A Russian-born Wisconsin mother accused of killing her 8-year-old son allegedly told investigators she was trying to prevent him from being “abused” due to her homeland’s war against Ukraine.
Natalia Hitchcock, 41, has lived for years in the U.S. with her husband and two sons, but a six-page criminal complaint filed in Sheboygan County Court this week says she began to spiral out of control in recent weeks as she watched news reports of Russia’s slaughter of Ukrainians.
In the days before Hitchcock allegedly strangled her 8-year-old son Oliver, her husband told investigators she became increasingly paranoid and had “surges of rages” as she began to drink vodka and became more and more “amped up” about the war.
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He said he “was worried about Hitchcock’s mental state of mind as she watched TV with the war between Russia and Ukraine,” the complaint notes.
With her mother still back in Russia, she reportedly became frustrated with being unable to go see her, and at the same time began to fear “people were going to be coming from a bigger city to attack them,” the complaint says.
Her apparently deteriorating mental condition culminated in a horrifying scene on March 30, when police say she tried to drown her 11-year-old son in the bath before setting her sights on the 8-year-old instead.
Her husband was reportedly woken from a nap by his younger son informing him Oliver was dead. The boy had found his younger brother on the floor of a bedroom in the home and seen that “his mother was on the bed with a big knife,” the complaint states.
The Sheboygan Falls Police Department said Oliver actually survived the initial attack but died two days later in a hospital.
Facing first-degree murder and attempted murder charges, his mother allegedly confessed to killing Oliver in comments to her husband and police investigators.
The criminal complaint against her notes that she told police she could no longer sleep at night because she was convinced the “Russian government was going to take her children and abuse them.”
As the “youngest and most vulnerable,” the complaint says, she decided Oliver “would be better off dead.”
“She said that she believed (Oliver) would not have been able to defend himself if he had gotten abused and she thought it better to kill him rather than watch him be abused. She said that she placed both hands around (Oliver’s) neck and squeezed as hard as she could until (he) stopped breathing,” reads the complaint.
After being informed on April 1 that Oliver had succumbed to his injuries, police say Hitchcock responded: “Well, I guess I accomplished what I set out to do then,” before she “began to cry softly.”
In her first court appearance on Tuesday, Hitchcock, who also tried to stab herself in the chest following the alleged attacks, reportedly turned to beg for forgiveness from her husband.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened,” she said, according to local news station TMJ4.
She is currently being held on a $1 million bond, with her next court hearing scheduled for April 7.
