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Yoselyn Ortega, 55, is accused of slaying Lucia Krim, 6,
nicknamed Lulu, and her brother Leo, 2, whose bloody bodies were
found in a bathtub of the family's Manhattan luxury apartment.
Ortega was the family nanny hired by Kevin Krim, a former senior
vice president of CNBC Digital who is now chief executive of a
media analytics company, and his wife, Marina, two years before
the October 2012 killings.
Ortega is charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Her
lawyer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, has been building a plea of
not guilty by reason of insanity for the jury trial, which is
expected to last at least three months.
The killings, which grabbed headlines as "A Family's Worst
Nightmare," were discovered when Marina Krim returned to the
family's Upper West Side apartment to find her children's gashed
bodies in the tub.
Ortega, who was standing over them plunging a knife into her own
neck, was rushed to the hospital.
Krim had returned home with the children's then 3-year-old
sister, Nessie, after Ortega failed to appear with the other
children at Nessie's swimming lesson.
In the years since the slayings, the Krim family welcomed two
more children, Felix, who was born in October 2013, and Linus,
born in January 2016.
The family also started the Lulu & Leo Fund, a non-profit that
raises money for education and enrichment programs to help
children and adults "build resilience, creative confidence and
social and emotional skills," Marina Krim said in a video posted
on the fund's website page.
"This trial will be very hard for us," Kevin Krim said on the
video, in which is Linus seen darting around in the background,
Felix speaks and Nessie plays piano.
Urging viewers to honor their slain children's memory by
encouraging creativity, the Krims noted the fund's website
ChooseCreativity.org.
"We're going to focus on the positive and the goodness that has
come out of all of this," Marina Krim said.
"In the face of destructive things like violence, anger and
fear, creativity is a positive act of defiance," her husband
added.
(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Leslie Adler)
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