A Crown Heights woman was beaten to death by her daughter's boyfriend in a violent end to weeks of domestic strife that came with a stunning admission: the suspect said he'd had an affair with the 61-year-old victim, police sources said Wednesday.
Joseph Cazeau, 48, told police that he killed Marie Tertel because she had put a voodoo hex on him, the sources said. Cazeau, a Haitian immigrant, was charged with second-degree murder.
Police said the slaying occurred Tuesday afternoon as Cazeau's girlfriend and mother of their three children, Mary Luzincourt, 42, was at court seeking an order or protection against him.
Tertel was found dead in her daughter's St. John's Place home.
Cazeau called 911 and confessed killing Tertel, police said. Sources said Cazeau made a written and a videotaped confession and even identified a length of pipe he used to strike Tertel five times.
"He killed my mother," Marc Tertel said quietly as he left his sister's home. "He is a terrible man -- a very violent man." The couple met 12 years ago and have three children 10, 9 and 2.
Their rocky relationship came to a head two weeks ago when Cazeau confessed to Luzincourt that he was having an affair with her mother, sources said.
Tertel denied the love triangle allegation to her daughter, but Luzincourt, already fed up with Cazeau's abusive ways, according to relatives, demanded that he leave their home.
In retaliation, Cazeau filed a complaint with police saying his girlfriend wanted him out and that he did not want to leave, sources said.
"My sister wanted him out of the house," Marc Tertel said. "It was very difficult. There were other issues and he was not helping to pay the mortgage or the electric bills."
"We have family troubles," Luzincourt said.
Detectives believe Cazeau killed Tertel in the afternoon, then said nothing until about 9 p.m., as his girlfriend was getting the kids ready for bed. When she told the 10-year-old to go to the bedroom where his father had been sleeping recently, Cazeau confessed, the sources said.
"He can't come in," the suspect told his girlfriend, one source quoted him as saying. "I just killed someone. I killed your mother."
The source said Cazeau picked up a phone dialed 911 and told the dispatcher, "I did a bad thing - send the cops here."
"It's really shocking," said neighbor Nichola Morgan, 33. "She was always with those children. Why would he kill someone who was taking care of his kids?"
She said Cazeau "did not like a lot of noise. She would have to move the kids to the back of the house when he came home from work."
Cazeau worked as a cook at the Museum of Natural History and has no previous criminal record.