Makenzie Vega, a 15-year-old actress who plays Julianna Margulies's daughter in CBS drama The Good Wife, was staying in the room directly above the one where investment executive Andree (Sara) Bejjani was found murdered Saturday. Vega says that hours before the murder she had a retrospectively scary exchange with suspect Derrick Praileau, the housekeeping manager at the Essex House who has confessed to stabbing Bejjani with a 10-inch bread knife during a violent rape attempt.
Vega's story appears in today's Daily News, the very same day The Good Wife premieres on CBS, but surely network flacks aren't trying to exploit the synergy between a horrible murder and the series debut. Vega says on Friday she thought she lost her cell phone in the bedsheets, which had already been collected by the housekeeping staff. That evening, she called housekeeping, which is when she believes she spoke with Praileau, who invited Makenzie to the building's basement to take a look.
But she did not go, and hours later, Bejjani was murdered in her condo, one floor directly below Vega. Praileau, 29, has told investigators he was "blind drunk" when he started wandering around the hotel and condo looking for a woman to attack. Sources tell the Post that Bejjani confessed, "When I drink, I lose control—and I want what I want." He was apparently so inebriated that he left evidence around the crime scene, including his work schedule, which was found on Bejjani's body. At his Bronx home, where he lives with his wife and two children, police found his bloody shoes, pants and shirt.
