Mother Details Day She Found Her Children Slain in Bathroom
March 2, 2018 by admin
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“Where are you?” Ms. Krim said she wrote in a text to Ms. Ortega, but the nanny did not respond, Panicking, Ms. Krim grabbed her third child, Nessie, then 3, who she had taken to swimming classes, and rushed to her home on West 75th Street.
The apartment was dark and eerily quiet, she said. The stroller for her son, Leo, 2, was in the living room, and Lucia’s backpack was on top of it. With Nessie in tow, she checked each room but couldn’t find the nanny or the children. She went downstairs and asked the doorman if they were home; he said they were.
Returning to the apartment, she realized she had not checked the bathroom. It was then that she noticed a light shining from underneath the door.
“First I see Lulu and I instantly know she’s dead,” Ms. Krim said through tears. “She’s lying there in the bathtub, her eyes open. I see Leo — they have blood on them, all over her dress. Then I see the defendant. I see blood all over her.”
Nessie, who was by her mother’s side, screamed, the mother recounted. The two ran out of the apartment, and she told the doorman that her babysitter had killed her children.
“It was the most awful feeling in the world,” Ms. Krim said. “She killed my best friends. These kids were my best friends.”
At times, Ms. Krim stared angrily at Ms. Ortega; other times she sobbed or laughed nervously as she tried to maintain her composure. Ms. Ortega, 55, clad in a long-sleeve gray shirt, stared straight ahead as Ms. Krim testified before a packed courtroom. A man in the audience sobbed.
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Pool photo by WYNY-TV
In her opening remarks, the assistant district attorney, Courtney Groves, said that Ms. Ortega resented Ms. Krim for providing for her children what Ms. Ortega could not give her own son.
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Ms. Ortega had left her 4-year-old son in the Dominican Republic with her sister. He joined her in New York City in 2012 to finish high school and eventually go to college, the prosecutor said. By then, Ms. Ortega had been working for the Krims for more than two years after meeting the family through her sister. Unknown to the Krims, the prosecutor said, Ms. Ortega had provided a phony reference.
But the rent for her Bronx apartment, her son’s private school tuition and the cost of caring for a teenager became too much for Ms. Ortega, Ms. Groves said.
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Ms. Krim tried to help by giving the nanny additional hours, but Ms. Ortega became enraged that her employer was trying to give her more work, which included cleaning for an extra $100 a week. Ms. Ortega worked in the afternoon, helping to pick up and drop off the children, and was paid at least $500 a week.
On the day of the slayings, Ms. Ortega woke on time for work, sent her son to school, sent him a text to confirm he had arrived, got rid of her cellphone and left her identification and insurance card with her sister. She had seen a psychologist three days earlier.
“She was putting her affairs in order,” the prosecutor said. “She knew when she left for work she would not be coming home. Her plan was to kill the Krim children and then to kill herself.”
She arrived at the Krims’ apartment at 3 p.m., and Ms. Krim asked her to drop Lucia off at her dance class and to take Leo with her, the prosecutor said.
Ms. Ortega left but never took Lucia to her dance class. Before 4 p.m., Ms. Groves said Ms. Ortega returned to the apartment. Once upstairs, she grabbed knives from the kitchen and stabbed Leo five times and Lucia 30 times in her neck and throughout her body, Ms. Groves said. The little girl tried to fight off the nanny, the prosecutor said. Ms. Ortega slit the children’s throats and left them to bleed out into the bathtub. Ms. Ortega, who had cut her wrists earlier, then plunged the knife into her throat, the prosecutor said.
There was no evidence before the slayings that Ms. Ortega suffered from a mental disease or defect, Ms. Groves said.
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But the defense attorney, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, said Ms. Ortega and her family suffered “a string of tragedies, suicides, death and mental illness that has spanned generations.”
She said Ms. Ortega suffered from a chronic mental illness and had heard voices and had a distorted sense of reality since she was 16. But she had not been treated until she was hospitalized after the slayings. Ms. Van Leer-Greenberg said Ms. Ortega was “guarded in her symptoms and reluctant to seek care,” because any care in the Dominican Republic “was worse than what she was suffering.”
“You will know a diseased mind when you see it,” she told the jury.
Ms. Krim testified that Ms. Ortega was always on time and reliable: “She was always where I needed her to be.” But there had been a bizarre incident when Ms. Ortega was angry that her son could not attend public school without repeating the 11th grade. Ms. Krim said Ms. Ortega was so upset that she poked her in the chest as she spoke about it.
A photo of the Krim children was on display in the courtroom: Leo, in blue; Lulu and Nessie, their surviving sister, both in orange, sitting on a bench in sunny weather. When asked who was in the photo, Ms. Krim barely managed the words: “My kids.”
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HR McMaster is reportedly becoming increasingly frustrated, and it’s fueled speculation he could be on his way out
March 2, 2018 by admin
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Thomson Reuters
- The White House is reportedly planning to replace National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.
- McMaster reportedly threatened to quit in front of his staff and voiced frustration at White House officials.
- President Donald Trump is believed to have berated McMaster on several occasions, including one instance during which he complained McMaster droned on during meetings.
As reports Thursday painted national security adviser H.R. McMaster on the verge of a potential White House departure, a more fuller picture emerged of McMaster’s tenure, a rocky one that at least one point made him threaten to quit.
McMaster, who took on the role last February, has been known to storm out of the West Wing in fits of rage, according to The Washington Post. He also reportedly threatened to quit, but eventually calmed down hours later.
“He often gets frustrated, goes through a phase, and his peer support group pulls him out of a funk,” a senior administration official said to The Post. “I was convinced several times that this was it for his departure. Hasn’t happened. I think he deep down cares too much.”
McMaster’s statements and views have found himself often at odds with President Donald Trump. In his first group meeting at the National Security Council, he reportedly said using the term “radical Islamic terrorism” was counterproductive. Trump has used that label liberally before and after his election.
Thomson Reuters
Trump became increasingly frustrated with McMaster during meetings, according to The Post. The publication said Trump griped that McMaster droned on too long and was too rigid in his thinking. In one instance, when McMaster entered the Oval Office over the summer, Trump complained that he had already seen him that day.
Tension builds — and not just with Trump
Trump publicly took a rhetorical swing at McMaster last month, when he asserted that McMaster “forgot to say” during one public appearance that the 2016 US presidential election was “not impacted or changed” by Russia’s meddling.
McMaster has also reportedly been at odds with other senior officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
McMaster griped that Mattis, a former four-star Marine Corps general, treated him “like a three-star” as opposed to an equal in the administration, according to The Post.
Mattis and Tillerson are also believed to have opposed McMaster’s idea of a preemptive “bloody nose” strike against North Korea. McMaster was said to be a staunch proponent and has indicated that a limited strike may be needed to “compel” North Korea into denuclearizing. Mattis and Tillerson, on the other hand, are said to have warned the Trump administration of its potential implications and the chance that the conflict could spiral out of control after such a move.
White House denies McMaster is near the end
Several reports on Thursday floated potential replacements for McMaster, including Stephen Biegun, the vice president of international governmental affairs at Ford Motor Company; Safra Catz, Oracle’s co-CEO; and John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations.
But the White House pushed back on reports of McMaster’s impending exit, which was first reported by NBC News.
“We frequently face rumor and innuendo about senior administration officials,” deputy press secretary Raj Shah said in a statement. “There are no personnel announcements at this time.”
National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton suggested Trump more emphatically denied the report.
“I was just with President Trump and McMaster in the Oval Office,” Anton said. “President Trump said that the NBC News story is ‘fake news,’ and told McMaster that he is doing a great job.”
Prior to joining the Trump administration, McMaster, a three-star US Army general, was widely praised for his military service. He was highly respected among military personnel and veterans and has been called a “warrior-scholar,” similar to Mattis.
His PhD dissertation-turned-book, “Dereliction of Duty,” chronicled how military officials did not effectively stand up to President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War.