The victim, Sylvie Cachay, a 33-year-old fashion designer, was found on Dec. 9, 2010, submerged in the bathtub of a hotel room at the Soho House, where she and Mr. Brooks had checked in less than three hours earlier.
Prosecutors said during the trial that Mr. Brooks, 27, had not finished college and lived off the generosity of Ms. Cachay and money from his father, Joseph Brooks, who wrote the 1970s hit song “You Light Up My Life.”
The father, who was arrested in 2009 on charges of sexually assaulting aspiring actresses, committed suicide in 2011.
Much of the testimony and evidence during a monthlong trial at State Supreme Court in Manhattan portrayed the storminess of the couple’s relationship. Ms. Cachay repeatedly broke up, or threatened to break up, with Mr. Brooks. And he, in turn, begged her to take him back, promising to meet her demands that he get a job and smoke less marijuana.
The city medical examiner determined that Ms. Cachay had died from being strangled and held under the water, based in part on injuries to her neck, the inside of her mouth, the back of her head, and burst blood vessels in and around her eyes. She was still wearing a turtleneck sweater and her panties when she was found.
Mr. Brooks’s lawyer, Jeffrey C. Hoffman, urged jurors to consider that Ms. Cachay’s injuries were caused by falls she took before the couple arrived at the hotel, and that she might have accidentally drowned while Mr. Brooks was out of the room.
After a month of trial testimony, the jury deliberated a little longer than two full days before convicting Mr. Brooks of second-degree murder.
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=14382
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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