Mother testifies in trial of nanny

Caretaker accused of killing two children

NEW YORK — The Manhattan apartment was eerily quiet, unusual for a home with three little kids. All the lights were off, except for the glow of a bathroom light. That’s where Marina Krim found her two children — covered in blood, slaughtered by the family’s trusted nanny.

“It’s like a horror movie,” she said Thursday, testifying in the murder trial of the caretaker, Yoselyn Ortega. “I go down, I walk down the hall and I see the light on under the back of the door, and I’m like, ‘Oh God it’s so quiet in here, oh God. Why is it so … quiet?’”

“And I open the door … And I open the door, oh God!” she wept.

Krim was the first witness at Ortega’s trial. Prosecutors said the nanny planned the Oct. 25, 2012, killing, waiting until she was alone in the apartment, selected two knives from the kitchen and then killed 2-year-old Leo and 6-year-old Lucia, who went by Lulu.

Krim was at a swimming class with their then 3-yearold daughter, Nessie. She ran outside with Nessie and called for help after finding her kids, and then started screaming.

“It was a scream you can’t imagine is even inside of you,” she said. “I don’t even know where it came from. I just thought: I’m never going to be able to talk to them ever again. They are dead. I just saw my kids dead.”

The central mystery of the trial isn’t whether Ortega killed the children, but why she did it — and whether she was too mentally ill to be held responsible.