Man Convicted of Hiring Pair to Slash Model

A jury Saturday convicted a makeup artist of assault for hiring two men who slashed a model’s face with a razor blade, leaving disfiguring wounds that took more than 100 stitches to close.

Steven Roth was found guilty in the June 5 attack on Marla Hanson, which prosecutors said he arranged in anger over her demands that he return a rent deposit and her rejection of his sexual advances.

Roth, 28, faces up to 15 years in prison when Justice Jeffrey Atlas sentences him on Jan. 27, after defense lawyers have an opportunity to put in motions to set aside the verdict.

Hanson, 25, testified that she was grabbed shortly after midnight by two men who held her down and moved a razor blade over her face “like an artist on a canvas.”

She said Roth, who had been walking with his arm around her and scolding her for being unfriendly to him, “just stood there not helping me.”

Hanson suffered 15 facial cuts that required up to 150 stitches.

Dr. Ronald Levandusky, the surgeon who repaired Hanson’s face, said the scars were permanent and that she would never be able to move her facial muscles the way she once did. The muscle that allows her to smile was severed, he said.

Steven Bowman, 27, and Darren Norman, 20, were charged as the two men Roth hired to attack Hanson. They are scheduled to be tried separately on assault charges.

Roth had said that Bowman, reportedly his former homosexual lover, sliced up Hanson’s face out of jealousy after Roth ended their secret 15-year affair.