SYLVIE CACHAY: Strangled or drowned.
TROUBLE: Nick Brooks in police custody yesterday, facing charges in the death of his designer ex-girlfriend.
Like father, like son.
Sex-scandal-scarred Oscar winner Joseph Brooks’ slacker son was slapped with attempted-murder and strangulation charges last night in the death of his swimsuit-designer ex-girlfriend at the posh Soho House hotel, police said.
Nick Brooks, 24 — whose dad was indicted last year on 82 counts of sexually abusing young actresses — was booked after nearly two days in police custody, where he was grilled by cops and body-searched for DNA and other evidence.
The felony strangulation charge is new to the New York penal code. Just eight days old, the provision is aimed at domestic abusers whose victims do not sustain serious neck injuries.
“We have enough [evidence] at this point to charge him with attempted murder and strangulation. He talked to us but has not confessed,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.
VIDEO: SWIMSUIT DESIGNER FOUND DEAD IN SOHO
Sources said that District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office made the decision to charge Brooks with attempted murder as opposed to murder.
A police source said that cops can prove that he choked her, thus the strangulation charge, but cannot prove the choking caused the death of Cachay, who was discovered lifeless in an overflowing bathtub.
“He definitely intended to kill her, but we can’t prove that he did,” the source said. “We’re not sure if strangulation or drowning caused her death.”
The source said investigators hope that more evidence will come in and the charges can be upgraded.
Cachay, a 33-year-old, Peruvian-born fashion designer, had jilted Brooks the night before she died. She had bruises on her neck, bleeding in her eyes and a bite mark on her hand.
Brooks is believed to be the last person to have seen her alive.
“There’s foul play here,” Cachay’s dad, Antonio, told The Post yesterday from his home near Washington, DC. “And I want justice applied.”
Brooks’ arrest followed more than 36 hours at Manhattan’s Sixth Precinct station house. He had answered questions all day Thursday before clamming up and hiring a lawyer.
An initial autopsy was inconclusive, and medical examiners have begun a series of toxicology tests that could take weeks to complete, sources said.
When Cachay checked in at Soho House with Brooks about 12:30 a.m. Thursday, she told the concierge she was on Xanax and could barely stay awake. Her body was found three hours later.
Her parents said they had long been suspicious of Brooks.
“They’d talked of marriage,” Cachay’s mother, Sylvia, said of their five-month relationship. “But she said she could not marry him unless he gets a regular job.”
Brooks’ father, Joseph — who won an Oscar for composing the song “You Light Up My Life” — is fighting charges he sexually assaulted 11 starlets.
The unemployed younger Brooks lives with three roommates in the East Village in what the building super and neighbors described as a frequently marijuana-scented apartment.
Cachay lived in a far more posh pad in the West Village.
“Sylvie was trying to instill in him good morals,” the mother recalled. “Good behavior, goal-seeking, getting interested in languages, whatever would make him a better person.”
Instead, Brooks was a layabout, the mother said.
“He gets a job, and then he drops it,” the mother recalled. “Then Sylvie, about a week and a half ago, said: ‘No. If you don’t prove to me that you can be a solid citizen, I will not continue a serious relationship with you, and I will not consider marriage.”
Additional reporting by Josh Margolin in New York and Grant Slater in McLean, Va.