He shot his kids - then tucked them into bed.
Police revealed Wednesday that the Westchester lawyer who wiped out his family in a twisted murder-suicide used a 12-gauge shotgun to blast his pajama-clad children.
Samuel Friedlander, who was in the midst of a bitter divorce, fired into the bodies of sleeping 10-year-old Molly and 8-year-old Gregory in their Cross River home.
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Friedlander, 50, used a table or chair leg to kill his estranged wife, Amy, 46, during the bloodbath early Tuesday.
"We believe she was bludgeoned in the bedroom," Kopy said. "We believe a struggle occurred. It was a struggle that cost her her life."
After he killed his wife and kids, he went down to the unfinished basement and fatally shot himself with the Remington 870. He did not leave a note.
The couple were going through a divorce and living in separate bedrooms in the gray Colonial-style house, which was on the market for $799,000.
They were due in court Thursday, but the purpose was unclear.
Michael Borg, a close friend of Friedlander, said the 11-year marriage was "rocky from the beginning" because Amy's family did not like Sam.
He said rumblings of a divorce started about two years ago and the husband felt his wife was trying to turn the children against him and that he would lose custody.
He claimed she once took the children's clothes to stop them from attending a bar mitzvah with their father, and stopped them from going to a seder with him.
"I think it was just the constant berating," Borg said. "Everything he did she criticized. She belittled him in front of the kids."
He said if Friedlander had only killed his wife "I would have baked him a cake with a file in it" but he could not imagine why his "gentle" law-school buddy killed the kids.
"I can't figure that out. The only thing I could think of is when he killed her, the switch went," Borg said. "It wasn't Sam who killed those kids. It was his body, but it wasn't him."
Is Michael Borg Married?
Or, for that matter, has he ever met and interacted with any women? I ask because, based on his public statements, it appears Michael Borg is unaware that women happen to be people: