A grief-stricken father spoke Monday about the loss of his daughter in an apparent murder-suicide to someone he thought he knew well.

"My daughter was killed ? murdered in her sleep by someone she thought was her friend," Richard Kudelka said while choking back tears. "He took the coward's way out and he killed himself and we don't have any answers as to why ? Whenever he was with us he was an absolute gentleman."

Police believe Kristin Kudelka's ex-boyfriend, 23-year-old Joel Diaz Garcia, broke into her family's Peekskill home over the weekend and shot her as she slept. Police found the 25-year-old victim after discovering Garcia face-down in the Hudson River. They found a sawed-off rifle nearby and Kudelka's car.

According to investigators, Garcia was an undocumented Mexican immigrant who may have been dealing with internal issues that were heightened by the couple's breakup a few months earlier.Garcia worked as a caretaker at a Dutchess County horse farm. Kudelka was an avid horse rider, who her father said loved photography and life. She was house-sitting for her parents at the time of her murder.