Woman testifies about horror of finding kids slain by nanny
NEW YORK » The Manhattan apartment was eerily quiet, unusual for a home with three little kids. All the lights were off, except for the glow of a bathroom light. That’s where Marina Krim found her two children — covered in blood, slaughtered by the family’s trusted nanny.
“It’s like a horror movie,” she said Thursday, testifying in the murder trial of the caretaker, Yoselyn Ortega. “I go down, I walk down the hall and I see the light on under the back of the door, and I’m like, ‘Oh God it’s so quiet in here, oh God. Why is it so ... quiet?’”
“And I open the door ... And I open the door, oh God!” she wept.
Krim was the first witness at Ortega’s trial. Prosecutors said the nanny planned the Oct. 25, 2012, killing, waiting until she was alone in the apartment, selected two knives from the kitchen and then killed 2-year-old Leo and 6-year-old Lucia, who went by Lulu.
Krim was at a swimming class with their then 3-yearold daughter, Nessie. She ran outside with Nessie and called for help after finding her kids, and then started screaming.
“It was a scream you can’t imagine is even inside of you,” she said. “I don’t even know where it came from. I just thought: I’m never going to be able to talk to them ever again. They are dead. I just saw my kids dead.’”
The central mystery of the trial isn’t whether Ortega killed the children, but why she did it — and whether she was too mentally ill to be held responsible. Krim said she saw Lucia first, and knew instantly that she was dead, because her eyes were fixed.
“And I look next to her and I see Leo, and he has blood on him ... blood all over Lulu’s little dress ...” Krim said.
Before she took the stand, Krim turned on the courtroom floor and angrily faced Ortega, who showed no emotion. Krim said she wanted to get a good look at the woman.
The jurors sat quietly as Krim struggled to explain the deaths through tears.
As she left the silent courtroom, Krim yelled to Ortega: “You’re gross. You’re disgusting.”
The only time Ortega appeared to show any emotion was when she shook her head during Krim’s testimony on using Ortega as a housekeeper as well as a caregiver. Ortega leaned toward her attorney as Krim talked about it, shaking her head and saying “No.”
Lucia had fought back and was slashed and stabbed about 30 times. Leo suffered five wounds. Their throats were cut so severely it appeared at first they’d been decapitated, Assistant District Attorney Courtney Groves said.
“There was no way to save them,” Groves said. “The devastation the defendant had inflicted on their little bodies was too much.”
Ortega’s lawyer said the slayings were an act of madness, but prosecutors argued Ortega said she knew exactly what she was doing.
“She knows that killing them was wrong,” Groves said.
But prosecutors conceded there isn’t a clear motive.
Groves said it’s possible Ortega’s resentment and jealousy of Marina Krim, coupled with an inability to provide for her own son, sent her into a calculated rage.
“You may believe you have not heard a satisfactory answer, because there just isn’t a satisfactory answer,” Groves said. “But not knowing why the defendant slaughtered Lucia and Leo Krim does not mean that she is not responsible for those actions or for those murders. It merely means there is no good answer.”