Brooklyn Woman Sentenced to 20 Years to Life for Drowning Her Three Children

A Brooklyn woman was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to drowning her three children in the ocean near Coney Island. Erin Merdy, 34, admitted to killing her children Zachary, 7, Liliana Stephens, 4, and Oliver Bondarev, 3 months, on September 12, 2022.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Danny Chun accepted the plea to three counts of first-degree murder and set the sentence after determining that life without parole was not required.

Prosecutors had sought a trial and life without parole.

The judge said the sentence reflected Merdy’s remorse shown in court appearances over three years. Merdy told the court she had struggled with postpartum depression and described the night of the deaths as a blur in which she was on autopilot. She said she had spoken with other women on Rikers Island who also experienced postpartum depression.

Small, the father of Liliana Stephens, said his daughter told him and his mother she was scared to go back to her mother and wanted to stay with them. He said the statement will forever haunt him. Jim Kobal, uncle of the infant Oliver, said Merdy was a monster who replaced family joy with a lifetime of grief and told her there was a special place in hell for her.

m. on September 13, 2022, after relatives reported concern that Merdy might be drunk and had harmed the children. Officers found Merdy walking barefoot on the beach in a bathrobe. The children were later found unresponsive along the shoreline three blocks from the family’s Neptune Avenue apartment and were pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital.