Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Ph.D. Candidate Accused of Killing Friend's Baby Boy After Assaulting His Twin

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi there. My name is Nicole Verzi. A PhD candidate studying psychology faces charges of homicide and assault. She's accused of killing a newborn baby and injuring that baby boy's twin. I go over the allegations and what

Starting point is 00:00:26 Nicole Verzi's lawyer has to say about them. I'm Anjanette Levy, and this is Crime Fix. Nicole Verzi is a 29-year-old PhD candidate in clinical psychology at San Diego State University. She's also the daughter of a prominent cardiologist in New York City. But instead of studying or taking summer break, Verzi is in the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, facing a number of charges, including criminal homicide, aggravated assault, and child endangering. Verzi is accused of killing little Leon Katz, a six-and-a-half-week-old twin. Police say Leon died on Father's Day and that Verzi had also harmed his twin brother by causing injuries to his genitals and scratches to his face. The probable cause affidavit says Verzi called 911 on June 15 before midnight and said Leon

Starting point is 00:01:19 had suffered a bump to the head after falling from a bassinet. The document said the baby was becoming non-responsive. Leon was rushed to the hospital. The affidavit said his parents had left Leon in Nicole Verzi's care after taking his twin brother to the hospital for the injury to his genitals, which Verzi had actually told them about earlier in the day. Police said Leon suffered a severe skull fracture and multiple brain bleeds. The affidavit says Dr. Wolford of the Child Advocacy Center informed Detective O'Neill that the injury sustained by both John Doe and Leon Katz is consistent with having been sustained as a result of child abuse, as these are inflicted injuries that are not natural and not accidental.

Starting point is 00:02:08 Verzi agreed to speak to police at the police department. The affidavit states Verzi was unable to provide any plausible explanation for the cause consistent with the extent of the injuries that Leon Katz sustained while in her care. Verzi stated that she was with Savannah Roberts, Ethan Katz, and the twins on the day of 6-15 of 2024. That was a Saturday. They went on an outing in the afternoon hours, and she was out by herself at a grocery store after that. Verzi estimated that at approximately 1830, that would be 630 in the evening, the parents took the John Doe to the hospital for an injury to the genital area. Verzi identified herself as the sole caretaker for Leon Katz while the parents and brother were at the hospital.

Starting point is 00:02:50 Detectives said that Verzi told them that Leon was fine after his parents left, that he had eaten, soiled two diapers, and was burped. The affidavit continued. Verzi stated that she fell asleep for a period of time while Leon was in the bouncer seat. She woke up and went to the kitchen to get a bottle for Leon. At that time, Leon was in the bouncer seat but not strapped into the seat. Detectives claim Verzi said she went into the kitchen and heard Leon screaming and then found him on his left side on the floor and picked him up. Leon died hours later at the hospital. It was Father's Day. The affidavit detailed the injuries that Leon's twin brother suffered.

Starting point is 00:03:31 It reads, it should be noted that your affiance spoke with Dr. Wolford, who stated that John Doe's injuries are as follows. Two scratches to the right cheek, one small scratch below the left side of the nose, one small scratch to the left cheek, two small scratch below the left side of the nose, one small scratch to the left cheek, two bruises below the belly button, bruising, swelling, and redness of the penis, and scratches to the tip of the penis. In addition, Dr. Wolford believes that all of Leon's injuries were acute. An autopsy performed on Leon determined that his death was caused by blunt force trauma, and his death was ruled a homicide. His parents denied causing the injuries to Leon or his twin brother. For Nicole Verzi's part, her lawyer David Schrager told me she plans to plead not guilty, and he stressed that this case is at the beginning of the investigation. Schrager continued,

Starting point is 00:04:22 At the beginning of every case, there is a lot of confusion about what happened. And that's what the purpose of a trial is, is to find out what really happened. And that is our intention. Schrager continued, this case is going to take a good amount of time and we have to make sure that it is done thoroughly and properly versus quickly. And we're talking about the life of an infant. We're talking about the people that are left behind. We're talking about a 29-year-old young lady who's never been in trouble. And we need to make sure that we're doing it properly and appropriately as the law requires." Schrager said there will likely be psychological information that comes into play along with

Starting point is 00:05:01 medical experts on both sides evaluating the evidence. Let me tell you, the world can be a really scary place. So I want to take a moment to tell you about the sponsor of this episode of Crime Fix. It's truthfinder.com. I've covered crime for a really long time. So I can tell you that truthfinder.com is a great platform to research the people that you meet each day so you and your family can stay as safe as you can. I have a family, so I use Truthfinder for unlimited lookups on people my family interacts with, especially my son. I've covered way too many stories about sex offenders and other criminals to know that you just can't be too careful. And Truthfinder shows you all the sex offenders who live near you,

Starting point is 00:05:45 which is really helpful to know. I use Truthfinder all of the time for work and in my personal life. I've even run a background check on myself, family, and neighbors, friends, just to see what's out there. And let me tell you, the information that's available is actually pretty shocking. So right now you can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash LC crime fix, log on and start accessing information about almost anyone. Joe Giacalone is a retired cold case sergeant with the NYPD and also host of true crime with the Sarge on YouTube. So Joe, this case is pretty interesting to me, very sad, first of all, but you have two little babies, six and a half week old babies,

Starting point is 00:06:33 suffering injuries, it seems, within a matter of hours of one another. The baby who survived, the twin who survived, is taken to the hospital by his parents. And then while they're there getting treatment for him for these injuries to his genitals and things like that, the other baby in Nicole Verzi's care allegedly falls over in a bouncer, suffers this massive head injury, and later dies. So, wow. What are your first thoughts about this? Well, just from the criminal investigative standpoint, you know, we don't believe in coincidences. So when you see something like this happen, I mean, you have to just turn your attention right to the person who was last seen with the children and left with them when they were in good health. So this is just part of the investigative 101 aspect of it.

Starting point is 00:07:21 And it is a very disturbing situation. And this is this is the thing that keeps parents up at night this is the kind of disaster that you're looking at and parents just really go into utter fear because of something like this now little Leon Katz he's the twin who sadly passed away and died you know his parents Ethan and Savannah they were apparently they called Nicole Verzi a family friend. Her attorney, of course, says that she will plead not guilty. They're starting the very beginning of this investigation.

Starting point is 00:07:54 They're looking into this. But they called her a trusted family friend. They obviously trusted her enough to watch their newborn babies. I mean, these are newborns, six and a half weeks old. They're helpless, about as defenseless as you can get. They can't do anything for themselves. And what I find interesting, though, is that she notifies them, according to the affidavit, she notifies them about this injury to the other twin, the one who survived. They go to the hospital, and then she says the baby

Starting point is 00:08:25 tumbles over in the bouncer while she's in the kitchen getting a bottle. What do you make of that? I mean, she notifies the parents of the injury to the baby and they take the baby to the hospital. So, I mean, I guess that just begs the question, if you actually harmed the baby, why would you notify the parents about the injury? Well, I mean, the question comes down to why does anybody do anything, right? So just from the investigative standpoint, calling 911 is not unheard of when calling and notifying the parents is not unheard of in situations like this. So

Starting point is 00:09:03 everything has to be taken with a grain of salt. They bring the child to the hospital and right away the doctors and the nurses, I'm assuming, say that this is inconsistent to what the story says. So now everybody is on alert. And as we know, nurses and doctors are mandated reporters, which means the police automatically get involved. And it really doesn't matter at what point the family says, how good of a friend she is, or anything else. The police are taking this over as a criminal investigation as soon as the doctors and nurses say this is not adding up. While the baby is at the hospital, the surviving twin with his parents, Nicole Verzi calls the hospital or calls 911 and says, Leon has fallen over. My experience as a mother with babies, and I actually just Googled it to make sure, just checking to make sure I was remembering everything correctly.

Starting point is 00:09:52 You know, the thought of a baby being able to move enough at that age to knock a bouncer, you know, over and to fall and suffer a massive, massive skull fracture, little six-week-old babies can't do anything. I mean, most babies can't roll over by themselves for several months, if not up to five or six months old. So they just kind of sit there. They don't really do a whole lot. And the head is heavier than the rest of the body at that point, too. So, you know, the heads tend to, you know, pull one way or the other. That's why, you know, you're told to hold them a certain way in order to support the neck and the head. So, you know, when you're dealing with this, this is an entire crime scene run that we would call this.

Starting point is 00:10:42 So the photos have to be taken. You know, you take her story as it comes, right? This is a story. So the police will document that story and keep it in there and make it part of the permanent record. And like everything else, anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. Everybody is innocent until proven guilty. That's why investigation and documentation are extremely important. Now, there are some questions about what Verzi is quoted as saying in her 911 call versus what she told police. The affidavit says Verzi claimed that Leon fell from a bassinet. That's what she said to the 911 call taker. But police say she told them Leon fell in his bouncer and was not

Starting point is 00:11:21 strapped in. Detectives wrote the distance from the bouncer to the floor was 18 inches. That's about a foot and a half that Leon would have fallen. It begs the question, was Leon's injury caused by one blow to the head or more than one? Dr. Wolford, as I had mentioned earlier, told detectives the injuries were the result of child abuse. Well, yeah, that's really a question for the medical examiner to tell us that because like you said it the skull is very soft and it you know tends to have some elasticity to it this is where we're going to find out after the autopsy about the type of injury that the baby received including if there are multiple injuries you know and there's other

Starting point is 00:12:02 issues that they're going to to come up with in regards to what are those injuries really mean. And we're going to have to wait for the full autopsy reports in order to determine that. Now, I've covered cases in the past where a parent turns over a child to a caregiver and the child or baby sadly passes away. The caregiver is later charged. And I've seen cases where the caregiver claims the child had to have suffered the injury prior to being dropped off. Well, I think that's going to be the exact argument that the defense is going to take, right? So you have the first child is brought to the hospital by the parents with injuries to the genital area. And that's something that, you know, of course, the prosecutor is going to say if

Starting point is 00:12:41 they did this, why would they bring the child directly to the hospital and put themselves in the forefront of that? So it's going to be, you know, listen, it's going to be a battle between the prosecutor and the defense in regards to that. But the situation happens as well. As you're at the hospital, the other child now has an injury that is. So, I mean, listen, there's lots of red flags here and like everything else as long as the the police have collected the evidence taking the photographs that they have to do it give the prosecutor a prosecutor prosecutable case then that's what all they need to go forward with it and see what happens are these cases involving infants can they be difficult i mean babies as i mentioned don't do

Starting point is 00:13:23 much they especially babies of this age. They sleep and they eat and they go to the bathroom in their diapers. That's about all that they do. They're helpless. Yeah, these cases are extremely difficult, not only for the medical staff, but the investigators as well. And, you know, let's just hope that the medical examiner has a specialty with children. Like in New York City, there is an ME that's dedicated specifically to doing autopsies on children. So, I mean, that takes a toll on you also.

Starting point is 00:13:55 And the reason is because they understand the injuries. They've received the training in specific areas when you're dealing with children. And I think that's something that is really important in a case like this. But can they be difficult to investigate? Or is the timeline fairly straightforward? No, just like every other death investigation, right? You treat it as if it's a homicide until proven otherwise. The changes in the body post-mortem and everything else that you have to deal with, you try to estimate the time of death, go through all of those stages, take your photos, and collect any evidence that has to be due. I mean, we don't know if there's any surveillance cameras in the house or baby monitors or those other things. That might be interesting to find out if those

Starting point is 00:14:33 items exist. Usually with new parents in today's, you know, in 2024, there's a lot of electronic devices around that people use to watch their kids. So that could be another interesting little tidbit out of this case that we might find out down the road. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. It's a good point. A lot of people have the Alexa devices, the Amazon devices, and sometimes they just record sound too. You don't even have to realize that you're talking to it. It might just pick it up. At least that's, I've seen that in some other cases. So we don't know if those types of items are available. Right now though, Nicole Verzi is in the Allegheny County Jail. She is facing a criminal homicide charge along with some other charges related to the surviving twin. And we will keep an eye on it to see what happens with this case. It's just so sad. A little six

Starting point is 00:15:23 week old baby is no longer here with his parents. Joe Giacalone It's just so sad. A little six-week-old baby is no longer here with his parents. Joe Giacalone, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Ph.D. Candidate Accused of Killing Friend's Baby Boy After Assaulting His Twin

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Ph.D. Candidate Accused of Killing Friend's Baby Boy After Assaulting His Twin

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