Musician Made Friends with Indian Prince, Then Got Caught Up in His NYC Murder Investigation
A shocking Park Avenue double-murder is a bracing reminder that an individual can get drawn into an investigation in a heartbeat. That's what happened to musician Rachael Cain.
A shocking Park Avenue double-murder that's the focus of a new episode of Oxygen’s New York Homicide is a bracing reminder that an individual can get drawn into an investigation in a heartbeat.
Musician Rachael Cain — who at the time of the 1993 crimes was 26 and known as Screamin' Rachael, and the “Queen of House Music” — knows all about that.
She recalls to Oxygen.com how she got caught up in the police probe into the slayings of Prince Chitresh “Teddy” Khedker and his wife, Nenescha, ahead of the New York Homicide Season 3 episode, titled “Royal Bloodshed” and debuting Saturday, March 15 at 9/8c p.m.
Cain, a performer and music producer who now lives in Chicago, vividly recalls learning of the murders on Monday, April 12, 1993, and how she responded. “I fainted,” she told Oxygen.com. “I just passed out.”
Khedker, 57, a prince from India, and his wife, a 70-year-old socialite, were found dead that day at their Upper East Side home by their maid. They’d been strangled and the case became a media sensation.
Rachael Cain meets Prince Khedker
Cain, who was living in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan at the time, met Khedker months earlier. “I’d been named best live performer of the year. There was a dinner party held for me at Tattoo, a club on the Upper East Side,” Cain said. “He was a very impressive gentleman.”
Cain later met his wife at the couple’s apartment. “She was quiet, she kept to herself," the musician recalled.
Khedker, who loved nightlife and was well-connected socially, took an interest in Cain. “He said I could be bigger than Madonna,” Cain told Oxygen.com. “Teddy had told me about these people in show business — he believed they were a father and son — that could possibly help me with my career.”
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Cain was invited to meet Khedker and, she believes, the same two men he'd told her about, on Friday, March 9. She chose to attend an MTV event instead. Police determined that the Khedkers were killed that night.
Cain had left a series of increasingly insistent messages throughout the weekend on Khedker’s answering machine. When she called on April 12, a detective answered the phone and informed her of the murders, she told Oxygen.com. “It was a complete shock,” she said.
Rachael Cain drawn into double-murder case after calls
With her tie to the victims, Cain was suddenly thrust into the case. Investigators had to determine if she had valuable information to share as a witness, or, was a potential suspect.
“I knew that everything would be okay for me,” she said. “But it's never pleasant to have people say, ‘We’re going to bring you down to the precinct.’” Cain was cleared by detectives in a couple days, she added.
But Cain remained tethered to the double-homicide. The press picked up on “the prince and the showgirl” narrative, she said. But despite Khedker’s pursuit, Cain said she did not have a sexual relationship with him.
“He wanted it to be an affair,” Cain said. “He wanted it to be one way, and that isn't the way that it went.”
Cain — as a singer-songwriter who performed at New York City clubs — also knew the players involved in the 1996 murder of fellow "Club Kid" Andre “Angel” Melendez. "There have been a lot of very unusual events in my life," Cain told Oxygen.com.
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Cain's decision may have "saved my life"
She still thinks about the meeting at the Khedker residence that she skipped that Friday night.
“Choosing to go to a different party rather than to do something that might have forwarded my career seemed flaky at the time,” Cain said. “But it could very easily have saved my life.”
Eventually, detectives learned the identification of the two men who’d been at the Khedker home on the night of the murders because of another double-homicide in Manhattan.
To find out who they were and more about the case, watch New York Homicide's “Royal Bloodshed" episode, which debuts on Saturday, March 15 at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen.
