A once-trusted nanny who was convicted of brutally murdering two small children in her care while their parents were out was sentenced on Monday to life in prison without parole.

Yoselyn Ortega wept as she spoke briefly in court in New York City – a rare show of emotion in a lengthy case, in which she was convicted in April of the gruesome October 2012 stabbing deaths of six-year-old Lucia Krim, known as Lulu, and two-year-old Leo Krim.

“I’m very sorry for everything that happened, but I hope that no one goes through what I have gone through,” 55-year-old Ortega said through tears. “Although many people wish me all the worst, my life is in the hands of God.”

The children’s mother, Marina Krim, speaking to the judge before sentencing, said Ortega tried to destroy her family but failed.

“The defendant may think she destroyed Lulu and Leo, but she is a failure in this, too. Lulu and Leo are powerful forces,” she said through tears. “They are two stars now who will always lead us forward.”

Krim and her husband, Kevin Krim, spoke of how Ortega robbed them of their children and how Ortega’s family and friends helped with this by lying to them about Ortega’s personality and experience as a nanny. Ortega had been recommended by her sister, a nanny for another New York family, and her background and references were faked by her family. The consequences, the Krims said, were horrifying.

Of the murdered offspring, a tearful Kevin Krim said: “We miss hearing them call out my name and run to hug me when I got home from work. We miss feeling their soft skin in our arms.”

Ortega said she wasn’t feeling well at the time, but wasn’t able to go to the doctor.

“I ask for a great deal of forgiveness. To God, to Marina, to Kevin. I wish my family had told them that I did not feel well,” she said through a Spanish-English interpreter.

But Judge Gregory Carro referred to Ortega as “pure evil” and said she should spend the rest of her life in prison.

During the seven-week trial, jurors grappled with whether Ortega had been too mentally ill to understand what she was doing when she killed the children.



On the day of the murders, Marina Krim arrived home from picking up her three-year-old daughter and found the apartment dark and “eerily quiet”, with a light on in the bathroom. She opened the door to the bathroom to discover the children’s bodies stacked in the tub. Lulu was stabbed more than 30 times, and Leo was stabbed five times.

Ortega had cut her own throat in a failed suicide attempt.

At the sentencing, Marina Krim talked about what that crime scene may have done to Nessie, even though she has grown into a strong, happy child.

“As Nessie grows up, she will be asking Kevin and me deep, unanswerable questions about life that most parents avoid talking about with their kids,” Marina Krim said.



