Killer of Filipina
wife tried June 7

TRENTON — Dr. Jonathan Nyce, the man accused of murdering his Filipina wife Michelle Nyce, will stand trial on June 7, the Filipino Reporter has learned.

Mercer County Superior Court Judge Bill Mathesius announced the trial date on the final day of arguments in the pretrial Miranda hearing of the murder case last March 17.

The 54-year-old research scientist is charged in the Jan. 16, 2004 slaying of the 34-year-old Filipina beauty consultant, and making it look like an accident by driving Michelle’s Toyota Land Cruiser — with her lifeless body behind the wheel — into a creek less than a mile from the family’s Keithwood Court home in Hopewell Township.

Police charged Nyce with murder two days later, when he reportedly admitted the killing on tape while being interrogated by State Police Detective Sgt. William Scull.

According to The Trentonian, Nyce’s attorney, Robin Lord, has argued that her client was never offered the chance to have a lawyer present before retelling his story.
Mathesius gave Lord and Assistant Prosecutor Doris Galuchi until April 11 to hand in their legal arguments pertaining to the confession.

Lord is trying to have the confession eliminated from use in the trial, since, she says, Pennington lawyer Lee Engleman did reach out to Nyce to represent him, but was blocked by various police agencies working the case.

“Lee Engleman was lied to,” Lord told the judge. “(Police) made it sound like Scull said everything Lee Engleman wanted him to know. That’s not what happened.”

Engleman called the murder suspect’s brother, Michael Nyce, on his cell phone the morning Jonathan Nyce was being interrogated to let him know he wanted to represent him and to order the former research scientist not to talk to the police, according to testimony in the hearing. Nyce called Engleman the day Michelle’s body was found, while police were evicting him from his home.

The lawyer represented both Michelle and Jonathan Nyce in the summer of 2003 after his wife’s boyfriend, Miguel “Enyo” DeJesus, reportedly threatened the family and tried to extort money from the doctor.
In the recorded statement played in court last week, Nyce related in morbid detail how he flung the mother of his three children to the cement floor in self defense after confronting her in the couple’s garage after a late-night rendezvous with DeJesus.

The defendant said his wife was armed with a stiletto and lunged at him after he asked her if she was with DeJesus when she told him she was going out with co-workers.
Nyce said in the statement he drove the SUV into Jacobs Creek and set up the alleged staged accident scene.

Mathesius suggested at the conclusion of the hearing that he’d like to make his decision on Lord’s motion that the statement should be tossed out by the end of April.
In the same tape confession played in court, Nyce professed his love for his wife.

“I wish she was alive. I wish everything would have stayed the same,” Nyce said on one of three tapes played. “I loved her very much. I still do. I was waiting for her to get better and I think she would have. I wish this stupid accident didn’t happen.”