A Chelsea floral designer suffocated to death in 2012 after two male prostitutes bound and gagged him so tightly he couldn’t breathe, prosecutor Lanita Hobbs told a Manhattan jury Monday at the men’s murder trial.
Grifters Edwin Faulkner, 33, and Juan Carlos Martinez-Herrera, 35, allegedly killed John Laubach, 57, after a night of rough sex then ransacked his pad and fled to Florida.
They were busted a few days later with suitcases stuffed with Laubach’s China, antique silver, statutes and jewelry, Hobbs said.
Faulker admitted to cops that he inadvertently caused Laubach’s death when he choked him during consensual rough sex.
But Hobbs argued Laubach died after the men bound and gagged him with an electrical cord cut from a lamp and duct tape so they could rob him. The tape caused him to asphyxiate within minutes, she said.
“The defendants may not have intended the death of John Laubach, but there is no doubt they recklessly engaged in conduct that killed him,” the prosecutor said in Manhattan Supreme Court before Justice Bonnie Wittner.
The men’s defense lawyers told the jury that they were guilty of stealing from Laubach but not of murder, kidnapping or robbery.
“Terrible things happened here, unspeakable almost,” said Faulkner’s attorney Daniel Scott. “John Laubach died from engaging in rough sex for which no one is criminally responsible.”
When Edwin realized that John was dead he panicked and fled, the lawyer said.
Martinez-Herrera’s attorney Daniel Parker said that Laubach, who often strolled through Chelsea with his pet Cockatoo Bolo, was openly gay and known for paying young men for sex.