03x03 - Soho Horror

[bunniefuu]

[ambient street noise]

There are situations
you hope to never be in.

What happened in that room, it's not
something you can just forget about.

I arrived for my shift
as night manager at Soho House

on Thursday, December th, .

Soho House is a private members' club,

very exclusive to the arts,
and film, and music industry.

Not open to the general public.

A few hours into my shift,

as I'm going through
my checklist for the evening…

[phone rings]

…I get a call that a guest is experiencing

a heavy leak of water into their room.

We begin to trace back
the origin of the leak,

where eventually
it leads me to Sylvie's room.

Sylvie Cachay was
a young, rising swimsuit designer

who had worked with the likes of
Victoria's Secret and Tommy Hilfiger.

She was up-and-coming, rising,

and heading for great things.

And she was just the perfect member
to be a part of Soho House.

We knock. We get no answer.

I'm able to open up the door.

And it's when I see Sylvie in the bathtub,
uh, submerged underwater.

My first reaction was just to jump in
and remove her out of that tub.

I'm shaking her. I'm talking to her.

I look for a pulse. I feel no pulse.

I then start to perform CPR.

I directed my colleague to call

as I continue to try to resuscitate her,

screaming at her to wake up, to wake up.

Um…

Yeah.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Mooney] Our job is to make sure
you can go home and sleep at night.

[Rivera] It's so important for a family
to know who m*rder*d their relative.

[chief] Compassion for the victims,
that's the most important thing.

[Parrino] I've always liked
the peek behind the curtain.

What really happened?

[McNeely] You want to find out the truth.

That's what detectives do.

[officer] Your instinct is to help people.

[Titus] In New York City, the NYPD…

this is it.

[suspenseful music trails off]

[phone ringing]

[detective] It was a, uh, chilly night.

It was quiet. There was nothing going on.

The phone rings.

It was a young sergeant
from the th Precinct on the other end.

He says,
"Yeah, lemme give you a heads-up."

"We have a young woman
dead in the bathtub at Soho House."

"It looks like she drowned."

I say, "She's pronounced?"
"She's pronounced."

And he was like,
"Uh, do you think this is a problem?"

I said, "It's a problem."

"Because it's pretty tough
to drown yourself in the bathtub."

"We're en route. Just lock it down."

[tense music playing]

The NYPD precinct detective squads operate

from : in the morning
till : a.m. in two shifts.

But at : a.m., crime doesn't stop.
Crime just rolls /.

So we have what's known as "night watch."

You get to go out and do detective work,
but then you pass it off in the morning.

Manhattan's divided into two boroughs,
Manhattan North, Manhattan South.

I worked Manhattan South night watch.

I'm a night owl.
I was born middle of the night.

I loved it.

The saying is,
"Nothing good happens after midnight."

Well, it… That's a true statement.

Soho House is
a very exclusive, high-end club.

Not just anybody can walk in and say,
"Hey, I wanna become a member."

There's a vetting process,
and it comes only with recommendations.

It's high-end. It's very high-end.

Probably not a place I'll be staying in,
but it is what it is.

When we get to Soho House,
I'm with an ambulance, cop car, and us.

Not many people there.

The room was not a big room.

There was a nice, big bed,

but literally three feet
in front of the bed

was this huge, bowl-shaped bathtub.

The hotel manager
had removed the woman from the tub.

We learned the identity of the victim.

It was Sylvie Cachay,
female, years old.

She was on her back,
laid out in front of the tub.

She had a sweater-type top on,

a pair of panties, and a Rolex watch.

Generally not stuff
you're going to wear into the bathtub.

And I'm the suspicious type.

I'm never good with dead people
in bathtubs to begin with.

And there were a number of pill bottles
laid out on the counter.

I think they were antidepressants.

Did this person overdose
and drown in the bathtub?

You don't know.

I call the commanding officer
of the th Precinct.

[ominous music playing]

And the precinct detective squads cover
everything in that geographical area.

Tommy Jones, Bobby Moller,
solid detectives I know for a long time.

They came right over to the scene.

We had an arrest the night before,
and we were working a late night.

So we responded over to the Soho House.

It's very unusual.

The clientele that are there,
you don't expect this to happen there.

We're briefed by the night watch sergeant,
Pete Panuccio.

It's suspicious,
but we don't really know what we have.

You look for blood.

"Is there any blood around?" No blood.

She had what appeared to be
a bite wound on her hand, which is odd.

When stuff like this happens,
homicide squad's gonna get a phone call.

These guys do a lot of footwork for you,
and they help in any way possible.

One in particular,
Detective Al Titus, who is a great guy.

I worked on many cases with him before.

He does his due diligence.

We had a whole team of detectives
on this case.

It was a big deal
because it was a high-end establishment.

There was a celebrity element
to the whole case.

So there's gonna be press involved

and a lot of extra pressure

to come up with answers
as quickly as possible.

[foreboding music playing]

The crime scene unit
started photographing the scene,

fingerprinting the tub,

and taking DNA swabs from the tub
and the faucet on the tub.

One of the things I noticed,
a pair of wet socks on the floor.

And not the kind of socks a young,
fashionable woman would be wearing.

They were gray men's socks.

We were like, "Okay. Now, what happened?"
What's going on? Who was she with?"

One of the first people we spoke to
was Bryan Alvarez,

who was the night manager
of the Soho House Hotel.

The detectives are asking questions of,
"What's going on?"

"Who is Sylvie? Is she with a guest?"

And the timeline of me entering the room
and seeing Sylvie in the tub.

And we were told that she checked in
with her boyfriend, Nicholas Brooks,

at about : in the morning.

Sylvie and her boyfriend Nick
checked into the hotel that evening,

shortly before I started my shift.

[Titus] One of the benefits
of the Soho House

was that they have
a lot of surveillance cameras.

And we were able
to quickly look at the video.

Sylvie seemed a little off her feet.
She was a little tired.

[Alvarez] Sylvie did mention
to my colleague

that she'd taken a sleeping aid,

and that she wasn't feeling well,
and… and needed assistance up to her room.

[Moller] So Nicholas sat
and did the check-in,

and the employee of the hotel said,
"I'll bring you to the room."

[Titus] The surveillance video shows
Sylvie Cachay getting helped upstairs.

It shows Nicholas Brooks
coming in and out of the hotel room

several times after they had checked in,

which was kind of strange.

Surveillance video also shows

Nicholas Brooks leaving the hotel room
the last time at :.

And then at :,
the manager came to check on the leak.

I had asked Bryan Alvarez,

had he seen Nicholas Brooks
after he found Sylvie Cachay?

I explained to the detectives
that he's no longer here. He stepped out.

[foreboding music playing]

She checked in with somebody,
and he's no longer there.

He's leaving the hotel,

which is starting to look
like a crime scene.

So, yeah, it is suspicious.

We have to find out why he's not there.
Where did he go?

[tense music playing]

[Titus] Our priority was
finding the boyfriend.

We were planning to go
canvass the bars in the area.

At about : in the morning,
I'm standing in the lobby,

and he came walking
right through the front door.

[music halts abruptly]

The hotel manager says,
"That's the guy right there."

We look at him,
and his eyes are bloodshot red.

He's completely disheveled.

You could tell
he is drunk, or high, or both.

Obviously, he went out
to go party somewhere.

[Panuccio] I look down,
and he's not wearing any socks.

They're in the room,
in the middle of a crime scene.

Men's gray socks.

[Jones] I introduced myself
to this young gentleman.

I asked him his name, and he said,
"My name is Nicholas Brooks."

I said, "Were you the male

that checked into the hotel
with Sylvie Cachay?"

He said, "Yeah."

I said, "Okay, I have some bad news."

I said, "We found Sylvie
upstairs in the bathtub, unresponsive,

um, and she didn't make it."

He never got upset.

He never said anything like,
"What happened?"

But maybe he's acting weird
because he's intoxicated.

I said to Nicholas,
"We need to talk to you,

find out who your girlfriend is."

"We're gonna need to go back to our office
and figure out what's going on here."

[suspenseful music playing]

[Jones] Nicholas Brooks
was willing to go with us.

I put Nicholas in an interview room.

I said, "It's important for you
to tell me where you were tonight,

for you to tell me what happened tonight."

And he's just… [sputters]

You know, stuttering and this
and really out of it,

and his eyes were closing.

I wasn't gonna get
straight answers out of this guy.

He's messed up.

So I thought, best for him,
"Put your head down for a little while."

You know,
"We'll get back to you later on."

I didn't want to interview somebody

that didn't understand
what I was trying to ask or say.

And although it does delay the process,
it's just better.

And he fell asleep.

If that happened to any one of us,
we'd be beside ourselves,

crying, and not able to sleep.

Wasn't like that with him.

The first thing we want to do, obviously,
is notify Sylvie's family.

Making a notification is tough enough.

I have daughters, so you're always
thinking about the family.

And because they lived in Virginia,
I can't do it personally,

which I prefer to do.

So we got in touch
with the Virginia police department,

and they went over,

and confirmed that they did
make the notification to the family.

[somber music playing]

[man] I received a call from my mother,

just frantic, in tears,
telling me that Sylvie had been k*lled.

Um…

Uh, it was terrible. It was…

completely outside of the realm
of anything I was expecting to hear.

My sister and I grew up
in McLean, Virginia,

a suburb of Washington, DC.

My stepfather was Peruvian %,
as was my mother.

So Sylvie was the daughter
of two Peruvians.

She was very ambitious,
represented the culture,

and tried to bring the culture
into her work as much as she could.

I was, you know, working in New York,

and, um, we would spend
all our holidays together,

and, you know,
we had a great relationship.

I met with the detectives.

I had to identify
my sister through photos.

You always have a hope
that there's, you know,

some untruth to what you're being told.

Until you actually see it, right?

You… You can't ever really fully recover.

[Moller] As morning got on,
it was now the reporters coming,

television cameras,
and trucks pulling up everywhere.

[Panuccio] My lieutenant came in.

And he was like,
"You got a circus downstairs."

"Go take a look."

And there were news trucks
from one end of the block to the other.

When the body is taken
by the medical examiner

over to the ME's office,

everybody's out there with cameras.

[reporter]
Thirty-three-year-old
fashion designer Sylvie Cachay

was found dead
in the uber-chic Soho House.

[Panuccio] Think about it.

A successful, attractive young woman

found dead in a bathtub at the Soho House.

It's a public-interest story. I get it.

The tabloids thrive on it.

I went on almost every news channel.

It's an added layer of pressure, and…

I'd rather that they hadn't known
for another six or eight hours

to give everybody a leg up
on getting the investigation rolling.

[tense music pulsing]

[Jones] Later in the morning,
Nicholas finally wakes up.

He came out, and he said,
"Detective, can we talk?" I said, "Sure."

Nicholas was telling me
that Sylvie and him,

they had been going out six months.

Their relationship was on and off,

and it wasn't a good relationship.

Nicholas told me that

that night he was supposed to meet Sylvie
at her apartment to have some dinner.

He went there.

Said they had sex.

After that, he lit some candles
on the back of her bed

and placed them on a platform
that were right behind it.

[Titus] She had taken
her sleep medication.

He went to take a shower.

He heard the smoke alarm going off.

[alarm beeping]

[Titus] When he came out,
the place was full of smoke.

The whole bed was on fire.

So he jumped on Sylvie,
and he jumped on the bed,

and put it out the best he could.

It actually singed her hair.

She said, "Look,
I'm a member of the Soho House."

"We can't stay here.
The smell of smoke is not good for us."

[foreboding music playing]

[Titus] He also mentioned
that she was having a hard time

going down the stairs
from the apartment down to the street

because the medication
had started kicking in that she took.

[Jones] They jumped into a cab and left.

I really wanted to know,
"What was your demeanor like?"

"Did you guys fight?"

And he said she was agitated,
cursing at him the whole way.

"I can't believe you're such a stoner.
You lit the whole place on fire."

She was upset.

Got to the Soho House.

He said, "We went up to the room,
maître d' put her in bed."

"She had talked
about maybe taking a bath."

"I wanted to get something to eat,

so I went upstairs
to the restaurant, ordered."

And went back downstairs into his room,
told Sylvie he was gonna go out.

I says, "Okay. You told me
she was gonna take a bath. Did she?"

He says, "I don't know. I… I left."

"Did you touch the tub?"

"Did you put the water on for her?"

If she was gonna take a bath,
maybe you were being a nice guy.

He goes, "No."
He goes, "She was in bed still."

According to Nicholas,
he left the hotel room.

And then he left the hotel
to go partying at a bar nearby,

with a guy he just met downstairs
in the lobby named David Raleigh,

until he came back in the hotel
when we saw him.

[Jones] I asked him,
"Did you do anything to Sylvie

before you left to go out with this guy?"

And he said, "No."

There was no concern in his voice,
no concern that he might be in trouble.

He was just straight-laced, stone-cold.

I just felt like he… he did something.

But we don't know exactly
what happened in that room yet.

So Nicholas is staying
at the precinct for the time being.

Our investigation turns to David Raleigh,

the individual Nicholas Brooks said

he hung out with that particular evening.

[ominous music playing]

[muffled banging]

[man] I hear a banging on my door.

I mean, it was loud.

I jumped out of bed and ran to the door.

And I opened it,
and it was two detectives.

And they asked me,
"Do you know Nicholas Brooks?"

And I went, "Oh!"

"Yeah, yeah, I met him last night.
We had a drink."

And they informed me

that a girl had been found dead
in the bathtub at Soho House,

and that her boyfriend
was Nicholas Brooks.

The detectives wanted me to come
down to the station and talk to them.

That night, the Soho House bar is closing,

and I kinda was still in party mode.

So I stopped down at the front desk.

A guy got off the elevator.

He said to the attendant,
"I'm looking for a place to have a drink."

"The bar's closed.
Know anywhere I could have a drink?"

Guy behind the desk looked at me,
looked at him, and said,

"He's going out for a drink. Go with him."

I was like, "Do you want to go?"
He goes, "Yeah, sure."

We got to the bar,
and we were having a drink and chatting.

Then he proceeded
to tell me about his girlfriend

and chatted with me
about his undying love for her.

And he told the story
of the fire in their apartment.

And he said his girlfriend,
she was sleeping in the hotel room.

He said, "I should call my girlfriend
and make sure she's okay."

He called the number,
and it rang and rang.

And he goes, "She's not answering."

And I went,
"Of course, because she's sleeping."

But he said he was gonna leave,
we said good night, and he walked out.

I mean, it was nothing unusual.

[Titus] It kind of confirmed
Nicholas Brooks's story.

At least, it made it seem like that part
of what he was telling us was the truth.

And there's still a possibility
that this is a suicide.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Titus] I need to know
who Sylvie Cachay was.

What was her state of mind?

I interviewed
Sylvie Cachay's family and friends,

and I knew on the other side
that they were emotional.

They told me that she had been depressed.

[woman] I knew Sylvie Cachay in

'cause she hired me
as an intern at Anne Cole Swimwear.

When Sylvie hired me,
we immediately got along.

We would go and, you know,
split a bottle of wine and just chitchat.

Sylvie to me was
a friend, a boss, a mentor.

I looked up to her,
thought she was brilliant.

[shutter snaps]

In , she launched her own swimwear.

She was featured in
Vogue,
InStyle, Sports Illustrated.

Our family celebrated every achievement.

We were very proud of her.

To launch your own line as a designer
is like a dream come true.

Sadly, Sylvie had to dissolve her company

because of the - economic crash.

[Orlando] The investor
that was funding her

had other investments,

and people were being very cautious
with new investments.

She had to go back to work at Anne Cole.
And she loved working at Anne Cole.

We had a great time,

but, you know, you personally feel like
you're taking a step down

from where you had gotten.

I think every day it was on her mind.

[Orlando] I think she did have
a lot of stress. She had a lot of anxiety.

She was on medication
that was working to improve her life

and make her more productive.

[Hadwen] They asked
if Sylvie was suicidal.

The answer would be a hard, immediate no.

Absolutely not.

The setback of Syla closing,
it caused some depression and sadness,

but never, you know,
in an incapacitating way for her.

There was always a plan for the future.

While we were working
during the day at Anne Cole,

we'd go to a print studio
and select prints for Anne Cole.

We'd also be collecting some for Syla.

It was never dead to her.
It was just "paused."

[Titus] Interviewing her intern Heather
was very interesting.

She was able to give me
some very specific information

about Sylvie's relationships
and who she was seeing.

Around ,
Sylvie had broken off an engagement.

She ended up
ending her relationship with her fiancé

because it was too much to deal with

along with what she was also dealing with
with her business.

[Hadwen] After that,
Sylvie was dating a little bit.

And she first met Nicholas in June
when she was going out,

hanging out with friends,
doing the nightlife scene.

Not long after, they were going on a walk
near her house in SoHo.

Her dog Pepper had gotten hit by a car.

Nick had to scoop her up off the ground
and wrap her in the coat.

He was there for her in that moment.

She was devastated.

I really think that that became
like a trauma bond for her.

Otherwise, I don't think
she would've ended up dating him

outside of that,
'cause he was really young.

She was , and I think he was .

They started spending
almost every day together.

He was spending the night.

Essentially one of those
quick move-in situations

where he's always sleeping over.

But there were red flags popping up,
probably month two.

That he didn't have a job
was baffling to her.

She was just getting sick
of him smoking weed all day long,

not working.

I remember her complaining

about the fact
she was always paying for everything.

She called him "the child."

Her friends were saying,
"Dude, you gotta lose this guy."

"Break this off. It's dimming your light."

And she did break up with him.
I think that was hard for her.

[Hadwen] The last memory I have of her
was on the morning before she died.

She's like, "He's asking me to see him."

"I'm just gonna meet him at my house
and we're gonna sit on the stoop."

"Apparently, he has a letter for me.
I'm not even gonna let him up."

[Titus] Knowing Nicholas Brooks
and Sylvie Cachay met up at her apartment,

and how turbulent the relationship was,

I felt more like,
"There's something wrong here."

[Jones] It's important
to go to that apartment,

see what happened during the night there.

[Titus] When we went inside the apartment,

there was clear evidence
that there was a fire.

[Moller] You smell the smoke.

The bed was… was really burnt up.

There was a clump of hair,
burnt hair on the bed.

What Nicholas Brooks was telling Tommy
actually did happen that night.

And then we discovered
the notes they left to each other.

She was telling him that,
"If you don't start being more romantic,

you're not gonna be in my life anymore."

She had a long list of requests,

simple things like "cuddle me after sex,"

"take me on dates,"
"if you use something, replace it."

"Don't smoke pot all day."
"Don't drink all day."

She basically was
almost like a mother telling him that,

"You better get yourself straightened out,
or else this isn't gonna work."

[Titus] The letters from Nicholas
were asking for forgiveness,

promising to do better,
asking her not to give up on me.

It gave us an example
of what she was falling for over and over.

[Moller] There was also another note
she wrote that basically stated

she suspected him
of stealing money from her.

We found Sylvie Cachay's bank statements.

[Jones] He had ordered prostit*tes
using her credit card.

He had complete nerve, in my eyes,

thinking about getting a prost*tute
and using her money to pay for it.

[Titus] And then we find an email,

and we call it the "f*ck you" email.

She wrote to Nick, and she was very upset.

She said, "I found out about you,
I know what you've been doing,

and I'm turning you in to the police
and the credit card companies."

It definitely leads
to a certain type of motive.

That could have been the catalyst

that caused him to make the decision
that he has to take her out.

We did a canvass of her apartment building
to try to get a picture of

if anybody heard anything
going on that night.

We had one of the neighbors stating
that they heard an argument.

They heard someone crying,
and they heard a lot of banging,

like someone falling to the floor
or something going on.

[Titus] You have
fighting and arguing, fire.

A few hours later,
Sylvie Cachay is found deceased.

[Moller] A picture is starting to emerge.

We're thinking, "This might be a homicide,

but we can't charge a person
with half of a picture painted."

We still have to turn over every stone,
find out exactly what happened.

We started to look into Nick's background.

It put a little bit more color
into the picture.

We learned that he was a trust fund baby.

His father,
a writer-composer named Joseph Brooks,

he had written the song
and the movie
You Light Up My Life,

and it won Academy Awards.

It was a well-known song.

♪
You
♪

♪
You light up my life
♪

I think it's one of
the worst songs of all time.

It was on the radios,
on every station, /.

♪
You light up my life
♪

I'm like, "Oh God." [scoffs]

[Titus] And although
he was known for that,

there was also a dark side
that he was known for.

[Panuccio] Around ,
I'm in the th Precinct.

I'm the number two guy
in the detective squad.

Part of my job is to review
all the complaints that came in.

Joe Brooks's name
starts coming across my desk.

I'm seeing a lot of complaints for r*pe.

Special victims squad handles those cases.

I finally called
the special victims squad.

I'm like, "Do we have
a mad r*pist running loose

in the confines of the th Precinct
that I should be concerned about?"

They were like,
"This guy's a serial r*pist."

"This is part of
an ongoing investigation."

[reporter]
The Manhattan District Attorney
indicted Joseph Brooks

on counts of r*pe.

[Moller] Joseph Brooks
was putting ads on Craigslist.

He was trying to get
up-and-coming female, uh, actresses

to come be coached
by a Academy-Award-winner.

He convinced them to come to his house.

He'd drug them,
and then would have his way with them.

Joseph Brooks was charged
with sexual as*ault on numerous women,

and he was awaiting trial.

Knowing Joseph Brooks's background

made me wonder if I was dealing with

the same type of individual
in Nicholas Brooks.

Character-wise, the apple may not fall
too far from the tree.

[mysterious music playing]

[Titus] During the background check,
we also learned that Nicholas's father

had set him up with an apartment
when he was in high school.

His father used to get him escorts.

He learned from his dad
how to pick these prostit*tes up

because his dad had been doing that.

[Titus] It painted
a very strange relationship

between him and the father,

but we also found out that
his father was somewhat controlling him

through the money.

Joseph Brooks's stipulations to Nicholas

was that he could not make contact
with his mother or his sister.

[Moller] And the minute that he found out
that Nicholas contacted his mother,

Joseph Brooks cut him out of the will
and took him off the trust fund

right around , .

So here is a young man out in the world

without any of the financial means
that he's used to living with.

So now if he wanted money,

he needed to, one, either work,
or mooch off somebody.

When he met Sylvie, she had money,
and she was cutting him off.

He may have felt like the gig was up

and that he had to do something

because she threatened
to go to the police.

Adrenaline's going with cases like this.

I'm probably up a good hours,
if not more.

You don't feel tired.

It's really the momentum of the case
that keeps you going.

We all returned to the th Precinct.

[Moller] We have to
look at all the evidence,

so we started to look at
the surveillance footage again,

and started
to really look at the timeline.

[Titus] Was there something we missed,
something we're not seeing?

We confirmed that Nicholas Brooks
left the hotel room at :,

and then went down into the lobby
and met David Raleigh.

Until the manager
came to check on the leak at :,

no one else had entered the room
or exited the room.

We need evidence that when Sylvie died,
Nicholas was still inside the room.

[Titus] So we got access
to the hotel phone records,

and Nicholas Brooks's alibi falls apart.

Once we started to look into
the call records to the front desk,

we started to realize
that it wasn't that he just left at :.

Before he left,

there was a call
coming in to the front desk

that was very interesting.

[phone ringing]

We saw that the phone call about the leak
from the hotel room below

came in at :.

We check the card swipes into the room,

which tells us that Nicholas Brooks
was in the room

when the leak was occurring.

[Moller] There was water overflowing.
It was already on the floor.

It was already seeping
into other apartments.

So he was there when she was in the tub.

He's been lying to us the whole time.

[Jones] So in this case, with the autopsy,

we're gonna know a lot more
about what happened to Sylvie.

[examiner] The significant findings
on this autopsy were

finger marks on the neck, bruises.

And she had petechial hemorrhages
under the eyelids.

That means that she had to have
obstruction of blood flow

at the neck in some way.

And then lungs full of water,
indicating she was alive when she drowned.

And of course, when toxicology came back,

it shows each of those medications
in her system were at therapeutic levels.

It was prescribed medication.

There was nothing there
that could have k*lled her in an overdose.

So that tells me definitely not suicide,
definitely not an accident.

The manner of death was a homicide.

[Jones] We had also gotten
the DNA reports back.

DNA was found on the tub,
and it did come back to Nicholas Brooks.

[Butcher] DNA profile on the tub
could mean nothing.

He's in the room.
He could have used the tub.

But he specifically denied
ever going near the tub.

[Moller] What we believe happened

is when they finally
got to the Soho House,

there was some sort of fight between them.

One thing led to another,
and then he snapped.

Brooks grabbed her by the neck,

pushed her into the bathtub,
held her underwater.

She inhaled the water.

She drowned.

And she was strangled.

[camera shutters snapping]

[reporter ] Did you strangle
your girlfriend?

-[reporter ] Did you do it?
-[reporter ] Did you k*ll Sylvie?

[Moller] We arrested Nicholas Brooks,

and we transport him
down to our central booking facility.

He said to me, "You know, I have money."

I'm thinking, "Is he trying
to bribe me here or something?"

I go, "What do you mean, you have money?"

He goes, "Yeah,
but I can't get to it until the morning."

And I go,
"Well, you don't really need money now."

And he goes,
"Well, I need it to pay for protection."

And I go, "What kind of protection
are you talking about?"

He says, "Well, the white supremacists."

I said, "Why would you say that?"
He goes, "I'm a big fan of
Oz."

I guess he was talking about
the TV show
Oz.

And I was like, "You're not going to Oz."

"You're going to New York City
Central Booking, you know?"

I definitely realized
that he really didn't know how life was

or how life worked.

I just thought it was odd.

At that point,
Corrections took control of him,

and it was the last time I spoke with him.

[Titus] After the arrest
of Nicholas Brooks,

we found out that his father
was coming up for trial.

However, he committed suicide.

[Moller] Joseph Brooks's attorney
took on Nicholas Brooks's case.

[Titus] The defense's position was
that Sylvie suffered from depression.

She was on medication.

She overdosed on that medication
after she got into the tub and drowned.

[reporter]
Her mother and father
flew in from their home in Virginia

to look Nicholas Brooks in the eye.

I didn't see any remorse.
He didn't look at me or my husband.

He didn't face us. He didn't care.

[Orlando] My sister was
an incredible person,

and her life was taken
absolutely inexplicably

by this parasite to society.

He has to pay for my daughter's life,
for her beautiful life.

We got a call from the DA's office
that the trial was over.

Nicholas Brooks was found guilty
and given years to life.

I feel very sorry for the Cachay family.

She should not have died.

People should be wearing her swimsuits.

She should be big in the fashion industry.

New York loves her, and she is New York.

[Orlando] My sister added
to the fun of life.

Myself and others around her
were better off

and did greater things
because she was around.

I miss the happiness
and the light that she brought.

She just was so sweet
and just a soul-level beautiful human.

She will forever be my mentor.

[Jones] Sylvie's case was
my last case as a detective.

I retired shortly after this.

And I have two girls.

It just hits home.

To take someone's life
and be so stone-cold about it afterwards…

It could be his upbringing,

but it was no excuse to k*ll somebody,

especially somebody that you loved.

In April of ', we had
the infamous Central Park jogger case.

It was a jogger that was r*ped
and seriously assaulted.

[detective] It was a huge case
'cause it was Central Park

and because of the horrendousness
of the crime.

Five young males were convicted.

These boys were known
as the Central Park Five.

The injustice that was perpetrated
needed to be undone,

but that's not the whole story.

There are other victims
of what we now put under the umbrella

of the Central Park jogger case.

He made her choose,
"Your eyes or your kids?"

[Rivera] "Your eyes or your kids"

is something I've never heard
any other perpetrator say before.

He started cutting under
and above my eyes.

He was just all about the violence.

It was a beautiful afternoon.
You just don't think it will happen then.

Everybody talks about the case
that haunts you.

That's the case that haunted me.

[dramatic outro music pulsing]