Sheboygan Falls homicide; Natalia Hitchcock pleads no contest
SHEBOYGAN, Wis. - Natalia Hitchcock was in Sheboygan County court on Thursday, May 11 to enter a plea in connection with the death of her 8-year-old son, Oliver, in March 2022.
Hitchcock faced two charges – first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide. On Thursday, Hitchcock pleaded no contest to the first-degree intentional homicide charge – and the judge dismissed the second charge, which was still read into the court record.
Afterward, the court commenced with sentencing – and ordered lifetime commitment for Hitchcock. The defense attorney had requested 40 years commitment, online court records show, but that was denied.
Case details
On March 30, 2022, police responded to a home in Sheboygan Falls where they found 8-year-old Oliver unresponsive. Prosecutors said they found Natalia Hitchcock trying to "cut out her heart" with a knife.
A witness told police the war between Russia and Ukraine was affecting Hitchcock's mental health; Hitchcock is from Russia.
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A criminal complaint against Hitchcock states that during an initial interview with police at the hospital, Hitchcock told police: "She had not been sleeping for the past five days, explaining that within the prior five days she gotten approximately eight hours of sleep. She went on to say that at approximately 4 p.m., she began to have a ‘brain fog.’" Hitchcock also stated "she did not have control of her thoughts and heard voices in her head."
Natalia Hitchcock
An emergency room nurse advised officials that Hitchcock "had a critical amount of Tylenol in her system, the complaint indicates.
Hitchcock told police she was worried that "she was being sold by people on the dark web" and the "Russian government was going to take her children and abuse them." She also said "people looked at her as a Russian spy." She confessed to suffocating Oliver.
Oliver Hitchcock
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Hitchcock also told (the detective) that she felt like she had no other choice but to take her life," the complaint states. Hitchcock went on to say "if she killed herself she did not want her kids to be abused and that she thought to herself that she was going to ‘End his suffering with my hands.’"