Indiana woman says she smothered kids to death to save them

Pasztor currently faces a March 20 trial date on two counts of murder in the Sept. 26 killings of 7-year-old Liliana Hernandez and 6-year-old Rene Pasztor. The children were killed after being abducted from their custodial grandparents’ home.

Investigators have said Pasztor parked a car outside the Elkhart Police Department hours after the children were abducted and told an officer her children’s bodies were the back seat. Elkhart is about 70 miles northwest of Fort Wayne.

The next day, a child services case worker visited the home of the grandparents, and family members “advised that Amber is completely unstable, and that she has been making threats for months to abduct and kill the children and kill herself,” the case worker wrote in a report.

Family members claimed they had been telling people about Pasztor’s threats for months, but child services staffers said the agency had received no such reports.

Pasztor’s attorneys are seeking to present a defence of mental disease or defect, saying they believe she cannot fully understand the legal proceedings or help prepare her defence. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence without parole.

Pasztor has also admitted to fatally shooting a neighbour, 65-year-old Frank Macomber, and taking his car. She has not been charged in the death, but prosecutors have said she is a suspect. Investigators believe Macomber was shot the same day the children were killed. His body was found the next day in a wooded area near Fort Wayne.

The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Indiana woman says she smothered kids to death to save them

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