The half-brother of a Queens woman accused of stabbing her father to death supported her claims of childhood abuse at the hands of her father, telling the Daily News her rage was likely fueled by childhood trauma.
Accused killer Anna Cavak, 30, was expected to be extradited from New Jersey to New York City Wednesday to face murder charges for the death of her 70-year-old father, Peter Cavak.
“I love the guy but the truth of the matter is I don’t think Anna woke up one day and said, ‘Oh, I’m gonna kill my dad,” said the suspect’s half-brother, who is the victim’s stepson.
“I think she had a psychotic episode, something that boiled up inside her for decades,” added the half-brother, who asked that his name be withheld.
Police found Peter Cavak’s lifeless body inside his 109th Ave. home near 115th St. in South Richmond Hills on June 5.
The suspect’s mother, the victim’s longtime girlfriend, told police she heard her daughter scream “He’s trying to kill me” and rushed into their bedroom to find Anna Cavak on top of her father, a Taser lying next to his bloody body, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters at a press briefing on Tuesday.
After law enforcement nabbed the woman in New Jersey, she detailed the alleged abuse she and her late sister Angelica Cavak endured at the hands of their father, Kenny said.
“She made statements once she was interrogated that her father was in a cult and that he was abusive,” the chief said.
Anna Cavak also claimed that her sister, who died of a drug overdose in October 2016, committed suicide as a result of the trauma she experienced due to her father’s abuse.
“She made statements that she had a sister that had committed suicide based on the same allegations, that the father was [abusive],” Kenny said.
Peter Cavak inherited his abusive tendencies from his own father, a Turkish immigrant who beat him as a child and terrorized Peter Cavak’s mother, according to Anna Cavak’s half-brother.
“Peter as an adult had a lot of childhood trauma and he projected that onto others,” the sibling said. “I’m not saying he’s a bad person. He had a lot of psychological issues he projected onto his children and his wife.”
The half-brother, who was raised by Peter Cavak from the age of 3, said he endured painful and humiliating abuse at the hands of his stepfather at a young age, including purposely having his privates caught in his zipper and having his face rubbed in urine whenever he soiled the bed.
“Every child deserves a parent, but some parents don’t deserve children,” the half-brother said. “There’s certain things parents should do or shouldn’t do. I don’t think he was ever ready to fill that role.”
The half-brother said he never witnessed sexual abuse of his half-sisters but said Anna Cavak confided in him at his Texas home last fall when she made accusations similar to what Kenny described.
“She just told me it was ongoing,” the half-brother said. “It was in her younger years when she was a kid.
“If that was the situation, there is still no reason for her to do what she did to him,” he added.
He described Anna Cavak as mentally stunted, saying she had difficulty communicating and possessed the emotional maturity of a teenager.
“I think childhood trauma had a lot to do with it. She was never diagnosed but I would imagine she had some type of developmental delays,” the half-brother said. “She was a little slow, insecure.”
The sibling said his stepfather’s abusive tendencies mellowed with age and they reconciled later in life. “Peter was a good man,” he said.
Both Peter Cavak and and Anna Cavak’s mother supported their daughter financially, buying her cars and an apartment they furnished as she pursued a bachelor’s degree at an upstate community college, where she struggled, the half-brother said.
“She went down the wrong lane and took advantage of Peter and my mother,” the half-brother said.
Peter Cavak’s brother-in-law described the man as the long-suffering father of an abusive daughter who constantly sought to weasel money out of him.
“He moved her upstate to go to school in Albany, was paying her rent for a year, bought her new furniture,” said Demetri Piatos, who is married to Peter Cavak’s sister and has known the victim for 35 years. “All they did was siphon money out of him.”
Piatos said Peter Cavak was incapable of the abuse his daughter described to police and that he was no cultist, calling her claims “bulls–t” and a desperate attempt to garner sympathy despite her heinous crime.
“She’s just using that to make I don’t know, whatever case she wants to make,” said Piatos. “I’ve known the guy for 35 years. Never in a million years. No way.”
