A 32-year-old Indiana woman is facing multiple charges, including murder, after law enforcement said they found her father fatally stabbed, with his heart cut out.
Serena Dolnics was charged with murder on July 28 in the death of her father, Gregory Dolnics, 69, Porter County court records show.
According to a probable cause affidavit reviewed by USA TODAY, deputies with the Porter County Sheriff's Office found Gregory Dolnics dead on July 26 while conducting a welfare check at the Valparaiso home where the two lived.
The city is about 55 miles southeast of Chicago.
Officers responded to the home just before 8 p.m. CT after a relative called 911 and said they were unable to reach the victim by phone, according to the affidavit.
Serena Dolnics “was
making odd statements” when a family member asked to talk to her father, and while the relative was on the phone with 911, they got text messages from Serena Dolnics’ boyfriend who was at the home, saying "Serena was covered in blood" and that he believed she had stabbed her father and might kill herself, the affidavit said.
Arriving officers found the boyfriend outside the home, and he said Serena Dolnics had just locked him out of the residence, the affidavit said. An officer looked in a window and saw blood on the floor but was unable to get hold of Gregory Dolnics. When the officer forced entry into the home, the affidavit continues, they found a body on the floor with multiple stab wounds to his head, neck, hands and arms.
"Laying on his stomach was what appeared to be his heart," police wrote in the affidavit.
Autopsy shows father's heart cut out of chest
Just before 9:50 p.m., officers found Serena Dolnics in a bedroom and arrested her, court papers show. At the time she wore no shoes or socks and her feet had blood on them, the affidavit continues.
She was taken to a nearby hospital and, according to court records, had multiple injuries on both of her hands, “consistent with being from a knife slipping through a hand.”
Police also found three knives in the home covered in blood.
According to the affidavit, Serna Dolnics told officers she hurt her hands working in the garden using a weed whacker or a small saw.
“There was no garden, no bloody shears or small saw located on the property," police wrote.
She also told officers she did not see her father injured before police arrived and recalled texting her boyfriend “to not come over.”
An autopsy, according to the affidavit, found that the victim suffered multiple cuts to his hands and face, stab wounds to the back of his neck, and multiple stab wounds over his body.
His heart had also been cut out of his chest, the affidavit continues.
Porter County Sheriff's Office records show Dolnics remained jailed without bond on July 29.
It was not immediately known whether she had obtained an attorney to represent her on the charges.
Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on X @nataliealund.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Indiana woman charged with murder after father found dead, heart cut out
