Detectives searching for the cold-blooded killer who stabbed exotic dancer Catherine Woods were early today quizzing her ex-boyfriend who continued to room with the vivacious, raven-haired beauty even though she had a new beau, sources said.
Doorman David Haughn described by police sources as "a person of interest" had pointed the finger at Woods' current lover, a professional dancer, who was also questioned and released.
A detective told The Post that skin was found under Woods' fingernails but Haughn had no scratches.
Just a week before she was savagely stabbed Sunday night in her Upper East Side apartment, Woods, 21, told her parents she had landed a job in an off-Broadway play called "Privilege" after an actor she was understudying got laryngitis, according to her grandfather, Clarence Greer.
A spokesman for the Second Stage Theater, where "Privilege" closed six months ago, said she had not been a cast member.
Instead, Woods whose father, Jon Woods, is director of the famed Ohio State University marching band was performing on another stage, at a Chelsea topless club called Privilege.
She left the strip joint in mid-July, management said.
The closest Woods got to her dream of dancing under the lights of a Broadway theater was her role as "Ava," the name she used performing at FlashDancers Gentleman's Club in Times Square.
"Penny," the club's manager, said Woods didn't socialize with the other dancers. "She talked a lot about her family," Penny said. "She was very nice and quiet. She didn't drink."
Haughn, a would-be rapper who uses the name "City," told cops he left the couple's second-floor apartment at 355 E. 86th St. at about 7 p.m. Sunday to work on his car. He said that when he returned 20 minutes later, he found the door ajar, and Woods unconscious and covered in blood. Her throat was slashed with a knife.
An upstairs neighbor, Andrew Gold, 49, heard a long scream at 6:20 p.m., followed by another, short scream, and then a scuffle as the victim's terrified dog barked.
"Then I heard a thud, like a statue knocked over," he said.
Friends and co-workers of Haughn, whose lower-income background contrasted with Woods' middle-class upbringing and who was said to be disliked by her parents, described the tall, blond, blue-eyed man as soft-spoken and somewhat naive.
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