The New York nanny suspected in
the killings of two children in her care began knifing herself when their
mother entered the bathroom and saw the bodies in the bathtub, police said
Friday.
"We believe now that the
nanny began to stab herself as the woman entered the room," Police
Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters in a revised account of Thursday's
events.
"We initially thought that
had already been done but now information is coming out that she did it as the
mother entered the bathroom."
Earlier, police had said that
Marina Krim found nanny Yoselyn Ortega, 50, on the bathroom floor of the
family's Upper West Side luxury apartment with self-inflicted wounds.
In the tub lay the clothed bodies
of two of Krim's children: Leo, who had recently celebrated his second birthday
with "Pinkalicious-inspired cupcakes;" and his 6-year-old sister,
Lucia, who had performed "beautifully in her ballet recital" in May.
Both children had been repeatedly
stabbed, police said.
Ortega started stabbing herself in
the neck with a kitchen knife, police said. Her wrists were slit.
"The charge is still to be
determined," Kelly said.
Krim had left the two children
with the nanny, known as "Josie," to take her third child, 3-year-old
Nessie, to a swim lesson at a nearby YMCA, Kelly said. She had expected to meet the nanny at a dance class for the
6-year-old around 5:30 p.m.
When the nanny and children didn't
show up, Krim went up to the apartment, where she found the lights were off,
police said. Krim then returned to the lobby and asked a doorman whether he had
seen her two other children leave with the nanny; he had not.
"There comes a time when she
goes looking for her children and enters the bathroom and finds her 6-year-old
daughter and son stabbed to death in the tub," Kelly said.
That's when neighbors heard a
scream.
The children's father, Kevin Krim,
a senior vice president for CNBC Digital and former Yahoo executive, was en
route back home from the West Coast. Police broke the news to him at John F.
Kennedy International Airport.
"A member of the CNBC family
has suffered an unimaginable loss," NBC Universal said in a statement.
"The sadness that we all feel for Kevin, Marina and their family is
without measure."
The nanny was taken to a hospital,
where she was in critical but stable condition.
The bodies of the two children
were removed from the building on a single stretcher and taken to a hospital
where they were pronounced dead.
Ortega was heavily sedated and
under police watch on Friday at Weill Cornell Medical Center, said Deputy
Police Commissioner Paul Browne.
Kelly said she was breathing with
the aid of a tube and unable to talk.
A native of the Dominican Republic, Ortega had been a naturalized U.S. citizen for 10 years.
Friends had introduced the family
to Ortega, and she had worked for them since Leo's birth two years ago, police
said.
She lives at another address on
Manhattan's West Side with her son, her sister and her niece, Kelly said.
"We're just grieving. Worst
nightmare anyone could ever imagine," said grandmother Karen Krim, who
lives in California. "We don't have a clue what set her off."
Police on Thursday evening
escorted from the apartment building the mother and her 3-year-old daughter,
covering them with a white sheet to shield them from photographers and gawkers.
The mother was treated at a hospital for trauma, police said.
Less than an hour before the
killings, Charlotte Friedman rode in the elevator with the nanny and the
youngsters.
"I told the little girl 'do
you know how beautiful you are?' and she gave me the biggest smile I've ever
seen and said 'thank you,'" Friedman said.
Nothing seemed amiss with the
nanny or the children, she said.
Later, Friedman was back in the
elevator -- heading out to run errands -- when she heard a "primal
scream" from somewhere in the building.
"It was pure terror,"
she said. "...It was unlike anything I've ever heard before."
She isn't sure who she heard
scream. But after she got off the elevator, Friedman saw the youngsters' mother
screaming on the mezzanine.
News of the crime spread quickly.
Some parents in the neighborhood said they rushed home to hug their own
children.
Maryellen Conway, 39, a mother of
two, said she called her children's nanny and they cried together. "She
was in tears. I trust her, obviously, with my life and she's part of our
family," Conway said. "There's no words to describe what they're
going through."
On Friday morning, Jasmarin
Rothbarb was pushing a stroller near the Krims' apartment building. She said
she employs a nanny, but the killings have made her question whether to
continue.
"It's a tough call," she
said. "You trust these people with your most precious joys. I think I see
more mothers out today than nannies. It's a horrible thing."
Outside the building, Kathleen
Peters placed flowers at a makeshift memorial. Peters, a mother herself, also
works as a nanny for children who live a few blocks away. "It makes me
really, really sad," she said. "I can't understand why (the nanny)
would do something like that."
The apartment is a block west of
Central Park and four blocks south of the American Museum of Natural History,
two locations popular with nannies.
It is not unusual for their
employers to treat nannies as extended members of their own families. That was
the case with the Krims. Marina Krim's blog, "Life with the Little Krim
Kids," offered the loving mother's view of a family life that included Ortega
as a member.
Last February, the Krims traveled
to the Dominican Republic, where they met their nanny's family.
"We spent the past nine days
in the Dominican Republic," Marina Krim wrote on February 18. "We
spent half the time at our nanny, Josie's sisters home in Santiago and the rest
at Balcones de Atlantico in Las Terrenas, a condo-style hotel where the 'Real
Housewives of Dominican Republic' and their families hang on weekends. It was
wonderful."
She added, "We met Josie's
amazing familia!!! And the Dominican Republic is a wonderful country!!"
One photograph showed the families
together, the nanny holding the girl who was learning how to swim at the time
her siblings were killed.
The blog included hundreds of
photographs and notes about picking blackberries, celebrating birthdays, going
to a pumpkin patch.
On September 30, Marina Krim
posted a photograph of her son after his second birthday. The boy had a
mischievous look as he played at a toy kitchen set. "Leo 'Lito' Krim!!!!!
Yes, the 2 year old boy," his mother wrote. "One of the best parts of
my day is after I drop both girls off at school and have 3 precious hours with
little Lito all to myself. Ok, I'm near getting cheesy I adore this boy so
much!!!"
Weeks before his birthday, mom and
son walked home, with the lad pointing at toy cars, trucks and fire engines,
excited in anticipation of his birthday. "Mama, present, present," he
said after spotting a toy helicopter.
"Lito, I must say, is a very
clever little boy," she wrote. "He is super talkative and just has a
million thoughts running through his brain and can express himself amazingly
well for an almost-2 year old."
In April, 6-year-old Lucia, known
as Lulu, accompanied her father on a take-your-child-to-work event. On the
whiteboard in her father's office, she wrote: "I like your ofis Dada. Love
LuLu."
Marina Krim logged her final entry
at about 2:30 p.m. Thursday, three hours before the killings were discovered.
"Leo speaks in the most
adorable way possible. Firstly, he speaks super clearly, so you can understand
every word (he) is saying. 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.'"
Within hours of the killings,
hundreds of people had left messages of condolences on the blog; by Friday
morning, it had been taken down.
Deut 28:28- The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and
astonishment of heart:
Deut 28:34- So that thou shalt be mad for the sight of thine eyes which thou
shalt see.
Deut 28:66-
And thy life
shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt
have none assurance of thy life:
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