‘It’s a sad situation’: Ventnor woman, charged in bludgeoning deaths of her mother and grandmother, appears in court

A woman charged with killing her mother and grandmother in their Ventnor boardwalk condo made her first appearance in Atlantic County Superior Court on Friday.

Heather Barbera, 42, said little during the four-minute hearing before Judge Bernard DeLury. She faces two counts of first-degree murder, robbery, and other charges in connection with the deaths of Elaine Rosen, 81, and Michelle Gordon, 67, whose bodies were found in their eighth-floor oceanfront condo last month.

Barbera, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, walked into the courtroom with her head down. Asked if she understood the charges against her, she quietly responded "yes."

"It's a really sad situation," Barbera's public defender Holly Bitters said after the hearing.

The brief hearing came after Barbera was extradited to New Jersey on Thursday. After the killings, police said, she fled to New York, where she was later arrested and held at a women's facility on Rikers Island.

Police said Barbera, a mother of two, bludgeoned her relatives to death with a nightstick before stealing her mother's credit cards and taking a bus to New York City.

Surveillance video showed Barbera leaving the Vassar Square Condominium on July 8.

Barbera's uncle, Richard Rosen, found the bloodied bodies in the high-rise apartment days later, according to a recording of the 911 call. He told the dispatcher he suspected his niece had killed the pair and that he had warned his mother and sister not to allow Barbera to move in with them.

"I knew this would be no good," he said.

After three days on the lam, Barbera was arrested at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan. Charges she had made with the stolen credit cards allowed authorities to track her down.

She later confessed to the murders, police said.

Barbera is being held at the Atlantic County Jail while she awaits an Aug. 9 bail hearing.