A fitness instructor yesterday was set to be slapped with murder charges for butchering his stripper ex-girlfriend – but grand jurors were thwarted by the transit strike.
Instead, he was arraigned only on charges he sodomized another woman, on New Year’s Day.
“There was a bloody fingerprint found at the [murder] scene which has been matched to this defendant,” Assistant District Attorney Martha Stolley said of Paul Cortez, a suspect in the death of stripper Catherine Woods. “But [if it wasn’t] for the transit strike, we would have arrested this defendant [on murder charges],” said Stolley.
Only a handful of people from three separate grand juries were able to beat the strike and make it to court yesterday, prompting prosecutors to hold their case close to the vest until they can get a complete panel.
So instead, Cortez – Wood’s wannabe-actor ex-boyfriend who has been at the heart of the NYPD’s investigation since her body was found inside her East 86th Street apartment on Nov. 27 – was arraigned only on criminal sex charges for the previous incident with a second woman.
Wearing blue jeans, a hooded sweatshirt a jacket draped over his arm, a piqued-looking Cortez listened as Stolley described how he forced himself on the 25-year-old victim he met that night at a Manhattan bar.
Once inside an East 116th Street apartment, the gym rat allegedly straddled the woman’s chest before flipping her over and forcing her to submit to a sex act. She came forward only last Friday after reading postings on a Web site for the aspiring rock star’s band, Monolith. The site blasted newspaper reports about Cortez being suspected in Woods’ gruesome death, calling it bold-faced lies.
“The reason for the delay is because the victim was embarrassed and didn’t think anyone would believe her,” said Stolley as she urged Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Karen Lupuloff to hold Cortez without bail, describing him an “extreme flight risk.”