Coney Island mother gets 20 years to life in deaths

May 21, 2026

Summary

Erin Merdy was sentenced to 20 years to life after pleading guilty to killing her three children in Coney Island in 2022.

Why this matters

The case concludes a closely watched child homicide prosecution in New York and documents how prosecutors said the killings unfolded. It also records the sentence imposed after Merdy’s guilty plea.

A New York woman was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years to life in prison for killing her three children nearly four years after their bodies were found along the shoreline in Coney Island, prosecutors said.

Erin Merdy, 34, pleaded guilty in March to three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her son Zachary Merdy, 7, her daughter Liliana Stephens Merdy, 4, and her 3-month-old son Oliver Bondarev, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. The office said she was sentenced over prosecutors’ objection.

Prosecutors said Merdy took the children to the beach near West 35th Street in Coney Island at about 12:37 a.m. on Sept. 12, 2022, and drowned them in the ocean.

At about 1:25 a.m., she walked more than two miles to the apartment of Oliver Bondarev’s father in Brighton Beach and called family members, prosecutors said. They said she was upset and would not say where the children were.

Relatives and the child’s father then looked for her and called 911, according to prosecutors. Kenneth Corey, who was New York Police Department chief of department at the time, said officers searched the Coney Island beach, boardwalk, and nearby streets for 90 minutes before finding Merdy barefoot and wet.

“When the defendant’s family members found her in Brighton Beach wet and barefoot, she repeatedly said that the children were gone and that she was sorry,” the district attorney’s office said.

Police found the children at about 4:30 a.m., unresponsive and wet, about two miles down the boardwalk from where Merdy was found and three blocks from her apartment building, according to police and prosecutors. Officers performed CPR, but the children were pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital.

Two days later, Merdy was arrested and charged with murder. The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner ruled the children’s deaths homicides by drowning.

At the time, police said there was no indication of prior abuse or neglect involving the children. Relatives said Merdy may have been experiencing postpartum depression.

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