Court extends remand of mother who allegedly admitted to murdering her 2 children

J'lem Magistrate's Court formally charges, Carina Brill, in homicides; judge orders her to remain in police custody.

By DANIEL K. EISENBUD
Murder suspect Carina Brill 370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Murder suspect Carina Brill 370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
During a brief remand extension in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, Carina Brill, who has allegedly admitted to killing her two children in their Talpiot apartment last month, was charged in the murders and ordered by a judge to remain in police custody.
According to police, Brill, 36, admitted to the September 16 murders during an interrogation late last month while recovering at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem from self-inflicted knife wounds.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Brill told investigators she killed her seven-year-old son and five-year-old daughter because she was “not a good mother,” and then attempted to take her own life by impaling herself.
Following the admission, the court extended Brill’s remand for eight days during a hearing held in absentia.
Brill’s sister, who was living with the family, heard the screams of the children and unsuccessfully attempted to restrain the mother. When her efforts failed, she ran to a neighbor’s apartment and the police were notified.
Brill, who was recently divorced and made aliya from Moscow last year with her two children and without their father, was struggling to acclimate to life in Israel emotionally and financially, police said.
She was scheduled to meet with a Jerusalem Welfare Agency councilor just two hours after killing her children, following an anonymous call to the agency one day earlier alerting it of her precarious mental state, as well as of suspicious bruises on one of her children.
The children’s father, Dmitri Brill, a noted jazz musician from Moscow who arrived in Israel a little over 24 hours following the murders, said he had no indication of the imminent danger his daughter and son were in.
“If I had known, I would have taken them immediately,” Channel 10 reported Dmitri as saying.
Rosenfeld said Wednesday that police will continue its investigation until Brill is formally tried.