Nanny Kills Two Babies in New York Trial
Manhattan Nanny Is Convicted in Murders of 2 Children
The courtroom vicious silent. The begetter of two children killed by their former nanny sat in the forepart row, beside a pair of alternating jurors who had been released earlier deliberations. They held hands. Tears streamed down their cheeks.
And when a jury convicted the nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, of murder, rejecting her claim that she was too mentally ill to understand her actions or know they were wrong, the children's father, Kevin Krim, hung his head, shook and rocked back and along. A juror took off his glasses and wiped abroad tears.
The jury of half-dozen men and vi women deliberated for two days before reaching their determination, which they delivered soon later on 4 p.m. Wednesday in Country Supreme Courtroom in Manhattan.
Ms. Ortega, 55, sat motionless as the verdict was read: guilty of first-degree murder, guilty of second-degree murder. She faces life in prison when she is sentenced on May 14.
At a news briefing later on the verdict, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said that the jury "rightly held Yoselyn Ortega answerable." He lauded jurors "for their diligence throughout this incredibly difficult and heartbreaking trial." A teary-eyed Mr. Krim stood by his side. Mr. Vance said the Krims "lived through the worst nightmare any parents could ever endure."
As for the jurors, subsequently sitting through nigh two months of testimony and reviewing graphic law-breaking scene photos, the Krims' pain had become theirs.
"Every bit a father of ii children myself, I tin can't imagine — no parent should have to experience the loss of a kid," one juror, David Curtis, said during the news conference, with tears in his eyes. "This was a very difficult decision for us. At that place were some raised voices and a lot of tears."
The case sent daze waves through the metropolis and cast a spotlight on the decisions — often informed by give-and-take of mouth — that New Yorkers from all walks of life make every solar day when they go out their children in the care of others.
Ms. Ortega never disputed that she killed Leo Krim, 2, and his sister Lucia, 6, in the bath of their family unit's Upper West Side apartment at 57 West 75th Street on October. 25, 2012.
The children's mother, Marina Krim, with her heart child in tow, came home around 5:thirty p.m. and discovered the two children lying lifeless in the tub, stabbed multiple times with a kitchen pocketknife, with Ms. Ortega continuing near them. As Ms. Krim opened the bathroom door, Ms. Ortega stabbed herself in the neck.
Prosecutors argued that Ms. Ortega intended to kill the children, then commit suicide, considering she was depressed and aroused at Ms. Krim over her workload and schedule.
The defense, however, said that Ms. Ortega was severely mentally ill and heard voices, including Satan's, telling her to impale the children. Her lawyer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, presented show that Ms. Ortega had experienced delusions and hallucinations since she was a teenager in the Dominican Commonwealth, but that her psychosis had gone untreated and undiagnosed until afterward her arrest.
Jurors heard from mental-health experts on both sides, who arrived at different conclusions about Ms. Ortega's state of mind at the time of the killings.
When deliberations began, Mr. Curtis said, jurors were divided, but in the end, "it came down to proof. We could not observe strongly, credible proof that the defendant was non aware."
Two psychiatrists for the defense, Karen B. Rosenbaum and Phillip J. Resnick, said that Ms. Ortega was in the grip of a psychotic break so severe that she did not understand her actions or know they were wrong. After interviewing her family members and scouring her medical records, they came to the determination that she had been overcome past voices in her head in the weeks before the murders. She could not fifty-fifty remember the gruesome killings, they said.
But a forensic psychologist for the prosecution, Ali Khadivi, testified that while Ms. Ortega suffered from feet and depression, she was not psychotic. He determined that she was not experiencing paranoia, delusions or any interruption from reality the day of the killings. To buttress his decision, prosecutors showed a 2016 videotape on which Ms. Ortega repeatedly denied to Mr. Khadivi that she heard voices commanding her to impale the children, contradicting what she had told defense psychiatrists several months after the killings.
Video
transcript
transcript
Accused Nanny Questioned About Mental Country
Yoselyn Ortega, the nanny accused of killing ii children in her intendance in 2012, told a forensic psychologist in 2016 that she was non hearing voices telling her to impale the children on the mean solar day of the incident.
-
"And then one other thing you tell this physician that in the forenoon when y'all woke up you were hearing voices. Do you remember any of that?" "No. No." "And you lot were hearing voices that would tell you to impale Krim'southward children?" "No." "Krim's family, children." "I don't remember. I don't recall that." "Do y'all recall at all talking about that y'all felt that you beingness possessed by devil, that the devil was taking control of your body?" "No." "Have y'all always had that experience before?" "No, no, no, no." "During this catamenia from September, were you feeling bad, you losing weight, feeling palpitations, did you lot ever thought that a devil was doing this to you?" "No, no." "You never ever saw a devil?" "No." "Had a visual image of a devil?" "No." "Did you lot ever experience seeing a homo in black appearing?" "No." "And then is it fair to say in September until the time of the incident, you were not hearing whatsoever kind of voices telling you to kill people?" "No." "Or impairment yourself?" "No." "Or experiencing devil taking over your torso?" "No"
Prototype
The prosecutors, Stuart Silberg and Courtney Groves, also focused on testify suggesting that Ms. Ortega had planned the murders. That day, she had left a pocketbook containing her valuables, identification cards and keepsakes for her son and an envelope of important personal documents for her sister Delci Ortega. She had too recently pleaded with Delci to take intendance of her teenage son and "raise him well."
Ms. Van Leer-Greenberg, however, noted that Ms. Ortega had expressed to several family unit members how much she loved the Krim children, and suggested to jurors that the merely possible explanation for such an atrocity was astringent mental illness.
Jurors heard vi weeks of testimony from 53 witnesses, including the wrenching accounts of Ms. Krim, who described discovering the horrific scene in the bathroom, and Mr. Krim, who spoke of his deep acrimony that members of Ms. Ortega'south family unit had lied to him and his wife almost Ms. Ortega's qualifications and background. Both said they had noticed that Ms. Ortega was upset in the weeks before the murders but saw no indication she was losing her mind.
Earlier her arrest, Ms. Ortega had never been hospitalized for psychiatric bug; the just medical tape regarding her mental health was one page of notes from a psychologist she visited three days before the criminal offence. The therapist, Thomas Caffrey, said he saw no signs of delusional or psychotic thinking. He determined she was suffering from depression and anxiety. "She didn't tell me about any concerns almost voices or visions," he testified.
Defective medical records, the defense team relied on testimony from Ms. Ortega'southward family unit members and friends to show that she had had 2 mental breakdowns in the Dominican Commonwealth, one in 1978 after her young sister died and a second in 2008 after a close family unit friend committed suicide.
In both cases, she slipped into deep low and refused to leave her family's firm, her sisters and friends said. In 1978, she received treatment from a doc and recovered. During the 2nd episode, witnesses said she started expressing irrational fears most people coming to get her and returned to New York City.
Ms. Ortega's siblings and other family members also testified that she appeared to be unraveling in the six months before the killings, crying oftentimes, asking people to pray for her and speaking of "shadows" and a "blackness man" following her and attempting to split up her family.
Her mental turmoil started when i of her sisters, Miladys Garcia, asked her to move out of the family'due south apartment in Hamilton Heights, the witnesses said. She moved to an flat in the Bronx belonging to some other relative and insisted her teenage son, Jesus Frias, be sent from the Dominican Democracy to live with her. She had left Mr. Frias with Ms. Garcia when he was iv years old and had not raised him herself, except for an 18-calendar month period effectually 2008.
Three days before the murders, she woke upward in the eye of the night and started throwing pots and pans around the kitchen, then claimed subsequently non to call back information technology, her sister Delci said.
Just iv hours before the killings, Ms. Ortega visited a neighbor'southward flat and, agitated and pacing up and downward, told a teenage woman staying in that location, Jennifer Reynosa, that she saw a "black shadow" that spoke to her. In more than a dozen interviews in the months subsequently the murders, Ms. Ortega told Dr. Rosenbaum that she had been hearing voices, including Satan's, telling her to kill herself and her employers' children.
Prosecutors, however, focused on the statements Ms. Ortega fabricated to Dr. Caffrey, the therapist, 3 days before the killings and to Dr. Marc Dubin, a psychiatrist who spoke to her eleven days after the horrific event as she was recovering from her cervix wound at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Eye.
In both interviews, Ms. Ortega complained about money trouble and expressed frustration with Ms. Krim about her schedule and workload, but did non mention hearing voices commanding her to kill.
She first reported hearing those voices over the next month as her health improved and her post-surgery delirium lifted. Her family members did not initially mention her psychotic symptoms to the law, but did so in later conversations with Dr. Rosenbaum and Dr. Resnick.
In closing arguments, the lead prosecutor, Stuart Silberg, suggested that Ms. Ortega had fabricated up stories about hearing commands from the Devil to avoid a life judgement, and that her relatives had invented stories about her delusions for similar reasons.
But Ms. Van Leer-Greenberg said that Ms. Ortega and her family members at showtime hid the symptoms of her disease because of the stigma fastened to mental illness in the Dominican Commonwealth.
She suggested that Ms. Ortega had lost the boxing with the demonic voices in her head, experienced a interruption with reality and did not know what she was doing.
"Her heed and her body separated," she said.
Virtually an hour after the verdict Marina Krim, who was non in court to hear the jury's decision, posted a photograph on Instagram from the Empire State Edifice, a landmark that Leo adored, and wrote: "Yous two never made it to the pinnacle, but I'm up here now for the first time, in peace, on top of the world, remembering some other lifetime and thinking of you lot."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/nyregion/nanny-trial-verdict.html
0 Response to "Nanny Kills Two Babies in New York Trial"
Post a Comment