A mum who came home to find her two young children dead in a bathtub and their nanny stabbing herself in the neck has told a jury the scene was “like a total horror movie”.
Marina Krim returned home to her luxury apartment in New York where she found daughter Lucia, six, and son Leo, two, stabbed to death on October 25, 2012.
The heartbroken mother described the grisly killings on the first day of nanny Yoselyn Ortega’s murder trial on Thursday.
The 55-year-old babysitter has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity
Mrs Krim told the Supreme Court in Manhattan: “I just wanted to wake up from this nightmare that I knew wasn’t a nightmare. It was real.”
Ortega faces two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder.
She is accused of planning the killing, waiting to be alone with the children and using the family’s kitchen knives, said Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Courtney Groves.
Lucia, known as Lulu, fought back and was found with 20 to 30 stab wounds.
Little brother Leo had five gashes, Groves said
Ortega waited to stab herself in front of Mrs Krim so she could see her reaction, the prosecutor said.
The nanny had been hired two years earlier by Mrs Krim and her husband, then-CNBC executive Kevin Krim.
Ortega resented Mrs Krim for being the mother “she could never be,” Groves said.
Ortega had recently brought her son, Jesus, 17, from the Dominican Republic, enrolled him in a private school so he did not have to repeat 11th grade, and was overwhelmed by financial concerns.
Ortega was “enraged” that Marina Krim offered to find her more work, Groves said.
Before the trial adjourned for the day, Mrs Krim testified she had clashed with Ortega in the past over an offer by a friend of the family to hire her as a household helper.
Few details were disclosed, but Mrs Krim testified that the following day she confronted Ortega.
On the day of the murders, Mrs Krim had returned home with her third child, then three-year-old Nessie, after Ortega failed to appear with the other children at a designated meeting place.
She rushed inside and started checking every room, thinking,“it’s like a total horror movie,” Krim testified.
Seeing blood drenching the bathroom, she ran out of the apartment screaming, adding: “It was a scream you can’t even imagine is inside of you.”
The Krim family have gone on to have two sons, Felix, now four and two-year-old Linus.
