Flowers and messages sit in front of the building where two children were stabbed to death allegedly by their nanny in a family’s Upper West Side apartment on October 26, 2012 in New York City
The devastated mother of two young children killed by their New York nanny broke down on the stand Friday, yelling that the former caregiver was “evil” and a “liar” before twice fleeing the court room.
Yoselyn Ortega is on trial for murdering Lucia, six, and Leo, two, with a kitchen knife in the bathroom of their Upper West Side apartment on October 25, 2012. Ortega, 55, does not deny the killings, but is pleading insanity.
It was a case that terrified working parents all over the world and went on to inspire a best-selling novel that explored the relationship between a working mother and the woman she hires to look after her young children.
Marina Krim, 41, tearfully fled the stand twice while testifying for a second day — once under cross-examination by the defense after becoming increasingly agitated by the questions — and again while being questioned by the prosecution.
“Because she is evil,” she screamed in reference to the Dominican-born former caregiver who looked after her children for two and a half years before killing them.
“You are liars,” Krim shouted. “You are evil,” she added as she left the courtroom for a brief break through the witness room door.
Ortega remained impassive. Her eyes motionless behind her glasses as she sat next to her lawyer in the Manhattan court room.
After she returned to court, the judge waived objections from the defense to allow the prosecuting lawyer to talk Krim through an incident she wanted to tell the court.
Stifling her sobs, Krim recounted the pain of suffering a miscarriage shortly before the killings and of Ortega’s response that particularly troubled her.
Krim said when she first told the defendant that she was pregnant, Ortega “gave me this giant hug, and she said, ‘I am so happy, I love you, I love you.'”
But when she later told her about the miscarriage, “she did not give me a hug, she gave me no emotion at all, she actually looked mad at me that I had a miscarriage.”
Krim then screamed: “She is a narcissist, it’s all about money, it’s all about money!”
She also testified about another moment in the kitchen once as she readied to go out. “She (Ortega) was just looking at me with this glare on her face that was just pure evil,” Krim told the jury.
When the prosecution tried to move on, Krim left the room shouting and did not return, leading the prosecuting lawyers to call another witness in what is expected to be a three-month trial.
Krim and her husband Kevin have had two more children since Lucia, known to her family as Lulu, and Leo were killed. They also founded a foundation that nurtures creativity among children facing adversity.
The killings served as the inspiration for “Chanson Douce” — a best-selling novel that earned author Leila Slimani France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt, in 2016.
The novel, set in Paris, was translated as “Lullaby” in Britain and in the United States as “The Perfect Nanny,” where it was less commercially successful than in Europe.
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