Socialite convicted in deaths of 2 young brothers writes bizarre jail letter to victims’ parents referencing NASA and SpaceX

Background: Police at the scene of the deadly crash where Rebecca Grossman fatally struck brothers Jacob Iskander, 8, and Mark Iskander, 11, with her car on Sept. 29, 2020. (YouTube screengrab/KNBC). Inset: Grossman is seen on Feb. 22, 2024, outside the courthouse in Van Nuys, California. (YouTube screengrab/KTLA).

A California socialite convicted of killing two young brothers she struck with her car as she sped through a residential neighborhood sent a rambling letter to their parents that included a bizarre reference to NASA and SpaceX.

Rebecca Grossman, 60, sent the letter to the parents of Mark and Jacob Iskander, 11 and 8, as she faces up to 34 years to life in state prison when she is set to be sentenced on Monday. The co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation was convicted of two counts each of second-degree murder and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and one count of hit-and-run resulting in death.

“Dear Nancy and Karim, I’ve not had the opportunity to write you since I was incarcerated,” Grossman wrote, according to a People’s Sentencing Memo obtained by Law&Crime. “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.

“I have been and will always be so very sorry. 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 moving in front of my car,” she wrote. “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 said a pastor encouraged her to write the parents to “keep me from going insane.”

She recounted the moments before, during and after the crash, the “life-altering second of my life” she will remember for the rest of her life that gives her nightmares. She wrote about being “completely mortified” when she learned that children were involved. She “started hyperventilating” when she learned the boys died.

“I could not breathe,” she wrote. “I could not stand. I no longer wanted to live on this planet knowing that two children died.”

At the sheriff’s station, she said she lost her will to live.

“My goal was to leave this world,” she wrote. “The pain of your loss was just too much. If I thought I could bring back your babies to you by having the Lord take me, I would in a second.”

She recounted the moments before the crash, saying she thought “something came down on the top of my car.”

She said she contacted “people at satellite companies like NASA and Space X in hopes that there was a video that captured what happened.”

She said she wished she never left home that day.

“I would have done anything to change what happened,” she wrote. “I often wonder why God didn’t take me instead of your two precious boys.”

She wrote that she hopes her foundation will one day buy a home near a hospital and convert it into a “Ronald McDonald-type house” for burn and trauma victims.

“I sincerely would want to dedicate the establishment and name it after Mark and Jacob Iskander,” she wrote. “I will always pray for your consent and for this could become a reality.”

Prosecutors countered in the memo that Grossman doesn’t deserve remorse and is “undeserving of any leniency.”

“The defendant has continually shown through her actions that she is deserving of the maximum punishment that is permitted by law,” the memo said. “The People proved beyond a reasonable doubt, as affirmed by the jury verdicts in this case, that it was the defendant’s own terrible choices on the evening of Sept. 29, 2020 that led to the deaths of two innocent children.”

As Law&Crime reported, the brothers were killed when Grossman hit them with her car as they crossed the street at a marked crosswalk in their Westlake Village neighborhood, about 35 miles northwest of downtown LA.

At the time, Grossman was allegedly engaging in a “high-speed game of chicken” with former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Scott Erickson when she reached speeds over 80 mph — more than twice the legal speed limit of 45 mph. She allegedly kept driving after striking the children, only coming to a stop a quarter-mile away because her engine cut off, authorities said. It was initially reported that she carried one of the boys on the hood of her car for more than 100 feet and then, after hitting the brakes, ran over him as she left the scene.

At a preliminary hearing, a sheriff’s deputy testified that Mark Iskander was thrown 254 feet. Evidence at that hearing also revealed that Grossman had reached 81 mph about a second and a half before hitting the boys.

Grossman’s defense argued she had been traveling at 52 mph and said Erickson, who drove his black SUV through the crosswalk before Grossman, was the first to strike at least one of the boys. Prosecutors argued that Grossman had cocktails with Erickson before racing him along the road where the fatal crash ultimately occurred.

Grossman is the wife of Peter Grossman, a plastic surgeon, and a co-founder of the nonprofit Grossman Burn Foundation, which, according to its website, aims to “promote effective, sustainable partnership solutions for the comprehensive treatment, care, and support of burn survivors and their families in the United States and around the world.”

Law&Crime’s Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.

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Socialite convicted in deaths of 2 young brothers writes bizarre jail letter to victims’ parents referencing NASA and SpaceX

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Socialite convicted in deaths of 2 young brothers writes bizarre jail letter to victims’ parents referencing NASA and SpaceX

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