Neighbors heard the couple shouting
at each other, but they never saw it get physical. Artur Plackowska said his
wife recently told him she loved him.
But beneath that ordinary domestic facade lay
far more violent resentments between the husband and wife, prosecutors say,
eventually leading Elzbieta Plackowska to kill her own 7-year-old son, stabbing
him 100 times Tuesday, all out of anger at her often-absent, truck driver
husband. She then fatally and repeatedly stabbed a 5-year-old girl she was
babysitting.
"She felt he truly did not appreciate how
fine a wife and mother she was," DuPage County State's Attorney Robert
Berlin said. "She told the detectives that she thought by killing (her
son) Justin she would make her husband hurt the way she hurt in their
relationship."
The gruesome slayings have shocked this
vibrant, populous suburb 25 miles west of Chicago, leaving prosecutors,
neighbors and relatives at a loss. Berlin said the 40-year-old Polish immigrant
told investigators that her husband used to bring her flowers and gifts, but
she resented him being home only on weekends and that she had to work as a
maid, which she felt was beneath her.
For some in Naperville, it brought back
painful memories of a similar horror, when Marilyn Lemak fed her three children
peanut butter laced with antidepressants and suffocated them 13 years ago as
revenge on her estranged husband.
"I don't understand anything that's going
on," said Tim Hooper, 28, who lives in the same condominium complex as the
Plackowska family and would sometimes work out with Plackowska's older son.
"This is so out of the blue."
The Naperville police chief said the crime
scene was the most gruesome sight he'd seen in three decades on the job.
Officials said Thursday that Plackowska
ordered her son Justin and a kindergartner she was babysitting, 5-year-old
Olivia Dworakowski, to kneel on a bedroom floor and pray, then stabbed them
both dozens of times as they begged for their lives, striking again and again
as she told her son he was going to heaven.
Plackowska killed Olivia because she had
witnessed the attack on Justin, Berlin said.
Officers who forced their way inside the
locked apartment hours later found blood-spattered walls and the children's
bodies in a master bedroom where moments before the killings they had been
happily jumping on a bed, prosecutors said.
Olivia's body was found on the bed, and
Justin's was found on the floor beside it. He had stab wounds on his head,
face, neck and back. Both appeared to have had their throats slit.
The slayings took place at the home of
Olivia's mother, who works nights as a nurse and had left her daughter in
Plackowska's care before. Plackowska also stabbed the two family dogs.
Investigators found two blood-stained knives:
a steak knife in the kitchen sink and another in Plackowska's car, Berlin said.
Still covered in blood and with scratches on
her hands, Plackowska drove to a Catholic church. Finding it closed, she called
the church and left a message saying she had "done something bad" and
needed help, Berlin said. She then went to a friend's home where her adult son
was staying and said she had been robbed.
About the same time, Olivia's mother, Marta
Dworakowski, returned home to discover her door locked and the babysitter's car
gone. She called police to report her daughter was missing, and officers forced
their way into the home.
Police took Plackowska into custody at her
friend's home, and prosecutors charged her with first-degree murder late
Wednesday.
Plackowska initially told investigators that
an intruder had broken into the home and killed the children while she was
outside smoking a cigarette. She then told investigators she was battling the
devil and trying to get evil out of the children. Finally, Berlin said, she
admitted she had lashed out in anger at her husband.
Plackowska's husband, Artur, denied the two
were having problems.
"The day before (the killings) she told
me that she loves me," he said in a brief interview with The Associated
Press, before hanging up because he said he wanted to focus on giving his son a
proper funeral.
However, a neighbor said he frequently heard
the couple shouting at each other. "It happened once every other
month," Victor Tuckenberry said.
There also were money troubles. Public records
show the couple filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2009; a foreclosure in her name
only was filed in 2007.
Still, Tuckenberry said Plackowska doted on
her sons and he was shocked by the slayings. Plackowska and Justin "were
together all the time," he said.
Plackowska arrived in the United States from
her native Poland on a tourist visa 12 years ago, Berlin said. She is not a
U.S. citizen and authorities were trying to verify her immigration status.
Berlin said she has no prior history of violence, although she had a
misdemeanor DUI about 10 years ago.
Plackowska didn't speak during Thursday's bond
hearing other than to indicate she could not afford an attorney. The judge appointed
a public defender.
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