Ex-boyfriend found guilty of killing dancer from Ohio

The victim's father is director of the Ohio State University marching band.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A personal trainer was convicted Thursday of murdering a classically schooled dancer who chased her dream of stardom from Ohio to Broadway but wound up performing in a strip club.
Paul Cortez, 26, was found guilty for slashing the throat of his ex-girlfriend, 21-year-old Catherine Woods, on Nov. 27, 2005, in her Manhattan apartment. The jurors deliberated over three days following a two-week trial in state Supreme Court.
He faces 25 years to life in prison at his March 23 sentencing on the second-degree murder conviction. His mother wept in the courtroom as the verdict was read, but Cortez showed no emotion.
Defense attorney Dawn Florio promised an appeal, and predicted that her client would prevail -- most likely by claiming prosecutors had no right to introduce Cortez's diaries, which detailed his tortured feelings over Woods' refusal to love him.
Cortez was calm after hearing the verdict, she said. "He was calmer than we were. He was very peaceful."
During closing arguments, prosecutor Peter Casolaro cited the key piece of evidence against Cortez -- the bloody print of a left index finger that was a match with the defendant. Casolaro said the print "actually puts Cortez in the apartment committing the murder." He showed the jury the print on a chunk of plaster that was cut out of the wall.
Other evidence
He also submitted Cortez's phone records as evidence. On the day of the slaying, the aspiring rock star repeatedly called Woods with an interval of only minutes between each phone call.
The calls stopped during the time the aspiring dancer was killed, and Cortez never placed another phone call to the victim, Casolaro said.
"He already knows she's dead and there is nobody to answer the phone," Casolaro told the jury.
Woods, a classically trained dancer, moved to Manhattan from Ohio, hoping to make it as a dancer on Broadway but instead wound up working in topless bars to cover her living expenses. Her father, Jon Woods, is director of the Ohio State University marching band.
The slain woman's father fought back tears when he took the stand as the trial's first witness and detailed his 2005 trip to New York, where he identified his daughter's mutilated body. Woods said his daughter's killer had called him seven months before the slaying to say she was abusing drugs and alcohol while dancing naked in strip clubs.
Woods testified that his daughter denied Cortez's accusations.
Defense lawyer Laura Miranda suggested another suspect, David Haughn, Woods' former boyfriend from Columbus, who was living with the victim at the time of her death.
The defense lawyer said Haughn, 25, was enraged by jealousy over Woods' seeing Cortez and other men. But during the trial, Miranda never offered proof that Woods was intimate with anyone but Cortez and Haughn.
The prosecutor charged the killer stabbed and slashed Woods furiously, his angry response to failed relationships with several women before he met the Ohio native. Cortez became a "violent, narcissistic misogynist [who] couldn't handle rejection," the prosecutor said.