Sylvie Cachay Update: Nicolas Brooks Pleads Not Guilty to Designer's Strangling, Drowning Death

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) Nicolas Brooks, the son of an Academy Award-winning songwriter, told police he left his girlfriend, swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay, sleeping in a trendy hotel room where she was found strangled and drowned hours later, a court document showed Tuesday, as he pleaded not guilty to murdering her.

The newly released document provides the first detailed look at Brooks' complicated account of the hours surrounding Cachay's Dec. 9 death - an account including an apartment fire and some cocaine-fueled carousing with someone he'd apparently just met. Brooks says he had nothing to do with her death and told police he never even went near the tub.

But a prosecutor said Tuesday there was "no question" Brooks killed Cachay.

"The evidence in this case makes clear that when Nicholas Brooks left Soho House for the last time on Dec. 9, Sylvie Cachay was already dead at the bottom of an overflowing bathtub,"

Manhattan assistant district attorney Jordan Arnold told a court.

Brooks, the 24-year-old son of "You Light Up My Life" songwriter Joseph Brooks, has been held without bail since his arrest. About a dozen members of Cachay's family converged on a Manhattan court for Brooks' brief appearance, where he uttered nothing more than "not guilty" before being taken back to jail.

Cachay, 33, was found half-clothed and face-up in a tub at the Soho House, an elite club and hotel known for hosting celebrities. Brooks wasn't there when her body was found by hotel staffers who'd been alerted after water started leaking through to the floor below. He came back to find police at the hotel, a move his lawyer says supports his innocence.

"It sort of belies reality that if you intentionally killed somebody ... that you would do this," attorney Jeffrey C. Hoffman said Tuesday. "I believe, from what I know now, he was not present

in the premises when the young lady died."

But authorities have said no one but Brooks and a hotel staffer who briefly delivered ice - escorted by Brooks - were in Cachay's hotel room between the time the couple checked into it and when her body was found.

Brooks and Cachay had rented a movie together the evening of Dec. 8 and had sex before he gave Cachay an unspecified medication and went to take a shower, according to the account of his statements. He told police he stepped out of the shower to find the bed on fire, apparently ignited by candles by the headboard, with Cachay sleeping in it.

Brooks said he smothered the blaze, which had burned some of Cachay's hair, and they decided to go to the Soho House, the document said. He told police she fell repeatedly and stumbled into the hotel, so "pilled out" that Brooks checked in while a hotel staffer helped her up to the room at about 12:30 a.m. Dec. 9.

He was in and out of the room, drinking and snacking for a time in the hotel lounge, while she lay in bed, at one point telling him she planned to take a bath to wash her hair, according to the

account of his statements. He ultimately woke her up to tell her he was going out, then left for a hip watering hole with a man he met in the hotel lobby, he told police. The two spent some hours at the bar and the other man's apartment, drinking beers and using cocaine before Brooks went back to the hotel, Brooks told police.

Brooks' arrest came about 18 months after his 72-year-old father was arrested on charges of molesting a series of women lured to his Manhattan apartment for supposed acting auditions. Joseph Brooks has pleaded not guilty to rape and other charges.

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF SYLVIE CACHAY ON CRIMESIDER