'I heard some kind of crack': Woman admits in police interrogation video to killing best friend's baby

For 12 hours on June 16, 2024, Nicole Virzi sat in an interrogation room at Pittsburgh police headquarters, repeatedly denying she hurt her best friend’s 6-week-old son who she’d been watching the night before.

Over the course of the day, the Ph.D. student in clinical psychology consistently told detectives she didn’t know how Leon Katz could have sustained multiple skull fractures.

But at 6:18 p.m., Virzi asked to speak to the lead detective one more time.

As Detective Janine Triolo settled in across the table from Virzi, the 29-year-old from San Diego said, “Um, I’m going to tell you the truth. The biggest part of that truth is that I did not want him to die.”

With a tone that fluctuated from somber to panicked to matter-of-fact, Virzi continued: “From a very, very young age, I don’t know what it is, but I always had this urge — almost like a compulsion I can’t control — to hurt kids.”

Leon, she said, fell victim to it. Virzi had traveled to Pittsburgh that week to visit her best friend, who had just had twins.

While she thought she’d get to spend time with her friend, Virzi told detectives, “I kind of grew angry because I was being put to nanny work.

“Something about that built up a lot of anger in me.”

“So when I was alone with (Leon) I shook him a couple times — hard. And I dropped him a couple times — hard.”

Virzi said she also flipped the infant upside down on the bathroom tile floor. “I heard some kind of crack.”

“Something just came over me I couldn’t control,” Virzi said. “I’m telling you this because I can’t keep lying about it.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone any more,” Virzi said. “I know the best thing is for me to go away — or maybe worse.”

That day, Virzi was charged with criminal homicide and multiple counts of endangering the welfare of children and aggravated assault — including for harming Leon’s twin brother.

The Allegheny County District Attorney’s office is seeking the death penalty.

On Friday, during a hearing on a defense motion to suppress her statement to police, prosecutors played lengthy portions of Virzi’s video-recorded interrogation.

‘I’ll talk’

Virzi’s lawyers, Tina Miller and William Difenderfer, argued Virzi’s confession was coerced following a 13-hour illegal detention “during which investigators utilized nearly every trick in the book to manipulate Ms. Virzi into making a statement.”

According to testimony, Virzi called 911 at 11:17 p.m. on June 15, 2024.

She had been tasked with watching Leon while her friends took their other son to the hospital.

Virzi called 911 to report that Leon was having difficulty breathing and had a lump on his head.

She reported that the boy had fallen out of a bouncy chair.

An ambulance took Leon from his apartment in Shadyside to the hospital, where he died a few hours later.

Just after 6 a.m., Pittsburgh police met Virzi outside of where she had been staying and asked her to go to headquarters for questioning.

She agreed, riding in the back seat of a police supervisor’s SUV. Officers asked her to turn over her cellphone, which she did, and her purse. She was not handcuffed.

According to the interrogation video, Virzi was placed in the interview room at 6:21 a.m. She was still not handcuffed, and Triolo said the door was not locked. However, Virzi did not have access to her phone or purse.

When Triolo began the interview, she told Virzi she had the right to remain silent.

“I think I have to choose to be silent for myself,” Virzi said.

But she kept talking, telling detectives what happened to Leon was an accident.

Then, she continued, “OK, I can talk.”

“I’ll talk.”

Not adding up

Detectives read Virzi her Miranda warning again, and she continued.

Virzi described watching Leon that night and said she placed him in the bouncy chair and then fell asleep.

When she woke up, Virzi said, Leon was on the floor next to the chair crying.

“I don’t know. Like maybe he tried to move, and he fell off of it,” she said.

But detectives repeatedly told Virzi that injuries as severe as Leon’s could not have been caused by a fall from such a short distance. Investigators found the seat was 12 inches off the ground.

“It doesn’t add up,” Detective Chris Kertis said.

“I’m telling you everything, sir,” Virzi answered.

Around 8:30 a.m., Curtis told Virzi that investigators found cameras in the apartment.

“What’s on the cameras, Nicole?” Triolo asked. “What are we going to see?”

Virzi replied, “I want a lawyer.”

And questioning stopped.

‘We’re here for you’

Over the course of the next several hours, Triolo allowed Virzi to call her parents — a call that was on speaker and recorded as part of the interrogation video.

Triolo brought Virzi several bottles of water, coffee, pretzels and a protein bar.

At some point that afternoon, Virzi spoke to a defense attorney — off camera — for about 45 minutes.

Then, just before 3 p.m., Virzi’s parents arrived. Triolo allowed them to hug their daughter and speak with her, all as the interrogation room camera still ran.

“I love you, honey,” her mother said. “We’re here for you.”

They told her they’d gotten her a good attorney.

“We will get through this as a family,” her dad said.

After about 10 minutes, Virzi’s parents left the room.

Over the next few hours, Triolo testified Friday, she worked on Virzi’s arrest paperwork and waited for Leon’s autopsy to be completed.

Virzi, who had been shackled to the floor immediately after asking for a lawyer, remained in the interrogation room.

It was during a bathroom break around 6:15 p.m. that she asked Triolo to talk.

‘That was so mean of me’

The detective read Virzi her Miranda warnings one more time before the woman began again.

As she described her compulsion to hurt children, Virzi said she’d felt that way since she was 3 or 4 years old.

“I don’t know why. I don’t know where it comes from,” she said. “Because I don’t feel that way about animals.”

Virzi said she had a long history of depression, anxiety and previously treated for an eating disorder.

When she was around 7 years old, Virzi said she locked a 2-year-old in a bathroom and pinched her until she cried. And when she was 12 at a church camp, she said she dropped a toddler on a couch a couple of times.

Then, in high school, Virzi told detectives she babysat just one time. She said she put a hot mug on the baby’s arm and pinched the child.

“This is the first time this happened as an adult,” Virzi said. “There’s some weird drive in me that wants to see kids in pain.”

She continued to describe what happened to Leon.

“I felt remorseful. When I was actually doing it, I was like watching myself, ‘That was so mean of me,’” she said she thought.

Causing pain, Virzi said, made her feel “satisfied.”

Virzi told the detectives that even as she was hurting Leon, she cared for him, too — changing his diapers and consoling him.

She said the abuse started a few minutes after her friends left and “it lasted all the way up to when I called 911.”

Nearing the end of the 13-hour interrogation, Virzi, who had denied it throughout the entire day, admitted she hurt Leon’s brother, too.

She confessed, Virzi said, because she thought her best friend ought to know the truth about what happened to her baby.

“I had an issue with that my whole life, too,” Virzi said. “Lying.”

“I did not want him to die,” she said. “That was not my goal. I just wanted him to feel a little pain.”

The hearing is expected to continue before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jill Rangos at some future date.