Psychologist Kathryn Faughey, 56, died a horrific death five years ago, slashed into lifelessness at her Upper East Side office by a colleague’s former patient.
Today, that horror will be on full photographic display in Manhattan Supreme Court as the presentation of evidence begins in her killer’s murder trial.
David Tarloff, a schizophrenic former telemarketer from Queens — who variously sees God and thinks he is God — is going to trial in hopes of being found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
“Very sad photos,” lead prosecutor Evan Krutoy said last week, describing the grisly evidence to come.
Many of Faughey’s injuries were caused by Tarloff striking her with a meat cleaver after she tried to protect a colleague, psychiatrist Kent Shinbach, whom Tarloff was trying to rob.
“I’ll stay in the courtroom, but I’m not going to be able to look,” Faughey’s brother, Owen, 62, said of the worst of the evidence.
Tarloff, 44, had stormed into the doctors’ East 79th Street psychology suite with a bag of knives — on God’s direction, he has told cops and doctors.
Defense lawyer Frederick Sosinsky on Friday urged the trial judge to strictly limit the grotesque, disturbing photos — but Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin answered that there could be no soft-pedaling, no sanitizing, of the brutality of Faughey’s death.