911 emergency. >> shots fired. >> he's running. >> we the jury find the defendant -- it was one of the most complex cases i ever did. >> the story of a man who, to outsiders at least, seemed to have it all. >> a very rich, entrepreneur doctor, very high-class professional pharmaceuticals, a beautiful filipino wife, three children. >> and then he discovered his wife was having an affair. a few months later, she was dead. >> i thought it was a case that had everything. >> he said it was an accident. but police suspected murder and

a cover-up that surprised even hardened police detectives. in this hour, "killing on keithwood court." >> early this morning, local workers driving by discovered a car had driven through a space in a guardrail, into the creek below. >> the suv was still running but the female driver with the ghastly injury to her head was clearly dead. it looked as though the woman had skidded off an icy new jersey back road and plunged down the slight embankment to the creek below. >> the hopewell township police department and the state police are still investigating. >> wedged behind the driver's seat was a suitcase filled with women's clothing. but arriving police officers immediately noticed something odd on the passenger side. footprints in the snow leading up to the road 150 feet away. detective dan mckeown got to the scene on a cold january morning in 2004. >> the second i saw her, i knew it was her. >> her.

the deceased in the front seat was 34-year-old michelle nyce, the philippine-born wife of a local pharmaceutical executive entrepreneur, a ph.d. named dr. jonathan nyce. >> the first thing that did go through my mind was, hasn't this family been through enough? >> the detective had met the couple the previous summer, when the husband, dr. nyce, made a police complaint about someone stalking his wife, michelle. and now this. the pretty, young wife was dead, slumped in her toyota, showing injuries far more terrible than the accident indicated. this looked like a homicide. so the detective immediately called on dr. nyce at the million-dollar home in a gated community, where he lived with michelle and their three children. >> we wanted to talk to jonathan to find out as much information as we could to try and reconstruct michelle's mind-set, who she was with, where she was going, prior to this incident. >> dr. nyce told the detective and his partner that he had last

seen michelle about 4:00 the afternoon before the accident, when she was getting ready for work. michelle sold chanel products at the local macy's. >> he was under the impression that she was going to work and after work she's going to go out with a friend. and that's allegedly the last time that he talks to her. >> at that point, did you see any reason to doubt that story? >> no. >> the man was with his family. went to sleep, and his wife tragically had a car accident on the way home from wherever she had been. >> mm-hmm. >> that was the story. >> that was the story. >> police, of course, had to know more about the relationship of jonathan and michelle nyce. he recounted for them a history of their becoming a couple, much as he did when he sat down to talk with us about his marriage. you talk about being as happy as a guy can be married to a woman. >> i thought my life was perfect. i had three perfect children. i had a beautiful wife whom i adored and i believed during that time she adored me, too. >> nyce was a 39-year-old

science professor at a university in north carolina. a little geeky, a little unlucky in love when an acquaintance steered him toward a friend, a teenager living in the philippines, who had been advertising in a local paper there for a pen pal. the lonely heart biologist and the teenager from an ocean far away began corresponding in the late '80s. nyce flew to the philippines to meet her. >> when i saw her in person, she was everything and more that i had come to expect from the writing. >> true crime writer john glatt followed the story and wrote the book "never leave me." he said michelle's reaction to her first sight of jonathan nyce was quite the opposite. >> when he turned up at the hotel, she was kind of completely crestfallen. because here is a sort of very clunky, middle-aged, balding individual, and she didn't recognize him at first. and she thought, what have i done? >> just a week after that first meeting, jonathan and michelle signed the philippine paperwork

that made them husband and wife. he fudged his age by nine years, though she didn't find out until years later how big the gap between them was. you were 40. she was 20. looking at each other through the fog of very different cultures. did it worry you? >> she had six brothers and sisters. they had basically constructed shacks out on the water on stilts. and it wasn't -- >> in a primitive community and housing, to say the least? >> yes. it was a community of squatters. she asked me, "you see my circumstances and are you sure you want to marry me?" and i said, "i'm not marrying you for your wealth. if i marry you, it will be because i love you." and i did love her. >> and big changes awaited the newlyweds back in the states. dr. nyce's lab research on promising asthma treatments had paid off like winning the lottery. big pharmaceutical companies wanted to be in business with him in a major way. you caught a rocket, didn't you? >> yes.

>> tens of millions of dollars was invested into the company. >> i raised about $65 million to advance my drugs into clinical trials. >> the professor became a wealthy business-owning entrepreneur and a new father. by the time he relocated from north carolina to central new jersey, they were a family of five. michelle found a 20-room, 5,000 square foot neocolonial on keithwood court. her friend, larissa soos, remembered how pleased michelle was with their sudden good fortune. >> they built their dream house. jonathan was doing well in his company. i mean, they would travel. she was the best dressed. her kids got the best of everything. she helped her family back in the philippines.

i mean, she was living an ideal life. >> michelle being brought up in poverty basically in the philippines. she came from a large family. there really wasn't very much money. and she set her sights on the american dream. it really went to michelle's head, and they started living the millionaire's lifestyle. >> the kids, successful husband, and a handsome house now to decorate and make a home. >> i bought, i don't know, $50,000 worth of trees or something that michelle had selected. and then they were planted in our yard, and it looked beautiful. >> but like another famous couple before them, things came undone in a seeming paradise of the garden. the landscaping required a gardner, and soon, the mistress of the house required him, too. >> enyo was a landscape gardner who michelle ran into on their estate. on the second time he came around to plant trees, she started basically chatting him up and got his phone number. and one thing led to another, and pretty soon, they were involved in a torrid affair. >> the husband says he was clueless. >> i thought our family life was continuing. you know, for me it was wonderful, and i thought for her too. >> but there were tensions and

worries aplenty on keithwood court. jonathan nyce's business had fizzled. the clinical trials of his medicine were a bust. you're burning through tens of millions of dollars in venture capital. >> yes. >> you get sacked as the ceo of your corporation. >> i was removed partially, but i had a cushion for my family. >> nyce became a stay-at-home dad, writing a book of poems for children he tried unsuccessfully to get published. >> once he lost his job, he started spending his life at home. and he being there all the time with michelle meant they didn't get on very well. they saw too much of each other. and, really, he lost a lot of self-confidence when he got fired. and his life began spiralling down. >> michelle seemed very angry about me being home during the day and acted sometimes very strangely, different. >> some women joke about for better, for worse, but not for lunch. but this was a little more than that? >> i remember her coming into my

office one day when i was working and just wiping clean my desk, everything on the floor. and saying, "this is my house during the day." >> i think michelle had a very wild side, and especially when she met enyo, the repression that must have come out of years and being this kind of wife and mother, the real michelle suddenly came out, and she wanted to be a teenager. coming up next -- sex, lies, and videotapes. jonathan nyce calls the police with what he says is an extortionist. >> i received a phone call from someone who began playing tapes of my wife having sex with somebody else. ♪ ♪ tonight ♪ ♪ we are young ♪ ♪ so let's set the world on fire ♪

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in the summer of 2003, jonathan nyce's marriage was falling apart. he had been pushed out of the pharmaceutical company he founded and was playing mr. mom to the three children he had with michelle. dr. nyce, oblivious, he says, to his wife's regular hookups with the gardener at hot sheets motels, claimed he received a threatening phone call. >> it was horrific. it was a man basically saying, i have something you need to listen to. and then he played the tape of michelle having sex with someone else. >> how did you know it was michelle? >> if you ever heard my wife speak, you would know her voice is very distinctive and the man called her by her name in the tape, so it was very clear that it was michelle. >> the mystery caller, nyce says, hung up and immediately rang again, now demanding $500,000. $500,000 or else what?

>> $500,000 or he would distribute not only the audio tape, but he said he had videotapes as well. >> see, i don't get the connect the dots here. it's not as though you're a hollywood celebrity. >> i agree with you. i don't know why this person called. but what developed in police records, i actually called in the fbi because it was an extortion threat and i didn't know what was going to happen after that. >> and that's when hopewell township detective dan mckeown had his first encounter with dr. nyce. he was assigned to run down the alleged extortionist. in the course of the interviewing both the husband and the wife, michelle reluctantly admitted her affair. are you starting to hear details about a man in her life? >> yes. >> a gardner, a guy who had worked for the family? >> that's right. turns out he is a gardener and the year prior was hired by jonathan nyce to plant trees. >> michelle said she had broken

it off with enyo the gardener after he began stalking her and began demanding money from her as well as her husband. but the detective confronted the gardner and a court-ordered restraining order against him seemed to put the complaint to rest. but in the back of his mind, the detective believed jonathan nyce had made up the extortion story himself as a ruse to break up michelle's relationship with enyo. >> we were never able to substantiate that these phone calls even took place. >> detective dan mckeown investigated it, had both of them in for questioning and was convinced jonathan had fabricated it, probably made the call himself. he wasn't very interested in the audio tapes or videotapes. and for all intents and purposes, nobody had ever been able to prove they ever existed. >> we didn't hear from jonathan again until january of 2004. >> that was the day his wife had been found in the vehicle in the icy creek. in his statement to the investigators, dr. nyce had been

quite clear about the last time he had seen and spoken to his wife. it was 4:00 in the afternoon before her shift at macy's. but later, as the detective drove dr. nyce back to his house, in a casual conversation, nyce said something that didn't add up. >> out of the blue, jonathan says, "you know, i really thought things were going to work out." he goes on to say, they had been getting along so much better, the only time they argued is when michelle talked about moving out, leaving him. i said, "well, when was the last time you had that conversation?" jonathan replied, "last night." >> last night? dr. nyce had told police he had last spoken to michelle at 4:00 in the afternoon. and now detective mckeown's ears were ringing. he whipped the car around. jonathan nyce was brought back to the hopewell township police department for another interrogation. two hours into the interview, he broke. >> he paused for a moment, and he said, "i need to know one thing.

was she with enyo that night?" and i said, jonathan, i have never lied to you before. she was with him. >> detective mckeown explained that michelle and the gardener had hooked up the evening before her death for another motel tryst. >> it was at that point he broke down and he gave us his new version of what happened. >> he basically made jonathan realize that the game was up. so jonathan finally did admit that he been there when she died but said he acted in total self-defense. >> in the new version of the story taped by police, dr. nyce claimed michelle tried to kill him in the garage when she came home in a rage at about midnight. >> nyce said michelle attacked him, slashing with what he took to be a stiletto or knife. he said she tumbled from the driver's seat and went down on

the concrete floor hard. >> what happened next would challenge even veteran cops who have heard a lot when it comes to disposing of the corpse. nyce propped his wife's body upright in the seat as though she was driving the car. >> he puts her in the driver's seat in the suv. he allegedly gets in the passenger seat and uses an ice scraper to control the gas and the brake pedals. >> husband and dead wife, threading their way through the icy streets of their gated community, until he finds the creek, veers off the road, and plunges into the water, leaves the engine running, and then scuttles up the snowy embankment to the road and walks home. this is quite a story you're hearing. >> yes, it was.

>> basically, there were two people in the garage who knew what happened and one of them is dead. >> that's correct. >> dr. jonathan nyce would be charged with murder and he would plead not guilty, not guilty on the grounds that it was an accident. could he convince a jury of that? coming up next -- jonathan nyce goes to trial for murder in the first degree. >> it was a very dramatic trial. it attracted a lot of national publicity. >> jonathan nyce did not murder his wife. [ woman ] i was ready for my trip.

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circuit tv from jail cell to courtroom, the pharmaceutical researcher and entrepreneur sketched out his line of defense. >> all i will say is that i have no history of physical violence ever against any person. i have never, ever had ill intent toward my wife at any point. and this is what happened was a pure accident. >> everybody knew it was going to be a very, very dramatic trial. jonathan had been out on bail for quite some months. so he would arrive every morning in a suit, looking more like a businessman with a snappy different tie every morning. he didn't look like a defendant whatsoever. and his defense lawyer was robin lord, who had a flair for dramatics, and she did an excellent job. >> jonathan nyce did not murder his wife. >> in trial, nyce's attorney, robin lord, was fierce in her opening argument. >> nor can the state beyond a reasonable doubt convince you otherwise.

>> the defense attorney portrayed michelle nyce as a runaround tramp, who spent her idle hours not at home with her kids, but having trysts at cheap motels. once more, the defense lawyer asserted that michelle had been planning to do in her husband since at least the summer before her death saying she and her lover, enyo, the gardener, had hatched together the alleged extortion scheme involving the sex tapes. >> my theory of the case is that both michelle and enyo arranged for the phone calls to be made. >> nyce's lawyer claimed michelle wanted out of the marriage and she was plotting to take some of the value of the house with her. >> $500,000 was the equity in the home and she would have $500,000 and she could leave with the gardner. >> after yet another motel night with the gardener, michelle, the defense attorney argued, arrived back home enraged and fully prepared to kill her husband in the garage. what happens in the garage? >> he goes down into the garage,

walks around to the driver's side of the vehicle, opens the door for his wife -- and this is a man who was nothing but a gentleman. and it's a pattern of practice he does regularly. he always opens the door for his wife when he, in fact, hears her pull into the garage. she lunges at him. he reacts to get away from the object, and simply one move throws her down out of the way and she, unfortunately, falls and received serious injuries. >> serious injuries. awful looking wounds to her head. >> yes, terrible. >> how do you get injuries like that if it's an accident falling what, three feet from the driver's seat down to the concrete floor of the garage. >> she had what's called contrecoup injuries. they are injuries to the brain, opposite, direct opposite to the point of impact. so if you hit your head here,

you will have injury to the brain directly behind the point of impact. >> the defense attempted to explain the head injuries as an accident. but questions, if that were true, why didn't nyce call 911 right away? and why in the world would he stage a car crash and cover up the so-called accident in the ghoulish manner he did? a lesser charge against him was tampering with evidence, i.e., his wife's corpse. >> he panicked. and that's all he did. i'm not going to stand here and tell you that he didn't attempt to stage an accident. >> you can almost understand what might happen in the garage. be it the theory of accident or be it the moment of explosion and passion and he kills her. but it's very hard to understand what happens next. leaving the garage with her body propped up in the driver's seat, looking for someplace to dispose

of her corpse while he's driving goosing the gas pedal with an ice scraper, of all things. do you understand any of this, disposing of the body business? >> we always took the position that we were guilty of tampering with evidence. and that's what we did. he's not proud of that decision. he can't believe that he actually picked up this woman that he loved to death, put her in the car and drove her away and left her. >> the attorney argued that dr. nyce, the medical researcher, was much too smart to murder his wife by bashing her head into the concrete. >> he is a genius when it comes to drugs. he could have created a drug that would have went undetected. there were so many different manners in which he could have killed her and got away with it. which i think supported the fact that he did not intend to harm his wife, that this was a pure accident. >> what happened in the garage, are you arguing accident or self-defense? because it seems you want it both ways. >> it's not really self-defense. it's a reaction to somebody lunging at you. and that's basically what happened. she lunged at him. whether you call it self-defense, whether you call it accident.

the injuries that she, in fact, received were not intentional on behalf of jonathan nyce. >> what is the price of infidelity? >> not according to the prosecution. coming up next -- more drama in the courtroom as the state presents its stunning case against jonathan nyce. >> when you're mrs. jonathan nyce, you pay for your extramarital indiscretions with your life. people with a machine. what ? customers didn't like it. so why do banks do it ? hello ? hello ?! if your bank doesn't let you talk to a real person 24/7,

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pick newt gingrich. officials are looking into whether an arsonist set i fire causing several deadly traffic accidents. smoke mixed with fog and killing at least 10 people. back to our program. the case of the beautiful mother of three found with massive head injuries behind the wheel of her suv was now before a jury at the mercer county superior court. the defense in the murder trial of dr. jonathan nyce presented michelle nyce's fatal head injuries to be the result of an unfortunate accident. but the prosecution had a different theory. >> this was not an accidental killing or killing in self-defense as he had claimed. it was rather a knowing and purposeful act. he did this on purpose. he wanted to kill his wife and he succeeded. when you're mrs. jonathan nyce -- >> the prosecution saw a much

darker side of jonathan nyce. >> your husband brutally beats you to death by smashing your skull into a concrete floor. >> in her opening statement, prosecutor doris galuchi cut right to the quick of the case. >> when you're mrs. jonathan nyce, you pay for your extramarital indiscretions with your life. we had to start with what this case wasn't about, and we felt that our mission was really to explain to the jury that this case was not about michelle nyce having an affair. the case was about her husband, who brutally beat and killed her. >> jonathan nyce broke down as his recorded confession was played for the jury. >> i know i pushed her to the ground. i was more just trying to control her, so that i could be a loving influence on her more than anything else. >> in his taped statement to police, jonathan nyce admitted he pounded his wife's head into the floor to get control of her. >> but if i pushed too hard and

she hit the floor in a way i never expected. i never expected her not to put up her hands and, whatever, catch with her feet or something, but i never expected that she would hit -- hit the floor with her head like that. >> when he suddenly realized she was dead. the prosecution said there never was a plot against nyce by michelle and the gardner. that was all the invention of an aging husband losing his favorite possession, his pretty, once compliant wife. >> we found that he was a very controlling person, very jealous person. he had to have michelle, his wife's, life very much under his thumb, in his control. >> michelle's best friend, larissa soos, recalls jonathan wanting to know michelle's whereabouts at every moment, making sure she didn't come in contact with other men. >> you know, she always wanted to be a model, but she knew in her heart that she'll never, ever be because obviously she

would be exposed to a lot of people. she said she can't even join the gym because there were other men working out. >> jonathan was very, very possessive of michelle. she was so young and much more beautiful than anything he thought he had the right to have. so he would -- he wanted to monitor everything she did. >> he didn't want her to see everything else that was out there, and part of her did want to see that. she was getting out a little more, and i don't think he adapted well to that change. everything then reversed. she was out. she was meeting people. and i think that really got to him. >> so the state argued michelle nyce paid with her life for her curiosity about life beyond the confines of keithwood court. >> what we believe happened was that they had an argument about her seeing someone else, and that she again told him that she wanted to move out. she had the suitcase packed and was ready to go and he would not let her leave.

i think she got as far as the garage with that suitcase and that's when he killed her. now, the blood that was on the suitcase, on the floor of the garage and on the side of the car and inside the car, indicate that she was trying to get into the car when he pulled her out, threw her to the floor of the garage and banged her head on the floor of the garage. the forensic evidence does establish that. >> there was other forensic evidence that the prosecutors presented to nail down the secondary charge, tampering with the body. remember the boot tracks leading away from the car in jacob's creek? crime scene investigators found cut-up size 12 boot soles hidden in nooks and crannies all over jonathan nyce's garage. when they put the soles back together like a jigsaw puzzle, they matched the tracks in the snow. when it comes to staging accidents, how good or how bad was dr. nyce at it? >> a miserable failure. >> and what about the weapon, that sharp object, that jonathan nyce claims his wife used to lunge at him? it was never found.

>> when he starts bringing into the picture weapons and other items of physical evidence that corroborate his story and miraculously none of those items can be found, then he's got a problem. >> in closing, it came down to one last argument from each side. robin lord for the defense. >> the issue is that she in fact lunged, and he reacted, and she fell. that's what the issue is. >> look at those marks, ladies and gentlemen. >> the prosecution team hammered home to the jury that nyce had known of his wife's infidelities for months. this, the state argued, was not a crime of passion, a man suddenly losing it, but a calculated killing. >> the defendant chose to kill her. remember, she was a human being. >> our position was, there was no surprise in this case. he knew she was out with her boyfriend. it's not as if he came home one night, found her in bed with the gardener, lost his mind and killed her. that's not what happened.

he knew that she was having an affair. they had discussed it and she had ended the affair. it then started up again. none of this was a surprise. he was living with it. >> after a five-week trial, the jury, which had even taken a field trip to the scene of the crime, was sent out to decide if jonathan nyce was a cold-blooded killer or simply a husband scorned. coming up next -- the jurors deliberate. >> can you talk about the verdict at all? >> can we get any of you to comment? >> it was up. it was definitely an interesting trial. >> you can say it was high on drama. because in a real world with this guy's life your hands. [ male announcer ] feeling like a shadow of your former self?

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after a five-week trial in which the defense and the prosecution painted two very different pictures of how michelle nyce died at the hands of her husband, the jury was out for three days. three members of the jury agreed to sit down with us to discuss the trial. they were a 44-year-old graphic designer, a 69-year-old retired banking consultant, and a 35-year-old marketing executive. were they all on the same page as they began deliberating? >> no. >> no. >> not at all. >> but the one question they all shared at the outset was -- who exactly was michelle nyce? >> i think it was hard to get much of an impression of her. she was presented somewhat of a -- you know, the harlot, the woman running around with the gardener.

but you didn't get -- at least i didn't get an impression of what she was like in any way. >> there really wasn't too many people speaking up for her character or her personality so much. but i got the same impression in the beginning that she was kind of quiet and then became americanized over time, got used to the lifestyle and the money and seeing what else was out there, that maybe she once was more innocent in the past. but, i, again, couldn't completely come to that conclusion because i didn't know her and there was nobody to represent her character throughout the trial. >> yeah, there really was no way to know who she was as a person. that information wasn't given to us. >> but when it came down to the facts of the case, deliberations got tense. >> well, we couldn't reach a decision. we were having trouble -- >> yeah. >> in fact, ed and i were on opposite sides of the table for a fair amount of time. >> yeah, yeah. you could have made a case for acquittal on one set of circumstances. you could have made a case for

more severe penalty. i don't think anybody could have made a case for premeditated murder. >> so what does the jury think took place in that garage on january 14th, 2004? >> my feeling is it was the last straw kind of thing. there was probably a confrontation in the garage and he snapped and the rage overtook him. so even though, yes, he knew she was having an affair and perhaps that night she said, i'm leaving you, and he snapped. >> i believe he loved her and he wanted to work it out. it was mentioned there was a break in michelle's relationship with her boyfriend for a while where she did stop seeing him. that's what we were told. and i think it had just resumed prior to the whole incident happening. so i think, you know, it was like having a wound reopened all over again. just not something he could tolerate any longer. >> so was this a crime of passion? >> a crime of passion is probably the closest you're going to come, given the evidence we had. and i think that's really the compromise we all came to.

regardless of when he might have started it. >> when the jury's verdict was announced, there were gasps from both sides. >> guilty of passion, provocation, manslaughter. >> a verdict of manslaughter, not murder. the jury decided that on january 16th, 2004, jonathan nyce had acted in the heat of passion when he confronted his wife in the garage. the difference between a verdict of manslaughter and murder was decades in prison. >> i did nothing intentional to my wife. >> do you feel like it was a fair verdict? >> yes. >> it is the sentence of this court -- stand, dr. nyce, please. >> he was sentenced to five to ten years for killing his wife and tampering with evidence. the jurors had no idea what kind of sentence would be imposed when they handed down their verdict. >> they did not say that passion provoked would get ten years. there was nothing that said

that. >> no, we didn't know that. >> based on the letter of the law, no idea what the punishment was for any of the crimes. >> when they heard about the sentence, the reaction was mixed. >> i think it's a terrible crime to kill someone and the punishment should be more extreme. >> i thought it was fair. i thought it was fair. >> was it difficult in court this very tall man, dr. nyce, with a resume of wonderful science that he's brought the world, was that a problem? he didn't look like a killer? he didn't seem like the kind of person who would be enraged and kill his wife? >> the victim isn't any less dead because the killer had a ph.d. in fact, i think it made his conduct that much more reprehensible. because, now, here was a man who could do whatever he wanted. >> look, is there a queasy message here that in new jersey, you can kill your wife and only have to do five to ten years? >> i think some people could certainly derive that message from this verdict. i hope they don't. >> the jury thought otherwise.

>> you can't look at it like that. i mean, i know people have thought that, like, oh, this sends a message. but it was a set of circumstances that the world didn't know about. only us 12 knew about. and we had to take what was presented to us and come up with a conclusion. it wasn't like somebody walking up to their wife with a gun and just blowing their head off. it wasn't the same kind of case. >> did anyone think that dr. nyce got away with murder? >> no. >> no. >> no. >> dr. nyce was sent to a new jersey state prison. he will be eligible for parole in 2010, many years sooner than if he had been convicted on the more serious charge of murder. nevertheless, he began planning his appeal the very day the sentence was handed down. >> i do not expect to be in jail for that period of time. i expect to win my appeal, and actually, i expect to put other people in jail who lied to put me here.

and you can mark my words on that. coming up -- jonathan nyce discloses the details of his appeal. >> i know that what i'm saying sounds unbelievable. until this happened to me, i might not have believed it either. but you have to believe the objective evidence when it's shown to you. and that objective evidence has been concealed up until now. c'mon dad! i'm here to unleash my inner cowboy. instead i got heartburn. hold up partner. prilosec can take days to work. try alka-seltzer. it kills heartburn fast. yeehaw! >> my name is jane and i've got osteoporosis. but i'm an on-the-go woman; i've been active all my life. that's why i'm excited about reclast.

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jonathan nyce was sentenced to five to ten years of incarceration after being convicted of killing his wife in the heat of passion in the winter of 2004. we spoke to him after his first year behind bars. >> i'm in prison for something i

didn't do and the whole world thought that i was guilty. i think today will change that. >> after spending 12 months locked up in south woods state prison, a medium security facility in southern new jersey, jonathan nyce is ready to publicly reveal the grounds for his appeal. >> hello. >> hi, how are you? >> i never expected that she would hit -- hit the floor with her head like that. >> after having given detailed confessions to the police and the court for having had a hand in his wife's death, he now says he has objective evidence proving himself innocent and another man guilty. >> the evidence was actually very clear that i was not the one who hurt my wife. i had nothing to do with harming my wife. the evidence, the objective evidence, pointed to another person. >> please state your name. >> the man who jonathan nyce is targeting as michelle's killer is the family landscaper, enyo,

who nyce claims stalked michelle, tried to extort money from the nyce family, and who police neglected to arrest at the time of the alleged stalking. enyo, a native of puerto rico, could not be reached for comment. >> we repeatedly begged for help, not only verbally but in writing, and the hopewell township police department ignored us. i still cannot understand why. michelle confided in her friends the man with whom she ended an affair was following her around. >> but her closest friend and confidante, larissa soos, said michelle never mentioned a thing about a stalker, extortion attempts or enyo. >> the only time i heard about enyo's name was the night when they found michelle dead that morning when jonathan mentioned it to me. i was really shocked. because i mean, we were very close. you know, i never even had any inclination of anything about the tape, about this guy enyo.

>> what's more, the hopewell township police investigation into the alleged extortion attempt turned up nothing, and the case was closed. jonathan nyce also argues that police found enyo had michelle's blood on him the night they questioned the gardener, which the landscaper claimed was from consensual sex. but nyce said he's not buying that story any longer. >> the new jersey state police forensics laboratory showed michelle had no evidence of sex. she didn't have semen or sperm in her that night. this was a lie. the objective evidence contradicted everything this man said to explain why he had michelle's blood on him the night she died. >> the medical examiner's report shows that michelle had her period that night she died, which would explain why her blood could have been on enyo. and at trial, enyo testified that michelle showered before going home that evening, which could explain the lack of semen on michelle's body. >> this footprint clearly is not size 12. >> next on jonathan nyce's list of what he claims is

objective evidence clearing him, are the footprints in the snow that led away from michelle's land cruiser that night and in the direction of the nyce residence. those boot prints, he claims, are not from any footwear he owns. instead, he says, they are enyo's size. >> in the police documentation, they establish that the man who had been stalking michelle, the size of his boot is size 9 1/2. this footprint was size 9 1/2. you can make measurements from any aspect of this footprint. they all show you that it is a size 9 1/2. >> but we contacted the forensic scientist who examined the boot print. he says that the impression was the exact size and manufacturer's design as the cut up and reassembled soles found in nyce's garage. >> this is just typical of the evidence that was used to indict me, to steer this investigation away from the man who had been

stalking my wife, who had my wife's blood on him the night she died and was in violation of the restraining order and towards me. >> and never mind the taped confessions he made to the police. >> i disassociate myself entirely from a statement obtained under those conditions when i'm pharmacologically impaired by warrantless police action. >> nyce claims that his audio tape confession was taken while he was in a state of duress. hours after he been deprived of the antidepressant medication that had been seized by the police. but even at the time of his bail hearing three weeks later, he was still taking responsibility. >> all i will say is that i have no history of physical violence ever against any person. i never, ever had ill intent toward my wife at any point, and this, what happened, was a pure accident. >> nyce also said the transcript of his statement, which was given to the jury, was altered, that the words on the page were not what, in fact, he said.

>> it's the transcript that was used to claim that i admitted slamming my wife's head into the garage. it is in the -- that never happened. it never happened in real life. it never -- i never said it. it is in ortman's transcript. it is not in the audio. >> but listen carefully to this. >> she went pretty straight in. i mean, i gave her a good push but i expected some defensive maneuver and none came. >> what nyce is claiming now is a u-turn from the case that his lawyer robin lord presented. >> he panicked. and that's all he did. i'm not going to stand here and tell you that he didn't attempt to stage an accident. >> when asked about his trial, his answer is quick and curt. >> i'm not discussing anything about robin lord. i was convicted because false evidence was presented against me.

>> the mercer county prosecutor's office declined our request for an interview, saying these issues would be addressed when jonathan nyce files his appeal. so what happened to michelle nyce on that bitter cold january night? for jonathan, it all circles back to the gardener. >> you'll have to ask enyo. >> we asked our panel of jurors what they thought of jonathan nyce's new claims. >> i think that these are fantasies that he's probably come up with to make himself feel more comfortable. because i think he did love michelle, and that when he has to face the fact that he killed her, he can't. and so he is -- his mind is doing everything it can to make it livable for him. >> if he's five to ten, he's going to be out in 3 1/2 years. why is he going through this appeal. it doesn't make any accepts to me. >> it just doesn't fit with what we were shown. it doesn't make sense. >> author john glatt.

>> i can really see he had many grounds for an appeal to be honest, but he really thinks he does. but maybe that's another kind of fabrication in his mind. he deludes himself a lot, i think. >> i know what i'm saying sounds unbelievable. until this happened to me, i might not have believed it either. but you have to believe the objective evidence when it's shown to you. and that objective evidence has been concealed up until now. >> jonathan nyce represented himself during his appeal, which he lost in may of 2009. in the appellate court, they upheld the original conviction, ruling that the police did not deny his rights, or seize evidence illegally from his home. the court concluded that the remainder of nyce's arguments were without sufficient merit to warrant discussion in a written