He was a cad, too.
The heroin-addled lifetime parolee who’s defending himself against charges he murdered his Chelsea girlfriend once bought her an ankle bracelet — then stole it back from her and sold it, according to testimony today.
Manhattan prosecutors put a 14th St. jeweler on the stand to show jurors that jobless ex-con moocher Robert Camarano had strained the relationship to the cracking point by selling his victim’s jewelry and doing whatever else he could to scrape up money.
Camarano, 62 — who is representing himself — slaughtered Michele Hyams, 60 on the bed they shared in her Eighth Avenue studio after they argued over a piece he’d swiped from her and sold, prosecutors say.
“Sometimes he’d find a piece of glass on the street and come in to me and try for an hour to convince me to buy it,” testified Jason Farahan of Jason’s Jewelry.
Once, Farahan said, he bought Hyams an anklet, then came back in a month and sold it. And just hours before she died, she came into the store to complain about a piece of hers that Camarano had sold there, according to testimony.
By all witness accounts in the four-day-old trial, Hyams had a crowd of loyal friends, a nice studio apartment, a great job as an administrative assistant at Swiss banking giant UBS, and $900,000 in savings.
Camarano, who she met online, was fresh out of prison for armed robbery and had no job, no home, and a heroin habit.
Prosecutors say he stabbed and bludgeoned Hyams after she confronted him for stealing and selling her jewelry to support his smack habit.
Camarano is representing himself against the advice of the trial judge. The prosecution is expected to rest its case Monday after presenting autopsy evidence; Camarano will then begin presenting his own case.