Marina Krim returned to her Upper West Side home around 5:30 p.m. Thursday to find her 2-year-old son Leo and 6-year-old daughter Lucia stabbed to death inside her bathtub, with the nanny in charge of their care lying dying nearby.
The horror unfolded inside a pricey apartment on West 75th Street, just a block from Central Park. Flowers and candles were left outside the building.
Krim clutched her one surviving child, a 3-year-old little girl, in the lobby as building residents recalled the horrifying screams they say came from their heartbroken neighbor. The nanny, identified as 50-year-old Yoselyn Ortega, was found with a knife in her hand, apparently suffering from a self-inflicted stab wound to her wrists and neck.
Ortega, a naturalized US citizen employed by the family for approximately two years, is intubated and has not yet been interviewed by police. Charges are still to be determined. Ortega has reportedly been in this country for about 10 years and was born in the Dominican Republic. Police say she may have stabbed herself as the mother arrived to bathroom.
"The apartment is dark, and she goes into the bathroom, and that's where she discovered the bodies," NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
Police have not yet determined a motive. It is unknown how long the mother and 3-year-old were out of apartment, but sources say they had gone to YMCA and were to meet up with Ortega elsewhere. When the nanny and children didn't appear, Marina Krim returned to apartment.
The children's father, CNBC digital media executive Kevin Krim, had been away on a business trip. He was met by police at the airport upon his return and was given an escort to the hospital where his loved ones had gathered.
Sources say Ortega was recommended by friends and did not come from an agency. It is not clear if those friends ever employed Ortega, and it could have been that their nanny recommended her. Detectives are still going through her Upper West Side apartment, where she lives with her son, sister and niece. There were no prior domestic incident reports at the household.
If there was tension between the nanny and the Krims, it didn't show on a Web journal kept by the children's mother. Marina Krim spoke lovingly in one entry about traveling to the Dominican Republic last February to stay for several days at the home of Ortega's sister.
"We met Josie's amazing familia!!! And the Dominican Republic is a wonderful country!!" she wrote.
Pictures posted on the blog showed the two families posing together for a happy photo, with Ortega hugging the 3-year-old, Nessie, their cheeks pressed together.
On a webpage devoted to a recent family wedding, the eldest of the children, nicknamed Lulu, is described as loving "art projects, ballet, and all things princess." The youngest, Leo, was said to be just learning how to walk. Marina Krim's blog described him as polite, saying he never responded "no," but always "no thank you."
The family had moved to New York from San Francisco within the last few years. Kevin Krim was named general manager of CNBC's digital media division in March, after working previously in digital media at Bloomberg. Marina had a cooking blog and taught art classes to young children.
The family lived in a stately, late 19th-century apartment building where one three-bedroom unit currently available for rent has an asking price of $10,000 per month. They had a greyhound, retired from racing, named Babar.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report)
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