A RUSSIAN mother strangled her eight-year-old son to death and threatened to kill the rest of her family in a rageful and paranoid state caused by the Ukraine war, officials say.
Natalia Aleksandrovna Hitchcock, 41, said that her murdered son Oliver would have been “better off dead” rather than “abused” by the Russian government.
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Hitchcock has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide after killing little Oliver and attempting to drown her older son days before, according to the Sheboygan Falls Police Department.
On March 30, police responded to a 911 call from the boys’ father. Officers arrived to find the lifeless body of the strangled boy and immediately transported him to the hospital.
The older boy, 11, had found his unconscious brother on the floor in the family’s Wisconsin apartment while “his mother was on the bed with a big knife,” authorities said. The surviving son’s screams woke up his father, who had been napping.
While the father attempted to perform life-saving measures on Oliver, the mother reportedly walked “around the apartment with a knife, dazed, saying she was going to kill everyone in the house,” a criminal complaint said.
Upon the police’s arrival, the father told responding officers that Hitchcock had tried to attack him and that she had stabbed herself, the complaint said.
The father told officials that the mother was from Russia and that she had been suffering from “surges of rage.”
The husband “felt the war between Russia and Ukraine amped up Hitchcock more than ever and that she started to drink alcohol.”
The complaint also reports that Hitchcock was worried that people from a bigger city would come and attack them.
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In the days before the attack, her husband said that Hitchcock asked him to stay home from work and buy survival gear such as a camping stove, fuel, knives, and guns.
When authorities asked Hitchcock’s husband if she had struggled with any mental illnesses, he responded “She does now.”
During questioning, the mother told cops that after strangling her son, she had tried to overdose on painkillers and stabbed herself in the chest to “cut her heart,” authorities said.
She then detailed her paranoia to the police, saying that she felt that she had been poisoned and that she feared her husband was planning to sell Hitchcock and her children to the dark web.
The complaint states that Hitchcock said that she “did not have control of her thoughts and heard voices in her head” on the fateful day.
“She began to have thoughts that the Russian government was going to take her children and abuse them.”
Hitchcock admitted to strangling her child. When asked why she did it, she responded: “I did not want him to be abused.”
Oliver died in the hospital from his injuries two days after the attack.
When police visited the county jail to inform Hitchcock that her son had passed away, the complaint states that she responded calmly and said “‘Well, I guess I accomplished what I set out to do then.”
‘BETTER OFF DEAD’
She then became emotional and said that she did it because she was worried for her son’s future and “felt he would be better off dead.”
When asked about attempting to drown her older son, Hitchcock maintained that she “didn’t do anything like bad to him.”
“She said that she told the boys they needed to wake up and needed to see what was going on around them,” the complaint said, continuing on to say that Hitchcock just wanted to scare him.
“She said that she dunked his head under the water to scare him so that he would understand his life was in danger.”
During Hitchcock’s first day in court on Tuesday, she found her “visibly emotional” husband in the crowd and spoke directly to him, according to TMJ4.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened,” she said to him, according to the outlet.
Police have worked with Sheboygan Falls Elementary School, where Oliver was a student, to provide resources for his peers.
“We encourage parents of the district to speak with their children and ensure their mental health,” Police Chief Eric Miller said.
Hitchcock is being held on bond for $1million. Her next court hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
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