Shana Spalding, the accused “Cat woman” robber, in court today. (Steven Hirsch)
The Catwoman has been declawed.
A Queens woman who robbed an Astor Place boutique while wearing a cat mask was today ordered to be caged for 10 years – but she didn’t go out purring.
“I am not the Catwoman!” Shana Spalding hissed after being sentenced to prison. “No! No! No! No!”
The 29-year-old Queens crook cried out for her mom and raged at court officers and photographers as she was led out of a Manhattan courtroom in handcuffs.
“Get off me!” Spalding screamed, while struggling with court officers. “Stop taking pictures, you bastards!”
The death-metal singer known as “Purgatory” was convicted in December of armed stick-ups at Arche Shoes on Astor Place and Cotelac, a French sportswear shop in Soho.
Authorities said she prowled the shoe store in a cat mask in June 2010, then pounced two months later at the Greene Street store while wearing a black scarf over her head.
Her targets, prosecutor Craig Ortner said, were always young female clerks.
“She purposely preyed on young vulnerable women who were doing nothing more than working at the store, and she chose to hold them up,” Ortner said.
Spalding’s two Manhattan robberies sandwiched a third heist at an Astoria Body Shop, which she pulled off while clad in a full-length burka and speaking in a phony Arabic accent. She previously pleaded guilty to that crime, then claimed she had nothing to do with it.
A wanted poster for her first robbery showed the creatively attired bandit in her cat getup, turning the Catwoman into an Internet sensation when the sketch went viral
But Spalding insisted to cops and to jurors that she was coerced into her final crime by a mystery man named “Angel Martinez.”
“She continues to manipulate and she continues to blame everyone but herself,” Ortner said. “In reality, she has no one to blame but herself.”
While Spalding tried to portray herself as a kitten in court, Ortner said she was recorded making death threats during a recorded jailhouse conversation with her mom.
“She hopes the district attorney and the jury all die,” the prosecutor said Spalding ranted.
Her defense lawyer Lori Cohen said Spalding’s death threats “clearly were the words of a dispirited, broken-down young woman.”
Before being forced into her crime spree, the lawyer insisted, Spalding had “led a law-abiding, peaceful life.”
Spalding said her weapon was a toy gun that never came out of her purse before being sentenced by Justice Richard Carruthers.
Carruthers wasn’t buying it.
“Your utterly anti-social crimes cannot be tolerated,” he said.