Metro

Swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay had written to-do list for boyfriend before her death

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(Steven Hirsch)

WORDS TO LOVE BY: Sylvie Cachay wrote out a list for beau Nicholas Brooks in the weeks before her death. (
)

She forgot to add, “Don’t murder me.”

In the weeks before she was found submerged in a Soho House bathtub, swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay penned an epic “to-do” list for her layabout, decade-younger boyfriend, who is now on trial for her murder.

“Get a job,” the tragic beauty wrote to Nicholas Brooks in the five-page handwritten list entered into evidence in Manhattan yesterday as testimony began in the 2010 strangulation-drowning.

“Hold me after sex and say sweet things . . . Do not overuse paper towels . . . Show me that I should be with you.”

Read into the record by her sobbing big brother, Patrick Orlando — who found it in her desk at the Anne Cole offices — Cachay’s list speaks volumes.

It shows how far from Cachay’s meticulous ideal the playboy stoner was and how earnestly she had tried to change him.

“Take me on dates!” she urges the jobless Brooks, who had taken up residence in her West 10th Street apartment during their tumultuous six-month relationship.

“No random over drinking or drug use . . . Every now and then spray bug spray.”

It’s been nearly three years since Cachay was found in the white porcelain tub of Room 20 at the club’s posh hotel.

The 33-year-old designer was wearing only a turtleneck sweater, pink panties and the shiny, white-faced Rolex watch her parents had given her for her 25th birthday. It was still ticking as prosecutors entered it into evidence yesterday.

In opening statements, prosecutors revealed that the water was running full blast in the tub and that Brooks’ DNA was on the silver box that controlled the spigot.

Brooks, who was just 24 at the time, was captured on video leaving the hotel seven minutes after the first water complaint was called in by guests two floors down. Later, he would deny he had gone anywhere near the tub.

“Sylvie’s dream, and her life, ended on Dec. 9, 2010, when that man there turned a posh hotel room into a gruesome crime scene,” prosecutor Jordan Arnold said in opening statements yesterday morning, pointing at Brooks at the defense table.

“It was an act as ruthless as it was cowardly,” Arnold said, calling Brooks “a young man from a privileged background who liked to party.”

The prosecution told of Soho House staffer Kristen Stevens, who walked past the pair’s room about 15 minutes after the warring couple checked in.

“She recognizes Sylvie’s voice,” the prosecutor told jurors. “What she will tell you is that there was arguing. And then the female voice abruptly cut out.”

The relationship had downs, but also ups, insisted defense lawyer Jeffrey Hoffman, disclosing the contents of an affectionate e-mail Cachay had sent Brooks the day before she died.

“Why don’t you come over and get in bed with me and we can hold each other?” she wrote.

“Think about it,” the doomed woman added. “I love you and just know everything will be alright.”

Brooks would take her up on her offer; she would be dead the following day.

Also yesterday, Cachay’s father, Dr. Antonio Cachay, took the stand, insisting, as his son Patrick would insist on the stand after him, that Cachay took only showers, never baths.

“My daughter,” the surgeon said, his voice strained, as he identified an image displayed on a large-screen television — a picture of the shapely Cachay in a low-cut, strappy top, staring straight into the camera with a wry smile.

Brooks is hoping to prove Cachay drowned accidentally after falling into the tub and into unconsciousness due to an overdose of the drugs she took to fight her migraines and fibromyalgia.

But prosecutors believe Brooks murdered Cachay in a rage when she threatened to cut him off financially and report him to cops for pilfering her credit card.

“She said he was 24 years old, he smoked a lot of pot, he didn’t have a job, and she was just very upset most of the time,” testified Cachay’s longtime friend, Chicago-based fashion designer Alicia Bell.

“She said, ‘We have crazy chemistry, but way too crazy,’ ” Bell testified.

Cachay’s friends are poised to testify she supported Brooks for months and was fed up with his pot-smoking prostitutes.

Brooks’ lawyer has promised a mountain of additional text and e-mail evidence showing there was also much fondness and tenderness in the relationship.

The trial is expected to last through the July 4 weekend.