All a joke to ‘killer’ nanny
The Upper West Side nanny accused of slaughtering two young tots laughed maniacally and muttered to herself in court Friday as an NYPD detective recounted the bloodbath.
Retired Detective Francis Brennan recalled arriving at Kevin and Marina Krim’s Upper West Side apartment on Oct. 25, 2012, where he found Yoselyn Ortega injured and on the floor.
“I looked down and she was bleeding and her eyes were closed,” he told jurors in Manhattan Supreme Court. “She looked dead.”
Ortega had plunged a knife into her own throat just as mom Marina Krim opened the bathroom door — to discover that her daughter Lucia, 6, and son Leo, 2, had been butchered and left to die in the bathtub.
Jurors shook their heads as they were shown disturbing photos of Ortega’s injuries.
At the hospital that night, the children’s bodies were put on a gurney and covered with a white sheet, Brennan testified.
“I could see the extent of the wounds,” he said.
The tots’ dad, who had flown home from a business trip that evening, demanded to see his children. Nurses swaddled the kids, leaving only their heads exposed when the father arrived.
At times during Brennan’s testimony on Friday, Ortega, 55, rolled her eyes and shook her head, appearing to disagree with what he was saying. At one point, she inaudibly muttered something in Spanish, while tightening her fist.
When asked on cross-examination about Ortega’s condition at the hospital, Brennan said he didn’t know, prompting the nanny to cry out, “Oh!” and laugh out loud within earshot of jurors.
Ortega has mostly been stone-faced during the trial, turning her head to avoid viewing grisly crime-scene photos.
Brennan described obtaining surveillance footage showing Ortega and the tragic Krim children strolling along Amsterdam Avenue hours before the murders, along with their surviving sibling, Nessie, who was away from home with her mom at the time of the attacks.
Earlier in the day, NYPD Detective Carl Roadarmel testified about searching Ortega’s apartment following the carnage — where he found receipts for money sent to Ortega’s native Dominican Republic, religious cards and rosary beads.
Ortega, if convicted, faces life in prison, but could spend the rest of her life in a mental institution if found not guilty by reason of insanity.