuesday and her bond was set at $ 1 million
During the hearing, a seemingly distressed Hitchcock was seen turning to her family members in the audience, including her husband, Jeff Hitchcock.
As they drove her away, an excited Hitchcock said to her loved ones: “I’m very sorry. I love you guys. I do not know what happened”
The six-member complaint filed in the Hitchcock case on Tuesday depicts a vivid picture of the apparent unfolding of a married mother of two in the midst of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, where her husband was born.
Hitchcock is said to have been angry that she could not book airfare to visit her parents in Russia. She had recently started drinking vodka and experienced an “outburst of rage”, according to her husband, who described his wife’s descent into apparent paranoia.
In the days leading up to the deadly outbreak, Hitchcock reportedly asked her husband to buy survival equipment, weapons and knives because she feared their family would be attacked.
The tragedy began to unfold at 5 p.m. on March 30, when Sheboygan Falls Police Department officers responded to the Hitchcock family’s apartment at 1110 Plank Trail Lane after receiving a 911 call from Jeff Hitchcock, telling a sender that his wife had attacked their son and wanted to. to commit suicide.
Officers who responded found Oliver indifferent with bruises around his neck and blood running from his nose and right ear, which are signs of strangulation.
On March 30, police responded to the Hitchcock’s apartment at Sheboygan Falls and found 8-year-old Oliver unresponsive to bruises on his neck.
The boy died of his injuries two days later at Milwaukee Children’s Hospital. His 11-year-old brother is seen standing next to his brother
The paramedics who were called to the scene performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the eight-year-old before transporting him to Saint Nicolas Hospital, from where he was later transferred to the Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee.
Meanwhile, in the apartment, Jeff Hitchcock led his wife out of the bedroom with a knife in his hand and told police he “tried to stab me.” It was later revealed that Natalia also stabbed herself in the chest in a failed attempt to “cut her heart”, leaving her shirt soaked in blood.
The couple’s 11-year-old son was also in the apartment and told investigators that his mother allegedly tried to strangle him in the bathtub after causing him to keep his head submerged in the water as long as he could.
“He said that after he went under the water he felt his mother’s hands on his head pushing him down and at some point he felt like her whole body was pushing him down,” the son told authorities, according to the complaint. . “She said she could get out from under her, so she did not keep him under water.
Hitchcock allegedly admitted to strangling her youngest son barefoot to save him from being abused by the Russian government
“He described that the water was not very high and said that if it was higher it would probably have drowned.”
It was Oliver’s older brother who found the eight-year-old strangled under a sheet in his bedroom on March 30 and notified their father.
“When he got closer to [Oliver] “he saw what he described as red dots on his face and that his legs were white,” the court document said. “She said she started screaming loudly [Jeff] introduction and start WRIST.
He also said that his mother ended up in the kitchen with a different knife, which he held around her neck. At one point he left the house, ran and hid in the garage. ”
According to the complaint, Jeff Hitchcock told investigators that he was concerned about his wife’s mental state as she watched news coverage of the war in Ukraine.
He said the mother of two, who had previously given up drugs and alcohol, had recently started consuming vodka and “became violent when she was angry”.
Jeff told police that three or four days before the murder, he asked him to buy a camping stove and fuel, which he did “to make her feel safe.” She also wanted to collect weapons and boxes, but her husband refused to comply with this request.
Hitchcock is also suspected of trying to strangle her eldest son (right) in the bathtub, although she claimed she was just trying to scare him
“He advised that Hitchcock also complained that he could not book a flight to Russia to see her parents, which made her angry,” the complaint said. “He said he felt that the war between Russia and Ukraine had strengthened Hitchcock more than ever and that he had started drinking alcohol.”
Jeff Hitchcock told detectives he was taking a nap on March 30 when his eldest son ran to him for help, screaming that his younger brother was “dead.” His wife then came to him and allegedly said: “I killed [Oliver]. ‘
The husband said that Natalia started walking around the apartment with a knife, “dizzy” and allegedly threatened to kill everyone in the house.
When questioned by a police officer, Natalia Hitchcock allegedly admitted to drowning her youngest son to save him from abuse.
She also said she had no control over her thoughts, heard voices and had “brain fog”. He also told her that he emptied a bottle of Tylenol into a glass of orange juice, waited for the pills to dissolve and drank the liquid to “sleep and never wake up”.
The 41-year-old allegedly said that while her husband was sleeping and her sons were playing video games, “he began to think that the Russian government was going to take her children and abuse them,” according to the court.
Natalia also claimed that her husband “was trying to sell her and the boys in the dark web”, decided to kill Oliver because he was “the youngest and most vulnerable”.
During interviews with police, Natalia gave various explanations for what happened, including that she feared that Oliver’s “innocent” son would be sold into the dark web and sexually abused.
“She said she believed it [Oliver] “He could not have defended himself if he had been abused and he thought better of killing him than of seeing him being abused,” Natalia reportedly told police.
The mother then described how she “put both hands around”. [son’s] neck and tightened as hard as he could until [Oliver] “He stopped breathing,” the complaint said. “She said she noticed [Oliver’s] the face loses its color and that as soon as he lost consciousness and fell to the floor, she grabbed a kitchen knife and started stabbing herself in the chest.
During a subsequent interview with a detective, Natalia downplayed the role of the stress caused by the war in Ukraine in her decision to kill her son, saying she was “more concerned that people were selling her in the dark.”
The woman reiterated, according to the document, that she wanted to end Oliver’s suffering with her own hands because he was “so small and so innocent.”
Hitchcock also said she had “no choice” but to commit suicide because she said people suspected her of being a “Russian spy”.
The woman, however, denied that she tried to kill her eldest son, telling police that she had dipped his head in the bathtub “to scare him into realizing that his life was in danger”.
After being told Oliver’s death on April 1, Hitchcock “began to cry softly and said he did so because she was worried that her son would be sexually assaulted and felt it would be better to die,” the complaint said.
Hitchcock has denied that he has mental health problems that want him to be abused. If convicted as charged, he could face up to life in prison.
The couple’s 11-year-old son (left) was the one who discovered Oliver lying motionless under a sheet and alerted their father
Meanwhile, Oliver’s uncle Eric Hitchcock has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help his brother, who works as a truck driver, take care of his surviving son, now a single parent.
“No one should suffer at the hands of a parent – the person whose job it is to protect a child and protect him or her from harm,” Eric Hitchcock wrote in the description. “Without a history of aggression or abuse, we have no choice but to ask why and how this could have happened.”
The uncle also revealed that Oliver’s sad dad did …
