Serena Dolnics was charged with murder on July 28 after deputies found her father, Gregory Dolnics, dead in Valparaiso with multiple stab wounds and his heart cut out. The 32-year-old remained jailed without bond on July 29, leaving the case centered on what deputies found inside the home where the pair lived.
Valparaiso welfare check
Deputies with the Porter County Sheriff's Office found Gregory Dolnics dead on July 26 during a welfare check at the Valparaiso home. Officers responded just before 8 p.m. CT after a relative called 911 and said they could not reach him by phone. A family member told investigators Serena Dolnics was making odd statements when asked to talk to her father.
Police said a relative also received text messages from Serena Dolnics' boyfriend saying, "Serena was covered in blood" and that he believed "she had stabbed her father and might kill herself." Officers found the boyfriend outside the home after he said Serena Dolnics had locked him out of the residence.
Inside the home
An officer saw blood on the floor through a window before forcing entry. Inside, police found a body on the floor with multiple stab wounds to the head, neck, hands and arms. In the affidavit, police wrote, "Laying on his stomach was what appeared to be his heart," and an autopsy later found that Gregory Dolnics' heart had been cut out of his chest.
Officers found Serena Dolnics in a bedroom just before 9:50 p.m. She was barefoot and had blood on her feet. Court records said she had multiple injuries on both hands consistent with a knife slipping through a hand. Police found three knives in the home covered in blood.
Serena Dolnics account
Serena Dolnics told officers she hurt her hands working in the garden using a weed whacker or a small saw, but police wrote that there was no garden and no bloody shears or small saw located on the property. She also told officers she did not see her father injured before police arrived and recalled texting her boyfriend to not come over.
The murder charge filed on July 28 turned the welfare-check discovery into a criminal case against the daughter. Porter County Sheriff's Office records show Serena Dolnics remained jailed without bond on July 29, and the record stops there on what comes next.
Hearts Are Out After 6-0 Aggregate Loss to Sturm Graz — Where To Watch The Champions League appears elsewhere in the site, but this case is about a different kind of heart entirely: a death scene in which investigators said the victim's heart was removed. The remaining question is why Gregory Dolnics' heart was cut out of his chest.
