NYC mom suspected of drowning her 3 kids was facing eviction, battling custody issues
The Brooklyn mom suspected of drowning her three young children Monday was facing eviction from her apartment, battling custody issues and grappling with mental health woes before she allegedly killed the kids, The Post has learned.
Erin Merdy, 30, of Coney Island owed more than $10,000 in back rent for her Neptune Avenue apartment, where she lived with her children, and had been threatened with getting booted out since January, after the state’s COVID-19 eviction moratorium expired, court records show.
The mom, who allegedly told kin she drowned her kids — 3-month-old Oliver, 4-year-old Liliana and 7-year-old Zachary – on a nearby beach early Monday, had stopped paying her $1,531-a-month rent in July 2021 and was served with an eviction notice days before the moratorium expired in January, records show.
Relatives reached by The Post on Monday said Merdy appeared unstable in recent years and had trouble maintaining consistent relationships.
“There was a time when Erin and I were in contact all the time, but in 2015, 2016, she disappeared off the Earth. I didn’t know how to get in touch with her,” Merdy’s uncle, Levy Stephen, told the Post.
“Now I’m faulting myself for that. She obviously needed help, and you can’t help but think, ‘Maybe I could have…’
“I’m at a loss for words. It’s not every day you lose three family members in one day,” he said. “Nobody wants to go to the funeral and see those three bodies.”
Another uncle, Jean Stephen, 64, said Merdy didn’t appear to “have her life together.
“I don’t think she could handle a relationship or anything like that. She didn’t seem like she was that kind of person. She didn’t seem like she was stable,” the relative said.
“Anybody can go out and just fool around, but a person that’s stable can settle down with one person. She didn’t have her life together enough to do that.”
Around 1 a.m. Monday, concerned relatives called police to report Merdy might be drunk and might have done something to harm her children. Hours later, the mom was found by police walking barefoot through the sand on the Coney Island beach, wearing a bathrobe and appearing dazed.
Law enforcement sources said that before cops found her, she told relatives she “drowned all three kids.” The children were later found unresponsive along the shoreline, just three blocks from their home on Neptune Avenue, and pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital soon after.
Merdy’s aunt Dine Stephen said she knew her niece was struggling — but wasn’t aware just how badly.
“I knew she was struggling in the sense she was trying to find her way through life. In this family we do have a history of mental illness to varying degrees. A few of us have battled with bipolar disorder, but I didn’t know her mental struggles,” the aunt said.
“I just knew she was trying to find a way for her children, a way to get on her feet. … It was the mental issues that took over.”
Another uncle, Eddy Stephen, said he was “speechless” when he heard from relatives that “Erin killed her three children.
“She did a little crazy stuff, but nothing that would lead to harming her children or herself,” Eddy said.
“She used to like to party here and there, do a little drinking, but I didn’t see any drug abuse or see that she was really irresponsible. It’s just tragic. I don’t know. She never gave us the sign that she would hurt her children. She loved her children.”
Merdy’s uncle Levy said his niece was in the midst of a custody dispute with 7-year-old Zachary’s father before Monday’s horror.
“He had issues with the way she was raising the child, from what I understand,” Levy said.
“She kind of went off the grid after that, changed her numbers. She wasn’t on social media — at least not to the point that I could find her.”
Law enforcement sources noted Merdy had failed to bring her son to a custody exchange in July ahead of a six-week visit planned with the kid’s father.
In May, Merdy pulled Zachary off his youth football team without explanation, according to his coach.
“She never gave a flat-out answer of why he stopped playing,” C.I.T.Y. Silverbacks football team head coach Allen McFarland told The Post. “She seemed as if she was juggling a lot.”
During the 2021 football season, coaches in the youth mentorship sports program regularly picked up Zachary for practice, fed him dinner after games and dropped him home, said McFarland, 34.
They tried to convince Merdy to bring Zachary, who McFarland said loved football, back to the team, to no avail.
“We felt it would be a positive thing for him, to get him out of the house and involved,” the head coach said. “We practice four times a week for three hours a day. That would have been a good relief for the household.”
The children’s exact cause of death has yet to be determined.
McFarland choked back tears imagining the terror Zachary must have endured at the end of his life.
“The person you should trust the most in the world is your mom,” he said. “A 7-year-old would have been excited to go to the beach. I can only imagine what that kid was thinking in that moment.”
The coach broke the tragic news to the boy’s former teammates at practice Monday night. The young football players released balloons with Zachary’s jersey number 15 into the sky over Coney Island and yelled “Zachary, we love you” as a final goodbye.
No charges have been filed against Merdy, who was transported to NYU Langone Hospital late Monday morning for a psychiatric evaluation.
“How does she come back from this? Even if you get your mind back, how do you get over the fact that you killed your children?” Levy said.
“That’s a shadow that’s going to be over her for the rest of her life. That’s what I’m worried about. I don’t think there’s a support group for people who commit such a heinous crime. Are there people who are functional that have done this?”
