By DYLAN CAMPBELL
On Oct. 25, 2012 a nanny took a knife to the two children she was supposed to be caring for,
stabbing them to death in their Upper West Side apartment before turning the knife on herself, driving it into her own neck.
But was there motive?
The nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, 55, has pleaded not guilty for reason of insanity to charges of
first-degree murder in the stabbing of Lucia, 6, and Leo, 2.
At her Manhattan Supreme Court trial on Thursday, the defense began to build its argument that mental instability drove her to murder by discrediting her statement in the hospital that seems to have shown possible motive. They argued that her communication with the police was not her own words but delirium speaking.
In an attempt to show that Ortega would not have been fit to make a statement, their first
witness was Dr. Philip Steven Barie, an attending surgeon at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, who oversaw some of Ortega’s care when she was in the hospital for her neck wound the days following the murders.
Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, Ortega’s lawyer, focused on the medical care, particularly the
drugs and intubation given to Ortega, as reasons that her statement can not be taken seriously.
On Oct. 27, three days after she was admitted, the defendant tried to make a statement to
the police officer guarding her; despite being intubated and under the influence of medications.
Sgt. Yoel Hidalgo testified last week that he tried to understand Ortega, reading her lips
and leaning over her bed with a letter chart for the two hours after she tried to communicate. He passed the notes he took from what he said Ortega was trying to say to the police officers outside the room.
“I had to do everything and take care of the kids,” Sgt Hidalgo read from one of the notes
as she took the stand. “I worked as babysitter only and she wanted me to do everything so wanted 5 hours of cleaning every week. ”
Though the statements were made through the twitching of her face and tapping on the bedside
as she lay intubated and drugged, Hidalgo expressed confidence in what was written as Ortega’s own words.
“When I got things wrong she would make a grunting, gargling sound,” Hidalgo testified.
“She would tap on the railing. She would show frustration. Even small facial expressions, she would make.”
The defense went on for hours, going through dozens of pages of medical records that even
put one juror to sleep.
With Dr. Barie on the stand, the defense emphasized the cocktail of drugs including fentanyl,
propofol, lorazepam and, later, diazepam, all to keep Ortega out of pain and sedated as they waited to do surgery to not only repair her wound but two smashed vertebrae in her neck from hitting her her head after she stabbed herself.
The day the testimony was made Ortega was on drugs from a preparatory procedure as she awaited the major surgery she would have early the next week.
Barie explained in cross examination that she was “more responsive” that evening. Medical
documents showed normal responses in everything except in speaking because she was intubated.
He said that “disorienting experience” of being in a hospital where there is “no day, no
night” could have caused delirium, but it is a mental state that “waxes and wanes.” But it is unclear if she was in a waning state of delirium if she could or could not have made a statement. He said there is “no stereotype.”
The days before were filled with tearful testimony from the parents of the children murder
as the prosecution tried to depict Ortega as a stressed woman motivated by anger.
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