By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — Chilling video released by prosecutors last week shows a Chinatown man walking the woman he is accused of strangling back to his apartment after a date to a strip club.
As accused killer Michael Lenahan, 32, walks through the lobby of his apartment building at 20 Confucius Plaza, he barely speaks to 24-year-old Lorna Santiago in the video shot at 4 a.m. Oct. 7, 2007 after the pair went on a date to Rick's Cabaret.
Three days later, Santiago was discovered decomposing in Lenahan's bedroom.
Lenahan is on trial for allegedly choking the young woman to death. She had recently moved to the New York area and was working as a passport inspector in Manhattan at the time of her ill-fated encounter, prosecutors said in opening statements at his murder trial last week.
As his date lay dead on his bed, Lenahan eerily searched "how to preserve a dead body" and watched sadomasochist porn on the Web, Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon argued last week.
The video, shown at trial on Thursday, also shows the pair on the elevator ride to the 39th floor where Lenahan lived with his grandmother.
He briefly placed his hand on Santiago's shoulder, but the pair did not appear to be speaking much as they went upstairs.
The doorman on duty testified last week that Lenahan and Santiago both appeared sober as they came into the building.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, said the doorman, who knew Lenahan by name as "Mike."
Lenahan's attorney, Fredrick Sosinsky, argued the tragic event was an accident that she was put in a choke hold during a fight but he did not intend to kill her.
Testimony will continue Wednesday in Lenahan's bench trial.
