KILLER NANNY IS CONVICTED
Faces life in jail for slaughtering kids
Jurors didn’t buy the insanity defense of killer nanny Yoselyn Ortega — convicting her on Wednesday on all four counts of murder in the butchering of two Upper West Side children.
“We could not find a strongly credible proof that the defendant was not aware and did not recognize what was going on,” juror David Curtis told reporters in a rare after-verdict press conference at Manhattan Supreme Court.
Anguished dad Kevin Krim — whose children, Lucia, 6, and Leo, 2, were stabbed repeatedly by Ortega and left to bleed out — wept as the verdict was announced and choked back more tears as he hugged jurors following the proceeding.
Prosecutors argued that Ortega had planned the 2012 crime, in which she stabbed Leo five times and Lucia 30 times with a 13-inch blade and left them stacked in a bathtub inside the family’s West 75th Street apartment.
Ortega waited there for the children’s mother, Marina, to get home with a third child before turning the knife on herself.
Ortega’s lawyer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, argued that the nanny was insane and “lacked the ability to make any decisions” the day of the murders.
Over the course of the six-week trial, the defense called several doctors, including two psychiatrists, to testify that Ortega was not responsible for her crimes.
But prosecutors convinced jurors that Ortega had carefully calculated the brutal killings to get back at Marina for supposedly overworking her, going so far as to carry out the murders in the bathroom because it was the room farthest from a street and it would be unlikely that anyone would hear the children’s screams.
“Today, a jury rightly held Yoselyn Ortega accountable for the horrific slayings of Leo and Lulu Krim, and I thank the members off that jury for their diligence throughout this incredibly difficult and heartbreaking trial,” Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. said.
Kevin Krim held the hands of dismissed alternate jurors Brittany Yee and Chloe Beck — who previously said they would have found the nanny guilty — as jurors prepared to announce the verdict.
Ortega, 55, sat expressionless with her arms crossed as the decision came down.
She wiped away tears as she was led out of the courtroom, but offered no apology to Krim.
In fact, neither Ortega — who faces life in prison without the possibility of parole when she’s sentenced on May 14 — nor anyone in her family has apologized to the Krims.
The panel of 12 jurors deliberated for nearly 13 hours over two days before reaching the decision a little after 4 p.m. Wednesday.
“It was not a decision we reached lightly,” Curtis said, wiping away tears. “There were some raised voices and a lot of tears. We were divided until the moment we made a decision.”
Curtis said he “worked very hard” to not think of his own children when deliberating.
“It was incumbent on all of us in the decision process to try to not put ourselves in those positions but to try to be separate,” Curtis said.
Kevin Krim released a statement Wednesday night, urging his family’s supporters to move forward in a “positive act of defiance.”
“Marina and I want to thank the judge and the jurors for their commitment to justice and their public service over this long and difficult trial,” Krim wrote on Facebook. “This process has been very challenging for us, but it has also reaffirmed our love of New York: a city that Lulu and Leo loved dearly.”
Krim also announced the family’s support for legislation against falsifying data on job applications, in hopes of preventing this sort of tragedy in the future.
“Every child deserves a caregiver who is honest and responsible,” he wrote.