NYC Nanny Murders 2 Children & Attempts Suicide In The Real Life Urban Mommy Legend
Many parents have nannies. Many fathers have babysitters. Many mothers have childcare that they trust with their children’s lives and well-being every day. Which is why this highly disturbing and horror film-esque story of the seemingly normal nanny who just snapped will haunt parents well into Halloween. And probably beyond.
The New York Times reports that Marina Krim, a mother of three in New York City, returned to her Upper West Side apartment to discover a grisly and knee-buckling sight: her 2-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter dead in her bath tub with the nanny unconscious on the bathroom floor. Yoselyn Ortega, aged 50, reportedly stabbed both children to death before slitting her own wrists. Ortego is currently in a medically induced coma. The scenario under which Krim returned to her apartment is one which can be justified in a text no one saw, a missed phone call, or a simple miscommunication:
Marina Krim, had left the two children…with the nanny…while Ms. Krim took her middle child, a 3-year-old girl, to a swimming lesson. He said that Ms. Ortega was supposed to meet Ms. Krim and the 3-year-old at a dance studio after the swimming lesson.
They never showed up, he said.
Ms. Krim, worried, walked home to the ornate prewar building where the family had lived for the last couple of years…Ms. Krim returned around 5:30 p.m., she found a dark apartment. She went to the lobby and asked the doorman if he had seen the nanny and her children. Told that they had not left the building, she returned to the apartment. She looked around in the quiet rooms. Finally, she turned on the lights in the bathroom ”” and saw her two children in the bathtub and the nanny unconscious on the floor…On the Upper West Side, neighbors described seeing Ms. Krim, a towel over her head, clinging to her one surviving child, being escorted by the police to a waiting ambulance. Ms. Starr said that when she saw Ms. Krim in the building’s lobby, she was in a state of shock. ”She was screaming in a psychotic state,” she said. ”She was not lucid.”
So far, authorities are at a loss as to why Ortego, who lived with her son, sister, and niece in Harlem, would carry out such a heinous crime. The mother herself has no criminal history nor any history of mental illness in her immediate family. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing nothing:
”No fighting with the mom, the family, the kids,” the official said. ”Everybody is looking for a reason here,” the official said, adding, ”We’ve got nothing bad other than the fact that she killed two children.”
”There was nothing, nothing, nothing ”” nothing that would indicate that there was anything going on, anything that would indicate this would occur. We’ve got nothing.”
There is talk from Ortega’s family that she may have either visited a psychologist as of late, or may have been contemplating reaching out to a professional. Some of her relatives have also suggested that she was “acting differently” in the weeks leading up to the murder. Even so, Ortego was apparently quite close with her employers. The Krim family even visited Ortego’s family in the Dominican Republic as recent as this February.
Still, despite the utter randomness of this horrendous crime (and as a former nanny/babysitter in NYC myself), I envision this random act of gruesome violence being parleyed into the biggest urban mommy legend ever to touch the island. Authorities have been unable to uncover a single motive, but I’m already sensing the parenting message boards lighting up with the common accusations that often get slung at women who hire extra help. The “where was their mother?” is already ringing in my ears. Frantic emails between mommy groups and playdate pals about nannies they have an odd feeling about have probably be Gmailed 100 times over.
The fact that Marina Krim reportedly documented her “perfect, beautiful family” in a mommy blog makes her story all the more accessible and therefore frightening. Her LiveJournal mommy blog, replete with cutesy photos of her children and shorthanded summaries of how much she loves them, has been pulled from the Internet following the crime. Compound that with one single quote the Times managed to dig up from neighbor, Charlotte Friedman, who says, ”I never saw her as a warm nanny” and you have what could be any family, anywhere, with a babysitter on a bad day.
The deaths of these poor children are not the fault of a neglectful mother who was too wealthy to be concerned with the safety of her babies, but rather of a trusted childcare worker who seemed, by all searchable accounts, fine. No shady record, no concerning past, and nothing to trigger even an inkling of concern. But I suppose none of that will keep this horrific story from escalating to the cautionary tale of the Upper West Side mother who once took her kid to a swimming lesson.
Halloween may be next week, but consider the entire New York City mommysphere spooked as of tonight.
(photo: Orhan Cam/ Shutterstock)
