TRAGEDY: Maxwell Sherman in police custody in Mineola, LI, yesterday in the strangu-lation murder of Lauren Daverin (above), whose nude body was found in Rockville Centre last week. (Dennis A. Clark)
TRAGEDY: Maxwell Sherman (above) in police custody in Mineola, LI, yesterday in the strangulation murder of Lauren Daverin (inset), whose nude body was found in rockville Centre last week. (
)
The alleged drug-fiend son of an affluent Chicago couple, accused of strangling a beautiful Long Island teen, chillingly chatted with TV reporters at the scene only hours after the murder.
Maxwell Sherman, 18, who was living with his parents in their waterfront second home in Long Beach for the summer, was approached by a WCBS/Channel 2 TV crew at about 11 a.m. Friday as he hung around the Rockville Centre footbridge where Lauren Daverin’s nude body was discovered the night before.
A reporter asked the teen — who was chain-smoking and pacing back and forth with his cellphone in his hand — if he was surprised by the grisly find.
“I’m amazed, I’m amazed,” Sherman said before shuffling off.
The burly redhead was busted in Daverin’s slaying the next day.
Investigators believe that Sherman murdered Daverin — an 18-year-old newlywed married to an Air Force serviceman — after partying with her and a group of teens.
Described by neighbors as a creepy druggie, Sherman showed up to his arraignment in Nassau County court in Mineola with cuts and bruises on his face.
Judge David Sullivan ordered the suspect held without bail until his next court date Wednesday.
About two dozen of Daverin’s friends and loved ones, including her husband of 10 months, filled the courtroom.
“We are here to get justice for my sister,” the victim’s older sister, Suzanne Caldeira, said outside court.
Daverin’s husband, Kashawn Gresham, who is stationed down South, broke down when the suspect was brought into court.
“To my wife: You will always be loved a lot, and you made me the luckiest man in the world,” he said in a heartbroken message left at the crime scene.
A couple renting out the bottom floor of the Shermans’ beach home described the suspect as odd — and said he randomly asked them for drugs.
“His parents are just nice, normal people,” one neighbor said. “They told me he’s a bit of a troublemaker.”
Sherman’s parents had been out of town in recent days and were flying back to New York last night.