‘Killer nanny’ sister blames parents for own kids’ murders
The parents are to blame.
That’s the outrageous claim of accused killer Yoslyn Ortega’s older sister, who took the stand Monday to say Marina and Kevin Krim should have noticed something was off about their nanny and given her some time off — to prevent her from slaughtering their little kids, Lucia, 6 and Leo, 2, with a kitchen knife.
“Why didn’t those parents realize and take her out themselves — they were seeing it,” Miladys Garcia said defiantly when asked by a Manhattan prosecutor why she didn’t do more following a troubling phone conversation with her sister on Oct. 25, 2012, the day of the gruesome murder in the Krims’ Upper West Side home.
Dad Kevin Krim, who sat in the courtroom gallery, shut his eyes and bowed his head upon hearing the shocking statement. Marina Krim was not present.
Garcia had earlier told jurors her sister “had become something evil,” that day, “gnashing” her teeth near the receiver about five hours before she slaughtered Lucia and Leo Krim in the bathtub.
“So the Krims should have seen her unraveling and given her vacation, is that what you’re saying?” Assistant District Attorney Stuart Silberg asked incredulously.
“Yes, because they were the ones seeing her,” Garcia, 64, replied flatly. “Give her a vacation if you see she’s losing weight, say ‘Yosie, you’re not yourself.’ Even a week of vacation. Say, ‘Go, Yosie, you’re very thin.’”
Ortega, 55, had been working part-time for the Krims alongside stay-at-home mom Marina, when she stabbed to death the 6- and 2- year-olds — who she’s likened to her own children.
“She adored them. She would say, ‘I have four children now,’” Garcia recalled Ortega saying, referring to the three Krim children and her own son.
Earlier in the day, Garcia said her sister in the weeks leading up to the murder kept babbling about “a black man” who wanted to “separate the families.”
Ortega first mentioned seeing “a black man” who wouldn’t let her leave the house years earlier, in 2008, Garcia testified. Those alleged hallucinations following the suicide of a family friend.
The nanny’s pal Raquel Perez also took the stand Monday, saying Ortega developed crying fits and jabbed at food in the months before the slaying.
Once, after she fell onto the couch in hysterics, Perez said she made Ortega a plate of food.
The nanny — just weeks before she repeatedly stabbed Lucia and Leo — took her fork and knife and repeatedly plunged the utensils into the food in an upright motion, Perez said.
Ortega, who’s mounting an insanity defense, says she was “touched by the devil” when she killed the children.
If convicted of first-degree murder charges, Ortega faces life behind bars. If found not guilty by reason of insanity, she’ll likely spend the rest of her life in a psychiatric institution.