Sylvie Cachay (Steven Hirsch)
NICHOLAS BROOKS (Steven Hirsch )
TRAGIC SCENE: Yellow evidence tags — and a blood smear on the floor — are seen around the Soho House hotel room where swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay (inset left) died. (
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The bed is unmade. A creepy mural fills one wall. And on the floor lies a smear of blood and a soggy women’s sock.
Jurors in the sensational Soho House murder trial were given their first glimpse yesterday inside the club hotel room where swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay was allegedly drowned and strangled in a bathtub by her layabout boyfriend, Nicholas Brooks.
“There was a bed, a couch,” Detective George McFall told the Manhattan Supreme Court jury as Cachay’s mom, Sylvia, shielded her eyes with a tissue in the audience. “And a female laying on her back on the floor.”
In one photo, evidence markers point to Cachay’s soaked sock on the carpet, an Evian bottle on a nightstand and a white bath towel on the floor.
A bloodstain on the floor gets no marker, because it wasn’t evidence — paramedics left the bright-red smear there while trying to resuscitate her after hotel staff pulled her body from the overflowing tub.
One photo shows Cachay prone, dressed only in her pink and purple panties and a black turtleneck sweater. The sweater had been cut open by paramedics.
What the fashion designer wore in the tub — or rather, the fact that she wore anything at all — is key evidence.
Brooks, 27, is claiming that when he left the room to go partying after 2 a.m. on Dec. 9, 2010, Cachay was asleep in bed.
In order to buy Brooks’ account, jurors will have to believe she fell accidentally and half-dressed into the tub and slipped into unconsciousness after overdosing on pain pills.
“She had on panties, and she had on a sweater,” retired Detective Robert Moller testified.
“Did it seem suspicious?” prosecutor Joel Seidemann asked.
“Yes, absolutely, it seemed suspicious to me,” the cop said.
Asked why, Moller answered, “The fact that she was pulled out of the tub and she had on panties and she was wearing a sweater.”
Two of Cachay’s girlfriends later testified about the 33-year-old’s discontent with her nine-years-younger boyfriend.
“She said he was unemployed and seemed to have no interest in working and couldn’t keep a job,” testified fashion publicist Lisa McHale, 42.
Cheri Fogleman, 34, her personal trainer, testified, “The last time I spoke to her, she told me about a Web site he had shown her where he could order prostitutes.”
“It was a private pass-code Web site where he would order prostitutes, where he would order women,” she said. “She was disgusted.”
Perhaps more damaging was Brooks’ own question after his arrest at 6:30 that night.
“He asked me how much time could he get for this crime,” Detective Moller said. “I basically told him that, again, anything could happen.”