Tub-slay deal due
Accused bathtub strangler Nicholas Brooks is mulling a plea bargain, a judge said yesterday.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner made reference to the secret plea discussions at Brooks’ latest court appearance for last year’s gruesome drown-and-strangle murder of his girlfriend, beautiful swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay.
No details of the negotiations were revealed, but Wittner put the murder case on hold until Sept. 19 in hopes that they’ll be complete by then.
Brooks’ father, the Oscar-winning composer of “You Light Up My Life,” killed himself with a mail-order helium tank suicide kit in his Upper East Side apartment last month while under indictment on charges of molesting and raping 13 would-be starlets during “auditions” for nonexistent movies.
“It’s plea or get off the pot,” Cachay family lawyer Susan Karten said after Brooks’ court appearance yesterday.
“All we know is that there are ongoing plea discussions. But on the next court date, either they have a plea in place or they get ready to start a trial,” she said.
Karten is representing the family in hopes of winning them some of the elder Brooks’ fortune.
Joseph Brooks, 73, died under a hill of debt, having committed suicide the day before a Manhattan judge was set to order he make a nearly $250,000 payment to a former pal who’d loaned him $3.2 million against his Upper East Side pad, according to court records.
But the Cachay family is eyeing the father’s $1.25 million now-released bail bond and some $5,000 to $6,000 a month he received in royalties on “You Light Up My Life,” Karten said.
Nicholas also collected and continues to be owed income from a trust fund his father set up for him in 2005, she said.
The victim’s family — her Virginia-based parents and her brothers, Patrick and David Orlando — are hoping the money can support The Sylvie Cachay Memorial Project, a charitable foundation that will fund scholarships and other projects involving Cachay’s love of the design arts.
The project’s Web site is http://www.sylviecachay.org.
Sylvie Cachay died in November at 33 — strangled and drowned in an overflowing bathtub at the Soho House hotel.
