Sylvie Cachay (Steven Hirsch)
PARTY’S OVER: A jury yesterday found scenester Nicholas Brooks (left) guilty of murdering designer Sylvie Cachay (right). (
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Cries of “Yes!” rang out in a Manhattan courtroom as trust-fund playboy Nicholas Brooks was convicted of strangling and drowning his swimsuit-designer girlfriend in the bathtub of their Soho House hotel room.
Prosecutors had promised jurors that Sylvie Cachay would speak to them from the grave, condemning her murderer through damning autopsy evidence.
Yesterday, the tragic beauty’s voice was indeed heard, said family members who had sat through a month of testimony and three days of sometimes contentious deliberations.
“It’s unimaginable,” mom Sylvia Cachay said, speaking after the verdict of her lingering grief — still present 2 1/2 years after the body of her daughter was pulled half-dressed from a tub at the exclusive downtown hotel.
Fingertip-shaped bruises ringed Cachay’s neck, pointing immediately to strangulation — and to the tempestuous young lover who had checked into the hotel with her on the brink of what proved to be their calamitous final argument.
“But Sylvie Cachay is here with us,” the heartbroken mother added. “She’s with me always. She was with me in the courtroom and she is with me now.”
As the forewoman read the verdict, Brooks shook his head and seemed to tear up. Brooks’ actress sister, Amanda — his only family member in the audience — broke into gasping sobs .
Amanda and Nicholas are the children of the late Joseph Brooks — composer of the Oscar-winning ’70s song “You Light Up My Life.” The father committed suicide in May 2011 while awaiting trial on a string of casting-couch sex assaults on young starlet wannabes.
Deliberations over Nicholas Brooks’ fate were contentious at times, with jurors sending out 29 notes over the course of 20 hours.
One juror, Jonathan Gregory Rohr, a securities-fraud litigator, was for hours the only juror not in favor of conviction, according to another panel member who asked not to be identified.
Rohr, a fourth-year associate at the powerhouse firm Sullivan & Cromwell, nearly hung the jury.
“I’m so done with this,” Rohr huffed as he angrily strode away from the courthouse.
“Some of us thought it was an unfair trial, but that our hands were tied based on the evidence that the judge allowed to be introduced,” Rohr said.
The Cachays hope the case will shed light on domestic violence, said family lawyer Susan Karten. “[Sylvie’s] life shone beautifully, like a diamond in the sky, no matter how much they tried to trash the victim.”
Defense lawyer Jeffrey Hoffman had tried to blame the drowning on an accidental overdose, and Sylvie’s neck bruises on kinky “rough sex.”
Brooks faces a maximum of 25 years to life in prison; his sentencing is set for Aug. 26 before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner.