Manhattan prosecutors presented their star witness today in a macabre Chinatown murder — a coroner who testified that the young victim’s strangler kept squeezing her neck for at least two minutes after she lost consciousness.
Murder defendant Michael Lenahan, 31, has insisted at trial that he’d only put girlfriend Lorna Santiago, 24, in a chokehold to get her to stop punching him during an argument, and hadn’t intended to kill her.
But if Lenahan really hadn’t wanted to kill Santiago, he would have let go when she passed out, rather than continue to grip her neck for two minutes or more, argues prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon..
Lenahan kept Santiago’s body in his bed for two days in the Confucius Plaza apartment he shared with his ailing grandmother, until it was discovered by his mother.
He spent those two days surfing web sites on sadomasochism and how to preserve a body, the prosecutor has told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon, who is presiding over the non-jury trial.
“I had no idea I was choking her with too much force,” Lenahan had told cops three years ago in claiming the strangulation was accidental.
He faces a maximum of up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted.