Woman pleads guilty to murdering best friend’s 6-week-old son, says she was compelled to harm children

A woman driven by the need to harm children admitted in a Pittsburgh court that she murdered her best friend’s infant son as part of a plea deal that would likely keep her in prison for life.

Nicole Virzi, 32, had been charged with capital murder before choosing to plead guilty Wednesday to third-degree murder and other charges.

She was sentenced to 35 to 80 years in prison.

“While this office is committed to pursuing this case to trial and final conclusion, after continued and ongoing consultation with the family and considering the best interest of the community and its protection, we have agreed to offer the above plea and sentence,” the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Virzi, a doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego, was close friends with the victim’s mother, Savannah Roberts. She was visiting Pittsburgh and helped babysit Roberts’ newborn twins, Leon and Ari Katz, in 2024.

In June 2024, the twins’ parents, Roberts and Ethan Katz, took Ari to the hospital after discovering injuries on his body. Virzi offered to look after Léon while they were gone.

Late that night, Virzi called police and claimed 6-week-old Leon had fallen out of a baby bouncer. He was rushed to a nearby children’s hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Investigators quickly determined that the severity of Leon’s injuries could not have been caused by falling from such a short height and arrested Virzi.

Leon’s death was ultimately ruled a homicide caused by “blunt force trauma to the head” and “the circumstances of the death were ruled a homicide,” Pittsburgh police said in a criminal complaint. It was also determined that Ari’s injuries that caused the family to leave Leon in Virzi’s care were caused by Virzi herself.

Virzi told investigators that she “always had a compulsion that she could not control to harm children,” prosecutors said in court.

“This is a horrific case in which Virzi used her trusted relationship with the Roberts/Katz family to place herself in a situation where she could commit her horrific acts,” prosecutors said.

The twins’ mother, Roberts, said the tragedy had forever shaken her faith in humanity.

“Nicole’s actions have fundamentally changed me as a person and I feel unrecognizable from the Savannah that I was. I could never have imagined that any person, much less my best friend, would be capable of the cruelty or violence that Nicole demonstrated,” Roberts wrote in a letter to Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jill E. Rangos.

“One of the most lasting impacts of Nicole’s crimes is that my self-confidence is forever shattered and I will never forgive myself for failing to protect my babies from this monster,” she wrote.

An attorney for Virzi could not immediately be reached for comment.

Virzi will have to serve the full term of the 35-year minimum sentence before being eligible for parole, according to Phil DiLucente, a local criminal attorney and legal analyst for NBC affiliate WPXI.

It is very unlikely that a parole board will allow him to leave prison, DiLucente said.

“It’s just a bizarre case, in many ways, that someone would fly in from all over the country to see their best friend and then commit such a horrible, premeditated act,” DiLucente told NBC News on Thursday. “It simply doesn’t apply to any of the things that would be (considered to be) mitigating (a parole granting factor).”

Both of Leon’s parents are twins, and the couple always dreamed of having twins, too, Roberts said.

The mother fears she will never be able to let their surviving twin son, Ari, out of her sight.

“It took me almost a year to use the bathroom, shower or brush my teeth on my own after learning that Nicole had thrown Leon to the floor of our old bathroom, fracturing his skull and ending his life,” Roberts wrote.

“Every time I went into the bathroom, Ethan had to stand at the door talking to me the whole time, preferably holding Ari where I could see him to make sure he was okay,” she said.

“I still have never been able to leave Ari alone with a friend and I don’t know if I ever will,” she wrote to the judge.