It was Staten Island’s version of “Gossip Girl” — with a “Law & Order” ending.
A man enraged over rumors he was cheating on his pregnant girlfriend savagely strangled a woman he thought was behind the salacious whisper campaign, authorities said yesterday.
And he allegedly used the cord of her own hair dryer to do it.
Authorities said Calvin Lawson, 28, has admitted he went to Caroline Wimmer’s Staten Island apartment on March 29.
“We got into a scuffle and I choked her,” his signed confession read. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Investigators said Lawson, from Coney Island, believed that Wimmer, 26, and a friend named Cece had been telling people in their social network that he was cheating on his girlfriend, Kiki, sources said.
Word eventually got back to Kiki and she confronted Lawson, who denied having an affair. Tension then erupted between Wimmer and Cece.
“She said, ‘Ma, it’s stupid. It’s high school,’ ” said Wimmer’s mother, Martha.
In response, Cece began putting nasty postings on Wimmer’s MySpace page insinuating that she was having an affair with Lawson. This led him to believe Wimmer was the one behind the rumors, sources said.
So he had a pal, Joshua Perry, a Marine recruit, drive him to Wimmer’s apartment where he allegedly killed her. Wimmer’s mother found her body on the bathroom floor the next day.
“There was no relationship whatsoever,” she said. “They killed my daughter for no reason.”
The murder remained unsolved for weeks until detectives got a tip leading them to Perry, 23, whom they picked up on Saturday at the Marine base in Parris Island, SC. Perry then gave up Lawson, sources said.
Cops tracked down Lawson on Monday. When led out of a Staten Island police station, he said: “I didn’t do it. I already told them who did it.”
He was held without bail on second-degree murder charges.
Lawson’s lawyer, Mark J. Fonte, said, “I assure you that after all is said and done, the facts of this case are going to look a lot different. He is an innocent man.”
But Wimmer’s father, Ronnie, said, “I want to see this guy spend the rest of his life in jail. If God has any justice he would do to him what he did to her.”
Additional reporting by Murray Weiss, Larry Celona, Perry Chiaramonte and Kavita Mokha