48 Hours - Death at Soho House

Episode Date: July 17, 2016

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This is Manhattan's trendiest neighborhood, the meatpacking district. Designer shops line the cobblestone streets. Celebrities and young people fill the cafes. At night, it is overrun when the clubs are open, but only the most fashionable and well connected get in. What you don't expect here is a murder. On a cold December morning at the Soho House, an ultra-exclusive hotel club in New York City. A body was found floating in a bathtub. I see a young woman submerged under the tub who wasn't moving. The water was overflowing heavily over the tub. I just put my hands under her arms and just removed her.

I work for a hotel. We need somebody here immediately. We found her in the tub. One of the night managers is trying to resuscitate her, and she's not breathing. I was saying, please, please, please don't go. No sign of life? No sign of life.

We looked around. There was an empty bottle of prescription pills there. How did she die? Did she kill herself? What happened in this hotel room? The medical investigator says, look, the marks on her neck, do you see them? I said, yeah, absolutely. I said, it doesn't look right.

Maybe someone could have choked her. Sylvie Cachet was a young, rising swimsuit designer. She had interned for Marc Jacobs. She worked for Tommy Hilfiger and Victoria's Secret. And she launched her own swimsuit design company called Sela. My name is Susan Carton, and I represent Sylvie Cachet's family. From the time I got this case, I knew that this was a murder. That night when she went to the Soho house,

there was nobody there with her but Nicholas Brooks. I believe that Nicholas Brooks caused the demise of Sylvia Caché. Police say 24-year-old Nicholas Brooks choked his girlfriend, 33-year-old fashion designer Sylvia Caché, then left her to die in a posh hotel bathtub. My brother absolutely did not murder Sylvie Cachet. He did not. Nick said they had rough sex, and those bruises happened earlier that night. None of the injuries that were found on Sylvie's body

were the result of rough sex. He loved Sylvie. I know my brother is innocent. I mean, this obviously was a grave mistake. Sylvie went into the Soho house looking beautiful and alive. She came out in a body bag. I'm Troy Roberts tonight on 48 hours

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and the Wondery app. It was summer in Miami, two years before her death, and Sylvie Cachet was on top of the world. From all over the country, top bathing suit designers were vying for attention. But all eyes were on Sylvie, it seemed, and her swimwear line, Sela. You see a lot of stuff, but it's rare that you see wow, and that's definitely what we felt. Lisa McHale was Sylvie's publicist and knew she had a hit on her hands. It was sort of a PR dream. The coverage was across the board from InStyle and Vogue and Lucky and Elle. They were attracted not only to her product, but to her as an individual, as sort of a style setter in her own right. Sports Illustrated chose Sylvie Designed Bikinis

to feature in their swimsuit video. She got her clothing in Barneys and all these amazing stores within the first year, which is unheard of. I shot her lookbooks. That was her photographer. Ben Baker was a lot more than her photographer. In 2008, Ben was Sylvie's fiancé. She's obviously a beautiful woman, and she's the sort of person

when that person walks in the room, everyone pays attention. So it was no surprise that a woman like Sylvie would occasionally stay at the exclusive Soho House Hotel. It fit the criteria of what the typical member would be in someone in fashion or in the film. Brian Alvarez is the former Soho House night manager. It's trendy. He says Sylvie actually had a special status

at the Soho House, a coveted membership that meant perks like access to the private club or the pool, a place so hard to get into that the TV show Sex and the City devoted an episode to it. There's a pool a block from my apartment, and I can't get in. What pool? At the Soho house. You have to be a member, and I'm on some kind of bulls**t wait list.

Don't they know who you are? And more importantly, who we are. Sylvie understood, her friends say, how important socializing at the club was to her career. This is a girl who's in fashion. She's stylish. She's inspired by new and fresh. She really never thought she

couldn't do anything. She really believed Her brother Patrick, an MIT graduate, marveled at how his sister launched her own business at age 29. Starting your own fashion line might be a dream of tens of thousands of people, but actually doing it is a whole other world,

and she did it. Sylvie Cachet grew up in privileged suburban Virginia. Her father a prominent surgeon, her mother an artist, but Sylvie understood work ethic. Her parents emigrated from Peru. Did you worry about her when she moved to New York City? Not really, not really. From day one in New York, she started looking for jobs. In one week, she already had her job with Tommy Hilfiger. No one was surprised. You could see her personality at age three. She wanted to

walk on the streets of New York with a big ribbon like that, a bow like this big. I was a little embarrassed, but she was not at all. It was almost a foregone conclusion that Sylvie would make it in New York. But in 2008, it was a manic Monday in the financial markets. The market crashed. That was a terrible time for, you know, many young designers in fashion, just many designers in general. Backers were pulling out.

She looked for other backers, but at one point she had to make the decision to close down temporarily. It was definitely a death. It was her baby, It was her dream. And so it was very difficult to see it go away so drastically and suddenly. I would say that she was lost. Fellow designer and close friend, Alicia Bell. You know, it's hard when you have worked your whole life and have built something and then it's taken from you. And on the heels of that,

she broke off her engagement. Right, with Ben. That ended. It was a very troubling time for her. She says Sylvie ended her engagement to Ben to concentrate on her business. It was really tough. I mean, she was down. She wasn't eating right. She lost a lot of weight, actually. Sherry Fogelman was her trainer at the gym. She just was so sad. I said, you know, at some point you do have to get a job

because you need income to survive the crisis. She went and actually got a very good job. Lead designer for Ankle Swimwear. But friends say she wasn't happy. Sylvie hadn't given up on her own line. It was then, in the summer of 2010, that Sylvie's attention was diverted. She met someone, Nicholas Brooks. He was just 24, almost 10 years younger, and he had a trust fund.

On their first date, they walked her dogs. She had these two dogs that she was very, very, very in love with. Pepper, her toy poodle, ran into the street and was run over. Pepper, her toy poodle, ran into the street and was run over. She called me from the animal hospital, and it was horrifying, crying, crying, crying. And eventually she had to put him down that night, but that was their first date. She told me about how Nick was there that night, and that he scooped Pepper off of the street and hailed a cab and took her to a vet. Stayed all night with her and was there by her side comforting her.

He was a shoulder for her to cry on. And he sounded like this. Night in shining armor. Yeah. It seemed good that this Prince Charming came in, you know, during this horrible stuff. But there was no fairytale ending for Sylvie. Six months later, she was dead in a posh New York City hotel room. Sylvie's mother was home in Virginia when her husband rushed in.

I said, what happened? And he says, Sylvie. I said, what happened to Sylvie? What is wrong? I said, what happened to Sylvie? What is wrong? And he says, está muerta, which means she's dead. And he said, no, my baby, no, no, no. And we fell on the floor. We just fell on the floor. And we were just holding each other, like, for more than an hour there. It was just awful, awful.

Police were also trying to make sense of Sylvie's death. When we walk in the room, we see Sylvie Cachet. She's dressed in a black turtleneck and panties. Former NYPD detectives Robert Moeller and Tommy Jones knew Sylvie's body had been pulled from an overflowing bathtub. They saw an empty bottle of pills on the dresser, but it was the fact that Sylvie was dressed that raised the first big flag. Her watch was on, her Rolex watch.

Normal people don't take baths with their clothes on. Investigators noted the bruising on Sylvie's neck. They were light-colored marks, but they were marks caused by choking. She also had a cut inside her lip. Could have been caused by someone would take their hand and put it over your mouth and push. It was starting to look like someone had murdered Sylvie. We wind up, she checked in with someone else.

Where is this person? Why isn't he here in the room with her? She had checked into the hotel with her boyfriend, Nicholas Brooks. Now, he was the first person detectives really wanted to talk to. But he was nowhere to be found. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Garba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all.

I'm Marcia Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+.

Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of them. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn.

When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely, Pacific island

to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery+, in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It was 5.30 in the morning, nearly three hours after Sylvie's body was found, when Nicholas Brooks walked back into the Soho house.

We were in the lobby, myself and the rest of the staff. We pointed him out to the police officer saying, hey, that's him. Night manager Brian Alvarez watched as an officer told Nick that something happened to his girlfriend. His reaction was a little weird. In what way? He didn't react to, like, someone who just lost, someone close to him. His reaction was very blank. Flat? Yeah. He appeared to be inebriated.

Eyes were bloodshot and smelt of alcohol. Sort of stirred his words. Detectives brought him to the precinct. They wanted to know where he had been all night and what had happened to Sylvie. We placed him in the interview room and he basically really couldn't hold the conversation with us. I said, it's late. I said, why don't you take a rest? And he just laid his head down and went to sleep. And when he woke up, was he alert? Yeah, much better. Nick was able to write a statement for police and detail his actions that night. He says he met Sylvie at her village apartment in the early evening. They watched a movie, lit some candles, and had sex. After sex was over, he wanted to take a shower. When he came out of the shower, the bed had been on fire. The lit candles had sparked a fire on the bedsheets. Nick says Sylvie was sound asleep because she had taken medication earlier.

He had to wake her up and rescue her. They decided to leave her apartment. Sylvie, he told them, repeatedly stumbled as they went down the stairs. Then Sylvie and Nick headed to the Soho house. On hotel surveillance tape, you see them arriving after midnight. Nick carrying Sylvie's pillow. He says Sylvie was still too pilled out to fill out the paperwork, so he did it for her. Once in the room, he says, Sylvie mentioned taking a bath. Nick decided to go to the hotel restaurant to eat.

When he returned, Nick says, Sylvie was sleeping. He just decided he was too awake, so he said he woke Sylvie up and said, I'm going to go out for a while. And he did. He said, the next thing I know, I got back to the hotel, and all the police were there. To check Nick's version, police interviewed Soho House employees, and it turns out there's a lot more to the story. Kristen Stevens was working at the reception desk when they checked in.

There was tension between the two of them. Kristen escorted Sylvie to the room. When they were alone in the elevator, Sylvie, she says, explained what was wrong. That there had been a fire at her apartment, and she blamed it all on Nick. She told me that her bed caught on fire because Nick had put candles on the headboard. And she said, who puts candles on the headboard? She said, he's 10 years younger than me. What am I doing with him? He's a child. I should just break up with him. And she said, now this pillow is all that's left of my $3,000 bed. Kristen says Sylvie was so exhausted that she stumbled in the hallway.

She said, I've already taken my sleeping pills for the night. You can see Kristen holding her hand, guiding her to the room. Once inside, Kristen helped Sylvie settle into the bed. She was in bed when I left her. She was going to sleep. She was just going to go to sleep right away. Absolutely. And then just a little while later,

Kristen was in the hall passing Sylvie's room when she heard yelling. And what sounded like Sylvie's voice. I'm hearing yelling, arguing. And as I came around the corner, that arguing ceased very abruptly. Using her passkey to open the room next door to Sylvie's, Kristen pressed her ear against the wall, trying to hear what was going on in Sylvie's room. And I spent a good minute and a half in there listening

and heard absolute silence. Not even shuffling of feet, not even whispering. Silence, no movement. Today, Kristen wonders if she heard the moment Sylvie was killed. She wishes she would have just knocked on Sylvie's room door. Because if I had knocked, what would have happened? Maybe could have helped her. That one I don't know.

And I don't know if I'm ever going to know that one. I'm sorry. It's okay. To police what Kristen heard sounded suspicious, but it didn't prove Nick killed Sylvie. Here's what they were able to determine. Nick came and left Sylvie's room many times that night. Sometimes it seems like he's pacing the halls. And other times, it looks like he's biting his nails.

He did go to the hotel restaurant, but an employee told police that Nick barely touched his food. At exactly 2.18 in the morning, Nick left Sylvie's room for the last time. He heads to the front desk and, strange as it seems, he meets and strikes up a friendship with the jazz musician David Raleigh. Raleigh said they decided to go out. He told police they went to a bar called Employees Only, where he and Nick had drinks and did some cocaine. While Nick was out partying, Soho House staffers were alerted to a water leak.

It was coming from Sylvie's room. When they opened the door, they discovered her body in the overflowing bathtub. By the end of the next day, detectives would have Nick under arrest. And that's when Nick said something that sounded a lot like an admission of guilt. He then asked, well, how much will I get for this? You know, how much time will I get for this? When he said, how much time can I get for this? What was your reaction? We kind of just looked at each other. We were a little shocked. But Nick's sister, Amanda, insists her brother didn't admit to anything.

He had no idea what he was saying. I don't think Nick completely understood what was going on. He didn't even know what he was being arrested for. If her brother really wanted Sylvie dead, she says Nick could have just let her die in the fire. He loved Sylvie. He saved her when their apartment was on fire. He tried to help her. Amanda says there's an entire story detectives are ignoring.

I believe that she wasn't sober. Sylvie Cachet had a lot of drugs in her system. Nick's attorney, Jeffrey Hoffman, thinks he can prove that Nick had no role in Sylvie's drowning. She couldn't even walk unassisted and had to be helped in the elevator, out of the elevator, down the hall. Nick, do you have any comment? Nick, what do you got to say? It's a rush to judgment, Amanda says. And it's all because of their father, the Oscar winner.

I think that this is a sensational story. If my brother was not my father's son, this would not be happening. It's the song that defined a decade. In the 1970s, the Debbie Boone hit You Light Up My Life was everywhere. Ten consecutive weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. And the man behind the song is Nick and Amanda Brooks' father. Amanda believes her father's troubled life would lead to the accusation that her brother killed Sylvie Cachet. Forty years ago, the sounds of composer Joseph Brooks seemed inescapable.

Brooks wrote the music for a slew of popular commercials. He became like the jingle king of America. Investigative reporter Murray Weiss is a 48 Hours consultant. He wrote for Pepsi. He wrote for Dial Soap. He came up with one of the most extraordinary jingles of the time. It was for Maxwell House Coffee,

Good to the Last Drop, and that was sung by no less a person than Ray Charles. He went from writing jingles to making movies about people who wrote jingles. Brooks' first Hollywood project, You Light Up My Life, about an aspiring songwriter, didn't attract a lot of studio interest. No one wanted to buy it, but he had such self-confidence that he invested like a quarter of a million dollars of his own money in it, and it wound up making him like 40 million. The title song would earn him an Oscar. People wanted to meet him, and that included women.

People wanted to meet him, and that included women. At the height of his popularity, Brooks married this woman, Sue Paul, a Playboy model and British actress who had a small part in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz. He literally swept Sue off her feet. I mean, it was private jets and designer clothes and jewelry. Former model and best friend, Lynn Barry. He was much older than her. I have to be honest, I didn't care for Joe from the get-go.

It was very, very controlling. Sue would have two children with Brooks, Amanda, and then five years later, Nicholas. But the marriage ended. Sue won custody, taking the children to live with her in London. I think he was very angry and very hurt that my mother left him. My father knew the only way to really get back at my mother was ultimately to take myself and my brother. When Amanda was 12 and Nick just 7,

they went to visit their father in New York. Brooks refused to send them back home to their mother. He kept the two children and he fought for custody and began a very serious brainwashing campaign against their mother, making her sound like she's a monster. Sue was just floored and she was coming to America, hiring detectives.

But by then, Brooks had begun to hide Amanda and Nick. He reportedly moved them from hotel to hotel under assumed names. I mean, Sue really tried very hard to find them. It just devastated her in the end. I think she just gave up. She didn't have the money. Nick was really close to my mother. I don't think Nick necessarily completely understood what was going on.

It was very difficult. But a teenage Amanda had a mind of her own and went to London to see her mother. Your father told you not to come back? Yeah. He sent me a letter, really, just saying he didn't want to see me again. I don't know if you ever get over that. I felt pretty broken. It was the rock in the bottom of my stomach that, to be honest with you,

I think never went away. Over the years, Amanda desperately tried to reconnect with her father and Nick. It would take 14 years for Amanda, now a Hollywood actress, to finally find Nick on Facebook. He was all grown up, a freshman in college. From that moment on, we've been pretty inseparable. It was a very instantaneous relationship. I don't know how else to describe it. Blood's a very strong thing. We kind of just clicked immediately. But it was a moment Nick could never tell his father about. We had to keep our relationship a secret. Nick would lose his inheritance if he contacted you? Yeah, me or my mother. I think that's the way that my

father controlled my brother. And I've come to realize is that maybe I was the one that got away as opposed to the one that was left. Amanda knows now what actually happened to her brother while they were separated. Her father lavished an incredible lifestyle on Nick, only to repeatedly threaten him with taking it all away, including his affection. When Nick was enrolled at this prominent New York prep school, Brooks gave his teenage son his very own apartment. He became like, you know, the golden boy in school. He had parties. He was so spoiled that if he used a plate up and it was dirty rather than clean it, he would just throw it in the garbage and they'd eventually go out and buy new china and plates to use.

But Joe Brooks didn't stop there. He introduced prostitutes to his son. He paid for them. Brooks himself had a long history of frequenting prostitutes, Weiss says. But as Brooks aged and became ill in his 70s, and having spent a great deal of his money, he resorted to preying on unsuspecting young women. He still had his apartment and his Oscar.

He would go out on Craigslist, inviting women to come and audition for him. Loretta Spruill told authorities she answered Joe Brooks' ad. I was 22 years old and I was doing my own booking. She claims when she went to his Manhattan apartment to audition, he attacked her. He laid me down on the bed and he raped me. More than a dozen aspiring actresses would tell similar stories to the police. And based on those accounts, New York police arrested Brooks, charged him with more than 100 criminal counts.

He faced 25 years behind bars. But before trial... Police say a friend found Brooks' body... Brooks committed suicide. He put a bag over his head, inserted a tube, and breathed in helium. I knew that he'd end his life before he went to jail. My father's a coward. So that was obviously the cowardly way to go.

He did not recognize you or Nick in his will. No. He didn't recognize me for 15 years. Why was he going to recognize me in his will? I didn't expect anything different. It would have been a miracle had there been some humanity in him when he died. At least he was consistent. But the alleged sins of her father have, unfairly, Amanda says, been visited upon her brother. I think, unfortunately, because of who my father was and the things he got indicted on and charged with,

the fact that they then had the son, potentially, too, made this just a whirlwind of a story. She says her brother told her every detail of that night. So then, how does Amanda explain those marks on Sylvie's neck, the bruising, the clear signs of choking? They had rough sex, and those bruises happened earlier that night. I don't want to in any way embarrass Mr. Cachet or her family, but when my brother's life's on the line, I feel it is important for that piece of information to be known because it's the difference between them having rough sex earlier and him choking her and killing her. Nick's defense attorney, Jeffrey Hoffman. Nick never told the police that he had rough sex with Sylvie, though.

Nick was asked what happened that evening, and he described having sex with Sylvie. Typically, if one is asked, did you have sex, they're not going to necessarily describe the nature of the sex, how they had the sex. I mean, I guess it's possible, but it's not typical. Yeah, we had sex. So then how did she end up drowning in an overflowing bathtub? Remember that videotape of Sylvie bumping into the wall while Kristen Stevens led her to her room? It's proof, the defense says, of just how out of it Sylvie was that night. The defense claims that while she was in this hotel room, that in a somewhat drugged state and it's late, she decided to go take a bath.

somewhat drugged state, and it's late, she decided to go take a bath. And because she's drugged, she kind of passes out, slips under the water, and drowns of her own volition, basically, somewhat similar to Whitney Houston. But unlike Whitney Houston, Sylvie didn't have any illegal drugs or alcohol in her system, just the prescription medications she took for a pain condition called fibromyalgia. Investigators say the levels in her blood weren't unusually high that night, but Nick's defense argues that somehow the combination of drugs in her body made her disoriented. What's more, when police examined the handle that turns the tub's water on and off, they only found Sylvie's DNA. So are you telling me Sylvie Cachet was not murdered? The evidence in this case was vastly insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was.

I mean, she's the victim here. It's so hard to hear a victim be talked about like that just to try to get your client off. Sylvie Cachet's cousin, Francois Jacobson, is horrified by Nick's defense, that after an evening of rough sex, a drugged out Sylvie accidentally drowned herself in the bathtub. That video of Sylvie bumping into the wall is evidence of nothing more than how sleepy her cousin was. There's not one incriminating piece of evidence except that she's exhausted. In pretrial hearings, Nick's lawyer argues the jury should consider the defense theory of how Sylvie died, but the judge wouldn't allow it. It seemed like my brother was being railroaded.

It was incredibly unfair. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance argues there's no evidence Sylvie ever participated in rough sex. Her injury suggests she was choked violently and forced under the water. The bruising around her neck was clear evident of strangulation. The fact that the lungs had twice their ordinary weight indicated that she was put into the tub alive and breathing. What's more, he believes he can place Nick at the murder scene. Security cameras show Nick left Sylvie's room to go out and party at exactly 2.18 in the morning. But what Nick didn't know was that at 2.11, seven minutes earlier, hotel guests in a room below Sylvie's were complaining about a water leak. Water from an overflowing bathtub in Sylvie's room.

Detective Moeller. He was in that room when the tub was on. The tub was overflowing. So if the tub is overflowing and the body's in theeller. He was in that room when the tub was on. The tub was overflowing. So if the tub is overflowing and the body's in the tub, he was in the room. I think that's certainly one of the most damning pieces of evidence that belies any contention that he didn't know what happened. Testimony begins in the trial of a man accused of killing the Zionist. Dozens of Sylvie's friends and family crowd the courthouse walls for the opening of the trial.

She's not here to speak for herself, so we felt it was in some way speaking for her. Lisa and Sylvie's friends are star prosecution witnesses because Sylvie confided in them with texts, emails, and phone calls about serious problems with Nick long before that night at the Soho house. What started out as a sweet romance quickly turned sour. She said that she was dating someone much younger, a kid, she called him. Best friend Alicia Bell will tell the jury that Sylvie was bothered by his childish behavior. I would get phone calls and just drama. He smokes pot all the time. He has no job.

You know, he drinks all the time. These pictures are from Nick's Facebook page. It got to a place where every time she'd call, I'd be like, I don't, why are you dating this guy? Sylvie would tell her friends they were breaking up, but just hours later, they made up. I knew that there was some kind of chemistry that kept making them get back together. Did she tell you that? That there was a strange chemistry between them?

Oh, yes. She said specifically, we have crazy chemistry. Sylvie, she says, knew it wasn't healthy. She tells me in an email, remember what I've told you about the boy I'm hanging with. Very bad influence. Very bad. And then she texts, makes me nuts and I don't need it. Her friends say Sylvie was paying all the bills and was tired of it. Her assistant, Heather Ditson. She wanted him to step up, like be a man and pay for stuff and treat her and spoil her.

I don't think she wanted to be like his sugar mama. That's definitely not what her plan was. And at times, it seemed like Sylvie was trying to raise a child. Prosecutors recovered this to-do list Sylvie drafted for Nick. Five pages of instructions. Nick was to wake up, be out of bed by 10, clean the bathroom, get a job, stop smoking pot, stop drinking. And after intimacy, Sylvie really wanted Nick to say sweet things to her. He was disconnected. Sylvie's family attorney, Susan Carton. His lovemaking was disconnected. And she said, hold me, cuddle with me.

You know, he was detached. So detached that Sylvie texted one friend, upset that Nick wanted something she wasn't comfortable with in bed. He wanted porn sex. What that was, we really never really knew, but it wasn't something that Sylvie thought was loving. She wanted to be held. She wanted to be cared for. Nick wrote Sylvie several apologetic letters promising to change, only the trouble escalated. One friend testified that Sylvie told her Nick even threatened her life one night. By Thanksgiving 2010, her friends say they thought the relationship was over. It was done, as far as she said.

But Sylvie never really ended it. On December 5th, court documents show she wrote Nick, Nicholas, I am so in love with you. Four days later, she was dead. And Sylvie's brother Patrick thinks he knows why. He believes he found what may have been Nick's motive to kill his sister. It was clear that someone was stealing from her. While sorting through Sylvie's personal

effects, Patrick found ATM statements that suggest his sister believed Nick was making unauthorized deductions from her account. She began a project to identify which ATM withdrawals were fraudulent. How much money altogether? Over $30,000. But Nicholas Brooks stole $30,000. What, Nicholas Brooks stole $30,000 from your sister? That's what it appears. Prosecutors say shortly before she died, Sylvie also learned something about Nick that really upset her. Nick visited escort service websites like this one and had used prostitutes. Around one in the morning, the day before she died,

Sylvie sent a message to Alicia Bell. The last text message that I got says, I know you're sleeping, but what a night. And that was on December 8, 2010. Just hours later, Sylvie sent another message, this one to Nick. Prosecutors call it the FU email. It reads, Nick, for the past six months,

I have supported you financially and emotionally. The fact you cheated on me makes me sick and you will effing pay. I am speaking with the credit card company and the police and I'm going to tell them that I never allowed you to use my card. I don't care. Have fun in jail. But Nick's defense says Sylvie's angry threat meant nothing. She never called the police. Instead, that very night, she met Nick at her apartment and was intimate with him.

I know my brother is innocent, and he did not harm Sylvie Cachet. My brother would never hurt anybody. I know my brother inside and out. Amanda and Nicholas Brooks' mother is too emotionally distraught to attend her son's trial. But Amanda's godparents, Lynn and Richard Barry, have relocated from Florida to be here. The truth is he didn't do it. He did not murder her. And you're confident as well of his innocence? I'm 100% confident. I've heard the whole story. He's told me every single detail. We believe in him so much we would not have stood up for him like this.

Fifty-six prosecution witnesses testify against Nick. The defense calls just one, a former New York medical examiner who suggests there was no murder that night. Sylvie died from too many prescription pills. Attorney Jeffrey Hoffman. Our expert witness testified that the combination of drugs in her system resulted in her passing out and slip under the water. And the defense expert testifies there's no way to tell when Sylvie suffered her injuries. But since the judge won't allow Nick's lawyer to tell the jury his rough sex theory, he's resorted to hinting at the idea.

At every turn, the defense tried to show that there might have been this rough sex, that there might have been some type of sexual activity before, some erotica sex. There was absolutely no basis for it. Sylvie Cachet's family attorney, Susan Carton. In my mind, this was a very thin defense. It was a bogus defense. But Hoffman isn't done. He asked the jury to consider this. After Nick left Sylvie and went out partying, he returned to the Soho house. Seeing all the police cars outside, he didn't run away.

If he believed he killed somebody in this instance, Sylvie Cachet, seeing all that, would he walk into it? The answer is no. You know what's a head scratcher is he leaves the Soho house, goes and parties with a stranger and returns to the hotel. Very odd unless you are trying to create the illusion of some form of quasi alibi. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance believes coming back to the hotel was all part of Nick's plan. And he says the defense can't explain away the timeline that puts Nick Brooks in the hotel room when Sylvie took her last breath. After five weeks of testimony,

the jury finally gets the case, and they seem to be struggling. After the first day, the second day, then I started to get a little worried. Hoffman's suggestions seem to have raised some questions for jurors. Reporter Murray Weiss. There were a number of readbacks that the jurors wanted. They wanted to hear more about their sex life and whether there was some rough sex.

But the judge tells the jury since there was no evidence of rough sex, they should not speculate about it. Then on day three, the jury returns. Breaking news in lower Manhattan, a guilty verdict. Nicholas Brooks, guilty, second degree murder. And sentenced to 25 years to life. It's hard to put into words. It's very overwhelming. It's heartbreaking. It's pretty unbear into words. It's very overwhelming. It's heartbreaking.

It's pretty unbearable for all of us. With Nick's guilt no longer in question, all that remains for Sylvie's loved ones is trying to understand why she stayed with him for so long. Best friend, Alicia Bell. No one can grasp it, nobody. I think she felt bad for him because he gave off that, like like I am a little puppy dog, a stray lost dog that needs help in life.

She was very motherly like that. And I think she saw somebody that she could help. To the district attorney, Sylvie's death is a classic case of domestic violence. She obviously was conflicted with the desire to get out, but the inability to get out. And that is what we see in domestic violence cases again and again and again. While it's too late to save Sylvie, Vance is committed to helping other victims. His office is heading up a new Family Justice Center in Manhattan that provides services to rebuild their lives. This center will provide a safe haven, we believe, for domestic violence survivors. Sylvie's family has set up a foundation which will also assist victims.

Helping others is a way for them to honor Sylvie's memory and compassionate spirit. To me, my daughter is an angel, a real angel, an angel of kindness, of good. She had this personality that was just really caring and alive. And I think you felt alive when you were around her. And I'm going to miss that. And I miss the opportunity that she had. I mean, she was going to be somebody huge. Nick Brooks is appealing his conviction. District Attorney Vance's Domestic Violence Center has helped more than 20,000 people since it opened in 2014. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.