Nicole Virzi pleaded guilty this week in the 2024 death of 6-week-old Leon Katz and the physical abuse of his twin brother, ending a case that began with a summer visit and ended with one infant dead and the other hurt. She now faces up to 35 to 80 years in prison for third-degree murder, aggravated assault and two counts of endangering a child’s welfare.
For Savannah Roberts, the plea brings the case back to the moment she said she would never leave Virzi alone with the boys. Roberts wrote that she now struggles to make even basic decisions about Ari’s care for fear that she could make a choice that inadvertently causes him harm, a fear that hangs over every ordinary part of parenting now.
Virzi told investigators that she had intentionally harmed the babies and said she had a compulsion to hurt kids her entire life. She also said she shook Leon hard and dropped him several times on purpose, including onto a tile floor, while insisting she did not want him to die. That contradiction sits at the center of the case: the harm was deliberate, but the fatal outcome was one she said she did not intend.
Scans found that Leon had a severe skull fracture on the left side of his head and multiple brain bleeds, and a doctor determined that the injuries to both boys were consistent with child abuse. Virzi, a one-time doctoral candidate at UC San Diego studying clinical psychology, had traveled to Pittsburgh in June 2024 to meet the twins and spend time with her best friend’s family. During the visit, she reported odd injuries on Ari, offered to babysit Leon while the parents took Ari to the hospital, and then called 911 after saying the baby had fallen on his head. Leon was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead.
The plea leaves sentencing as the next decisive step, and the range is wide enough to keep the final outcome uncertain. What is no longer in dispute is that Virzi admitted to the abuse herself, the surviving twin lived through it, and the court will now decide how much of her life she will spend behind bars for what happened in that house in June 2024.
