# Man who killed stripper girlfriend did it to save her from life of sin.



## Anton Bruckner (Jan 10, 2006)

STRIPPER SLAY DIARY
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/61350.htm

By LAURA ITALIANO
PHOTO Paul CORTEZ
Photo: Jeff Day

January 10, 2006 -- EXCLUSIVE

He had to save Catherine Woods from sin - by slashing her throat.

Personal trainer Paul Cortez, charged with slaughtering his stripper girlfriend in her Upper East Side apartment, admitted his sadistic crime in a hand-scribbled diary that featured references to sacred writings favored by Hare Krishnas, The Post has learned.

"He's talking a lot about Hindi gods and people cutting off each other's heads as sacrifices," said a source familiar with the chilling diary that cops found in the home of yoga-trainer suspect Cortez, 25. "He talks about cutting her throat. It's because she won't change her ways. She won't quit her stripping, and she's living a life of sin.

"The impression is, he's freeing her from her earthly bounds that are just so distasteful to him. It implies that she would be better off dead."

Cortez is being held without bail, accused of nearly decapitating Woods, a beautiful topless dancer, last November.

In his diary, Cortez makes references to the book that may have been his inspiration "” the Bhagavad Gita, a portion of the sacred books of Hinduism revered by Hare Krishnas, the source said.

Cortez, a rock-star wannabe, was so crazy and careless, he left the journal behind for cops to seize when they got a search warrant last month, sources said.

"He's so nuts, it's three weeks after the murder and he's still got a diary in his apartment, talking about the murder beforehand, and then talking about how bad he feels afterward "” using her name," said one source.

In entries apparently made after the murder, Cortez writes about how much he misses the 21-year-old Woods "” to the point of wanting "to follow her" into death.

As evidence, Cortez's diary is terribly damning, the source said.

"It's very bad "” it's like the last nail in his coffin," a source said.

The other "nails," investigators say, are Cortez's bloody fingerprint at the crime scene and video surveillance showing him standing outside Woods' East 86th Street apartment at around the time of the murder.

Yesterday, another "nail" was made public "” Cortez's police statements. In them, Cortez is careful to give himself an alibi, insisting that on the day of the murder, he was home, making phone calls and then visiting friends. Still, he freely displays to cops how obsessed he's been with his tragic girlfriend "” and how stormy their relationship had been.

At one point, Cortez said he "begged" her to quit her job dancing topless at Privilege on West 23rd Street because he believed she had been drugged and raped there.

When she refused, "I then called her father, Jon Woods," who is the director of the Ohio State University marching band, in Woods' home state, Cortez wrote.

Cortez told the father everything, the statement says.

"He was clearly controlling and obsessed," a law-enforcement source said of Woods. "He's the boyfriend from hell."

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## Anton Bruckner (Jan 10, 2006)

I didn't know that Hindus and the Hare Krishna's are this extreme.


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## turmeric (Jan 10, 2006)

Generally, they aren't. I believe the Bhagavad Gita records an incident during a power-struggle of rival factions in the warrior/ruler caste in ancient India, in which "lord Krsna" takes the disguise of a warrior's coachman and convinces him that he's fighting a just war.


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## Pergamum (Jan 10, 2006)

If God has predestined all people to heaven or hell and if babies are all assumed to be predestined to be saved then we should be peopling heaven by genocide. 

If even the Apostle Paul could wish himself accursed for the sake of his brethren, then the Christian thing to do would be to be the initiators of this genocide -for the sake of the children,even if they were guilty of sin!

Sometimes logic can be twisted a tad....


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