A judge will not suppress a statement from a Pittsburgh homicide defendant to police that she dropped a baby “hard” a couple of times on the floor of a Shadyside home several hours before the child died.
Nicole Virzi, 31, of San Diego is charged with killing her best friend’s infant son in 2024 and might face the death penalty. She sought to bar prosecutors from using a potentially incriminating statement.
Virzi’s attorneys argued at a hearing in November that her statement — in which she admitted she’d long had a compulsion to hurt children and did so with the Leon, the 6-week-old victim — had been coerced following a long day during which she’d had little sleep or food.
On Monday, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jill E. Rangos ruled that Virzi’s statement was “knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily made.”
For several minutes, Rangos recounted the circumstances of Virzi’s interviews with police that day and found nothing that made her believe the statements could not be used at trial.
She noted that Virzi was 29 years old at the time and was a Ph.D student studying clinical psychology. While in custody that day, Rangos said, Virzi also spoke for 45 minutes with a defense attorney and with her parents.
“The vast majority of time she was in that room, she did not appear to be in any distress,” the judge said.
Virzi had come to Pittsburgh to visit her best friend who had recently had twins in mid-June 2024.
On June 15, her friend had left Virzi home watching Leon while they took their other son to the hospital. Around 11:17 p.m., Virzi called 911 to report that Leon was having difficulty breathing and had a lump on his head.
An ambulance took Leon from his Shadyside apartment to the hospital where he died a few hours later.
She kept talking
Just after 6 a.m. on June 16, police met Virzi where she had been staying and asked her to go to headquarters for questioning.
She agreed.
Virzi spent 13 hours at the police department that day before she was taken to the Allegheny County Jail.
In the beginning of her interview, Virzi received her Miranda warnings, Rangos said.
Virzi told detectives: “I think I have to choose to be silent for myself,” Rangos recalled.
But Virzi kept talking.
“She’s equivocating,” Rangos said in announcing her decision on the motion to suppress. “She wasn’t sure.”
But then, Virzi told detectives she wanted to talk. They read her her Miranda warning again, and she told police that she had placed Leon in his bouncy chair, and she fell asleep.
Virzi claimed when she woke up, Leon was on the floor crying next to the chair.
But detectives continued to press her, telling Virzi the infant could not have sustained the type of injuries he had from a fall from such a short distance.
At 8:30 a.m., the detectives told Virzi they’d found cameras in the apartment.
It was then that she asked for a lawyer, and questioning stopped.
‘I can’t keep lying about it’
Over the next several hours, Virzi remained in an interview room where detectives brought her water, coffee, pretzels and a protein bar.
They allowed her to speak to a defense attorney and her parents on the phone.
Then, her parents arrived at the station just before 3 p.m., and she spoke in person with them for about 10 minutes.
Although Rangos agreed it was a long day, and Virzi had likely not slept much, Virzi showed no signs of lethargy or being overly fatigued.
“She was treated respectfully, not further interrogated in any way, treated kindly and professionally,” Rangos said.
Around 6:18 p.m., Virzi asked to speak to the lead detective on the case.
During that interview — after she was informed of her right to remain silent a third time — that she admitted to harming Leon, police said.
Virzi told detectives she shook Leon hard and dropped him. She also said she flipped him upside down on the bathroom tile floor.
“Something just came over me I couldn’t control,” Virzi said in the video-recorded interview. “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.”
Rangos agreed with prosecutors there was probable cause to arrest Virzi and her statements to police were made voluntarily.
“Ms. Virzi’s statements were not the result of coercion,” the judge said.
Virzi’s case is scheduled for a jury trial on Oct. 1.
