Kid-slay trauma sticks with jury
Can’t forget nanny-stab case
One has recurring nightmares. Another can’t take a bath anymore. Still another can’t sleep.
Jurors in the murder trial of a nanny who fatally stabbed two small children in the bathtub of their Manhattan apartment said the nearly twomonth-long experience took an emotional toll they fear will linger long after their guilty verdict.
They are still haunted by the words of the anguished parents and the grisly photos that showed 6-year-old Lucia Krim and her 2-year-old brother, Leo, gashed so severely in the throat that they were nearly decapitated.
“It was gut-wrenching,” said juror David Curtis, a 52-year-old actor who has two children of his own. “I had nightmares which related to losing something important to me or not being able to find my family. It truly did affect me.”
Alternate juror Chloe Beck, 31, said her days of taking baths to unwind ended after seeing the crime-scene photos (not shown to courtroom spectators) that showed blood coating virtually every surface of the bathroom, even a bloody children’s toothbrush. She fixated on the toddler, Leo, calling him her “little guy.”
“I don’t know how I’ll ever get over this,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
For juror Edgardo Chacon, 57, it’s the face of the girl, Lucia, known as Lulu, that he sees when he sits up in the night. Many of the more than 30 stab wounds on her body indicated she tried to fight back.
“I was there for 33 days, and every night I think about Lulu,” he said. “I don’t know why it was in my mind. But it was not fair . . . It’s not fair what she did to those kids.”
Yoselyn Ortega was convicted Wednesday of mur- der after the jury rejected the argument that she should not be held responsible in the October 2012 slayings because she was mentally ill. Prosecutors argued that Ortega, who had been the children’s nanny for two years, knew exactly what she was doing, acting out of jealous hatred of the children’s mother for her wealth and happiness.
Several in the panel of 12 jurors and five alternates who sat through the trial were parents, and for at least one, the testimony early in the trial was too much. The man with two small children of his own — ages 2 and 4 — asked the judge to be excused, saying he could not be impartial.
Said juror Curtis: “I worked very hard at not thinking about my own children . . . It is horrifying to think of being in a position, of having to experience or go through the process of what the Krims had to go through.”