A PUBLIC OFFENDER DEFENDER
‘Slur’ heiress in court
Poor little rich girl. The millionaire socialite accused of hurling anti-Semitic slurs at a Manhattan restaurant patron on New Year’s Eve and bashing him on the head with her mirrored designer purse was in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday — and her lawyer was a public defender.
Adding to NFL heiress Jacqueline Kent Cooke’s woes, prosecutors revealed they are mulling a hate-crime charge.
She was represented by a taxpayer-funded lawyer despite being the daughter of late Washington Redskins multimillionaire-owner Jack Kent Cooke. The lawyer said in Manhattan Criminal Court that Cooke, 29, was simply misheard and that the bloodied victim was to blame for her broken finger.
Matthew Haberkorn, 52, suddenly started screaming at her in the coat check line inside Caravaggio on the Upper East Side, the lawyer claimed.
“My client never made the slur that she was accused of making,” Rebecca Phipps, a lawyer with New York County Defenders, told the court. “This is a simple misunderstanding where a statement was misheard at a busy restaurant. That statement was never made.”
Prosecutors allege Cooke (inset) spat, “Hurry up, Jew,” at Haberkorn’s mother as she waited to retrieve her coat and then twice bashed Haberkorn in the head with her Lulu Guinness Women Chloe Mirror Perspex clutch outside the East 74th Street eatery, leaving him bloodied. Assistant DA Jorge Deossa said the incident, for which Cooke is charged with second-degree assault, was being investigated as a possible hate crime.
But Phipps said Cooke and her boyfriend fled the restaurant to escape the couple and that Haberkorn followed her down the street and “continued to yell offensive slurs” at the late sports tycoon’s daughter before pushing her to the ground. Footage of the sidewalk confrontation shows Cooke flailing on the sidewalk, shrieking, “You called me a f--king bitch. You called me a c--t!”
“You called me a f--king Jew!” he yells back.
“My client has a clearly broken finger,” the lawyer said as she held up her wrist.
Meanwhile, Haberkorn reported to the 19th Precinct station Thursday to receive a desk-appearance ticket, after Cooke filed a crosscomplaint against him. He did not immediately return a message.
Deossa asked the judge to hold Cooke in lieu of $10,000 bail and noted that she had been arrested in 2006 for a theft and that her record also included a 2008 DWI in Boston and driving without a license in South Carolina that same year.
Before releasing her without bail, the judge advised Cooke — whose father was worth more than $800 million before his death in 1997 — to get her own lawyer.
She’s scheduled to return to court Feb. 15.