After being charged in 2018, teenager Nickalas Kedrowitz will serve two consecutive 50-year terms in prison.
Nickalas Kedrowitz confessed to killing his siblings in 2018, and was found guilty in 2021 on two counts of murder for their deaths, according to local outlet WXIX.
Two-year-old sister Desiree McCartney died on May 6, 2017 at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital after Kedrowitz told his mother, “She wasn’t breathing right,” according to the publication. Christina McCartney, Kedrowitz’s mother, told WXIX on May 1, 2017, that she came home to find her daughter lifeless, and she thought her daughter died of an unknown illness.
Two months later on July 21, 2017, Kedrowitz’s 11-month-old stepbrother Nathaniel Ritz died as well. The teen, then 13, confessed to both murders after Ritz’s death, according to Ripley County prosecutor Ric Hertel.
According to the local outlet, officials ruled that both children died of suffocation in the family’s Osgood home.
Prior to sentencing, the teen was held at the Dearborn Juvenile Detention Center and received treatment at a mental hospital, according to his mother. He was evaluated to determine if he was competent to stand trial and if he could be tried as an adult, according to Hertel.
According to the local outlet, the teen’s mother defended her son, placing some responsibility on her ex-boyfriend.
“He did it under threat. He was told that if he didn’t do what he was being told he would be killed and that Stephen would kill me,” McCartney said to WXIX.
“He witnessed him being mean to the babies. That he pushed them down on purpose. He would lock them up in the bedroom to try to shut them up. He painted a pretty bad picture. As a mom that’s hard to swallow that was going on and I didn’t know.” McCartney continued the news outlet.
“There were several remarks that were made to police about freeing the siblings from some sort of hell,” Hertel said in response to Kedrowitz’s confession.
"This man destroyed many people's lives. My son will never be the same and my kids are gone. Those were my babies. They were my life, but he still walk free. That's not right," said McCartney to the local outlet.
The ex-boyfriend has not been charged despite her allegations.
The teen was sentenced to two 50-year terms — one for each sibling — that will run consecutively.
