A grand jury has voted a throw-away-the-key indictment — charging first degree murder — against Yoselyn Ortega, the nanny accused in the bathtub slashing deaths of two young Upper West Side children under her care.
The rare charge — brought only 27 times in all of New York in 2011, according to state stats — carries the maximum sentence of life without parole, meaning zero chance of daylight.
It is reserved for the most heinous homicides, including serial killings, the killings of judges and cops, and killings deemed cruel and wanton.
In Ortega’s case, the grand jury found the charge is warranted because there were two victims, Lucia and Leo Krim, according to a copy of the indictment filed publicly today. The girl was 6 years old; the boy was 2.
Ortega has remained at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell since Oct. 25, when the children were found bleeding to death in the bathtub of their W. 75th Street apartment by their mother, Marina Krim. Ortega had slashed her own self in the throat.
Marina Krim’s surviving child, 3-year-old Nessie, had accompanied her mom home to their house of horrors and was physically unharmed.
The nanny had been suffering mental and financial difficulties, and told cops that she resented the Krim family for asking her to do an extra five hours a week of housework.
No date has yet been set for Ortega to be arraigned on the indictment, which charges her with two counts of murder one and two counts of murder two. A call to Ortega’s lawyer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, was not returned.