Cops: Mom Stabbed Kids 200 Times

(CBS/AP)  The mother of a 9-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl who were fatally stabbed more than 200 times each inside their suburban Chicago home was charged Friday with two counts of first-degree murder, authorities said.

Tonya Vasilev, 34 — a heavy bandage covering her left wrist — appeared in court Friday afternoon and answered the judge's questions in a soft, shaking voice. The judge appointed a public defender to represent her and ordered her held without bail.

The children's father, Nikolai Vasilev, discovered the bloody scene when he returned to their home Wednesday night with a friend who had been living with the family, prosecutor Richard Karwaczka said.

Vasilev spotted his 9-year-old son, Christian, lying on the floor in the kitchen in a pool of blood, Karwaczka said. The father scooped him up and carried him to the front door, where he frantically called 911. Then he and the friend started up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, they found the Vasilevs' 3-year-old daughter, Grace, dead from stab wounds, the prosecutor said.

"Right next to Grace was the defendant, Tonya, sitting there with a knife," he said.

The mother was taken to the police station for questioning, where Karwaczka said she admitted stabbing the children. She had what appeared to be minor cuts on her hands, police said.

Emergency crews tried to resuscitate the boy when they arrived, but couldn't save him, Hoffman Estates Police Lt. Rich Russo said Friday. Inside the home, he said, officers found several knives believed to have been used to kill the children.

"It really doesn't get much worse than this," said Russo, who would not discuss a possible motive for the killings.

The autopsies showed that both children tried to fight off their attacker, he said.

The stabbings came five years after the couple's 3-month-old daughter died in a fire at an Elk Grove Village town house where the family then lived. The cause of the 2000 fire remains undetermined, but foul play was never suspected, said Larry Hammar, deputy chief of the Elk Grove Village Police.

Hammar said his department will investigate that fire again. The mother was home at the time of the blaze.

Village police said at the time that Tonya Vasilev left the baby in a carrier in the laundry room while she went to check on another of her children. She noticed smoke coming from the window a short time later.