The deranged nanny who allegedly butchered two adorable young children entrusted to her care was unraveling in recent months — suffering from mental, physical and financial issues, neighbors and police sources said yesterday. 
 
 Yoselyn Ortega, 50, appeared sick and gaunt, her Hamilton Heights neighbors said, and she appeared “nervous.” 
 
 “She lost a lot of weight. She looked very unhealthy. It looked like she was going through some problems,” said Ruben Diaz, 49. “She had aged a lot — like seven years in a few months.” 
 
 She also told people she was seeing a psychiatrist, cops said. 
 
 NEIGHBORS SHARE IN THE HORROR 
 
 NANNY ACCUSED OF STABBING TODDLERS TO DEATH 
 
 PHOTOS: REMEMBERING LEO AND LUCIA KRIM 
 
 “She snapped,” said Celia Ortega, the nanny’s sister. “We don’t understand what happened to her mind.” 
 
 Still, neighbors were shocked that she was suspected of stabbing to death little Lucia Krim, 6, and her baby brother Leo, 2, on Thursday before slashing her own wrists and throat in the kids’ West 75th Street apartment. 
 
 NYPD detectives were unable to interrogate her yesterday, as she remained in a medically induced coma at New York Hospital. 
 
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 Law-enforcement sources said Ortega, a Dominican who has been a US citizen for 10 years, complained of money troubles, and her employers, Marina and Kevin Krim, had given her more hours of work. 
 
 They even hooked her up with a family they knew for a baby-sitting job on the side — but the family turned her down after an interview because she was, “a little too grumpy,” a law-enforcement source said. 
 
 But nobody could predict the horror she would allegedly inflict. 
 
 Marina Krim, 36, had taken daughter Nessie, 3, to a swimming lesson but returned to her tony prewar building shortly after 5:30 p.m. because the nanny never showed up with the two other children to meet them for Lucia’s dance class, a source said. 
 
 “She got a call from the nanny saying she’d picked them up from school and she was taking them straight home,” said an employee at the Upper West Side swim and dance facility. “She [Marina] didn’t seem nervous at all; she waved to me.” 
 
 A neighbor who likely was the last to see the children alive said Lucia seemed happy in the elevator only 30 minutes before the unspeakable crime. 
 
 “She [Lucia] looked so delightful,” said upstairs neighbor Charlotte Friedman. “I said, ‘What did you do?’ and she said, ‘Dancing.’ And that was it.” 
 
 Friedman described the girl as “happy, happy, happy.” 
 
 That all changed inside the apartment. Ortega used two kitchen knives in her alleged attack on the helpless children, sources said. Lucia suffered defensive wounds from bravely trying to fight her off. 
 
 She was stabbed multiple times in the stomach and neck, and Leo was stabbed twice in the neck, the sources said. 
 
 “They both suffered. They bled out,” said a source. “The little girl tried to protect herself.” 
 
 When their unsuspecting mom arrived home a short time later, she walked into the bathroom and found her babies lying in the tub fully clothed with stab wounds on their bodies. 
 
 Ortega slashed her own throat right in front of the horrified woman, said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. 
 
 Marina was later seen in the mezzanine of the La Rochelle building, clutching her surviving middle child, Nessie. 
 
 “She was bent over the child, screaming and holding onto the only live child she still had,” said Friedman. “They were very deep, dark screams. 
 
 “She was screaming things like, ‘I’ll never speak to her again,’ repeating that over and over again. Then screaming things like, ‘It’s all right, you’ll be all right, you’ll be all right,’ ” said neighbor Rima Starr, 63. 
 
 “Then she would get waves of the reality of what just happened and then she’d go into just plain, bloodcurdling screams, with her arms flailing out to the sides. 
 
 “Then, in lucid moments, she’d say, ‘I need a doctor. I need a doctor.’ ” 
 
 Marina was rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital, and when cops arrived, the hysterical woman said, “What are we going to do now? I’ll never go back there again,” law-enforcement sources said. “They can have everything. I don’t want anything.” 
 
 Marina left the hospital and was holed up with Kevin, 37, and relatives at a luxury Manhattan hotel, sources said. 
 
 There was no clear motive yesterday, although Friedman, the neighbor, said Ortega was often aloof. 
 
 “The nanny just smiled — and nothing,” she said of the elevator encounter. “She was a colder type [than] most nannies I have encountered,” Friedman said. 
 
 Ortega’s tearful sister, Celia Ortega, of The Bronx, nannied for a girl in the same ballet class as the Krim girls and recommended her sister for a job with the Krim family. 
 
 Celia said she would tell Marina, “I’d give you my life,” if it would bring back the children. 
 
 Yoselyn Ortega was under guard at the hospital. A toxicology report came back negative for drugs, sources said. 
 
 Yoselyn’s son, a 17-year-old who attends the Bronx Catholic school Mount St. Michael Academy, is staying with another aunt. 
 
 The Krims’ extended family in California was still reeling from the news. 
 
 “Who would do that to innocent children?” said Karen Krim, Kevin’s mother. 
 
 “We’re exhausted,” said William Krim, Kevin’s father. “We’re all devastated here.” 
 
 Students and parents at PS 87 on West 78th Street — where Lucia was a first-grader — were shocked by the news, and all field trips had been canceled. 
 
 “People are very shaken obviously by what happened,” said Beth Servetar, whose son is in the fifth grade. 
 
 “I don’t think anybody really knew what to say to each other. There were watery eyes. The thing we did talk about was how horribly difficult it is to explain to our children what happened.” 
 
 Additional reporting by Laurel Babcock, Linda Massarella, Kirstan Conley, Reuven Fenton, Rebecca Rosenberg and Yoav Gonen ||||| Marcus Santos for New York Daily News 
 
 A neighbor of the family who shared an elevator with the nanny and the kids 30 minutes before they were found dead said nothing seemed amiss.“The kids looked normal. The nanny looked normal,” said neighbor Charlotte Friedman. “She had a poker face. There was no indication that something like this was going to happen.”Little Lucia appeared full of joy and told Friedman she had just gone dancing.Friedman, who lives on the seventh floor, said she typically ran into the nanny a couple of times a week and always greeted her with a smile — but Ortega never reciprocated.“She wasn’t warm,” Friedman said. “Usually when you smile at a nanny and the kids, the nanny smiles back. It’s instinctive. But she had a poker face. I didn’t get the sense she was evil, just cold.”Ortega’s neighbors in Hamilton Heights said the deeply religious woman ran a side business selling makeup and sometimes complained about being broke.“She had said that someone owed her 100 or 200 dollars for makeup she sold,” said Maria Lajara. “She said, ‘Someone owes me money. Pray for me.’”Lajara said Ortega, 50, adored the Krim children.“She was very happy with the work,” Lajara said.“She liked the kids. She would show pictures of them. She was happy with her boss and never had any problems. She must have lost her mind.”Another neighbor said Ortega begged her for work about two years ago.“She said, ‘I’ll clean. I’ll do anything,’ ” the neighbor recalled.Karen Krim said her son and his wife lived for their kids.“Our poor son. He was such a wonderful father,” the grandmother said. “The thing I’m most proud of him for is he was such a fabulous father.”Karen Krim said that the family hired Ortega two or three years ago. Whenever they left town with the children, the Krims would buy Ortega a flight back to the Dominican Republic.The News on Friday obtained a photograph of Ortega, showing her clutching little Lucia and her sister Nessie while the Krims were on a family trip to the Dominican Republic in February. They stayed part of the time with Ortega’s relatives. The girls, smiling wide, were captured in matching embroidered tan outfits and holding pink flowers.The slayings rattled the leafy, well-heeled neighborhood, which teems with stroller-pushing nannies. Scores of well-wishers, many of whom didn’t even know the Krims, dropped off flowers outside their building.“Dear Krim Family,” read a note wedged into the mountain of bouquets. “We weep with you at your horrible loss. There are no words that can express our sadness. We pray for you and your beautiful children.”rschapiro@nydailynews.com ||||| Ms. Ortega, 50, survived, but the police have been unable to question her because, though conscious, she remains intubated in the hospital, a deep stab wound in her throat. She has not yet been charged. 
 
 The authorities remain mystified over the motive. Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, said family members had told detectives that Ms. Ortega “over the last couple of months was not herself.” 
 
 “She was, according to others, seeking some professional help,” he said, adding, “There were financial concerns.” 
 
 Ms. Ortega, who the police said was a naturalized American citizen from the Dominican Republic, had worked for the Krims for about two years. She had been referred by another family, the police said, and did not come through an agency, which customarily does background checks. A law enforcement official said Ms. Ortega had had no previous brushes with the law, nor have detectives learned of any tensions in her relationship with the Krims. 
 
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 “No fighting with the mom, the family, the kids,” the official said. “Everybody is looking for a reason here.” He added, “We’ve got nothing bad other than the fact that she killed two children.” 
 
 On Friday, the sort of memorial with stuffed animals and flowers that has become sadly familiar in the aftermath of a city tragedy took shape outside the Krim apartment building, as parents pondered what to say to their own children. Disbelief was pervasive in the neighborhood. 
 
 “I don’t have words for something like that,” said William Davila, whose daughter is a fifth grader at Public School 87, which Lucia Krim, 6, had attended. The children’s father, Kevin Krim, was returning from a business trip on Thursday when he was met by the police at the airport. 
 
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 Mr. Krim learned that his youngest child, Leo, and his daughter Lucia, known as Lulu, had died and that the police had arrested the nanny with whom the Krims were so close that they had traveled to her home in the Dominican Republic. He is an executive at CNBC. Ms. Krim did not work outside the home, but taught an occasional art class at the Museum of Natural History. On Thursday night, CNBC put the Krims up in a hotel. 
 
 Mr. Krim’s father, William Krim, 74, said the parents had not returned to their apartment. 
 
 “I don’t know if they ever will,” he said. “I don’t know if I could.” 
 
 A spokeswoman for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, said Lucia had died of “multiple stab and incise wounds,” and Leo of “incise wounds of the neck.” They had been clothed, a law enforcement official said, suggesting that Ms. Ortega had not been bathing the children. 
 
 For about 30 years, according to neighbors, Ms. Ortega has lived in a six-story tenement building at 610 Riverside Drive in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. Before the nanny job, they said, she had worked in factories and as a cleaning lady. A neighbor said the sister she lived with was a taxi driver. 
 
 This year, Maria Lajara, 41, a friend who lives in the building, said Ms. Ortega had stopped by to tell her how happy she was that she had found a new apartment in the Bronx for herself and her son. She said that Ms. Ortega had conveyed how much she loved working for the Krims and that she was paid and treated well. Also this year, she said, the Krims had given Ms. Ortega an Ann Taylor jacket as a gift. 
 
 Nannies who work near one another often form social networks, setting up joint play dates or meeting at playgrounds. But most other nannies in the Krim building said they were unfamiliar with Ms. Ortega. 
 
 One nanny, Terla Duran, 35, said she did not know Ms. Ortega, but a friend who is a nanny did. 
 
 “Not many of us knew her; they say she was very strange,” Ms. Duran said. “She spent most of her time locked up inside the apartment.” 
 
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 Once she moved to the Bronx, Ms. Ortega stayed in touch with Ms. Lajara, her friend. She would tell Ms. Lajara to save copies of a religious magazine, Rayo de Luz, which Ms. Ortega’s sister would then take to her. 
 
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 Twice, Ms. Ortega asked Ms. Lajara to pray that a woman would pay her for makeup she had given her to sell. The amount, Ms. Lajara said, was about $100, and it was important to her. 
 
 Within the past few months, Ms. Ortega returned to live with her sister. Fernando Mercado, the superintendent of the building on Riverside Drive, said she had been renting the Bronx apartment from an acquaintance who moved to the Dominican Republic. But the tenant returned and threw out Ms. Ortega. “She spent a lot of money on the Bronx apartment,” Mr. Mercado said of Ms. Ortega. 
 
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 Neighbors on Riverside Drive said that in recent weeks, Ms. Ortega had looked older, anxious, harried. Ruben Rivas, one of the neighbors, described her as “kind of devastated.” 
 
 He last saw her two weeks ago. “She was in bad shape,” he said. “Skinny.” 
 
 Neighbors said she walked faster in the hallways and was withdrawn. She had been known as a gregarious woman who, they said, greeted them with shouts of “Hola, vecina” — “Hello, neighbor.” But now, they said, she avoided eye contact and said little. 
 
 Kenia Galo, 25, who has known her all her life, would see her in the elevator lately and remark that she looked tired. 
 
 “I am tired,” she would reply. “Work.” 
 
 Neighbors said she would leave the building at 5:30 or 6 a.m. and not return for 12 hours. 
 
 Ana Bonet, 40, a neighbor, said that besides her nanny job, Ms. Ortega sold inexpensive jewelry and makeup to neighbors. Others said she also earned money by cooking rice and chicken dishes for parties. 
 
 The Krim parents were both Californians who have been married for about nine years. Ms. Krim grew up in Manhattan Beach, and Mr. Krim in Thousand Oaks, where he was a football star. He worked at McKinsey & Company in Los Angeles and she worked for a wholesaler of powders; they met at an Italian restaurant in Venice Beach. 
 
 Mr. Krim took a job at Yahoo in San Francisco, where they lived before moving to New York about three years ago. After first being employed at Bloomberg L.P., Mr. Krim moved to CNBC. 
 
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 According to Mr. Krim’s parents, Ms. Ortega was hired about six months after the Krims came to New York. They did not know what vetting the couple did. 
 
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 “We’re just the most stunned people in the world — I mean, they treated this woman so well,” said William Krim, who lists Marina Krim in his cellphone as “World’s Best Mom.” 
 
 Though Ms. Krim did not work outside the home, Mr. Krim’s parents said, they wanted a nanny to help out. Sometimes, Ms. Krim would take the two oldest children out with her, leaving the youngest with Ms. Ortega, whom they called Josie. 
 
 An acquaintance of Mr. Krim said he had been extremely happy in California and often lamented the difficulties of family life in New York and how it was necessary for a big family to have help. 
 
 Mr. Krim’s mother, Karen Krim, said Ms. Krim was a hands-on mother. “They’re both very careful,” she said. “She didn’t even leave the kids that much alone with this nanny; that’s the irony of all this.” 
 
 She added: “She didn’t have a nanny so she could go out and play tennis — not that there’s anything wrong with that. But she was always with the kids, and Josie just helped her because, with three little kids, it’s really hard.” 
 
 When the Krims took family vacations, they paid to fly the nanny to Santo Domingo to visit her family. One time, they accompanied her because Ms. Ortega wanted them to meet her family. Marina Krim maintained a blog, on which she chronicled “life with the little Krim kids.” 
 
 Charlotte Friedman, a retiree who lives in the Krims’ building, may have been the last person to see the children alive. She did not know the members of the family, but would periodically bump into them. Around 5 p.m. on Thursday, she said, she entered the elevator, heading for her seventh-floor apartment, at the same time as the nanny and the children. 
 
 She asked the girl if she had been on a play date. The child replied that she had been dancing. Ms. Friedman described the girl as “happy, happy, happy.” 
 
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 The times she had encountered Ms. Ortega, she found her cold. There in the elevator, she said, the nanny smiled but said nothing. And then, she and the children got off on the second floor.
– The 50-year-old nanny accused of fatally stabbing two young siblings in her care had been on a downward spiral in recent months, losing weight, worried about money, and growing increasingly withdrawn, according to accounts by friends and family to the media. But Yoselyn Ortega, who remains in an induced coma after trying to kill herself, seemed to have no problems with the family she worked for. "They treated her like family," the victims' grandmother tells the Daily News: New York Post: “She looked very unhealthy," says one of her neighbors. "It looked like she was going through some problems. She had aged a lot—like seven years in a few months.” New York Times: "She was unraveling," is the story's first sentence. Ortega, a Dominican who has been a US citizen for a decade, shared an apartment with her son, sister, and niece, and her sister told a friend that Ortega felt lately like "she was losing her mind." The family took her to a psychologist. Daily News: Ortega sold cosmetics on the side to try to make extra money. “She had said that someone owed her 100 or 200 dollars for makeup she sold,” says one neighbor. “She said, ‘Someone owes me money. Pray for me.’”