Ph.D. Candidate Accused of Killing Friend's Baby Boy After Assaulting His Twin

hi there my name is Nicole verie 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 Nicole ver lawyer has to say about them I'm Anette Levy and this is crime fix Nicole verie 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 verie is in the alagan county jail in Pittsburgh facing a number of charges including criminal homicide aggravated assault and child endangering versy is accused of killing little leyon cats a six and a half week old twin police say leyon died on Father's Day and that verie had also harmed his twin brother by causing injuries to his genitals and scratches to his face the probable cause affidavit says verie called 911 on June 15th before midnight and said leyon 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 leyon in Nicole V's care after taking his twin brother to the hospital for the injury to his genitals which verie had actually told them about earlier in in the day police said leyon suffered a severe skull fracture and multiple brain bleeds the affidavit says Dr Wolford of the Child Advocacy Center informed detective O'Neal 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 verie agreed to speak to police at the police department the affidavit States verie was able to provide any plausible explanation for the cause consistent with the extent of the injuries that Leon cats sustained while in her care verie stated that she was with Savannah Roberts Ethan Catz 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 ver estimated that at approximately 18:30 that would be 6:30 in the evening the parents took the John D to the hospital for an injury to the genital area verie identified herself as the sole caretaker for Leon cats while the parents and brother were at the hospital detectives said that verie told them that leyon was fine after his parents left that he had eaten soiled two diapers and was burped the affidavit continued Bersy 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 verie 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 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 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 V's part her lawyer David shreer told me she plans to plead not guilty and he stressed that this case is at the beginning of the investigation shager continued 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 shreer 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 as 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 Sher said there will likely be psychological information that comes into play along with 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 careful and truthfinder shows you all the sex offenders who live near you 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 LC crime fix log on and start accessing information about almost anyone Joe jackalone is a retired Cold Case Sergeant with the NYPD and also host of True Crime with the sarge on YouTube so Joe uh this case uh is pretty interesting to me very sad first of all but you have uh two little babies six and a half week old babies suffering injuries it seems within a matter of hours of one another um you know the 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 V'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 uh 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 and it is a very disturbing situation and this is the 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 Catz he's the twin who sadly passed away and died um you know know his parents Ethan and Savannah they were apparently they called U Nicole ver a family friend her attorney of course says that she will plead not kilty they're starting the very beginning of this investigation they're looking into this um 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 um they can't do anything for themselves and she 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 tumbles over in the bouncer while she's in uh the kitchen getting a bottle what do you what do you make of that I mean she notif the parents of the injury to the baby and they take the baby to the hospital hospital so I mean I 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 or calling the notifying the parents is not unheard of in situations like this so everything has to be taken with a grain of Sal uh they bring the child to the the hospital and right away the doctors and the nurses I'm assuming say that this is inconsistent to what the story has 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 that point what the the family says how good of a friend she is or anything else the police start taking this over as a criminal investigation as soon as the doctors and nurses say this is not adding up while the the baby is at the hospital the surviving twin with his parents um Nicole verie calls the hospital or calls 911 and says Leon has fallen over um my experience as a mother with babies and I actually just Googled it to make sure just you know checking to make sure I was remembering everything correctly 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 uh skull fracture little six week old babies can't do anything I mean they 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 the you know the heads tend to you know uh 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 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 so you the photos have to be taken you you know you take her story as 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 you know anything you say Canon 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 verie is quoted as saying in her 911 call versus what she told police the affidavit says ver 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 strapped in detectives wrote the distance from the bouncer to the floor was 18 Ines that's about a foot and a half that Lon 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 that's really a question for the medical examiner to tell us that because like you said the skull is very soft and it uh you know tends to have some elasticity to it uh 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 uh you know and there's other issues that they're going to to come up with in regards to what are those injuries really mean uh 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 this the first child is brought to the hospital by the parents with injuries to the genital area and that's something that um you know caused prosecutors is going to say if if they did this why would they bring the child directly to the hospital and put themselves you know in the Forefront of that so it's going to be you know listen there going to be a battle between the prosecutor and the defense in regards to that but the situation happens is as you're at the hospital the other child now has an injury that is 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 taken the photographs that they have to do with it give the prosecutor a prosecutor PR utable 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 much they especially babies of this age they sleep and they eat and and they go to the bathroom in their diapers that's about all that they do they 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 uh hope that the medical examiner has a specialty with children like in New York City there's there is an me that's dedicated specifically to doing autopsies on children so I mean that takes a toll on you also and the reason is is because they 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 word no just like every other uh death investigation right you treat it as if it's a homicide until proven otherwise the changes in the body postmortem 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 do it I mean we don't know if there's any surveillance cameras in the house or baby monitors or or those other things that might be interesting to find out if those 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 um a lot of people have the Alexa devices the the Amazon devices and sometimes they just record sound too um you don't even have to realize that you're talking to it it might just pick it up um at least that's I've seen that in some other cases so we don't know if those types of items are available uh right now though Nicole verie is in the aligan county jail she is facing a criminal H homicide charge along with uh some other charges related to the surviving twin and we will keep an eye on it to see what happens with this case um it's just so sad a little six- week old baby um is no longer here with his parents Joe jackalone thank you so much thanks for having me and that's it for this episode of crime fix I metion at Ley thanks so much for being with me I'll see you back here next time