Nanny stabbed children to death then tried to kill herself, say police

Published on 27/10/2012 00:34

A NANNY was in critical condition in hospital yesterday after she was found with stab wounds in a New York apartment containing the bodies of two young children in a bathtub.

Police suspect that Yoselyn Ortega stabbed the children to death before attempting to kill herself with a kitchen knife.

The children were named as two-year-old Leo and six-year-old Lucia Krim.

Their mother, Marina Krim, a paediatrician, is said to have entered the unlit apartment with her three-year-old child and initially thought her other two children were out with Ms Ortega, 50, police commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Mrs Krim went downstairs and asked the doorman whether he had seen them leave.

When he said no, she went back upstairs and discovered Leo, and Lucia, known as LuLu, in the bathroom, Mr Kelly said. It is unclear how many times the children were stabbed.

The nanny was found on the bathroom floor with stab wounds to her neck, and the knife close by, police said. There was no water in the bath. Mr Kelly said it was unclear how long the nanny had worked for the family, and the police investigation was ongoing. No charges had been filed.

Kevin Krim, the children’s ­father, had been on his way home from a business trip and was met by police at the airport and notified of the tragedy.

Mr Krim is a senior vice-president and general manager of CNBC Digital. He moved to CNBC in March from Bloomberg, where he was global head of Bloomberg Digital. A graduate of Harvard University, Mr Krim was also a former executive at Yahoo.

The final entry in an online blog that Marina Krim maintained to document her daily life with her children was dated Thursday, hours before the ­horror discovery.

“Leo speaks in the most adorable way possible,” she wrote.

“And he does things like, ‘(I)want a fresh bagel’ and ‘Dito (what he calls himself) wants cold milk’ and most adorable of all, ‘No thank you’ – he never uses ‘No’ alone, it’s always paired with ‘thank you’.”

Music therapist Rima Starr, who lives on the same floor as the Krim family, said she had heard screams coming from the apartment at around 5:30pm. “There was some kind of screaming about, ‘You slit her throat!”’ she said. “It was horrible.”

Ms Starr said she believed the nanny had been employed just recently.

“I met her in the elevator, the day before yesterday, and was making small talk,” she said.

After police arrived, she said, the distraught mother remained in the building’s lobby, screaming and clutching her surviving child.

The couple’s apartment building sits in one of New York’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, a short distance from Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The area is home to many affluent families, and seeing children accompanied by nannies is an everyday part of life.