Who stole tots’ laughter?
What she’d done was unspeakably awful. But was she ill...or was she pure evil? LEO & LULU: Hadn’t stood a chance
She claimed she’d heard voices…
When mum-ofthree Marina Krim arrived to collect her daughter from ballet class on 25 October 2012, she knew instantly that something was seriously wrong. Lulu, 6, wasn’t there. The Krims’ nanny Yoselyn Ortega was meant to have dropped Lulu off at the lesson, then return home with Leo, 2, while Marina took Nessie, 3, to her swimming lesson.
But Ortega and Lulu had never shown up.
Where are you? Marina texted 50-year-old Ortega. No reply. Grabbing Nessie, Marina raced out to the car.
She called Ortega’s phone dozens of times on the journey home, there was still no answer.
As they pulled up outside the family’s New York apartment around 5.30pm, everything was calm.
But Marina’s panic was growing.
She stepped inside to an eerie silence.
Where was the children’s laughter which usually met her as she came through the front door?
Marina checked almost every room, but Ortega and the children were nowhere to be found.
Then she spotted a light coming from beneath the bathroom door.
And she will never forget what she saw as she turned the handle and opened the door.
Inside, her precious children Leo and Lulu were lifeless in the bath, soaked in their own blood.
They’d been stabbed to death.
Ortega was standing beside them. Suddenly, she plunged the knife into her own neck.
Nessie, who was beside her mother, screamed and the mother and child ran from the apartment in horror.
When the police arrived, Marina was sobbing and holding Nessie.
Police contacted the children’s father Kevin, who was away on a business trip.
Ortega was taken to hospital for treatment before being arrested and charged – with two counts of murder in the first degree and two counts of murder in the second degree.
No-one can imagine the pain and grief that the Krim family endured as, over the next five years, Ortega appeared in court approximately 90 times.
Despite confessing to killing the children, she claimed she’d heard voices, including that of Satan. And that, under his spell, she’d agreed to kill the children.
A judge even offered her the minimum sentence – 30 years in prison – in exchange for a guilty plea.
But she rejected it, pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. So it meant the family would have to sit through a harrowing court case. In February this year, the trial began. It emerged that Ortega had been the family’s nanny for more than two years. But, unknown to the Krims, she’d provided a fake reference. The court heard that, on that fateful day, she’d grabbed knives from the kitchen before
launching the frenzied attack.
Lulu had fought back, but hadn’t stood a chance.
Leo was stabbed five times and Lulu 30 times, then they were left to bleed to death.
Prosecutors said Ortega intended to kill the children, and then commit suicide.
They claimed her reasons were that her workload and schedule as a nanny were becoming too hectic, and that she was disgruntled with not being paid enough.
They insisted Ortega’s actions were premeditated –
she slit Leo’s neck from behind so he wouldn’t fight back as his sister had done. And she’d even had the foresight to leave a purse containing valuables, ID cards, and keepsakes for her son, and an envelope of personal documents for her sister. But, despite the evidence, Ortega’s defence claimed she’d had a psychotic episode, that her family had suffered a ‘string of tragedies, suicides, death and mental illnesses that spanned generations’. They said the nanny loved the children, so the only possible reason for the attack was that she was severely mentally ill. The defence claimed she’d suffered delusions and hallucinations ever since she was a teenager living in the Dominican Republic. Two psychiatrists gave evidence, claiming the psychotic episode she suffered was so severe that she ‘didn’t understand her actions or know they were wrong’. They said she’d been overcome by voices and didn’t remember the attack. But despite the experts’ opinions, the prosecution put forward that Ortega had never been hospitalised for psychiatric problems.
She’d seen a therapist three days before the killings, who wrote in her medical notes that there was no sign of delusional or psychotic thinking, but that she did suffer from depression and anxiety.
Had Ortega become psychotic over those three days?
A month into the trial, mum Marina took to the stand. She sobbed as she described Ortega as always ‘on time and reliable’.
And she said that Ortega had seemed upset in the weeks before the murders, but that there was nothing to make her suspect the nanny was having a mental breakdown.
In a harrowing testimony, Marina had to relive what she’d seen that dreadful day.
‘First, I see Lulu and I instantly know she’s dead – she’s lying there in the bathtub, her eyes open.
‘The children have blood on them. Then I see the defendant. I see blood all over her,’ she said.
She told the court that the children were her ‘best friends’, and seeing them dead was ‘the most awful feeling in the world’.
In a final statement, the prosecutor said Ortega had fabricated the story of hearing Satan to avoid a life sentence.
But the defence were adamant she’d had a psychotic episode and wouldn’t have committed the crime against the children she loved dearly.
The jury deliberated for two days. On 19 April, the foreman took to the stand at the State Supreme Court, ready to share their verdict.
The mum had to relive what she’d seen