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An Indiana woman accused of killing her two children has said she did so to send her kids to “a better place” — and added that she gave her children a choice.
“They were in good hands, but I don’t think they were safe. My kids are in a better place. They’re in heaven now, they don’t have no worries no more,” Amber Pasztor told WANE-TV in an exclusive interview from the Elkhart County Jail.
Pasztor, of Fort Wayne, was charged with the murder of her two children, Liliana Hernandez, 7, and 6-year-old Rene Pasztor. She did not have custody of the kids.
Elkhart County Coroner James Elliot previously told PEOPLE that the children died of asphyxiation. Pasztor allegedly confessed to authorities that she suffocated her children. She told WANE that she originally planned to shoot the kids, but could not go through with it.
Elkhart Police Department via AP
“I gave them a choice,” she told WANE. “They could live traumatized like their mom or they can go to heaven with God and be better off.”
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She said both the children chose to “go to heaven,” but they fought her “a little bit” as she smothered them.
An AMBER Alert was issued for the kids last month with police noting that they were believed to be “in extreme danger.”
Liliana and Rene’s bodies were found in a car behind the Elkhart Police Department on the same day the alert was issued when Pasztor approached an officer and told him there were two dead people in the back seat of her car, Elkhart Police spokesperson Sgt. Chris Snyder previously told PEOPLE.
INDIANA STATE POLICE
Police learned that the car belonged to 65-year-old Frank Macomber, who was later found dead of a gunshot wound in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Allen County officials previously told PEOPLE.
Pasztor admitted to WANE that she shot and killed the man after luring him into the woods by telling him she would have sex with him in exchange for his gun and car.
“I’m not proud of it,” she said. She has not been charged in Macomber’s death.
Pasztor lost custody of her children a year and a half ago as she allegedly battled substance abuse and threatened to harm the children, according to both Leanne Pastor and her step-grandmother, Emily Lasko Green.
Leanne said Rene and Liliana were afraid of Pasztor, and she described the woman as “evil.”
