Cop's Track Stripper's Boyfriend : New York Post

Detectives probing the brutal slaying of stripper Catherine Woods were yesterday trying to pinpoint how their prime suspect — her estranged yoga-teacher boyfriend — may have traveled from his East Harlem apartment to her Upper East Side pad on the day of the murder.

NYPD detectives yesterday questioned workers at a car service across the street from the apartment of 25-year-old Paul Cortez, who had dated Woods over the past year.

"We're doing everything we can. We checked everything, even the buses," said a law enforcement source.

An employee of New Easy Way Radio Dispatcher said cops showed her a picture of Cortez, asking if she recognized the personal trainer and rock musician.

They told her he was a suspect in the killing of Woods, 21, who was stabbed and nearly decapitated in her East 86th Street apartment Nov. 27.

Law enforcement sources have identified Cortez as the prime suspect in the case.

The Post previously reported that cops learned Cortez made seven cell-phone calls in rapid succession to Woods — who did not answer — around the same time she was killed.

He told police he had called from his apartment, but cops learned the calls actually were made from near Woods' apartment, and that surveillance video from a building down the block shows Cortez standing near her residence around the time she was killed.

I was waiting for Cortez to be arrested before blogging, but since it hasn't happened yet and the story is getting old, I blogged it now.

In television coverage for the first 24 hours, she was a dancer who was in training and auditioning. She had told her parents he was in off-Broadway productions.

A day later she was now a "stripper" and the story has been covered from that angle ever since.

Here's some criticism of the coverage:

New York's gristmill exploits Ohio girl's murder : Scrips Howard

On the day after Catherine Woods was killed, the New York Post described her as "an aspiring Broadway dancer" in a story headlined "Dancing Beauty Murdered on Upper E. Side."

Within what seemed a New York minute, however, the 21-year-old was dismissively demoted in a WABC-TV Web site headline: "Still No Arrest in Topless Dancer Murder."

Scrips Howard seems here to be exploiting Wood's death here as well for it own purposes of putting down New York media. Scrips Howard folded its New York newspaper in 1967.

What's especially sad is how God gave her beauty and talent and how tragic her life has ended.

The dangerous thing to do is to say that God punished her or that she deserved it.
God doesn't cause sin or suffering.

Technically, New York has the death penalty for murder, but even though there have been a few death sentences, none have been executed.

Cell phone call traces put Cortez at the scene of the crime and he's already lied to the police, so I think it's only a matter of time before an arrest.