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Creepy composer Joseph Brooks — who notched an Oscar for the saccharine hit song “You Light Up My Life” before gaining infamy as an alleged casting-couch rapist — killed himself in his Upper East Side pad yesterday, cops said.
The 73-year-old Brooks — whose troubled son, Nicholas, has been charged in the grisly December strangulation of a girlfriend — used a crude “suicide kit” complete with plastic bag and helium gas to off himself, sources said.
He left a “rambling,” three-page suicide note in which he complained about his health and about a woman he said was physically abusing him and taking his money, the sources said. Cops believe the woman was a prostitute.
Brooks also said he would have been acquitted of rape charges.
He didn’t mention his son, with whom he had a notoriously strained relationship. The wrinkly, accused serial sex fiend had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday for a pretrial hearing on charges of raping or molesting 13 actress wannabes.
He allegedly lured — and then attacked — the women during supposed auditions in the same East 63rd Street apartment where he committed suicide by donning a “helium hood,” also known as an “exit bag,” and asphyxiating himself.
One of Brook’s friends was supposed to have lunch with him yesterday and went to his 15th-floor apartment at around 12:30 p.m.
Brooks earlier had told his doorman that he would be expecting a male pal for lunch and to let him up, a source said.
The friend found Brooks’ door unlocked and discovered Brooks’ limp, fully clothed body sprawled on the den couch, police sources said. The note also was in the den.
The songwriter’s head was encased in a dry-cleaning bag that had a tube attached to a helium gas tank nearby, sources said. A towel was wrapped around his head and neck to seal the bag.
The lethal set-up is described in online euthanasia how-to’s as a quick, painless way to go. Brooks, who suffered a stroke in 2008 and used a cane in court, supposedly suffered another health crisis, possibly a second stroke, a few months ago.
“I saw him yesterday — he looked like walking death . . . like a skeleton,” said a neighbor, Elizabeth Zoch, 75.
Resident Jack Stone, 51, who lives one floor above Brooks, said the songwriter “looked very bad the last few days.” But a bevy of gorgeous girls kept streaming into the home. There was “one every few weeks” up until about seven months ago, Stone said.
Besides being estranged from his son, Brooks also had no relationship with his daughter, Amanda, according to a New York magazine profile in February.
“I am grateful to know he is finally facing the consequences of his actions and that there is some justice in the world,” she said in the piece, referring to the sex raps.
“My father is a bully and very scary and very intimidating.”
As for his accused-killer son, a friend told the mag, “[Nicholas] loved his dad and tried to make the relationship work, but they clashed a lot.”
Nicholas is charged in the murder of Peruvian-American swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay, who was found dead in an overflowing bathtub at the swank Soho House hotel in December. He has pleaded not guilty.
Susan Karten, the lawyer for the Cachay family, last night said she hopes Joseph Brooks at least left behind an apology to his victims.
“Unfortunately, those girls will never see justice now,” Karten said. “But hopefully, one day, the Cachay family will,” referring to Nicholas Brooks.
“It’s just a web of perversion in that family,” Karten added.
The senior Brooks won the Academy Award for best original song for the 1977 Debby Boone ballad “You Light Up My Life” and directed a movie of the same name about a comedian who had a one-night stand with a director. Brooks also won a Grammy for the song.
“I have been saddened to hear of the horrible tragedies surrounding Joe Brooks and his family over the years,” Boone said in a statement released through a friend today.
“My only real association with Joe was in 1977 for a couple of hours in a New York recording studio when I recorded his beautiful song. I will continue to sing it proudly and hope that people will be able to separate the song from Joe’s severely troubled life.”
Additional reporting by Laura Italiano, John Doyle and Cathy Burke