Claudia Charriez. (Steven Hirsch)
He didn’t choke her. He didn’t tamper with her testimony. But he did assault her — a little.
A Manhattan jury has reached a final, though mixed, verdict in the bizarre War of the Hoses assault trial in Manhattan, acquitting an FDNY calendar hunk of the most serious charge against him — felony strangulation of his glamorous, bottle-blonde, pre-op transsexual girlfriend.
Beefy Taylor Murphy, 28 — a former “Mr. March” — smiled and rubbed tears of joy from his face after the jury forewoman pronounced him not guilty of felony strangulation, which could have put him in prison for up to seven years.
Fiery Claudia Charriez, 31, an admitted escort who still advertised herself at $400-an-hour, 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.
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 of one felony count of criminal contempt, for violating an order of protection by calling, texting and emailing Charriez more than 1,000 times in the five months after his arrest.
He was cleared of witness tampering, and convicted of misdemeanor criminal contempt, misdemeanor assault and criminal mischief, for smashing Charriez’s cell phone.
Not a single firefighter had come to court to support him throughout the week-long trial — save his own brother, a retired smoke-eater, 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.”
“I had to step away from the department,” he said. “When you’re burning in a fire, you don’t want to call everyone in to save you, because they’re gonna get burned too,” he said. “I didn’t want them to burn too.”
Murphy said he hopes the conviction on criminal contempt — a nonviolent felony — won’t prevent him from going back on active duty as a firefighter. Defense lawyer Jason Berland said
As for Charriez, he insisted he only dated her for two months — until he found out that she was an escort and had a “venereal disease,” as jurors in the case were told. He tried to remain her friend, he said, but her jealousy over his other relationships consumed her, he said.
“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.”