Former Nanny Convicted Of Murdering Two Children In Her Care
On Wednesday, April 18, 2018, a Manhattan jury found former nanny Yoselyn Ortega guilty of murdering two children, 6-year-old Lucia Krim and her 2-year-old brother Leo, in her care. As The New York Times reported, the 55-year-old “Killer Nanny” claimed that she was too mentally ill to understand that what she did was wrong, but the Manhattan jury felt otherwise. After 13 hours of deliberation, over the course of two days, the jury’s verdict was announced Wednesday afternoon: guilty on two counts of first-degree murder, and guilty on two counts of second-degree murder. In the video below, Ortega is seen sitting silent as her fate was read to her. After the trial, Kevin Krim, the children’s father, wept as he hugged the jurors.
The heinous crime took place in 2012 when the two children were stabbed multiple times and had their throats slit. Marina Krim, the children’s mother, arrived home that fateful evening, alongside her other child, to find her two other children dead in the bathtub. Marina said Ortega was standing near the lifeless children before Ortega stabbed herself in the neck.
The defense attorney for the convicted murderer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, presented evidence that the former nanny was severely disturbed and had suffered from delusions and hallucinations since she was a teenager. Psychiatrists for the defense claimed that she was hearing voices leading up to the murders and that one of those voices was of Satan himself. They also claimed that she was too psychotic to understand that her actions were wrong.
The prosecutors presented the case that Yoselyn carefully planned the killings and attempted to commit suicide because she was depressed and angry at Marina Krim for being overworked. A forensic psychologist for the prosecution, Ali Khadivi, testified that she was not psychotic but that she did suffer from anxiety and depression. To support the claim that Ortega understood what she was doing, prosecutors played a 2016 videotape to the court of Ortega and Khadivi. In the video, Yoselyn denies to Khadivi, multiple times, that she heard voices telling her to kill Lucia and Leo Krim, though she once claimed the opposite.
Jurors did not reach this verdict lightly. As seen in the video below, a juror spoke publicly after the trial while choking back tears.
“It was not a decision we reached lightly or easily. There were some raised voices and a lot of tears. But I think we all feel good that we addressed all of the issues, and fairly weighed everything that was presented to us.”
Yoselyn Ortega’s sentencing is scheduled on May 14, 2018, and she faces life in prison. Kevin and Marina Krim have created a non-profit in memory of their children called the Lulu and Leo Fund.
