NEW YORK (AP) — A Brooklyn woman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison on Wednesday for drowning her three young children in the ocean near Coney Island’s famed boardwalk.
Erin Merdy, 34, pleaded guilty earlier this year to first-degree murder charges in the 2022 killing of her 7-year-old son Zachary, her 4-year-old daughter Liliana and her 3-month-old son Oliver.
“No sentence can fully measure the loss of a seven-year-old, a four-year-old and a three-month-old baby, or the grief their loved ones will carry forever,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. He added that the children’s lives were taken “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”
A message left with Merdy’s attorney was not returned.
The frantic search for the three children began in the early hours of Sept. 12, 2022, after New York City police received a call from Merdy's relatives, concerned that she intended to harm her kids.
Officers first found the mother, barefoot and soaking wet, 2 miles (3 kilometers) down the boardwalk from the section of Coney Island where she lived. She repeatedly said that the children were gone and that she was sorry, according to prosecutors.
Hours later, the bodies of the children were recovered from the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean, steps from the boardwalk and about a dozen blocks from the stadium where the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team plays.
The city medical examiner’s office ruled their deaths homicides by drowning.
The evidence against Merdy included video showing her walking toward the ocean with the children just before 1 a.m., according to the criminal complaint.
At the time, relatives said she may have been going through postpartum depression.
FILE - New York Police investigators examine a stretch of beach at Coney Island where three children were found dead in the surf, Sept. 12, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Joseph Frederick, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Promising a commitment to "ambitious journalism and agenda-setting conversations,” media scion James Murdoch has struck a deal with the Vox Media digital company to acquire New York magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Vox editorial brand.
The deal with Vox, widely seen as liberal-leaning, represents a major move toward his own media empire for the 53-year-old younger son of Rupert Murdoch, who himself owned New York Magazine from 1976 until 1991. And it comes less than a year after the Murdoch family reached a deal on control of the 95-year-old mogul’s media empire after his death, ensuring no change in direction at Fox News, the most popular network for conservatives, under Rupert's chosen heir, Lachlan Murdoch.
Under the new deal, expected to close within weeks, Lupa Systems, James Murdoch’s media company, acquires the three divisions — about half of Vox Media. Neither Vox Media nor Lupa was disclosing the sum. The New York Times cited people familiar with the matter saying it was more than $300 million. The acquired divisions will operate, according to a statement, as a subsidiary of Lupa — called Vox Media.
Not included in the deal are the Vox brands Eater, Popsugar, SB Nation, The Dodo, and The Verge. But the deal does include, along with New York magazine, its verticals The Cut, Vulture, Intelligencer, The Strategist, Curbed, and Grub Street.
It also includes the Vox Media Podcast Network. which features wildly popular shows like “Criminal” and “Pivot” with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. The network “has been the fastest growing business within Vox Media and will immediately put Lupa at the top of the podcast field,” said the Vox statement.
James Murdoch, a former CEO of 21st Century Fox who resigned from the board of News Corporation in 2020 over differences about content and direction, is known to hold less conservative views than his father. In the deal reached last year, James and his two older sisters. Prudence MacLeod and Elisabeth Murdoch, gave up any claims to control of Fox in exchange for stock valued at the time at $3.3 billion.
That deal created a trust establishing control of the Fox Corp. for Lachlan Murdoch, along with his younger sisters, Grace and Chloe.
In his own remarks about the Vox deal, James Murdoch said the acquisition “aligns well with our existing holdings and investments and reflects both our interest in the forward edge of culture and our deep commitment to ambitious journalism and agenda-setting conversations.
It will allow us to apply new tools across the businesses we are building, adding substantial production, distribution, and editorial capability to our group," Murdoch said.
Current Vox chairman and CEO Jim Bankoff will lead the new Vox Media, becoming CEO of the new company upon closing.
“We are incredibly proud to have built and scaled several of the leading media properties of this generation,” Bankoff said. “Together under Lupa’s stewardship we are primed to be the best home for talent and the most dynamic media company of this new era.”
David Haskell, New York magazine's editor-in-chief, noted in an email to subscribers that Lupa now becomes the magazine's sixth owner since 1968.
Haskell promised that the magazine would continue with “the fearless, independent journalism that you expect from us."
“We will continue to create news cycles, start conversations, contribute to the most important debates in politics and society, identify and explore what’s most interesting in contemporary culture, and always do our best to challenge our readers, surprise them, and help them make sense of the modern world,” Haskell said.
Jocelyn Noveck covers the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press.
FILE - James Murdoch arrives at St Bride's Church for the celebration ceremony of the wedding of Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall in London, March 5, 2016. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP, File)
