The giant eye of beautiful Sylvie Cachay looked out over her murder trial from a large-screen, projected evidence photo today — an eerie but forensically telling moment as damning autopsy testimony began in the sensational Soho House tub-strangle case.
“This is People’s exhibit 100-A, a picture of her right eye,” the city’s acting chief medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson, told a Manhattan jury.
“The nose is here,” she said, pointing off screen. “And we’re using forceps to look at the underside of the upper lid of the right eye.”
Accused strangler boyfriend Nicholas Brooks sat writing notes at the defense table as his ex-girlfriend’s magnified eye pointed his way. Brooks was just 24 when he allegedly strangled and drowned the 33-year-old swimsuit designer in their hotel room bathtub, enraged, prosecutors say, over her plans to leave him.
Cachay’s eye and the inside of her eyelids showed the burst blood vessels characteristic of strangulation, the coroner testified, pointing the dots of red out for jurors.
Next, jurors saw the half-dozen small points of bleeding and bruising inside the dead woman’s mouth — from Brooks’ hand, prosecutors say — and the fingertip-sized bruises on her neck.
Cachay’s parents, meanwhile, kept their vigil, heads down in the second row. They and their son, Patrick, have attended every day of the trial, which tomorrow will wrap its third week of testimony.
Brooks’ lawyer insist Cachay — who designed for Victorias Secret, Marc Jacobs and her own brand, Syla — died accidentally, from an overdose of the five prescription drugs she took to treat a chronic pain condition.
But toxicology tests showed that the drugs, “Were all within the therapeutic range,” the coroner told jurors, and there was no evidence they’d had any role in her death.