A former Yahoo executive and a current CNBC employee and his wife suffered an incredible loss Thursday afternoon: New York police said their nanny stabbed the couple's 1-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl to death inside their apartment before cutting her own throat.
The children belong to Kevin Krim, who is now the senior vice president at CNBC Digital, and for three years was a vice president at Sunnyvale-based Yahoo! He and his wife, Marina Krim, had both lived in San Francisco's Noe Valley for many years before moving to New York, where they currently live on the Upper West Side.
Kevin Krim was returning to New York from San Francisco when he met police at John F. Kennedy Airport.
CNBC sent out a statement Friday morning expressing its deepest condolences and offering its prayers to the Krim family.
NY Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Marina Krim, returned to her West 75th Street home Thursday afternoon after a swimming lesson with a third child, a 3-year-old girl.
The apartment was dark when Marina Krim and her daughter entered, and Krim went to look for her two other children, police said.
"She goes downstairs to the lobby, assuming the nanny may have gone out with the children," Kelly told reporters in a briefing Thursday night. "She asks the doorman if in fact they have gone out, and he says 'No.' She goes back up, the apartment is dark, and she goes into the bathroom."
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That's where she discovered her two children, Lucia and Leo, stabbed in the bathtub, Kelly said.
The nanny was on the floor of the bathroom with self-inflicted stab wounds to her throat. A kitchen knife was nearby.
Neighbors said they heard the mother's screams from her apartment as she called 911. After police arrived, a neighbor said the mother remained in the building's lobby, screaming hysterically and clutching her surviving child.
The 50-year-old nanny is in custody. She's hospitalized in critical condition.
Kelly said the nanny has been in the U.S. for 10 years and worked for the family for two years; she was referred by another family. Police are not aware of a history of mental illness.
Investigators are searching her Washington Heights apartment and belongings for clues to what happened. A law enforcement official tells NBC 4 New York that the nanny has a teenage son who attends private school in the Bronx and that relatives told detectives the nanny may have been under some financial pressure recently to make his tuition payments.
But the son told detectives that he's had no other issues with his mother, who he told them was "pretty strict," the official said.
The children's father, Kevin Krim, an executive at CNBC, was out of town and was met by police at the airport. Mark Hoffman, president of CNBC, said in a statement that "there are simply no words to convey the magnitude of this tragedy."
"What we can do is come together to express our unwavering support for a friend in need," Hoffman said.
The mother's blog, called Life with the Little Krim Kids, portrays a devoted mother who adores her children, and is charmed by their daily observations and latest tricks. It is filled with family pictures and the children happily posing together.
In a February entry, Krim writes about visiting their nanny's family in the Dominican Republic. She refers to the woman as Josie; it's not clear if it's the same nanny found wounded Thursday.
"We met Josie's amazing familia!!! And the Dominican Republic is a wonderful country!!" she wrote.
Neighbors left flowers at the front door of the building on Friday and parents said they were devastated to hear about the children's deaths.
"You rely on other people to help you," said Rachel Cedar, an Upper West Side mom. "You have to believe in the best in people and you have to believe they love your children just as much as you do. It's a betrayal. It's very, very scary."
NBC Bay Area's staff writer Lisa Fernandez contributed to this report.
