Life Was in Chaos for Nanny Accused of Killing 2 Children

by N. R. KLEINFIELD, nytimes.com
October 26th 2012

She was unraveling. Yoselyn Ortega's home was an overcrowded tenement that she yearned to leave. She shared the apartment with her teenage son, a sister and a niece, and roamed the halls selling cheap cosmetics and jewelry for extra money. She had been forced to relinquish a new apartment for her and her son and move back. A woman had chiseled her on a debt. Neighbors found her sulky and remote. She seemed to be losing weight.

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Juan Pozo, 67, a car service driver who used to rent a room in her apartment, said he spoke to her sister on Friday, who told him that Ms. Ortega had not been feeling well lately, "that she felt like she was losing her mind."

He said the family had taken her to see a psychologist, an account shared by others, including the police.

This was the unfinished portrait that began to emerge on Friday of Ms. Ortega, the Manhattan nanny who, the authorities said, committed the unthinkable.

On Thursday evening around 5:30, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said, Marina Krim returned to her Upper West Side apartment with her 3-year-old daughter to discover her two other children, a 2-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl, dead of knife wounds in the bathtub and Ms. Ortega slashing herself with the same bloodied kitchen knife used on the children.

Ms. Ortega, 50, survived, but the police have been unable to question her because she remains in the hospital in a medically induced coma, a deep stab wound in her throat. She has not yet been charged.

The authorities remain mystified over the motive. Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, said family members had told detectives that Ms. Ortega "over the last couple of months was not herself."

"She was, according to others, seeking some professional help," he said, adding, "There were financial concerns."

Ms. Ortega, who the police said was a naturalized American citizen from the Dominican Republic, had worked for the Krims for about two years. She had been referred by another family, the police said, and did not come through an agency, which customarily does background checks. A law enforcement official said Ms. Ortega had had no previous brushes with the law, nor have detectives learned of any tensions in her relationship with the Krims.

"No fighting with the mom, the family, the kids," the official said. "Everybody is looking for a reason here." He added, "We've got nothing bad other than the fact that she killed two children."

On Friday, the sort of memorial with stuffed animals and flowers that has become sadly familiar in the aftermath of a city tragedy took shape outside the Krim apartment building, as parents pondered what to say to their own children. Disbelief was pervasive in the neighborhood.

"I don't have words for something like that," said William Davila, whose daughter is a fifth grader at Public School 87, which Lucia Krim, 6, had attended. The children's father, Kevin Krim, was returning from a business trip on Thursday when he was met by the police at the airport.

Mr. Krim learned that his youngest child, Leo, and his daughter Lucia, known as Lulu, had died and that the police had arrested the nanny with whom the Krims were so close that they had traveled to her home in the Dominican Republic. He is an executive at CNBC. Ms. Krim did not work outside the home, but taught an occasional art class at the Museum of Natural History. On Thursday night, CNBC put the Krims up in a hotel.

Mr. Krim's father, William Krim, 74, said the parents had not returned to their apartment.

"I don't know if they ever will," he said. "I don't know if I could."

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, said Lucia had died of "multiple stab and incise wounds," and Leo of "incise wounds of the neck." They had been clothed, a law enforcement official said, suggesting that Ms. Ortega had not been bathing the children.

For about 30 years, according to neighbors, Ms. Ortega has lived in a six-story tenement building at 610 Riverside Drive in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. Before the nanny job, they said, she had worked in factories and as a cleaning lady. A neighbor said the sister she lived with was a taxi driver.

Reporting was contributed by James Barron, David M. Halbfinger, Daniel Krieger, Peter Lattman, Randy Leonard, William K. Rashbaum, Nate Schweber, Daniella Silva and Vivian Yee.

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This year, Maria Lajara, 41, a friend who lives in the building, said Ms. Ortega had stopped by to tell her how happy she was that she had found a new apartment in the Bronx for herself and her son. She said that Ms. Ortega had conveyed how much she loved working for the Krims and that she was paid and treated well. Also this year, she said, the Krims had given Ms. Ortega an Ann Taylor jacket as a gift.

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Nannies who work near one another often form social networks, setting up joint play dates or meeting at playgrounds. But most other nannies in the Krim building said they were unfamiliar with Ms. Ortega.

One nanny, Terla Duran, 35, said she did not know Ms. Ortega, but a friend who is a nanny did.

"Not many of us knew her; they say she was very strange," Ms. Duran said. "She spent most of her time locked up inside the apartment."

Once she moved to the Bronx, Ms. Ortega stayed in touch with Ms. Lajara, her friend. She would tell Ms. Lajara to save copies of a religious magazine, Rayo de Luz, which Ms. Ortega's sister would then take to her.

Twice, Ms. Ortega asked Ms. Lajara to pray that a woman would pay her for makeup she had given her to sell. The amount, Ms. Lajara said, was about $100, and it was important to her.

Within the past few months, Ms. Ortega returned to live with her sister. Fernando Mercado, the superintendent of the building on Riverside Drive, said she had been renting the Bronx apartment from an acquaintance who moved to the Dominican Republic. But the tenant returned and threw out Ms. Ortega. "She spent a lot of money on the Bronx apartment," Mr. Mercado said of Ms. Ortega.

Neighbors on Riverside Drive said that in recent weeks, Ms. Ortega had looked older, anxious, harried. Ruben Rivas, one of the neighbors, described her as "kind of devastated."

He last saw her two weeks ago. "She was in bad shape," he said. "Skinny."

Neighbors said she walked faster in the hallways and was withdrawn. She had been known as a gregarious woman who, they said, greeted them with shouts of "Hola, vecina" — "Hello, neighbor." But now, they said, she avoided eye contact and said little.

Kenia Galo, 25, who has known her all her life, would see her in the elevator lately and remark that she looked tired.

"I am tired," she would reply. "Work."

Neighbors said she would leave the building at 5:30 or 6 a.m. and not return for 12 hours.

Ana Bonet, 40, a neighbor, said that besides her nanny job, Ms. Ortega sold inexpensive jewelry and makeup to neighbors. Others said she also earned money by cooking rice and chicken dishes for parties.

The Krim parents were both Californians who have been married for about nine years. Ms. Krim grew up in Manhattan Beach, and Mr. Krim in Thousand Oaks, where he was a football star. He worked at McKinsey & Company in Los Angeles and she worked for a wholesaler of powders; they met at an Italian restaurant in Venice Beach.

Mr. Krim took a job at Yahoo in San Francisco, where they lived before moving to New York about three years ago. After first being employed at Bloomberg L.P., Mr. Krim moved to CNBC.

According to Mr. Krim's parents, Ms. Ortega was hired about six months after the Krims came to New York. They did not know what vetting the couple did.

"We're just the most stunned people in the world — I mean, they treated this woman so well," said William Krim, who lists Marina Krim in his cellphone as "World's Best Mom."

Though Ms. Krim did not work outside the home, Mr. Krim's parents said, they wanted a nanny to help out. Sometimes, Ms. Krim would take the two oldest children out with her, leaving the youngest with Ms. Ortega, whom they called Josie.

An acquaintance of Mr. Krim said he had been extremely happy in California and often lamented the difficulties of family life in New York and how it was necessary for a big family to have help.

Mr. Krim's mother, Karen Krim, said Ms. Krim was a hands-on mother. "They're both very careful," she said. "She didn't even leave the kids that much alone with this nanny; that's the irony of all this."

She added: "She didn't have a nanny so she could go out and play tennis — not that there's anything wrong with that. But she was always with the kids, and Josie just helped her because, with three little kids, it's really hard."

When the Krims took family vacations, they paid to fly the nanny to Santo Domingo to visit her family. One time, they accompanied her because Ms. Ortega wanted them to meet her family. Marina Krim maintained a blog, on which she chronicled "life with the little Krim kids."

Charlotte Friedman, a retiree who lives in the Krims' building, may have been the last person to see the children alive. She did not know the members of the family, but would periodically bump into them. Around 5 p.m. on Thursday, she said, she entered the elevator, heading for her seventh-floor apartment, at the same time as the nanny and the children.

She asked the girl if she had been on a play date. The child replied that she had been dancing. Ms. Friedman described the girl as "happy, happy, happy."

The times she had encountered Ms. Ortega, she found her cold. There in the elevator, she said, the nanny smiled but said nothing. And then, she and the children got off on the second floor.

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Reporting was contributed by James Barron, David M. Halbfinger, Daniel Krieger, Peter Lattman, Randy Leonard, William K. Rashbaum, Nate Schweber, Daniella Silva and Vivian Yee.

Original Page: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/nyregion/motive-for-stabbings-a-mystery-as-a-portrait-of-a-troubled-nanny-emerges.html?pagewanted=all

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