FATAL SPOT: A cop descends the stairs where Carlisle Brigham was found yesterday. (
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SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR: A friend of Carlisle Brigham (right) weeps yesterday outside the Lower East Side building where she might have tripped on her high heels after partying. (
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FATAL SPOT: A cop descends the stairs where Carlisle Brigham was found yesterday. (Chad Rachman/New York Post)
A stunning Manhattan blonde from a prominent family was found mysteriously dead yesterday morning at the bottom of a Lower East Side apartment stairwell — possibly after tripping on her high heels following a night of drinking with college pals.
Carlisle Brigham — the 29-year-old daughter of wealthy banker and former New York City Budget Director James Brigham — was dressed all in white as she tumbled down the steep marble stairs of a pal’s apartment building at 191 Orchard St. in an apparent “freak accident,’’ police sources and witnesses said.
The Medical Examiner ruled her death was an accident.
Brigham suffered blunt-impact injuries to her head and neck, consistent with falling down stairs, a rep for the Medical Examiner said today.
There was so much blood around Brigham’s neck when her body was found at 10:33 a.m. that investigators initially theorized she’d been slashed.
But they later said it appeared to be just a tragic accident, during which she shattered her chin on a step of the first-floor stairwell in the building, where she stayed overnight with a friend, and died. The police investigation is ongoing, authorities said.
She was wearing “all white,” said resident Lippy Khair, 27, who saw Carlisle’s body. “White top, white pants. And she had really high heels.”
Resident Mizanur Rahman, 19, said he performed CPR on her, to no avail.
“Her body was actually quite cold,” he said. “The whole floor was just blood.”
Former Mayor Ed Koch, for whom James Brigham worked as budget director, said her shattered father called him yesterday afternoon.
“He was sobbing,’’ Koch said. “He told me that she had died and that it was apparently a fall . . . a freak accident.
“Wonderful young woman,” the ex-mayor said of the daughter, whom he knew.
“I just was overwhelmed with grief and still am.”
Last year, Brigham, a native of St. Louis, seemed to have it all.
She married Anthony Champalimaud, a real-estate executive for an Asian hotel conglomerate who hails from a moneyed Connecticut family, according to the couple’s August 2011 wedding announcement in The New York Times.
Brigham was just coming off an internship in the paleontology section of the American Museum of Natural History at the time.
But her storybook marriage quickly soured. She and her husband have been separated, sources said.
Her estranged husband was in the United Kingdom yesterday and couldn’t be reached for comment.
Carlisle, who lived on East 12th Street, had been partying after a college friend’s wedding. The male pal whom she had stayed with left his home at 9 a.m., only to later learn she’d died, and he was seen sobbing outside.
Additional reporting by Chuck Bennett and Helen Freund