WRITE & WRONG: Nicholas Brooks wrote this note of apology to his alleged victim, saying he was sorry he had hired prostitutes. (
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These are the hands of death, prosecutors say.
Jurors in the Soho House tub-strangle trial yesterday were shown this evidence photograph (above) of the hands of accused killer Nicholas Brooks taken within hours of his arrest — showing incriminating red marks across the knuckles.
Prosecutors say Brooks used his hands to strangle and drown his beautiful girlfriend, swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay, in a white porcelain bathtub at the posh Meatpacking District hotel during a breakup argument in December 2010.
“What did you notice on these hands,” prosecutor Jordan Arnold asked Norman Marin, a criminalist for the city Medical Examiner’s Office as photo was displayed to Brooks’ Manhattan murder jury on a wide-screen television.
“The redness of the skin and the irritation,” Marin responded
Prosecutors are expected to argue that Brooks, then 24, was injured during his deadly struggle with Cachay, 33.
But Brooks, the son of Oscar-winning,“You Light Up My Life” composer Joseph Brooks, seems poised to argue that there is an innocent explanation.
“Did you know or did you become aware of any skin condition that Mr. Brooks had on his hands?” defense lawyer Jeffrey Hoffman asked the criminalist on cross-examination.
“No, I did not,” Marin answered.
The unemployed playboy had just penned a handwritten apology letter to Cachay when she died, in which he said that he was sorry for having hired prostitutes in “my past.”
The note, too, was shown to jurors yesterday.
“You are so smart, beautiful and funny,” he wrote in the one-page letter. “And I don’t think about anyone else but you.”
He signed the letter, “Love Nick.”
More of Brooks’ handwriting also came into evidence yesterday — his police statement, in which he claimed that Cachay wanted to take a bath when she got into the hotel because her hair was dirty after a candle fire at her apartment.
But Cachey’s hair was clean, according to a Soho House staffer who testified that the she helped the woman to her room.