A prominent Connecticut news anchor revealed her mother’s February death was the result of a brutal homicide instead of a medical incident as first reported — and she kept the truth hidden from the public to protect the investigation.
Heidi Voight, an anchor with NBC Connecticut, said she and her family had been “carrying this painful secret” for months in an emotional message posted to her Instagram account Monday.
“My mother’s death was not natural, nor peaceful. My mother was murdered, violently, in the place she should have felt safest,” she wrote.
“Our silence was necessary to protect the early stages of the intense criminal investigation.”
Vermont police confirmed Monday that the death of Claudia M. Voight was being investigated as a homicide and that facts about her case had been kept secret to preserve the investigation.
Claudia Voight’s body was first found in her Windham, Vermont home on February 20. Officials initially thought she’d died of natural causes, but an autopsy later revealed she’d been killed by compressions to her neck.
Police said Voight appeared to have been “targeted” by the killer, and that there was no threat to the public, WCAX-TV reported.
They declined to comment on whether any suspects had been identified in the investigation.
An award-winning journalist and former Miss America contestant, Heidi Voight said she’d taken time off the air during the ongoing investigation and thanked her viewers for their support.
“Claudia Voight was stolen from this world. She was stolen from her family, from her children, and from my precious daughters who now ask me almost every day, ‘Why did Grandma go to Heaven?’” she wrote.
“For the last 161 days, the world around us has moved on. But my family and I have been living February 21st on repeat. There is an emotional purgatory that comes when you must silence what you want to scream from the rooftops.”
“As we often say in the news, there will be more details to unfold. But for now, I just wanted you to know why you haven’t seen me. And I wanted the world to know: She should still be here.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
