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Nanny charged with double child murder

Yoselyn Ortega, who worked for a New York family, has been charged with knife killing of Lucia Krim, 6, and brother Leo, 2
Photos outside the Krim family apartment in New York
Photos outside the Krim family apartment in New York. The two children's nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, has been charged with their stabbing murder. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

The nanny to a New York family who is accused of stabbing to death two children in her care has been charged with murder.

Yoselyn Ortega had recovered enough from her own self-inflicted wounds by Saturday to be interviewed in her hospital bed at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell medical centre, police said. After the interview she was formally charged with two counts each of first- and second-degree murder.

Police didn't know if Ortega had a lawyer.

Police say that on the evening of 25 October while the children's mother was out with a third child, Ortega repeatedly stabbed six-year-old Lucia Krim and her two-year-old brother, Leo.

When their mother, Marina, returned with her three-year-old daughter she found their bodies in the bathtub and Ortega lying on the bathroom floor with stab wounds to her neck. A kitchen knife was nearby.

The children's father, Kevin, a CNBC executive, had been away on a business trip when the killings occurred.

The couple's apartment building is in an affluent neighbourhood a block from Central Park, near the Museum of Natural History and blocks from Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts.

Some of Ortega's friends and relatives said she appeared to have been struggling emotionally and financially but they could not believe what had happened.

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