Nanny Who Killed 2 Children Is Sentenced to Life in Prison

NEW YORK — Before a judge sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole for fatally stabbing two young children she had cared for, the former nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, spoke in open court for the first time since the trial began and begged for forgiveness.

“I’m very sorry for everything that happened,” she said tearfully in Spanish, her face flushed. It was a rare display of emotion by Ortega, who during the six-week trial remained stoic, even during graphic testimony.

The judge, Gregory Carro, sentenced Ortega, 55, to the maximum penalty for the stabbing deaths of the two children — Leo Krim, 2, and his sister Lucia, 6, on Oct. 25, 2012.

Carro borrowed the words of one witness who described the former nanny’s actions as “pure evil,” and he said the jurors were right to reject Ortega’s defense that she could not be held responsible because she had suffered from a mental disease or defect and could not understand her actions or know they were wrong.

The jury convicted her of first- and second-degree murder.

“Your planning and forethought regarding your suicide plan on that day was certainly unmistakable,” Carro said.

“What’s unclear, and it’s unclear mainly because you claim you have a lack of memory, is why you decided to take the lives of the children.”

He said there was no doubt that Ortega’s “untreated mental illness played a significant role” in her actions that day, but that she and her family failed to get her the mental health treatment she needed.

The killings stunned parents throughout the city, where many rely on others for help with child care and often base their decisions about caregivers on word-of-mouth recommendations. The sentencing put an end to a yearslong case that had been delayed as Ortega’s lawyers prepared the insanity defense.

Before the sentencing, the children’s mother, Marina Krim, said Ortega had not succeeded in her ultimate goal: “To destroy what Kevin and I had created and built — an inspired, happy, thriving family.”

Instead, she destroyed her own family, Krim said. Ortega, dressed in a light gray, long-sleeved shirt, dropped her head as Krim began to speak.

The Krims have said that Ortega and her family deceived them, claiming that Ortega was an experienced nanny when she was not. The couple is pushing for legislation that would make lying on child care applications a crime.

The Krims, who have had two other children since 2012, said they see in the younger siblings constant reminders of Leo and Lucia, who was known as Lulu.

“The defendant may think she destroyed Lulu and Leo. But she is a failure in this, too,” Krim, trembling, said through tears. “Lulu and Leo are powerful forces. They are two stars now, that will always lead us forward.”

After speaking, Krim returned to her seat in the second row, closed her eyes and sobbed.

Kevin Krim asked the judge to sentence Ortega to the maximum penalty to ensure “that the defendant can never leave prison alive. The defendant knows nothing of responsibility or remorse. It is right that she should live and rot and die in a concrete and metal cage.”

Nine of the jurors and alternates from the trial were in court Monday to witness the sentencing, crowded together in the second row, opposite the family, some in tears.

Marina Krim, with her middle child, Nessie, then 3, had found her two other children dead from stab wounds in the tub and Ortega plunging a knife into her own neck. Ortega had used a butcher knife from the kitchen to stab the children.

Stuart Silberg, the lead prosecutor, urged the judge to sentence her to life without parole.

“This defendant has to this day shown no remorse. She has never shed a tear for the children,” he said Monday. “Make sure the defendant never has hope of being free.”

Ortega’s lawyer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg asked the judge to “show mercy.” She said jurors were “emotionally distracted” and had not based their conviction on a “cold objective analysis of the facts.”

“She did not posses or exhibit the faculties of understanding and liberty of will,” she said of Ortega. “She did not know what she was doing. No more than an infant, a brute or a wild beast.” Prosecutors had argued that Ortega was angry about her workload and schedule and killed the children to spite their mother. Prosecutors also said Ortega resented Krim for being able to provide her children with what she could not give her own son, whom she had left at the age of 4 to be raised by her sister in the Dominican Republic. He joined her in New York City in 2012.

The defense countered that Ortega suffered from a chronic mental illness and was experiencing a psychotic and dissociative episode when she killed the children. Two psychiatrists for the defense said Ortega had heard voices, including Satan’s, commanding her to kill herself and the children. They testified that Ortega, a religious woman, had suffered from bouts of deep depression, delusions and hallucinations since she was 16 in the Dominican Republic, but her illness had not been treated or diagnosed until after her arrest on murder charges.

Several family members and friends testified that in the weeks before the slaying Ortega’s behavior had become bizarre. They said she had complained of seeing shadows that followed her, cried frequently and talked about a “black man” who was trying to split up her family.

In her remarks Monday, Ortega said she had asked for forgiveness from God and from the Krims, before speaking disjointedly about having told her family and Lucia she did not feel well, and about a missed follow-up appointment with a psychologist.