NYC- Yoga instructor Paul Cortez - the long-haired Lothario who wooed murdered stripper Catherine Woods at a Manhattan gym - will be charged later this week with her grisly slaying, authorities said yesterday. Cops matched Cortez's fingerprints to one found at the murder scene and would have charged him with the slaying yesterday but held off because the transit strike prevented grand jury members from getting to court, prosecutors said.
"There is a bloody fingerprint found at the scene that was matched to this defendant," Assistant District Attorney Martha Stolley said yesterday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Cortez, 25, a wanna-be rock star, has been the prime suspect in the Nov. 27 murder. He was busted late Monday on an unrelated sex assault charge, allowing cops to fingerprint him.
Woods was found nearly decapitated inside her upper East Side apartment by her longtime flame and roommate, David Haughn, 23, a doorman and aspiring rapper.
She came to the city with dreams of starring on Broadway, but paid her rent by dancing in topless clubs. The 21-year-old beauty's doting family in Columbus, Ohio, only learned of her double life after her death.
Suspicion for her murder first fell on Haughn, but he cooperated with cops - allowing them to fingerprint him, examine him for scratch marks and take DNA samples - while Cortez stonewalled investigators.
Haughn's family said they never doubted his innocence.
"We knew David didn't do it. It just wasn't in him," said Haughn's grandmother, Anita Gaston. "We're so tickled they found who did it. I didn't use to believe in a life for a life, but Catherine's family is just devastated. They need some justice."
Haughn told cops he left his E.86th St. apartment the night of the murder to get his car to drive Woods to a Times Square topless club only to return to find her dead. Her larynx and jugular vein were severed.
Police sources said surveillance video shows Cortez lurking outside the apartment just before the murder. Cops also have said Cortez called Woods seven times from his cell phone before she was killed.
"It was clear they were eventually going to arrest him," said his lawyer Michelle Gelernt, who failed to convince Judge Karen Lupuloff to grant Cortez bail yesterday.
Police were expected to execute search warrants last night at Cortez's home and the Equinox gym where he worked. Customers at the E. 85th St. gym had few kind words for him.
"Every woman who has flirted with him describes him as overly obsessive," said Neam Obstfeld, 25, of Manhattan. "He had the ability to pull them in with this yoga personality ... but everyone knew they could see the anger in him."
Cortez was arrested Monday night on a sexual assault charge when a woman he dated told cops he had attacked her last New Year's Day.
