The Cunningham family seemed to live the perfect suburban life in Westchester County.
Michael was a successful entrepreneur who rose early to exercise, commuted to work on Wall Street, and then returned to his four-bedroom, colonial-style home in Rye.
His 41-year-old wife was a stay-at-home mom who ferried their two kids to tennis, soccer and basketball in the family’s Porsche Cayenne.
Then their American Dream suddenly went up in flames when Michael, also 41, learned that his wife — who claimed she grew up as an orphan in Milan, Italy — was really a Mexican immigrant who fled a chaotic childhood of 10 siblings for the US at 19, according to court papers.
Two years later, while living in Colorado, she legally changed her name to the bizarre DKNY Swarovski.
But then Michael discovered an even more disturbing secret from his wife’s more recent past: Their kids told a therapist that in 2014, DKNY had tried to strangle their 8-year-old son with headphone wires so she could kidnap their 5-year-old “without the extra baggage,” according to a divorce judge’s ruling.
“I’m in shock at this point,” Michael said, recalling the moment when he first learned about the alleged murder attempt.
After a 2015 therapy session, the son collapsed in his father’s lap crying.
“He’s apologizing to me and I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and he said, ‘Mom tried to kill me and it wasn’t an accident, she put a cord around my neck,’” Michael recalled.
The shocking details of the Cunningham divorce case emerged this week after Westchester Judge Linda Christopher referred the mother to law enforcement for criminal charges.
“This case is unlike even the most horrendous cases of abuse and neglect that Family Court judges must preside over,” Christopher writes in her ruling awarding the dad full custody. “Attempting to kill one’s own child in a calculated, coldblooded manner is a rarity,” she emphasized.
Michael discovered an even more disturbing secret from his wife’s more recent past: Their kids told a therapist that in 2014, DKNY had tried to strangle their 8-year-old son with headphone wires.
The judge even quotes what DKNY told her son. “‘It will only hurt for a minute,’ she eerily comforted him,” the judge writes. “This while his 5-year-old sister was shoved into the bathroom to allow the mother an opportunity to get rid of her son as extra baggage, in an attempt to vanish with her ‘sweet little girl.’”
The son was left with visible scars that DKNY tried to cover with makeup, the ruling states.
The incident happened in August 2014 when the wealthy housewife “absconded” with the kids on a one-way trip to Colorado, the decision says. She returned home when she was threatened with arrest, Michael said.
He told The Post that although his wife’s name was strange, she refused to talk about her past, saying only that her parents died in a car accident when she was 11.
Still, he never questioned her claimed Italian heritage.
“We went to Italy, we met people who were supposed to be her previous employees, previous friends, they all spoke Italian to each other,” Michael said. “She was meticulous. She left no stone unturned.”
The couple met in New York and married in Las Vegas in 2004. Michael, who now works in television, filed for divorce after 10 years of marriage when his wife refused to let his friends or family be involved in their children’s lives, he said.
Reached at work, DKNY — who goes by her married last name, Cunningham — said she never harmed her kids. “I’m going through a very ugly divorce and my children have been brainwashed by my ex-husband,” she said. She declined to comment more on the case.
Christopher referred the case to both the Westchester County and Denver, Colo., district attorneys. A spokesman for Westchester said his office determined that the case belongs in Colorado.
A spokesman for the Denver DA said her office has received the ruling but would need “a referral from law enforcement in New York … for any involvement here.”