The giant image of beautiful Sylvie Cachay’s right eye looked out ominously over her accused killer’s trial from a large courtroom screen yesterday — an eerie 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. “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, unblinking eye seemed to stare 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 dump him.
Cachay’s eye and the inside of her eyelids showed the burst blood vessels characteristic of strangulation, the coroner testified, pointing out the dots of red for jurors.
“It made me suspicious that we were dealing with a strangulation,” she said.
The jurors also 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.