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Mother charged in stabbing deaths of children
(cnn)
Updated: 2005-04-30 08:48
The mother of a 9-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl who were fatally stabbed
more than 200 times each inside their suburban Chicago home was charged Friday
with two counts of first-degree murder, authorities said.
Tonya Vasilev, 34, is accused of stabbing her
two children to death. [AP] |
Tonya Vasilev, 34 -- a heavy bandage covering her left wrist -- appeared in
court Friday afternoon and answered the judge's questions in a soft, shaking
voice.
The judge appointed a public defender to represent her and ordered her held
without bail.
Investigators believe she was at home Wednesday night when Christian and
Gracie Vasilev were killed.
The children's father and a friend who had been living with the family
discovered the bloody scene when they arrived home that evening.
Police found the boy lying just inside the front door and carried him
outside, where they tried in vain to resuscitate him, said Hoffman Estates
Police Lt. Rich Russo.
The little girl and the children's mother were both upstairs. The girl was
dead, and her mother had what appeared to be minor cuts on her hands. Police
recovered several knives believed to have been used to kill the children.
"It really doesn't get much worse than this," said Russo, who would not
discuss a possible motive for the killings.
The autopsies showed that both children tried to fight off their attacker, he
said.
The stabbings came five years after the couple's 3-month-old daughter died in
a fire at an Elk Grove Village town house where the family then lived. The cause
of the 2000 fire remains undetermined, but foul play was never suspected, said
Larry Hammar, deputy chief of the Elk Grove Village Police.
Hammar said his department will investigate that fire again. The mother was
home at the time of the blaze.
Village police said at the time that Tonya Vasilev left the baby in a carrier
in the laundry room while she went to check on another of her children. She
noticed smoke coming from the window a short time later.
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