Former nanny sentenced to life for killing children

NEW YORK (FOX5NY.COM) - A Manhattan judge sentenced former nanny Yoselyn Ortega to life in prison with no possibility of parole for slaughtering two children in her care, Lucia and Leo Krim, in 2012.

Last month, a jury rejected her lawyers' arguments that she was mentally ill and could not be held responsible for the deaths of the siblings and convicted her of murder.

Ahead of hearing her fate, a tearful Ortega, 55, apologized in court to Lucia and Leo's family.

The judge expressed some understanding for Oretga regarding her mental illness and said it could mitigate some of her responsibility.

"But your failure to seek, all these years, treatment for your mental illness nullifies that mitigation," Justice Gregory Carro told Ortega just before announcing her sentence.

Ortega stabbed Lucia, 6, more than 30 times and Leo, 2, five times in their Upper West Side home. Ortega then stabbed herself in the neck in an apparent suicide attempt, police said.

At trial, the DA's team said the nanny knew what she was doing.

"She did it intentionally with a full understanding of exactly what it was she was doing—every stab, every slash," ADA Stuart Silberg said in his closing.