Woman, 32, ‘Cut Up Ribs’

A woman has been accused of killing her dad and carving out his heart.

Serena Dolnics, 32, has been charged with murder after police say they found her covered in blood near her father’s corpse in Valparaiso, Indiana. Cops allegedly responded to a 911 call made by relatives of 69-year-old Gregory Dolnics after they became concerned about his well-being on Sunday evening, with the police dispatcher reportedly being told someone had seen Desiree ‘covered in blood’ at the home.

Arriving at the property, cops say that they found the property locked, but noticed a body lying on the ground surrounded by dried blood. Forcing entry, they discovered that the corpse belonged to Gregory, who had allegedly suffered slash wounds to the head, face, neck and hands, while his heart had been cut out from his body, as per local news outlet NWI.

According to a postmortem, all of these injuries had been executed with knives, including incisions made to the ribs to allow the removal of the heart.

Dolnics, who was discovered at the property covered in blood, was arrested and taken into custody after being treated at the hospital due to injuries to her hands.

According to court documents, Dolnics claimed she suffered the cuts to her hands while gardening, although cops maintain that these injuries were consistent with a knife slipping through.

She told detectives that she and her father “get along really well” despite having the occasional “small tiff” that they would quickly move past. She also insisted she had not seen Gregory injured.

Court records show Dolnics has a record of drug and drink-driving offences. She pleaded guilty to having methamphetamine in Jasper County in 2024, and has prior convictions for operating while drunk in Porter County in 2017 and 2014. She was also convicted of public intoxication in neighbouring LaPorte County in 2016.

Dolnics made an initial court appearance on Thursday (July 30), where she wore a blue suicide-prevention smock and reportedly spoke hesitantly via a video chat link.

She has reportedly pleaded not guilty, although she is not yet thought to have arranged an attorney, and when questioned in court about this, she said: “I’ll figure it out.”

A further hearing has been scheduled for August 11.

The very idea of a daughter killing a parent where excessive brutality was involved is beyond comprehension.

This is excessive overkill, and she must have been extremely mentally ill, and she will certainly need detention in a secure psychiatric hospital.

Perhaps her attorney will declare an insanity defence, although at present she doesn’t have an attorney, which indicates she has no guilt or she has no understanding that what she did was wrong.

Cases like this leave a kind of hollow ache because you can see all the points where something should have happened earlier, and yet it didn’t. And when someone is spiralling into severe mental illness, the gap between what should happen and what actually happens can be devastating.

When someone is becoming extremely mentally unwell, the warning signs are usually subtle, sporadic, dismissed as stress or “odd behaviour”, concealed from family, not enough to trigger emergency services, and misunderstood by professionals. And unless the person is already known to mental health services, the system tends to respond only after a crisis, not before.

This is sad because it’s not one life lost. It’s two. One through death, and one through the collapse of their mind, and the sadness comes from knowing that, with earlier intervention, both lives might have been saved.