Metro

FDNY firefighter tears up while being aquitted of stragulation charges against pre-op transsexual gal pal

Claudia Charriez

Claudia Charriez

WATERWORKS: A teary Taylor Murphy, with lawyer Jason Berland, reacts to his acquittal yesterday of choking gender-bender Claudia Charriez, his flame before Wanda Batista.

WATERWORKS: A teary Taylor Murphy, with lawyer Jason Berland, reacts to his acquittal yesterday of choking gender-bender Claudia Charriez, his flame before Wanda Batista.

WATERWORKS: A teary Taylor Murphy, with lawyer Jason Berland, reacts to his acquittal yesterday of choking gender-bender Claudia Charriez (right), his flame before Wanda Batista. (
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He didn’t choke her. He didn’t tamper with her testimony. But he did assault her — a little.

FDNY calendar hunk Taylor Murphy, 28, burst into tears as a Manhattan jury acquitted the smoke-eater of the most serious charge against him — felony strangulation of his glamorous bottle-blond, pre-op transsexual girlfriend.

The former “Mr. March” smiled and rubbed tears of joy from his face as the jury forewoman rendered a final, though mixed, verdict in the bizarre War of the Hoses assault trial — clearing him of strangulation and witness-tampering charges but convicting him of misdemeanor assault.

Fiery Claudia Charriez, 31, had accused Murphy of clutching her throat with his massive hands as they fought on their bed at a Midtown hotel last August, squeezing with enough force to cause physical injury and stupor or loss of consciousness.

“I’m screaming and screaming and screaming!” Charriez had told jurors on the witness stand last week, her giant implants heaving under her filmy, low-cut blouse.

“He’s choking me with one hand, and he’s got the other hand over my mouth so that I can’t scream,” she claimed. “My contact popped out of my eye!”

Murphy could have served as much as seven years prison had jurors believed her.

But ultimately, jurors had only a photograph of a small pale-pink blotch on Charriez’s neck as forensic proof — along with her own word from three days on the witness stand, during which Murphy’s lawyer had repeatedly confronted her with inconsistencies and apparent lies.

Murphy was convicted in a partial verdict Wednesday of one felony count of criminal contempt, for violating an order of protection by calling, texting and e-mailing Charriez — who was booted off “America’s Next Top Model” when the show’s producers found out she had male genitalia — more than 1,000 times in the five months after his arrest. He was also convicted Wednesday of criminal mischief for smashing Charriez’s cellphone.

Not a single firefighter had come to court to support him throughout the week-long trial — save his own brother, a retired Bravest, and his father, a retired deputy chief who took the stand for his son. Murphy said he’d wanted it that way — to keep the department from being tainted by the “drama.”

Murphy said he hopes the conviction on the non-violent felony of criminal contempt won’t prevent him from going back on active duty.

As for Charriez, he tried to remain her friend, he said, but her jealousy over his other relationships, including with latest gender-bender squeeze Wanda Batista, consumed her.

“I wish the best for her,” he said as he left court. “I wish she gets a sense of reality. I wish she leaves me alone.”