He may never handle a hose again — at least not as a city firefighter.
FDNY calendar hunk Taylor Murphy burst into tears — and ran to the arms of his glamorous, brunette pre-op transsexual girlfriend — after a Manhattan jury rendered a partial verdict today convicting him of felony of criminal contempt in the bizarre War of the Hoses assault trial.
“He’s a sweetheart,” the current gender-bent girlfriend, Wanda Batista, told The Post, standing by her fireman. “He’s my giant teddy bear and I just want to take him back home,” said Batista, 32.
Murphy’s jury continues deliberations tomorrow on the remaining charges of felony strangulation and misdemeanor assault. The beefy former “Mr. March” is on the hook for allegedly beating, biting and choking his previous gender-bent girlfriend, blonde pre-op transsexual Claudia Charriez during an August, 2011 fight in their Midtown hotel room bed.
The peroxide blonde Charriez and the newly-brunette Batista — both of whom have active online “she-male” escort sites — have contended for the affections of Murphy, a bisexual attracted to men who live — extravagantly — as women.
Charriez told jurors that Murphy flew into a rage when she called him a “faggot.” Defense lawyer Jason Berland countered that Charriez exaggerated what had been a mere love-tussell out of jealousy that he was seeing other transsexuals.
“I’m done! Call your girl!” Charriez texted Murphy after the alleged assault. “Go to your trannies and slits[cq]” Charriez had texted this past March. “You were never my boyfriend. I hate that I ever loved you…You think ur playing me but ur not — I know ur with ur girl.”
“He was her Ken,” Batista said of Murphy and Charriez. “She doesn’t like it because I took her Ken. I’m the Barbie now.”
The jury convicted Murphy today violating an order of protection by reaching out in more then 1,000 calls, emails and texts to Charriez after she pressed assault charges against him, and could get him anywhere from zero to four years in jail, and could get him booted from the FDNY.
“I’m obsessive compulsive,” Murphy told The Post of all those phone calls he made to Charriez — as many as more than 100 in a single day. “I’m in therapy for it.”
The nine-woman, three-man jury also convicted Murphy today of misdemeanor criminal mischief for breaking the blonde’s cellphone.