A jaw-dropping letter shows how a wealthy socialite pleaded for forgiveness with the parents of two boys she killed with her car after a boozy lunch in LA.
Rebecca Grossman, 60, laments not driving her Mercedes into a tree instead of the boys’ fragile bodies, which she hit at a speed of no less than 73 mph in 2020.
The Los Angeles socialite, who prosecutors branded as a narcissist, also writes about her ‘harsh’ childhood, and how she herself has suffered two miscarriages.
A well-heeled woman who allegedly had a boozy lunch with her former Dodgers star lover before fatally hitting the two boys, Grossman was found guilty of murder earlier this year.
The correspondence was used by prosecutors to paint her as unrepentant, three-and-half years after she struck eight-year-old Jacob Iskander and brother Mark, 11.
A letter shows how wealthy socialite Rebecca Grossman, 60, pleaded for forgiveness with the parents of two boys she killed with her car after a boozy lunch in LA. She is seen in court in February, days before being found guilty
The Iskanders in their final photo together: parents Nancy and Karim with their sons, Zachary, Jacob and Mark; and baby daughter, Violet
The boys’ mother, Nancy Iskander, was also nearly hit, but able to grab her youngest, five-year-old Zachary, and dive for their lives.
Nancy and husband Karim received the note from Grossman in March, a month after she was found guilty of murder.
During the trial, Grossman’s lead attorney repeatedly blamed Scott Erickson, a retired MLB pitcher, for the deaths, suggesting his car hit the boys first as the pair – reunited after Grossman briefly separated from her husband – sped down the street.
The jury didn’t buy it – and a judge four days ago threw out the killer’s bid to have her murder convictions overturned.
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The letter, aired in Grossman’s sentencing memorandum Wednesday, was never before seen, and helped put her away.
‘I’ve not had the opportunity to write you since I was incarcerated, and I had a chance to read my letter so it could be typed and sent to you,’ the typed three page letter, sent on March 11, begins.
‘First, I want to express the profound sadness that I feel daily and that there’s not a day that passes that I don’t think about you and pray that you and your children are surrounded by guardian angels.
‘And that of course includes your forever angels, Mark, and Jacob.’
She goes on to state she hopes the boys are watching over her to ‘protect [her] from any more pain’, while shielding her ‘family from harm for each of [their] remaining days on earth.
Disclaiming how this note was not the first, Grossman added: ‘I truly hope that one day you’ll be open to reading all the letters that I started writing to you and continued writing to you over the last three and a half years.’
Grossman goes on to state how she ‘desperately’ wanted to reach out to the couple, but was stopped ‘time and time again’ by people presiding over the case.
In it, 60-year-old Rebecca Grossman laments not driving her Mercedes into a tree instead of the boys’ fragile bodies, which she hit at a speed of no less 73 mph in 2020
She also writes about her ‘harsh’ childhood, and how she herself has suffered two miscarriages
‘I have been and will always be so very sorry,’ she asserts at a point. ‘I have expressed my feeling of profound sadness.
‘[Even those were taken and redacted, blocking out my words or remorse, or the actions I wish I could have taken to prevent the accident,’ she adds, after prosecutors claimed Grossman was impaired with alcohol at the time of the crash – from the drinks she’d had with old flame Erickson earlier in the day.
She goes on to claim she would have driven her car into a tree if she had the chance, before embarking on a sob story about her childhood and life.
A few weeks later, a judge would cite her boozing and speeding in his decision to uphold her conviction.
‘As God is my witness, if I had seen anyone in the road ahead of my car, my knee-jerk reaction would have been to immediately steer away hard, to avoid hitting anyone or anything,’ Grossman, who is married with kids of her own, writes.
‘I wish that I had seen something, even a glimpse – any sign of anything. I have re-lived that split second in time over and over in my head a billion times.
‘I give you my word that if I had been given the opportunity, I would have driven my car into a tree,’ she goes on to sate.
‘I wish God had given me the opportunity to give my life instead of that of Mark and Jacob’s. I’m not afraid of death, I know that our souls live eternally.’
She then hones in on her self-professed ‘strong relationship with our heavenly Father’, which she says started ‘at a very young age.’
The Iskander boys, Mark and Jacob, 11 and 8, died at the scene of the accident after Grossman’s Mercedes hit them at high speed
The boys’ mother, Nancy Iskander, was also nearly hit, but able to grab her youngest, five-year-old Zachary, and dive for their lives. She and husband Karim received the note in March, a month after Grossman was found guilty of murder
‘I feel his presence always, even after this tragic and unthinkable accident,’ she writes.
‘At first, It was difficult to function at all. I could not remember what people had said to me minutes earlier.’
She then remarks how her elderly mother ‘died within a year of the tragedy’, after five years of suffering from Alzheimer’s – after which she ‘could not get up off my hand and knees from sobbing uncontrollably for months on end.’
‘I couldn’t believe how many tears could come out of my body,’ she gripes. ‘I so desperately wanted to reach out to you.
Conceding her pain ‘was only a fraction of what both [parents] were feeling, she goes on to claim she was suicidal.
‘I’ve been on my own since I was 12,’ she adds at this point, pivoting to a point in her life neither of the boys were able to reach.
‘My father left before I was born, and my mother struggled having to work full time as a sole provider for three children,’ the letter continues.
‘I learned to be responsible at a very early age.’
Because of this, she says, ‘I’ve always had a weakness for children, to protect them and help them heal whenever I could.’
Thus, ‘I was completely mortified when I knew positively that there were in fact children involved.’
She goes on to claim that she was not even aware she was the one behind the wheel at the time of the crash in September 2020.
Grossman adds that a news broadcast she saw from the hospital was ‘when [she] first learned that the children had died.
‘I started hyperventilating. I could not breathe. I could not stand. I no longer wanted to live on.’
Grossman ploughed into the boys at more than 70mph in a 45mph zone, in a luxury Mercedes
Grossman was separated from her husband at the time of the crash and had been dating Scott Erickson (seen here with the convicted child killer in 2020 just before the crash), who she attempted to blame for the boys’ death. A jury, however, did not buy it
Erickson played with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2005 for a year, then ended his career with the New York Yankees in 2006
Grossman is seen gripping her LA plastic surgeon husband Dr Peter Grossman’s arm as they left court today for the start of her murder trial in January, before she was found guilty
It wasn’t until about a year after the accident the ‘fog’ she said had been shrouding her memory of the incident started to lift.
At this point, she writes, she was ‘being bullied constantly’, while worrying ‘about the two of you.’
She then singles out Nancy – the one present for the fatal crash – specifically, telling her, ‘Please believe me when I tell you, I originally thought you were a teenage girl with long brown hair on roller blades, falling.
‘When I caught sight of you, I gasped,’ she adds, before complaining about a bleeding disorder she said made her pull over first to make sure she was all right.
‘All I could think about is getting my car to the side and out of traffic.
‘The vehicle’s emergency system called me with 60 seconds of the air bags deploying. The woman told me she was passing me through to 911. This is why I did not call 911.’
Toward the end of the call, the woman on the other line told her she believed children were involved – something Grossman claims to have been aware of even at this point.
‘My heart stopped,’ she recalls of this. ‘I was saying to myself over and over, “no, no, they don’t know yet – this isn’t happening. There cannot be children involved. This is not possible.” Your brain can slip into the place of denial when you’re in shock,’ she writes.
The September 2020 crash left Mark , 11, and brother Jacob, 8, dead. The pair are seen here in photos from their school
Before sending the letter, Grossman allegedly ‘conspired with a friend to contact the Nancy and Karim Iskanders by scheming to give them a necklace, which had their sons’ birthstones
After the crash, she says, ‘my brain kept telling me this must be a mistake. They would never answer my questions or my please for information regarding the children.
‘I honestly did not think that the girl I saw falling before my airbags deployed was even related.
‘They did not say to me there was a family, there were parents, how old the children were. They never answered my questions.’
She adds shortly after: ‘I wished I had a dash cam on my car that night. I told my husband and children that at the same time my airbags deployed, I thought something came down on top of my car.
‘I even reached out to people at satellite companies like NASA and Space X in hope that maybe there was a video that captured what happened.’
She goes on to mention her two children, both of whom were present for much of the proceedings.
‘To even think about this is so painful and saddens my heart. I will forever cry for you both and continue to pray that God comforts you in knowing that you will be reunited with your children.
‘I suffered two miscarriages,’ she goes on to reveal. ‘And I know that this is no comparison, but even those losses were heartbreaking.
‘I saw this with all sincerity, I have so much empathy and love and compassion for your both.
‘I wish I had never left my home that day. I would have done anything to change what happened. With all my heart and soul, Rebecca Grossman.’
Grossman has already been accused of using dirty tactics to try to get her convictions overturned. Her sentencing has been slated for June 10
On Monday, a Los Angeles judge threw out her bid to have her murder convictions overturned for a new trial.
The wealthy socialite’s attorneys argued that she was entitled to a trial do-over because prosecutors at her trial four months ago produced ‘insufficient’ evidence to find her guilty and ‘misled’ the jury.
But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joseph Brandolino rejected Grossman’s pleas Monday, telling the court in Van Nuys, California, that he found prosecutors had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that she had acted with ‘implied malice’.
Under the law, to prove second degree murder, prosecutors had to prove ‘implied malice’ – that Grossman knew what she was doing when she ran down the Iskander brothers.
Grossman has already been accused of using dirty tactics to try to get her convictions overturned, like conspiring with a friend to contact the Iskanders and give them a necklace with their late sons’ birthstones
Prosecutors say that from jail she told her husband, and daughter to hunt down jurors and seek out witnesses to try to get them to change their testimony and sway Judge Brandolino into giving her a new trial.
She also allegedly told Alexis to publicly release a sheriff’s deputy’s body-camera video that had been sealed by the judge.
Her sentencing has been slated for June 10.