The stoner ex-boyfriend accused in the gruesome bathtub drown-and-strangle murder of swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay pleaded not guilty in Manhattan this morning, as officials released for the first time bizarre remarks he’d made to police while in custody — including his stated fear that as a jailed Jew, he’d be beaten up by “white supremacists.”
Nick Brooks, 24, told cops that Cachay and he had argued just prior to her death over his history of hiring escorts — though he claimed that “it was not a big deal.”
This morning’s brief proceeding also gave Cachay’s brothers, Patrick and David, their first look at the man investigators believe choked and submerged the partially-clad designer as she struggled for air in the tub.
“Truly it was disgusting to see this cowardly individual,” Patrick, 38, of Lima, Peru — their mother’s native country — told reporters outside court. “It was definitely important to see that he was in custody.”
“This was just a horrible act of unnecessary violence against my sister,” he said.
The days’ most significant legal development, though, was Brooks’ insistence to cops that Cachay was alive — sleeping in their bed at the Soho House — when he left their room to go by taxi with a male friend to “Employees Only,” a lounge on Hudson Street, and that he later indulged in a night of cocaine and Corona beers at the unnamed buddy’s house before returning to find police at the hotel room.
He’d never seen Cachay go near the tub, Brooks insisted to cops, according to the new police statements.
But lead prosecutor Jordan Arnold countered in court today that Brooks’ alibi is belied by hard evidence that the tub had already overflowed — and water complaints were already being called in by downstairs guests — by the time Brooks left the hotel.
“The evidence in this case makes clear that when Nicholas Brooks left Soho House for the last time on December 9, Sylvie Cachay was already dead,” Arnold told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner, in asking successfully that Brooks remain held without bail.
“Sylvie Cachay was already dead at the bottom of an overflowing bathtub,” Arnold said. “This bathtub was already leaking into the floors below when this defendant left… There is no question that he committed this horrific murder,” he said.
“It’s clear from the evidence that Sylvie Cachay’s deliberate and painful death was the result of his intention to kill her.”
Brooks pleaded not guilty in a soft, eerily gentle voice, wearing a freshly-pressed dress shirt and khakis, his hair neatly trimmed and combed.
But his behavior was nothing short of odd as cops drove him from the 6th Precinct to Central Booking on the day after the murder.
“How long can I get for something like this,” he asked detectives, according to the newly-released police statements. “Will I get bail? I have money in a trust fund, but I have to get the money in person,” he announced.
Any such trust fund would apparently come courtesy of his once famous, now infamous father.
Brooks is the son of Joseph Brooks, Oscar-winning composer of the ’70s dirge ballad “You Light Up My Life” and an accused violent felon like his son.
The elder Brooks is charged with luring 13 young women to his Upper East Side apartment under the pretense of giving them movie roles — only to pounce on them in attacks ranging from rape to forcible touching
“Should I pay someone for protection while I’m in?” the paranoid-sounding Brooks asked detectives during the drive to Central Booking, according to the police statements.
“How long is the process? Will I see my lawyer down at court? I’m Jewish and I’m worried about getting beat up by white supremacists. I watch the show Oz,” Brooks announced. “I’ve seen what happens in jail.
“Thank you,” he added, finally, as he was driven through a gate into Central Booking’s salley port, “for not parading me around when we got to court.”
Susan Karten, the family’s lawyer, said “It was a brutal killing. A brutal killing. And then to hear that this person left the room after he killed somebody and went to dinner and drinks is just mindboggling,” she said, referring to Brooks’ police statements. “It just shows you the cold-bloodedness of this murder.”
Interestingly, Karten said, Brooks has now been implicated by the very bathwater he used to drown his victim — water he never believed would cascade down to haunt him.
“The water created a timeline as to when the murder was committed, and that’s what he did not anticipate,” she said.
Investigators believe the beautiful victim — who had designed for Victoria’s Secret, Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Jacobs and Anne Cole, along with her own brand Syla — had at the time been trying to break off her six-month relationship with the lay-about Brooks, whose Facebook pages are filled with snaps of him swilling whiskey and smoking what looks to be a marijuana pipe.
A note from Brooks — in which he expressed an unwillingness to call things off — was recovered from her pocketbook, investigators said.
But while Brooks conceded to cops that Cachay was “had been upset” after learning of Brooks’ history of hiring escorts, “it was not a big deal” when they argued over the topic.
Defense lawyer Jeffrey Hoffman, meanwhile, continued to insist today that prosecutors still have the timing wrong — and that Cachay was alive when Brooks left the hotel.
“He was not present on the premises when the young lady died,” said the lawyer, who also represents Brooks’ father.
Joseph Brooks remains out on bail pending his next court date, two weeks from now. Today, the judge ordered the son remain caged pending his next court date, set for Feb 8.