By RADHIKA VISWANATHAN & DYLAN CAMPBELL
The mother of two children stabbed to death by their nanny in 2012 took the stand today giving an emotional testimony and describing a scene she says was like a “horror movie.”
Marina Krim was crying and finding it hard to breathe in the Manhattan courtroom as she wrestled with reliving the day she viewed the bloody bodies of two of her children while she came face to face with the defendant, Yoselyn Ortega.
“She’s a liar,” shouted Marina Krim as she took the stand, glaring at the emotionless defendant. “She killed my best friends.”
Throughout her testimony, Krim often broke down, sobbing uncontrollably and turning to glare at Ortega, who stands accused killing Leo, 2, and Luisa (Lulu), 6.
The witness cried saying she was trying to get in the “zone” to testify but couldn’t.
Choking back tears, Krim described the day of the murder:
It was five years ago when Krim’s regular routine with her nanny went differently, sparking worry. Krim said she knew something was wrong when her 6-year-old daughter Lucia wasn’t at the dance lesson her nanny was supposed to drop her at.
She repeatedly called her nanny and rushed home to Upper West Side apartment, dragging along her other daughter, Nessie, then 4. She returned to a completely dark apartment except for a crack of light from under the bathroom door.
“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?”
She walked in to see the bloodied bodies of her children, stabbed to death in the bathtub and Yoselyn Ortega, the nanny she hired to care for her children, was in the act of stabbing herself in the neck.
“It was so awful,” she said, still weeping. “Like a total horror movie.”
“I was destroyed,” added Krim, describing hitting her head against in the pillars in her lobby “to wake up from this nightmare.”
When the witness left the stand she turned to the defendant and hissed, “You’re disgusting.”
Ortega is charged with two counts of first degree murder and two counts of second degree murder. The trial was delayed as defense lawyer Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg argued that Ortega was not responsible due to mental illness. But the judge found her fit to stand
Her lawyers were expected to mount an insanity defense. In New York a mental health defense comes with high barrier. Ortega’s lawyers must prove she did not understand her actions or the difference between right and wrong.
In opening statement to the jurors the defense cited depressive episodes and psychosis. the prosecution argued Ortega’s actions that day including “avoiding” Krim and committing the murders in a dark and empty apartment showed that Ortega was aware of her actions.“You will know a diseased mind when you see it,” said Van Leer-Greenberg. She also argued that her illness wasn’t taken seriously in her home country, the Dominican Republic. and that the lack of clear motive reinforces her client’s mental instability.
Asst. DA Courtney Groves in her opening statement portrayed the killing as stemming from of resentment by Ortega against her employers for giving her cleaning jobs in addition to child care. She said Ortega slit the throats of the children to keep them from screaming and fought off Lucia’s struggles, citing the child’s wounded hands, and then laid their lifeless bodies in the bathtub.
“You may believe you have not heard a satisfactory answer (to a motive), 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.”
Since the murders the Krims have had two more children, Felix and Linus, and founded the Lulu & Leo Fund, an organization that offers parents and schools a creativity curriculum.
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