NEW YORK - The ex-boyfriend charged with killing a New York University professor's daughter faced a judge in a hospital gown, his fidgety presence beamed into a courtroom via closed-circuit television.
Michael Cordero remained hospitalized and on suicide watch during his arraignment on murder charges. Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Melissa Jackson ordered Cordero, 23, held without bail.
A prosecutor said Cordero had given detailed written and videotaped confessions explaining how he killed 20-year-old Boitumelo McCallum and left her body to decompose in a campus apartment.
Cordero told investigators, “I strangled her after a fight, wrapped her up and left her on the floor,” Assistant District Attorney Martha Bashford said.
Cordero, who slit his wrists shortly before his arrest, sat in a tiny room next to his lawyer for the brief hearing.
When it was over, he bowed his head for several seconds before being pulled out of the room by a court officer.
Cordero's lawyer, Eric Sears, said he would probably ask a judge to invalidate his client's alleged confession, the New York Post reported.
The lawyer suggested Cordero couldn't have properly consented to questioning, given his medical condition after the suicide attempt.
McCallum was a student at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. Her mother, Teboho Moja, who was overseas at the time of the slaying, is a professor of higher education who has served as a policy analyst in South Africa, where her daughter was born.
Police found McCallum's badly decomposed body wrapped in a sheet in a locked bedroom Sunday after tenants noticed a foul smell.
From the start, detectives said they were investigating the death as a homicide and wanted to question the victim's boyfriend.
On Tuesday, after Cordero was publicly identified as the boyfriend, he cut his wrists on a Manhattan rooftop, police said.
Police later located Cordero in a nearby grocery store and took him to a hospital.
Once there, police say, he told the staff, “I tried to kill myself because I killed my girlfriend.”
The medical examiner has ruled that McCallum died from “manual strangulation and smothering due to covering of face with a towel.”
A prosecutor said Cordero had given detailed written and videotaped confessions explaining how he killed 20-year-old Boitumelo McCallum and left her body to decompose in a campus apartment.
Cordero told investigators, “I strangled her after a fight, wrapped her up and left her on the floor,” Assistant District Attorney Martha Bashford said.
Cordero, who slit his wrists shortly before his arrest, sat in a tiny room next to his lawyer for the brief hearing.
When it was over, he bowed his head for several seconds before being pulled out of the room by a court officer.
Cordero's lawyer, Eric Sears, said he would probably ask a judge to invalidate his client's alleged confession, the New York Post reported.
The lawyer suggested Cordero couldn't have properly consented to questioning, given his medical condition after the suicide attempt.
McCallum was a student at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. Her mother, Teboho Moja, who was overseas at the time of the slaying, is a professor of higher education who has served as a policy analyst in South Africa, where her daughter was born.
Police found McCallum's badly decomposed body wrapped in a sheet in a locked bedroom Sunday after tenants noticed a foul smell.
From the start, detectives said they were investigating the death as a homicide and wanted to question the victim's boyfriend.
On Tuesday, after Cordero was publicly identified as the boyfriend, he cut his wrists on a Manhattan rooftop, police said.
Police later located Cordero in a nearby grocery store and took him to a hospital.
Once there, police say, he told the staff, “I tried to kill myself because I killed my girlfriend.”
The medical examiner has ruled that McCallum died from “manual strangulation and smothering due to covering of face with a towel.”
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