Nicholas Brooks (Steven Hirsch)
UGLY: Sylvie Cachay sent a “f–k you” e-mail to beau Nicholas Brooks before he allegedly killed her at Soho House (above) in 2010. (Seth Gottfried/Splash News)
UGLY: Sylvie Cachay (right) sent a “f–k you” e-mail to beau Nicholas Brooks (left) before he allegedly killed her at Soho House (center) in 2010. (
)
Less than 24 hours before police say she was drowned and strangled in a Soho House tub, beautiful Sylvie Cachay fired off a scorching e-mail to the stoner beau who’d be charged with her murder — accusing him of repeatedly stealing from her credit card and threatening to go to the police.
Subject-lined “F–k you,” this bombshell e-mail is the object of a heated battle between Manhattan prosecutors and lawyers for alleged strangler Nicholas Brooks.
Prosecutors call it powerful murder-motive evidence and want jurors to see it when the sensational case goes to trial in May.
“The subject line was ‘F— you,’ and it said she was going to the police, and that’s relevant,” prosecutor Jordan Arnold said while arguing in October that the DA’s office did nothing wrong in subpoenaing Brooks’ masterstudent@gmail.com account.
Recently, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner agreed, ruling there was ample probable cause to probe all correspondence from the stormy seven-month relationship between Brooks and Cachay, a talented designer whose swimsuits had been worn by stars, including Lindsay Lohan.
Brooks’ dad, Joseph, who notched an Oscar for the 1977 hit “You Light Up My Life,” killed himself in 2011 as he faced multiple sex-assault charges.
The fight to keep the e-mail secret from jurors is not over, says Brooks’ lawyer, Jeffrey Hoffman.
“I do not believe it is admissible” as evidence,” he told The Post, vowing to challenge it in future filings as prejudicial and irrelevant.
“But were it to be ruled admissible, then there are scores of other e-mails to put this one in context — that there was a very, very intense relationship day to day,” he said.
Even after the “F—k you” e-mail, the couple had consensual sex, Hoffman said.
“This is nothing more than a given feeling at a given moment that was different two moments before and two moments after,” he said of the missive.
Sources have told The Post that Cachay’s credit-card receipts show multiple suspicious cash withdrawals.
Under police questioning, Brooks, then 25, admitted that he and Cachay, 33, had argued right before her death over his history of hiring escorts.
“It was not a big deal,” Brooks claimed.
He is also fighting a default judgment against him in the Cachay family’s wrongful-death suit. Judge Paul Wooten is still mulling Brooks’ claim that, as an incarcerated, self-represented defendant, he had valid reason for initially failing to respond to the suit.