[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Police in San Antonio, Texas are beginning to piece together the awful timeline of a murder-suicide involving a 32-year-old woman and her 3-year-old son — and the details are truly bone chilling.
Back on March 19, Savannah Kriger and her son Kaiden (both pictured above, inset) were found dead at Tom Slick Park in the south Texas city. Right from the start, detectives determined Kaiden had been murdered, and Savannah died by suicide. But the details that led up to the murder-suicide make this awful tragedy even worse.
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The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and the department’s leader, Sheriff Javier Salazar, spoke via a Facebook livestream press conference late last week about the tragedy. In it, they finally briefed the media with a detailed timeline of Savannah and Kaiden’s deaths. Per Sheriff Salazar (pictured above), the trouble started just before 1:00 p.m. in San Antonio on March 18. Savannah left work at that time and went to her estranged husband Brian Kriger‘s home. (He had filed for divorce from her earlier in March.) There, she entered the residence while Brian was still at work and began “damaging his personal clothing, miscellaneous items, and furniture.” She then went back to her home, and began to damage her wedding dresses, as well as the estranged couple’s old wedding photos. Sheriff Salazar explained:
“She was at [her] residence alone at this time. There were some wedding dresses that seemed to be laid out on the bed and we believe she fired two shots into her wedding portraits that were positioned on the bed.”
Damn…
But it gets so much worse. Savannah then picked up her son from daycare and made a FaceTime video call to Brian. He recorded the call, and later provided the video to cops. As far as what was in it, Sheriff Salazar said:
“During the two minute and 13 second conversation, Savannah states in the video, ‘you don’t have anything to go home to now. You really don’t … And you won’t have anything at all at the end of today.'”
The sheriff went on to add:
“[Savannah said] ‘You left us for a piece of ass … Daddy left us for some woman he met on the internet … explain to your son why you’re not here.'”
Brian then asked his wife on the video call about the damage she had done to his home, to which she responded dismissively that he “cared more about material possessions than his son.”
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Just after 3:00 p.m. on the 18th, Savannah and Kaiden arrived at Tom Slick Park. There, she tried send another FaceTime call to Brian, but he didn’t answer. So, she sent a text message to him instead:
“Say goodbye to your son.”
Following another failed FaceTime attempt, Savannah then recorded a 21-second video. Sheriff Salazar explained that she instructed the young boy to say goodbye to his father in that clip:
“[In the video] she and Kaiden appear to be already seated at the drainage ditch where their bodies would be found approximately 19 hours later by law enforcement. Savannah instructs Kaiden to say bye to daddy, which Kaiden does. Savannah also apologizes to Kaiden for his daddy not being there, then kisses Kaiden.”
Sheriff Salazar stated that there was “nothing graphic” about the video, but said it was “pretty obvious what’s about to happen next,” considering the fact that the mother and son were found dead in that same spot hours later. The law enforcement officer added:
“It seems to be pretty clear what her intentions are at that point.”
So, so haunting…
Investigators were later able to determine that after the FaceTime calls and video message, Savannah looked up cartoons on her phone on YouTube for Kaiden. Then, early the next morning, both she and Kaiden were found in the same place in the park. Both were dead from gunshot wounds.
Tests on shell casings found at the crime scene matched shell casings that were found back at Savannah’s home where she’d shot through the estranged couple’s wedding photos. Cops say she’d purchased the gun legally from a friend at some point in the recent past.
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As for Brian, he spoke to Fox News Digital about the incident. For one, he thought the “goodbye” messages were sent because she was planning on taking Kaiden out of state:
“She sent the message on the tail end of a wire transferring all the money out of our joint account. I assumed she was running with him –- that’s what prompted my lawyer to initiate the order for writ to make her appear in court the next day.”
Brian went on to add:
“What was going through my head was that I needed to get my son out of her custody as quickly as possible because of her erratic behavior after seeing the damages. The only thing that cops did was a welfare check to her residence, which was stupid because I told them that she wasn’t there, and she had my son and intentions to take everything from me.”
That outlet reports that Savannah had a restraining order against her husband at the time of the murder-suicide. Brian denied that the order had been filed on legit grounds, though; he claimed that Savannah had “filed false police reports and allegations of domestic violence to take my son away from me.”
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Regardless, cops now believe they have the full timeline of events in this tragedy nailed down nearly to the minute based on Savannah’s cell phone activity, FaceTime calls, and other investigative tactics. What a horrible, unimaginable situation. We send our love to those affected by this senseless loss — and most especially to the family members, loved ones, and friends of the innocent 3-year-old boy killed by his own mother. You can watch Sheriff Salazar’s full media briefing on the incident HERE.
To learn more about the impact of gun violence, visit https://www.apha.org/topics-and-issues/gun-violence.
If you have sincere cause to suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org.
If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, help is available. Consider contacting the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988, by calling, texting, or chatting, or go to 988lifeline.org.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Consider calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233, or text START to 88788, or go to https://www.thehotline.org/.
[Image via Bexar County Sheriff’s Office]
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