‘psycho’

Shrink testifies kid killer ‘not aware of actions’

SHE DIDN’T realize what she was doing.

That was the opinion offered by a defense expert Thursday in the trial of an Upper West Side nanny accused of fatally stabbing two kids in her care.

The shrink, testifying for Yoselyn Ortega’s team, which is mounting an insanity defense, said the babysitter was in a “dissociative state” when she killed Lulu and Leo Krim, 6 and 2, in their family’s apartment.

“She wasn’t in her normal conscious state where she could control her behavior or where she could form an intent to act to consciously act,” Karen Rosenbaum testified. “She was in a dissociative state and a psychotic state and wasn’t aware of her actions.”

Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, Ortega’s lawyer, has argued that the former babysitter should be acquitted because of her mental state.

Ortega (photo inset, left) made repeated claims to Rosenbaum (inset, right) that she was hearing voices prior to the tragedy, and that the “devil” eventually told her to murder the children and take her own life, the psychiatrist testified.

On Oct. 25, 2012, Lulu was stabbed about 30 times as she tried to fend off the attack in the family’s W. 75th St. apartment.

Leo, who was too little to resist, had five knife wounds.

Ortega plunged one of the two kitchen knives she used into her own throat but failed to strike the jugular vein and survived her injuries.

Rosenbaum said she didn’t believe Ortega was faking her symptoms or lying about the voices overtaking her mind.

The voices got “stronger,” and shortly before the attack they were “telling her to kill herself and to kill the children,” she recalled.

Rosenbaum argued there was no other explanation besides insanity.

“She loved the children. She had always talked about loving the children,” Rosenbaum said.

She said that Ortega’s family and friends said she liked the Krims.

“There was no reason why she should want to hurt anybody — other than the psychotic delusions that she was experiencing,” she added. Prosecutor Stuart Silberg grilled Rosenbaum on her findings Thursday afternoon. Rosenbaum admitted her opinion was based largely on Ortega’s self-reporting of her symptoms over 13 interviews after the slayings.

The district attorney argues that Ortega was acting out of spite against the children’s mother Marina Krim, whom she grew to resent over the two-year period in which she worked under her supervision.

Silberg pressed Rosenbaum on why she ignored evidence that Ortega got her affairs in order the day of the killings and attempted suicide by leaving family heirlooms for her son and her important records for her sister — all signs he said point to careful planning instead of a crazed state of mind.

“I still think there’s overwhelming data that shows she was psychotic . . . She was hearing voices all day. She was psychotic all day,” the witness said.

Ortega faces life behind bars if convicted of murder. If she’s found not responsible, she’ll likely spend the rest of her life in a mental institution.