It is a senseless and horrific crime and every mother’s worst nightmare.
Marina Krim walked into her W. 75th St. apartment in New York about 5:25 p.m.on Thursday to find her 6-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son lying motionless in a blood-soaked bathtub. Each had multiple stab wounds. The children’s nanny, Yosalyn Ortega, 50, was found slumped on the floor with a slit throat and with her wrists cut and bleeding in an apparent suicide attempt.
Police said the children were stabbed to death with a kitchen knife.
The children’s mother arrived back at the family’s three-bedroom, $10,000-a-month apartment, but found it dark, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
She returned to the lobby to ask the doorman if he had seen her children, which he hadn’t. She ventured back upstairs and went through every room, searching for her children. Then she switched on the bathroom lights and found the grisly, heartbreaking scene.
Her piercing shrieks could be heard echoing through the building known as La Rochelle. “I could hear really loud, hysterical screaming — world-class screaming,” said an elderly neighbor, who lives down the hall from the Krim family.
The neighbor said he eventually opened his door and spotted his super standing outside the family’s door.
“He’s also screaming at the top of his lungs,” the neighbor said. “He said, ‘The kids are dead! The kids are dead! And the nanny has something sticking out of her throat!’ ”
Neighbors described seeing the children’s mother, a towel over her head, clinging to her one surviving child, being escorted by the police to a waiting ambulance.
She was said to be in a state of shock. “She was screaming in a psychotic state,” a neighbor said. “She was not lucid.”
The children, Lucia, 6, and Leo, 2, were pronounced dead at St. Luke’s Hospital.
Ortega was taken to Cornell Medical Center with wounds to her neck and was listed in critical but stable condition.
“It’s about the worst thing you can hear or imagine,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.
The children’s father — Kevin Krim, CNBC’s general manager of digital content — was on a plane from California when the kids were found. He was met at the airport by police who recounted the terror of what occurred at his home.
Mr and Mrs Krim remained at St. Luke’s hospital last night with Mrs Krim’s sister. Police said the shocked mother was unable to communicate and had to be sedated. They have one child, Nessie, 3, who was not in the building at the time of the crimes and is the only surviving child in their family.
Ortega has no criminal record and police said there were no immediate explanations for the murders and suicide attempt.
And a neighbor who saw the nanny the day before horrific incident took place, said Ortega appeared relatively normal.
“I rode in the elevator with the nanny just the day before yesterday,” Ms. Starr told the New York Times. “I was making small talk. She was sort of unfriendly, didn’t want to interact. But I didn’t notice anything strange or weird.”
Our hearts break for the Krim family and their loss– no parents should have to endure losing their children in such a heinous manner.
What do you think?