March 16, 2026

Michelle and Jonathan Nyce - Part 2

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To the neighbors in his exclusive New Jersey enclave, Dr. Jonathan Nyce was a "gentle giant" — a brilliant molecular biologist on the verge of a billion-dollar medical breakthrough. But behind the 21-room mansion and the 6,000 tulips in the drive, the "perfect" marriage he shared with his wife, Michelle, was a facade built on secrets, financial ruin, and a suffocating need for control.When Michelle’s body was discovered in her Land Cruiser at the bottom of a frozen ravine on a cold January morning, it looked like a tragic accident. However, investigators soon found that the math didn’t add up.

Today's snacks: Assorted Buc-ee's snacks (thanks Carla!)

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WEBVTT

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Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina.

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If there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years

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of marriage.

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Some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and.

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Some days you'll feel like killing your wife.

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Welcome to Love Mary Kill.

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Hey Tina, Hey Rich. How are you today?

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I'm pretty good? How are you?

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I am doing great?

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Great.

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We have an audience for our recording today.

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We have a very special mess.

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We have our little friend Clover in here. She is

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really excited to hear about this case.

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Well, I know that there's a trigger warning coming up,

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so it'll make sure that she heeds that warning.

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Yeah, definitely. March Madness is here. Do you know what

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that means?

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There's a bunch of insane leprechauns running around.

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It does mean that, But it also means that I

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have created our very own bracket challenge. I called it

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Love Mary Madness, and I want to invite all of

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our listeners to join. Make their picks, see how their

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picks stack up against hours.

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Okay, and oh I have to do a bracket.

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You have to do a bracket as well.

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Historically I'm not great at it.

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Well, you know, there's a lot of luck involved, so

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you never know it's all for fun, but we are

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going to put up some prizes. The overall winner will

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take home a one hundred dollars gift card.

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Oh, I thought you were going to say a date

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with Rich.

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No, but we have also fifty dollars gift cards for

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the top men's and women's brackets, and there will even

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be a consolation prize. If you finish dead last will

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give you a prize as well.

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So I have a chance.

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You have a chance the ultimate prize though, if anybody

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gets a perfect bracket. I haven't talked to you about

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this yet, but if anyone gets a perfect bracket, we

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will personally show up on your doorstep and bring you snacks.

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Oh how great is that?

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That's great?

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So you can get all the details and sign up

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now at Madness dot love mary dot com. Okay, that's

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Madness dot lovemarykill dot com. Registration closes March eighteenth, so

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don't delay.

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Okay, So I told Rich that no one was going

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to sign up, So prove me wrong and sign up

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and make Rich's day.

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Are you ready for a snack?

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Yes? Because I know that it's a really nice box.

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That are very sweet, lovely kind friend, Carla sent who

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was one of our biggest supporters and just a gem

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of a person she is.

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And Carla went over and above the call of duty here,

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so she sent a large box. She went to BUCkies,

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which we've talked about many times on here, which we've

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never been to because we don't have the Shison too.

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We are going to it at some point, But Carla

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went to Bucky's and she just went crazy. She bought

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like all kinds of stuff and sent it along. So

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I'm probably not going to list everything that's in this

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box because there is a lot. But there are beaver nuggets,

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of course, sea salted carmel, also cinnamon beaver nuggets, which

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I don't think we've had before, right I don't.

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I'm excited, No, I don't think we have.

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I'm excited about that. There's also some snack stick spites, hallapenno,

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honey flavor, oh, some cherry maple beef jerky, some praline peacans,

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a Bucky Bar, milk chocolate, and a dark chocolate Wow.

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But then there's she also sent all kinds of non

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food items too, like this nice BUCkies.

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Oh my god, Oh that's so cute, and.

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A nice Bucky's towel and a little Old Bucky's mascot.

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There's there's more. So thank you so much, Carla. It

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is just so nice of you. We really appreciate it.

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You know. It's really hard for me not to send,

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like everyone who sends something to us back a gift,

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because that's just how I operate. So Carla, thank you

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so much. She's just the sweetest and she sends me

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funny memes all the time and I adore her. So

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thank you so much, Carla.

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Yeah, we appreciate it. Well, why don't we try it

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to try a couple of I really want to try

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the cinnamon Beefer nuggets and then maybe we should try

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the Hallapenno honey snack stick spites. Okay, all right, let's

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do it. What did you think those were.

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Really good and together? I thought they were really yummy together.

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It's a good combination.

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Yeah, it really was.

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The snack snick snack stiff bites jalapeno honey is an

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interesting flavor combination. I love both of those things, but

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I wouldn't have expected them to go together that well.

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But they really are good together. And the cinnamon Beaver.

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Dugget has a chaser. Yeah, really good.

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Yeah, really good. Thanks again, Thanks Carla. Shall we get

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to part two of the Michelle and Jonathan Nice Story?

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Absolutely.

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I do have a couple of trigger warnings. First of all,

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this episode does contain discussions of domestic violence and homicide,

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which may be distressing for some listeners. Also, at the

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very end of the episode, we have a segment where

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we talk about cruelty to animals, So please listen with care.

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Would you like to give us a recap of part

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I'm going.

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To say, can I give a recap of Part one?

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I knew you wanted to.

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In part one, we met doctor Jonathan Nice, a brilliant

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six foot for molecular biologist who believed he was on

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the verge of curing the world's asthma. In nineteen ninety,

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he traveled to the Philippines and married twenty year old

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Michele Riviera after using whiteout to lie about his age

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on their marriage license. For over a decade, they lived

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out a version of the American dream, a twenty one

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room mansion in New Jersey, three children, and a one

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hundred million dollar pharmaceutical deal. But as Jonathan's ego grew,

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his world began to collapse. He lost his company, his

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massive payday, and finally his grip on Michelle. After discovering

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Jonathan had lied about his age for years, Michele's resentment

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turned into a secret life of her own. She began

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a clandestine affair with a local gardener named Enio, meeting

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him in seedy motels to escape the fortress that Jonathan

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had built for her. By the summer of two thousand three,

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the gentle Giant was a man on the end edge,

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Unemployed and increasingly paranoid. Jonathan had began tracking Michelle's every move,

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even writing dark emotional poetry about her betrayal. The stage

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was set for a collision between Jonathan's obsession with control

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and Michelle's desperate need for freedom.

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One thing to point out is that Michelle had a

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fairly large family back in the Philippines, and she sent

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money to them regularly.

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She still had ties to her family, strong ties for

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her family.

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Yeah, and Jonathan often took credit for basically saving them,

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bringing them out of poverty, but it was really unclear

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whether it was Jonathan that was taking the initiative to

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send the money or whether it was Michelle.

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In one word, thing, Jonathan was fired from his job

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by the board, right, that's right.

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It was his company, but he basically kept bringing in

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new venture capitalists to keep the company afloat, and they

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finally realized this guy's a liability. He's a brilliant scientist,

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but not a good businessman, and they ended up shelving

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the rug that he had spent his time researching on,

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saying that it wasn't really that effective.

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Well, and you've referred to him as brilliant several times,

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but really his brilliance I think is questionable because the

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drug that he spent twenty years developing was shelved.

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Yeah, that's true. I think he did have I think

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he was fairly brilliant in some ways, Like he did

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develop a drug that could have been used for some

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childhood leukemia sufferers, but it didn't get picked up because

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the economics weren't that great. But it is hard to

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tell whether he was truly brilliant or whether he was

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a little bit more of a fraud maybe.

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Well we talked about this a little bit in episode one,

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but just how the pharmaceutical industry works and if something

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shows even mild potential, a lot of times it gets

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so much money through it at it.

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People throw money at it, but it also takes years

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to figure out whether it really is successful or not.

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In July two thousand and three, not long after he

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discovered Michelle's affair, Jonathan dropped a bombshell on his wife.

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He told her that he had just received a call

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from a man who had played a portion of an

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audio tape of her having sex. Michelle panicked. She first

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claimed that she had gotten a job on a phone

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sex line, but under Jonathan's relentless questioning, the truth finally

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spilled out. She admitted to the affair, though she downplayed

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it as a drunken mistake. Jonathan later claimed that he

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sat with her that afternoon while she called Enyo to

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end it forever, but Jonathan wasn't taking any chances. Two

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weeks later, he left a threat on Enyo's voicemail if

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you put your hands on my wife, you're going to

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be a dead man. The next day, he walked into

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the FBI's West Trenton office with an extraordinary tale. He

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told Special Agent John Mulligan that Enyo, under the alias

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Alexander Castaneda, was extorting him for five hundred thousand dollars

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in exchange for sex tapes. He showed them calls that

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he had received on his cell phone that had come

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from a Shell Station payphone as his proof.

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You had mentioned this a little bit in part one,

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But Enyo was a little bit of a scammer artist himself.

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Yeah, he had three different names that he used. He

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was dodging child support payments, he had different Social Security numbers,

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and he had asked Michelle for money more than once.

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The case was handed over to Detective Daniel McCune of

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the Hopewell Township Police, who interviewed Jonathan and Michelle separately.

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He found Michelle distant and emotionless, a woman clearly trapped

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in a loveless marriage. She admitted to the affair and

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to lending Enyo one thousand dollars, but she looked the

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detective in the eye and denied any knowledge of a

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half million dollar blackmail plot. McCune's professional instincts immediately signaled

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a red flag. Why had Jonathan waited two weeks to

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report a threat to his family and why were there

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no instructions on how to pay the money. When mckune

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pulled the surveillance tapes from the shell Station, he didn't

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see Enyo's truck. He came to the conclusion that Jonathan

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had made up the extortion attempt to drive a wedge

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between Enyo and his wife. Then Jonathan's claims grew more

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or outlandish. He sent a bizarre fax to the detective

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claiming Enyo had tried to hire Michelle to kill him,

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and that mysterious trucks were lurking outside their kitchen window

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at night. Mckune was in disbelief the story was ludicrous.

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He officially shut down the investigation, labeling the extortion allegations unfounded.

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Despite the investigation being shut down, Jonathan sought a restraining

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order against Denio. On August twenty first, the two rivals

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finally stood face to face in a courtroom. The judge,

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sensing the toxic volatility of the triangle, issued a mutual

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restraining order. If Enyo saw Michelle, he was to turn

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the other way for two years. They were legally bound

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to stay apart.

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So Jonathan has not had another job since he was

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fired from his lap.

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No, he had dreams of starting this other company, I

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think it was called Prism Pharmaceutical that he was planning,

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and he wrote a kid's book and he was writing

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poetry and things like that, but at this time point

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he had not had another job.

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As two thousand and three wore on, Jonathan Knys found

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himself caught in a spiral of erratic behavior. He began

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seeing a psychiatrist and was prescribed laurezapam to manage his anxiety,

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but the medication only seemed to heighten his volatility. In

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a moment of raw vulnerability, he broke down in tears

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at his parents' house, telling them about Michelle's betrayal with

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the Gardener. Toward Michelle, he acted with a confusing blend

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of desperation and dominance. He began lavishing her with expensive gifts,

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yet simultaneously moved to choke off her independence. He closed

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their joint bank account and placed her on a meager

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three hundred dollars a month allowance, claiming he wanted her

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to learn to manage finances. To Michelle, it was a

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declaration of war. She called her family in the Philippines,

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telling them the money was stopping and that she wanted

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a divorce from a man who had become obsessively controlling.

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In a last ditch effort to save the marriage, Jonathan

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orchestrated a second honeymoon in Charleston, West Virginia, he visited

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a doctor to obtain a viagraa prescription, determined to physically

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reclaim the intimacy they had lost, but the trip couldn't

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00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:18.080
fix what was broken. Upon their return, Michelle took a

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00:12:18.080 --> 00:12:21.399
decisive step. She got a job. For nine dollars and

242
00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:23.720
twenty five cents an hour. She began working as a

243
00:12:23.759 --> 00:12:27.799
beauty adviser at the Chanelle counter in Macy's. She loved

244
00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:31.440
the work, the social interaction, and most importantly, the escape

245
00:12:31.480 --> 00:12:35.720
from the mansion where Jonathan was always present. Jonathan hated it.

246
00:12:35.879 --> 00:12:39.279
He could feel his grip slipping. In a bizarre attempt

247
00:12:39.279 --> 00:12:41.960
to re establish himself as the center of her world,

248
00:12:42.159 --> 00:12:46.759
he announced the founding of a new perfume company, Sampaguita

249
00:12:47.039 --> 00:12:50.200
is that right that is named after the national flower

250
00:12:50.320 --> 00:12:54.120
of the Philippines, a symbol of innocence. He began obsessively

251
00:12:54.159 --> 00:12:57.879
trying to synthesize the flowers scent, drafting business plans that

252
00:12:57.960 --> 00:13:01.200
included Michelle and her best friend, Larissa. It was another

253
00:13:01.279 --> 00:13:05.080
make believe world designed to keep Michelle under his professional

254
00:13:05.200 --> 00:13:08.600
and personal watch, but the real world was closing in

255
00:13:08.960 --> 00:13:11.919
Jonathan was drowning in debt, even being sued by his

256
00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:16.120
own dentist over a thousand dollars bill. In September, he

257
00:13:16.200 --> 00:13:18.679
put the house on the market for one point six

258
00:13:18.720 --> 00:13:21.759
million dollars, claiming he wanted to move closer to his

259
00:13:21.879 --> 00:13:25.799
parents in Pennsylvania. Michelle was horrified. She didn't want to

260
00:13:25.879 --> 00:13:29.240
leave the life she had finally built for herself. The

261
00:13:29.279 --> 00:13:34.279
atmosphere at one keith Wood Court turned toxic. Theodoro, who

262
00:13:34.320 --> 00:13:38.200
was visiting again, witnessed Jonathan's temper exploding at the dinner table,

263
00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:42.120
slamming his fists with such violence that Michelle would simply

264
00:13:42.120 --> 00:13:45.879
get up and walk out. Jonathan began telling his confidant,

265
00:13:46.080 --> 00:13:49.799
Sherry Leonard, that he was worried about Michelle's state of mind,

266
00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:54.080
even floating the idea of having her committed. Sherry Leonard

267
00:13:54.200 --> 00:13:56.480
was his ex assistant.

268
00:13:56.720 --> 00:13:58.720
Yeah, she had worked with him for a number of years.

269
00:13:58.759 --> 00:14:01.480
They were purely put They were like brother and sister,

270
00:14:01.519 --> 00:14:04.000
but they were very close. She was the one person

271
00:14:04.039 --> 00:14:06.120
that Jonathan would basically confide in.

272
00:14:06.559 --> 00:14:09.559
Things reached a fever pitch in October when Michelle was

273
00:14:09.600 --> 00:14:12.960
offered a well paying modeling gig for a TV commercial.

274
00:14:13.320 --> 00:14:16.440
It was a chance for her own success, her own spotlight.

275
00:14:16.840 --> 00:14:19.759
Two days before the shoot, she called her friend in tears.

276
00:14:20.120 --> 00:14:22.799
Jonathan wouldn't let her do it, She said she was

277
00:14:22.840 --> 00:14:26.159
a woman living in a multimillion dollar home surrounded by

278
00:14:26.279 --> 00:14:29.320
six thousand tulips, who couldn't even say yes to a

279
00:14:29.399 --> 00:14:33.399
five minute commercial without her husband's permission. By the end

280
00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:36.399
of two thousand and three, the restraining orders meant to

281
00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:39.279
keep Michelle and Enno apart had become little more than

282
00:14:39.360 --> 00:14:43.440
paper suggestions. Despite the court's warning, the two were back

283
00:14:43.480 --> 00:14:46.399
in each other's arms within a month. According to Enyo,

284
00:14:46.600 --> 00:14:49.639
Michelle was the pursuer, calling him in tears until he

285
00:14:49.720 --> 00:14:53.480
agreed to meet. The weekly motel meetings resumed, and with

286
00:14:53.559 --> 00:14:58.240
them a continuing transformation in Michelle. She began dressing like

287
00:14:58.279 --> 00:15:02.080
a teenager, swapping her to designer labels for trendy outfits

288
00:15:02.120 --> 00:15:05.039
to go clubbing with her twenty one year old friend Amy.

289
00:15:05.600 --> 00:15:08.000
At thirty four, Michelle was in the best shape of

290
00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:10.799
her life and leaned into the attention she received at

291
00:15:10.840 --> 00:15:14.759
the chanel counter. She was flirting with customers, even scheduling

292
00:15:14.840 --> 00:15:17.480
dates with men who had no idea she was married.

293
00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:21.480
The contrast at home was staggering. While Michelle was staying

294
00:15:21.519 --> 00:15:24.639
out late going to nightclubs. Jonathan was a ghost in

295
00:15:24.720 --> 00:15:28.039
his own mansion. He would take his lorazepam and wander

296
00:15:28.080 --> 00:15:30.120
out to the swing set he had built for the kids,

297
00:15:30.399 --> 00:15:33.120
sitting in the dark and contemplating how his life had

298
00:15:33.159 --> 00:15:36.279
gotten to this point. At a Christmas party in December,

299
00:15:36.559 --> 00:15:39.639
Michelle was the life of the room, singing Madonna on

300
00:15:39.679 --> 00:15:42.799
a karaoke machine and wanting to stay until the party

301
00:15:42.879 --> 00:15:46.720
was over. Jonathan sulked in a corner, eventually dragging her

302
00:15:46.759 --> 00:15:49.519
away for a screaming match on the drive home. Yet

303
00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:52.360
days later, on New Year's Eve, they hosted a lavish

304
00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:57.279
party for two dozen friends. They appeared relaxed, happy and perfect,

305
00:15:57.639 --> 00:16:00.759
even making double date plans for Valentine's Day and a

306
00:16:00.759 --> 00:16:05.279
summer vacation to Cancun. On January ninth, two thousand and four,

307
00:16:05.559 --> 00:16:08.240
Teodoro prepared to return to the Philippines.

308
00:16:08.279 --> 00:16:11.559
But Teodoro was Michelle's dad, and he came over to

309
00:16:11.600 --> 00:16:13.960
the United States at least two or three times that

310
00:16:14.039 --> 00:16:16.279
I read, and stayed for like six months at a time,

311
00:16:16.519 --> 00:16:18.799
so he was almost part of the household. At a

312
00:16:18.799 --> 00:16:19.440
certain point.

313
00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:22.679
The night before he left, Michelle confided in her dad

314
00:16:22.840 --> 00:16:25.879
that she was finally done. She had a plan. She

315
00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:28.279
was waiting for the one point six million dollar house

316
00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:31.159
to sell, and the moment the papers were signed, she

317
00:16:31.440 --> 00:16:34.440
was filing for a divorce. But if I remember right,

318
00:16:35.039 --> 00:16:37.480
he took like a big loan out on like a

319
00:16:37.519 --> 00:16:38.399
second mortgage out there.

320
00:16:38.559 --> 00:16:40.200
He took a second mortgage out. So yeah, I'm not

321
00:16:40.240 --> 00:16:42.159
sure how much equity they had in the home, but

322
00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:44.639
they I think they bought it for nine hundred thousand dollars,

323
00:16:44.679 --> 00:16:47.039
so they were selling it. If they were able to

324
00:16:47.039 --> 00:16:49.759
get one point six million, it was a pretty significant

325
00:16:49.759 --> 00:16:50.679
profit they would make.

326
00:16:51.080 --> 00:16:54.240
It was the last time Teodoro wouldever speak to his daughter.

327
00:16:54.639 --> 00:16:57.759
The very next night, January tenth, The Nicest went out

328
00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:00.720
for a night in Philadelphia with her friends Larissa and

329
00:17:00.799 --> 00:17:04.440
John Sues. They dined at expensive restaurants and danced at

330
00:17:04.440 --> 00:17:07.519
the Catman Do nightclub until the lights came up. To

331
00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:10.680
the Sues. They seemed like a couple enjoying the prime

332
00:17:10.759 --> 00:17:13.680
of their lives. But back at one keith Wood Court,

333
00:17:13.839 --> 00:17:17.599
things were about to reach their final violent breaking point.

334
00:17:17.880 --> 00:17:20.759
One thing to point out is that Michelle didn't really

335
00:17:20.839 --> 00:17:25.200
tell anyone any of her close friends about her relationship

336
00:17:25.279 --> 00:17:27.799
with Enyo. I think the only one who knew was

337
00:17:27.839 --> 00:17:30.359
her friend Amy, who was twenty one years old, that

338
00:17:30.440 --> 00:17:32.960
she had met at Macy's and they had started hanging

339
00:17:32.960 --> 00:17:35.720
out together. But it is interesting that a lot of

340
00:17:35.759 --> 00:17:39.319
the couple's friends really didn't know that the marriage was

341
00:17:39.720 --> 00:17:42.839
struggling or falling apart. There had been some public fights

342
00:17:42.839 --> 00:17:44.319
and things like that, but a lot of people really

343
00:17:44.359 --> 00:17:46.279
had no idea that they were in trouble.

344
00:17:46.480 --> 00:17:49.759
People were probably surprised by this couple though, because there's

345
00:17:49.839 --> 00:17:52.759
twenty years difference in them, right, Yeah, and you've described

346
00:17:52.839 --> 00:17:57.920
Jonathan as tall but you know, portly, Yeah, and not

347
00:17:58.079 --> 00:18:00.799
in great shame. Michelle is young.

348
00:18:01.839 --> 00:18:02.079
Out.

349
00:18:03.079 --> 00:18:04.680
We'll be back after a break.

350
00:18:11.880 --> 00:18:16.000
Thursday, January fifteenth, two thousand and four, began with the quiet,

351
00:18:16.079 --> 00:18:20.400
muffled stillness of a New Jersey snowstorm. Hopewell Township schools

352
00:18:20.440 --> 00:18:23.799
were shuttered inside the mansion at one keith Wood Court.

353
00:18:24.039 --> 00:18:27.960
The morning was a study in domestic contrast. Jonathan sat

354
00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:31.599
at his computer obsessively refining the color layout for his

355
00:18:31.720 --> 00:18:36.119
sampaguita perfume his scent of innocence, while his three children

356
00:18:36.160 --> 00:18:40.039
played video games nearby. Michelle drifted in and out running

357
00:18:40.160 --> 00:18:42.559
errands before her evening shift at Macy's.

358
00:18:42.720 --> 00:18:45.720
I'm so curious what this perfume smelled like? Yeah, did

359
00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:47.559
he develop it in his lab?

360
00:18:47.880 --> 00:18:49.720
I think he was working on it. I don't think

361
00:18:49.759 --> 00:18:52.960
he ever finished. By all accounts, the afternoon was a

362
00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:56.960
picture of dedicated fatherhood. Jonathan took five year old Samantha

363
00:18:57.039 --> 00:18:59.920
sledding on the massive hill behind their home. When she

364
00:19:00.119 --> 00:19:02.519
fell and cried, he brought her in and took the

365
00:19:02.519 --> 00:19:05.400
boys out for the rest of the day. As dusk fell,

366
00:19:05.480 --> 00:19:09.480
the rolls shifted. Michelle prepared for work while Jonathan bundled

367
00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:12.559
the kids into the car for gymnastics, followed by a

368
00:19:12.599 --> 00:19:16.799
pizza dinner at TG's Tratoria. They arrived home just before

369
00:19:16.839 --> 00:19:19.519
seven pm to a package that the children had been

370
00:19:19.519 --> 00:19:22.880
waiting for, a model castle from the Lord of the Rings.

371
00:19:23.359 --> 00:19:25.839
The kids spent some time getting started on the model,

372
00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:28.960
then by eight pm, Jonathan claimed that he and the

373
00:19:29.039 --> 00:19:32.480
kids were tucked into the king sized master bed. They

374
00:19:32.559 --> 00:19:36.039
watched the Jim Carrey comedy Bruce Almighty on pay per view,

375
00:19:36.440 --> 00:19:39.240
and by ten PM the lights were out and Jonathan

376
00:19:39.319 --> 00:19:41.759
later insisted they were all fast asleep.

377
00:19:42.039 --> 00:19:45.279
That sounds like a picture perfeed day with three young cousins.

378
00:19:45.880 --> 00:19:49.960
Meanwhile, at Macy's, Michelle called Eno around five thirty pm

379
00:19:50.079 --> 00:19:53.440
to arrange a rendezvous. After her shift ended at nine

380
00:19:53.599 --> 00:19:57.599
fifteen pm, she clocked out. Security footage later showed her

381
00:19:57.880 --> 00:20:01.359
still in her black uniform, her bras Chanelle name tag

382
00:20:01.400 --> 00:20:04.599
glinting under the parking lot lights, a thick gold chain

383
00:20:04.680 --> 00:20:08.000
around her neck. She drove her Toyota land Cruiser to

384
00:20:08.039 --> 00:20:11.039
an Applebee's parking lot where Enyo was waiting in his

385
00:20:11.160 --> 00:20:15.119
Nissan Maxima. As Michelle climbed into Enyo's car, her cell

386
00:20:15.119 --> 00:20:18.720
phone rang. It was her friend Amy checking in. Michelle

387
00:20:18.759 --> 00:20:21.920
lied with practiced ease, telling Amy that she was headed

388
00:20:21.920 --> 00:20:25.000
to the supermarket. As soon as the call ended. Enyo

389
00:20:25.079 --> 00:20:27.960
pulled into the parking lot of Mount's Motel, a CD

390
00:20:28.119 --> 00:20:31.440
spot not far from the high end mall where Michelle worked.

391
00:20:32.000 --> 00:20:34.920
Enyo booked room two O two for two hours under

392
00:20:34.960 --> 00:20:39.599
the name Jose Pineda. It cost thirty dollars Inside the room.

393
00:20:39.640 --> 00:20:42.839
As they began to have sex, Michelle's cell phone lit up.

394
00:20:43.160 --> 00:20:46.480
It was Jonathan calling from the mansion. She glanced at

395
00:20:46.480 --> 00:20:49.440
the caller id and simply switched it off, turning her

396
00:20:49.480 --> 00:20:52.599
attention back to her lover. When their time was up

397
00:20:52.640 --> 00:20:56.640
at midnight, the motel clerk called the room. Michelle freshened up,

398
00:20:56.759 --> 00:20:59.960
putting on her favorite Chanelle twenty two perfume, a set

399
00:21:00.200 --> 00:21:02.640
of luxury to mask the smell of sex in a

400
00:21:02.680 --> 00:21:05.519
thirty dollars motel room, and you know, drove her back

401
00:21:05.559 --> 00:21:09.039
to her land cruiser. They kissed, and at twelve thirty am,

402
00:21:09.279 --> 00:21:11.920
Michelle pulled out onto Quaker Bridge Road.

403
00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:16.519
So I'm a little curious how CD motels work.

404
00:21:16.880 --> 00:21:19.839
Apparently pay for them by the hour, which is a

405
00:21:19.839 --> 00:21:20.519
little disturbed.

406
00:21:20.599 --> 00:21:24.400
But then at midnight is someone waiting for the room

407
00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:28.480
And I'm guessing, like the cleaning people aren't there at midnight.

408
00:21:28.839 --> 00:21:31.279
And I don't like to think about it too much,

409
00:21:31.319 --> 00:21:34.359
but yeah, it's a little bit. It's a little bit sortid.

410
00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:37.160
And I'm glad we exactly know the answer to that,

411
00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:38.960
because if you were like, oh, no, the cleaning cruise

412
00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:40.920
there are twenty four hours a day, and I'd be like.

413
00:21:40.920 --> 00:21:44.559
Yeah, they come right in right when you're leaving that husband, Oh.

414
00:21:44.279 --> 00:21:47.640
Yeah, not that we have not been at CD motels

415
00:21:47.720 --> 00:21:50.319
but it's been a few years in a while, and

416
00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:53.759
we never were in one where we re rented by

417
00:21:53.799 --> 00:21:56.799
the hour when we were poor and young, and we're

418
00:21:56.920 --> 00:21:59.640
now we're old and poor. But there were some motels

419
00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:02.559
that we rend to that I was like, I am

420
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:05.960
not comfortable staying here, honey.

421
00:22:05.759 --> 00:22:10.119
Yes, I remember those days well. Michelle was driving the

422
00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:14.119
thirteen miles toward their mansion, toward her sleeping children, and

423
00:22:14.279 --> 00:22:17.519
toward a husband who, despite his claims of being asleep,

424
00:22:17.720 --> 00:22:21.359
had been watching his calls to Michelle go unanswered. Michelle

425
00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:24.720
Nice was heading home for the very last time. The

426
00:22:24.799 --> 00:22:28.160
next morning, the silence of the snowy landscape was broken

427
00:22:28.319 --> 00:22:31.640
at eight fifty one am when the first officers from

428
00:22:31.640 --> 00:22:35.640
the Hopewell Township Police Department arrived at Jacob's Creek Road.

429
00:22:36.079 --> 00:22:37.960
They had been called to what appeared to be a

430
00:22:38.039 --> 00:22:42.720
routine traffic accident, but the PSEE ANDNG Electric Company workers

431
00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:46.640
who discovered the vehicle already knew better. As one worker

432
00:22:46.720 --> 00:22:50.160
told the responding officer, you can slow down from running.

433
00:22:50.359 --> 00:22:53.720
She's already dead. The Toyota land cruiser sat in the

434
00:22:53.759 --> 00:22:57.000
shallow water of the creek, but the scene immediately defied

435
00:22:57.000 --> 00:22:59.720
the logic of a simple crash. The damage to the

436
00:22:59.799 --> 00:23:03.759
VA was minor, yet the interior was a chamber of horrors.

437
00:23:04.160 --> 00:23:07.759
Blood was smeared across the steering wheel, both front seats,

438
00:23:07.799 --> 00:23:11.319
and the left running board. Officers noted that the driver's

439
00:23:11.319 --> 00:23:13.480
seat was pushed back as far as it could go,

440
00:23:13.960 --> 00:23:17.200
far beyond the reach of the five foot four Michelle Nice.

441
00:23:17.599 --> 00:23:21.119
Michelle was still in her black Macy's uniform, her brass

442
00:23:21.200 --> 00:23:24.319
name tag and a white channel ribbon still pinned to

443
00:23:24.440 --> 00:23:27.759
her lapel. A thick gold chain remained around her neck,

444
00:23:27.880 --> 00:23:31.400
but she was missing one gold earring. In her left hand.

445
00:23:31.559 --> 00:23:34.440
Her fingers were clenched tight around a clump of hair

446
00:23:34.559 --> 00:23:38.279
and fibers. As the Hopewell officers, who had never handled

447
00:23:38.319 --> 00:23:41.839
a homicide waited for the new Jersey State Police Major

448
00:23:41.920 --> 00:23:46.759
Crime Unit, they began to document the anomalies. First, the footprints,

449
00:23:47.160 --> 00:23:50.640
a clear set of size twelve footprints led away from

450
00:23:50.640 --> 00:23:54.319
the passenger side, crossing the creek and disappearing up toward

451
00:23:54.359 --> 00:23:57.119
the road. Then there were the injuries to the woman

452
00:23:57.160 --> 00:24:01.640
in the car. Despite the intact windshield dashboard, Michelle had

453
00:24:01.680 --> 00:24:06.000
suffered massive traumatic head injuries that were inconsistent with a

454
00:24:06.039 --> 00:24:09.200
low speed slide into a creek. Finally, there was a

455
00:24:09.279 --> 00:24:12.640
large black suitcase in the back seat. It was bloodied

456
00:24:12.680 --> 00:24:16.400
on all six surfaces. When investigators opened it, they found

457
00:24:16.400 --> 00:24:20.039
it packed with clothing. The investigators looked from the bloody

458
00:24:20.079 --> 00:24:23.319
suitcase to the size twelve tracks in the snow. This

459
00:24:23.599 --> 00:24:26.279
wasn't a woman who had lost control on an icy road.

460
00:24:26.640 --> 00:24:29.880
This was clearly a staged crime scene, and one that

461
00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:33.160
was not staged very well. It didn't take officers long

462
00:24:33.279 --> 00:24:36.720
to trace the land cruiser back to Jonathan Nice. At

463
00:24:36.799 --> 00:24:41.200
nine thirteen am on Friday, January sixteenth, officers arrived at

464
00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:44.200
one keith Wood Court. Before showing up, they learned a

465
00:24:44.240 --> 00:24:48.119
curious detail. The Nice homes burglar alarm had been triggered

466
00:24:48.160 --> 00:24:51.200
at six a m. That morning. A patrol officer had

467
00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:54.359
checked the perimeter then but found nothing out of the ordinary.

468
00:24:54.759 --> 00:24:57.440
When they knocked just after nine am, ten year old

469
00:24:57.440 --> 00:25:00.640
Trevor and five year old Samantha answered. Their mother was

470
00:25:00.680 --> 00:25:03.000
at work, they said, and their father was dropping their

471
00:25:03.039 --> 00:25:06.400
brother off at school. The officers waited in the driveway.

472
00:25:06.759 --> 00:25:10.359
When Jonathan's Hummer H two finally pulled in, The officers

473
00:25:10.400 --> 00:25:13.519
noted that he was disheveled, his hair was messy, his

474
00:25:13.640 --> 00:25:17.200
clothes rumpled. As they walked toward the house, Jonathan reached

475
00:25:17.240 --> 00:25:20.480
out and closed the garage door, an instinctive move that

476
00:25:20.559 --> 00:25:24.119
struck the officers as a deliberate attempt to hide whatever

477
00:25:24.200 --> 00:25:27.720
lay inside inside the house. When told about the crash,

478
00:25:27.920 --> 00:25:31.920
Jonathan immediately asked what hospital Michelle was in. Once the

479
00:25:31.960 --> 00:25:35.480
officers delivered the news of her death, Jonathan's reaction was

480
00:25:35.519 --> 00:25:39.480
not one of grief, but of deflection. As little Samantha

481
00:25:39.519 --> 00:25:43.079
sat on his lap drawing a picture, Jonathan began a cold,

482
00:25:43.279 --> 00:25:46.759
clinical tear down of his dead wife's character. He spoke

483
00:25:46.799 --> 00:25:50.680
openly of her infidelities and her unstable nature. Right in

484
00:25:50.680 --> 00:25:53.359
front of the child. He pointed the finger at Eno,

485
00:25:53.400 --> 00:25:57.119
the gardener, and her morally bankrupt young friend Amy. To

486
00:25:57.240 --> 00:26:00.160
the police, it felt less like a husband's grief and

487
00:26:00.200 --> 00:26:03.240
more like a prosecutor building a case against the victim.

488
00:26:03.640 --> 00:26:06.839
Detective Mchune, the man that Jonathan had once tried to

489
00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:10.559
fool with the five hundred thousand dollars extortion story, took

490
00:26:10.599 --> 00:26:13.400
the lead on the case. He and his sister, Detective

491
00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:17.599
Karen Ortman, recognized the need to lock Jonathan into a statement.

492
00:26:18.079 --> 00:26:20.960
In the car ride to the station. They used Jonathan's

493
00:26:21.079 --> 00:26:25.319
own ego against him, flattering him about his scientific achievements

494
00:26:25.359 --> 00:26:26.319
to keep him talking.

495
00:26:26.880 --> 00:26:29.559
So the two detectives are brother and sister. Yeah, that's

496
00:26:29.640 --> 00:26:31.559
a really interesting dynamic.

497
00:26:31.160 --> 00:26:33.160
It is. And apparently this was the first case they

498
00:26:33.160 --> 00:26:35.279
had ever worked together. I didn't go into a lot

499
00:26:35.319 --> 00:26:37.039
of detail on it, but the book that I read

500
00:26:37.400 --> 00:26:39.079
talked a little bit about this, how they were really

501
00:26:39.119 --> 00:26:41.599
excited to work a case together because they had never

502
00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:42.880
had that chance before.

503
00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:44.559
Do you think they thought over who was going to

504
00:26:44.559 --> 00:26:45.240
be the bad cup?

505
00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:45.799
Probably?

506
00:26:45.880 --> 00:26:47.039
I don't want to be the bad cup.

507
00:26:48.039 --> 00:26:51.039
Jonathan claimed that he had last seen Michelle at four

508
00:26:51.119 --> 00:26:54.119
pm the previous day, when she left for work. He

509
00:26:54.160 --> 00:26:56.480
said he went to sleep at ten pm with the kids,

510
00:26:56.599 --> 00:26:59.559
only waking at six am when his mom called because

511
00:26:59.599 --> 00:27:02.240
the burg their alarm in Jonathan's house had been triggered

512
00:27:02.440 --> 00:27:06.039
and she had been notified. Jonathan also repeated the fake

513
00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:08.799
story about how he and Michelle had met, and he

514
00:27:08.880 --> 00:27:12.400
told the detectives that he took larrazapam when Michelle stayed

515
00:27:12.400 --> 00:27:14.319
out late so that he wouldn't worry.

516
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:18.319
But remember, how did they meet? It was like you

517
00:27:18.759 --> 00:27:20.799
kept saying, meet cute. I can't remember well.

518
00:27:20.799 --> 00:27:25.079
They actually metted through a pen pale ad, but the

519
00:27:25.119 --> 00:27:27.799
story that they made up was that he was scuba

520
00:27:27.839 --> 00:27:30.680
diving in Hawaii and she stepped on his foot and

521
00:27:30.920 --> 00:27:35.039
they started talking for there. Detectives noticed that Jonathan's hands

522
00:27:35.079 --> 00:27:38.799
were covered in small cuts and scratches. His fingernails were

523
00:27:38.839 --> 00:27:43.039
torn and dirty. They asked to take photos and Jonathan agreed. Then,

524
00:27:43.160 --> 00:27:45.640
during the drive back to the house, Jonathan made a

525
00:27:45.680 --> 00:27:50.160
massive blunder. Wistfully musing about his relationship. He said, you know,

526
00:27:50.400 --> 00:27:52.680
I really thought things were going to work out, and

527
00:27:52.720 --> 00:27:56.039
he explained that they only fought when Michelle threatened to leave.

528
00:27:56.559 --> 00:27:59.480
When mckune asked when she had last threatened to move out,

529
00:27:59.559 --> 00:28:02.880
Jonathan and replied last night. If he hadn't seen her

530
00:28:02.920 --> 00:28:05.559
since four pm, as he had claimed, how could she

531
00:28:05.559 --> 00:28:09.920
have threatened to leave him last night? Even as the

532
00:28:09.960 --> 00:28:13.880
police canvassed the neighborhood, Jonathan was busy managing the narrative.

533
00:28:14.240 --> 00:28:17.480
He called Michelle's best friend Larissa, not to grieve, but

534
00:28:17.599 --> 00:28:20.160
to convince her that Michelle was a bad person who

535
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:23.400
had been seeing her lover every night. Larissa was shocked

536
00:28:23.480 --> 00:28:25.920
she had no idea that her best friend had been

537
00:28:25.960 --> 00:28:29.759
having an affair. Most tellingly, Jonathan made no effort to

538
00:28:29.759 --> 00:28:33.319
call the Philippines. Michelle's family found out through a friend

539
00:28:33.359 --> 00:28:37.359
who saw the news. When a devastated Teodoro finally reached

540
00:28:37.359 --> 00:28:40.400
his son in law, Jonathan offered nothing but the cold

541
00:28:40.599 --> 00:28:44.720
scripted line, Michelle died in a car accident. Jonathan wanted

542
00:28:44.839 --> 00:28:47.319
everyone to believe that he was the victim of a

543
00:28:47.400 --> 00:28:50.160
cheating wife and that she was the victim of a

544
00:28:50.240 --> 00:28:51.200
vengeful gardener.

545
00:28:51.839 --> 00:28:53.640
Even if I was cheating on you, wouldn't you be

546
00:28:53.720 --> 00:28:55.720
sad if I died in a car accident?

547
00:28:55.960 --> 00:28:56.599
Yeah, of course.

548
00:28:56.960 --> 00:28:58.480
Wouldn't you inform my family?

549
00:28:58.680 --> 00:29:02.200
Well? Yeah, absolutely. That part is kind of shocking that

550
00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:04.920
he didn't call her family at all. It wasn't even

551
00:29:05.160 --> 00:29:06.759
important enough for him to let them know.

552
00:29:07.319 --> 00:29:10.599
At six fifteen PM, as the temperature plummeted to abiding

553
00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:14.160
sixteen degrees, the medical examiner arrived at the edge of

554
00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:17.599
the creek. Michelle's body was frozen solid, a state that

555
00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:21.759
preserved the final violent moments of her life with clinical precision.

556
00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:24.759
It didn't take long for the emmy to look past

557
00:29:24.880 --> 00:29:28.799
the accident staging. It was without a question, a homicide.

558
00:29:29.319 --> 00:29:32.680
The autopsy performed the following morning told a story of

559
00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:36.359
a woman who had fought desperately to survive. Michelle's body

560
00:29:36.440 --> 00:29:39.880
was a map of a brutal, prolonged assault. First, there

561
00:29:39.880 --> 00:29:43.119
were the defensive wounds. Her hands and wrists were covered

562
00:29:43.160 --> 00:29:46.519
in injuries, and the hair and fibers found clenched in

563
00:29:46.559 --> 00:29:51.440
her left hand further confirmed her final desperate struggle. Second,

564
00:29:51.720 --> 00:29:54.759
Michelle was black and blue from head to toe. Her

565
00:29:54.799 --> 00:29:59.519
forehead bore three lacerations so deep they exposed the bone.

566
00:30:00.119 --> 00:30:02.319
The top of her head had been struck with such

567
00:30:02.440 --> 00:30:08.759
force that fractured the skull, causing massive intracranial bleeding. And crucially,

568
00:30:09.079 --> 00:30:12.720
the medical examiner found blood on the soles of her feet.

569
00:30:13.119 --> 00:30:17.720
This was a devastating detail. It meant Michelle had been standing, walking,

570
00:30:18.079 --> 00:30:21.279
or perhaps running, through her own blood as she tried

571
00:30:21.319 --> 00:30:24.039
to escape her attacker. Did she have shoes on?

572
00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:26.920
I don't believe she did, okay.

573
00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:30.880
But the most disturbing revelation was the timing. The presence

574
00:30:30.920 --> 00:30:33.880
of frothy blood in her lungs told the medical examiner

575
00:30:33.880 --> 00:30:37.640
that Michelle Nice did not die instantly. She had survived

576
00:30:37.640 --> 00:30:40.799
the initial skull, crushing blows for at least ten minutes,

577
00:30:40.960 --> 00:30:44.559
gasping for air and inhaling her own blood before her

578
00:30:44.880 --> 00:30:49.039
heart finally stopped. The report was clear Michelle had been

579
00:30:49.079 --> 00:30:52.240
beaten to death by blunt force trauma. She hadn't died

580
00:30:52.279 --> 00:30:55.039
from a car sliding into a creek. She had died

581
00:30:55.079 --> 00:30:57.799
in a struggle that began long before the land cruiser

582
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:02.480
ever reached Jacob's Creek. As the forensic details were logged,

583
00:31:02.519 --> 00:31:05.000
the police were already looking back at the twenty one

584
00:31:05.079 --> 00:31:08.559
room mansion. They were thinking about the size, twelve footprints,

585
00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:11.880
the scratched hands of a disheveled husband, and the garage

586
00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:15.000
door that Jonathan Nice had been so quick to close.

587
00:31:15.799 --> 00:31:19.759
While the forensic evidence was mounting, detectives began interviewing those

588
00:31:19.839 --> 00:31:23.640
closest to Michelle. When they spoke to Amy Sumayang, Michelle's

589
00:31:23.720 --> 00:31:26.799
friend and confidant from the Chanel counter, she confirmed that

590
00:31:26.799 --> 00:31:30.039
Michelle had been seeing Enyo. In fact, she was certain

591
00:31:30.119 --> 00:31:33.200
that Michelle had been with Enyo the night before. After

592
00:31:33.240 --> 00:31:36.720
her shift ended at Macy's. By ten a m detectives

593
00:31:36.759 --> 00:31:40.000
tracked Enyo down at the home he shared with Patricia Abod.

594
00:31:40.400 --> 00:31:44.839
Unlike the disheveled husband they had interviewed earlier. Enyo was cooperative,

595
00:31:45.039 --> 00:31:47.920
eventually returning to the station with his lawyer to lay

596
00:31:47.920 --> 00:31:51.440
his cards on the table, and New's confession was detailed

597
00:31:51.519 --> 00:31:55.759
and surprisingly transparent. He admitted that he and Michelle were

598
00:31:55.839 --> 00:31:58.480
seeing each other and that they had broken the restraining

599
00:31:58.559 --> 00:32:01.440
order in October on a to stay away from each other.

600
00:32:01.880 --> 00:32:05.640
He confirmed their final rendezvous at Mount's Hotel, where they

601
00:32:05.680 --> 00:32:09.480
had parted ways at twelve thirty am. Enyo also admitted

602
00:32:09.519 --> 00:32:12.759
to the police that to explain his late arrival to Patricia,

603
00:32:13.079 --> 00:32:16.640
he had used a classic ruse. He stopped for two

604
00:32:16.680 --> 00:32:19.200
Heinekens on the way home so his breath would smell

605
00:32:19.240 --> 00:32:23.200
of alcohol, providing a legitimate reason for being out late

606
00:32:23.440 --> 00:32:27.279
and snoring on the couch. Patricia confirmed his story. She

607
00:32:27.359 --> 00:32:30.319
had been so annoyed by his late, drunken return at

608
00:32:30.359 --> 00:32:33.480
one fifteen am that she banished him to the sofa

609
00:32:33.880 --> 00:32:37.200
for the police. Enyu's timeline checked out and helped to

610
00:32:37.240 --> 00:32:39.640
clear him. If he was at his house by one

611
00:32:39.720 --> 00:32:43.640
fifteen am, a fact corroborated by a suspicious wife, he

612
00:32:43.799 --> 00:32:46.319
couldn't have been the one staging a car crash in

613
00:32:46.359 --> 00:32:50.319
a Creek miles away. Soon after that, the spotlight shifted

614
00:32:50.359 --> 00:32:52.599
back to the man who had claimed to be tucked

615
00:32:52.680 --> 00:32:55.279
up in a king sized bed watching movies with his

616
00:32:55.359 --> 00:32:59.039
kids while Enyo was drinking Heinekens to hide a mistress.

617
00:32:59.319 --> 00:33:02.920
Jonathan Knight was at home, likely staring at the clock

618
00:33:03.119 --> 00:33:05.960
waiting for the scent of Chanelle twenty two to enter

619
00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:09.440
the house for the very last time. So the oldest

620
00:33:09.519 --> 00:33:10.880
child is at least ten.

621
00:33:11.000 --> 00:33:12.839
At twelve, I believe the oldest child was.

622
00:33:13.079 --> 00:33:15.599
Were any of them talked to by the police and

623
00:33:15.680 --> 00:33:16.799
able to corroborate his.

624
00:33:16.799 --> 00:33:18.920
Alibi, We'll talk about this in a little bit, but

625
00:33:19.039 --> 00:33:21.640
the police were not able to talk to them for

626
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:23.759
quite a while after this happened.

627
00:33:23.799 --> 00:33:27.319
Okay, the investigation at one keith Wood Court was no

628
00:33:27.359 --> 00:33:31.599
longer a courtesy call. It was a forensic investigation. By

629
00:33:31.599 --> 00:33:35.279
the evening of January sixteenth, the detectives had seen enough

630
00:33:35.319 --> 00:33:39.480
contradictions to treat the Nice residents as a primary crime scene.

631
00:33:39.960 --> 00:33:43.119
As Detective Ortman was crossing the t's and dotting the

632
00:33:43.160 --> 00:33:46.720
eyes on the search warrant, investigators worried that Jonathan was

633
00:33:46.759 --> 00:33:50.880
in the basement desperately attempting to erase any physical evidence,

634
00:33:51.279 --> 00:33:54.319
and they weren't wrong. Knowing he had left those size

635
00:33:54.359 --> 00:33:57.599
twelve tracks in the snow, he didn't just hide his shoes,

636
00:33:57.839 --> 00:33:58.799
he destroyed them.

637
00:33:58.880 --> 00:34:00.599
I don't know if you remember from Art one when

638
00:34:00.640 --> 00:34:03.839
he was on his sabbatical, when he was unemployed, one

639
00:34:03.839 --> 00:34:06.440
of the things he did was to invent a new

640
00:34:06.519 --> 00:34:09.480
kind of footwear where he took the souls from work

641
00:34:09.519 --> 00:34:12.440
boots and cut them off and pasted them or glued

642
00:34:12.480 --> 00:34:14.599
them onto the bottom of a pair ofmocracy.

643
00:34:14.679 --> 00:34:16.719
It was like a lug soul, right yeah.

644
00:34:17.199 --> 00:34:17.519
Now.

645
00:34:17.559 --> 00:34:20.440
He used a scroll saw to cut the boot's souls

646
00:34:20.480 --> 00:34:25.519
off and slice the souls into small, unrecognizable fragments. He

647
00:34:25.639 --> 00:34:29.719
then hit the pieces in various locations, including inside a

648
00:34:29.719 --> 00:34:33.440
box of Christmas decorations. His work was interrupted by his

649
00:34:33.519 --> 00:34:36.599
five year old daughter, who came downstairs to tell him

650
00:34:36.599 --> 00:34:40.400
the police had returned. At eight thirty one pm, officers

651
00:34:40.480 --> 00:34:43.159
arrived to remove Jonathan from the home to prevent the

652
00:34:43.199 --> 00:34:48.039
destruction of further evidence. The cool clinical scientist was replaced

653
00:34:48.079 --> 00:34:51.480
by a man scrambling for a lifeline. He fumbled through

654
00:34:51.519 --> 00:34:53.880
the yellow pages for an attorney he had used for

655
00:34:53.920 --> 00:34:58.320
a minor municipal hearing. Months earlier, his police escorted him

656
00:34:58.320 --> 00:35:01.079
through the house to pack a bag. They noticed broken

657
00:35:01.119 --> 00:35:05.960
glass in the master bathroom. Jonathan's explanation was immediate and practiced.

658
00:35:06.159 --> 00:35:09.239
The kids broke the glass earlier. They let him pack

659
00:35:09.239 --> 00:35:09.719
a bag.

660
00:35:10.239 --> 00:35:13.599
Yeah, I'm actually surprised a little bit about this whole

661
00:35:13.639 --> 00:35:15.920
thing because they didn't have the search warrant yet, but

662
00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:17.840
they told him he had to leave the house. They

663
00:35:17.920 --> 00:35:20.440
knew that they were working on the search warrant, but

664
00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:24.039
I'm surprised that they could tell him he had to leave.

665
00:35:23.880 --> 00:35:25.880
At that point without a search warrant.

666
00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:28.079
Yeah, And I think that would come up later in

667
00:35:29.079 --> 00:35:29.440
one of the.

668
00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:32.079
Appeals that his It sounds like they were kind of

669
00:35:32.119 --> 00:35:34.039
going through the house, Like you said, they went to

670
00:35:34.039 --> 00:35:38.559
the basement and he saw that is it does seem

671
00:35:38.639 --> 00:35:39.159
not normal.

672
00:35:39.400 --> 00:35:39.639
Yeah.

673
00:35:40.079 --> 00:35:43.719
Once Jonathan Is and his family vacated the premises, the

674
00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:48.440
forensic team spent three days meticulously searching the mansion. They

675
00:35:48.480 --> 00:35:51.280
didn't have to look hard to find the violence Jonathan

676
00:35:51.320 --> 00:35:54.559
had tried to wash away. Detectives found blood on the

677
00:35:54.599 --> 00:35:57.639
door jam and floor of the basement in the garage.

678
00:35:57.719 --> 00:36:01.079
The dwarf frame leading into the house was stained and

679
00:36:01.119 --> 00:36:04.559
the floor showed clear squirl marks where someone had attempted

680
00:36:04.760 --> 00:36:07.519
to mop up a significant amount of blood, and a

681
00:36:07.559 --> 00:36:11.320
shelving unit. In the garage, investigators recovered a baseball bat

682
00:36:11.360 --> 00:36:14.960
stained with what appeared to be blood. Nearby lay an

683
00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.000
empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide, apparently used here for a

684
00:36:19.079 --> 00:36:23.159
desperate failed cleanup. The garage contained a lot of evidence

685
00:36:23.360 --> 00:36:27.400
and various garbage containers. They found plastic trash bags stuffed

686
00:36:27.440 --> 00:36:31.280
with numerous blood soaked white paper towels. There was also

687
00:36:31.400 --> 00:36:34.880
evidence found hidden away in odd places. In the living room,

688
00:36:35.039 --> 00:36:38.599
a pair of men's black pajama bottoms soaking wet, had

689
00:36:38.599 --> 00:36:42.039
been stuffed behind a couch. There was a plastic bag

690
00:36:42.119 --> 00:36:45.159
filled with more bloody paper towels tucked in the chimney,

691
00:36:45.159 --> 00:36:48.679
flu behind a fireplace in the basement, and upstairs, the

692
00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:52.920
washing machine was filled with reddish brown tinted water. So

693
00:36:53.039 --> 00:36:54.880
this guy does not know how to clean up a

694
00:36:54.920 --> 00:36:55.679
crime scene at all.

695
00:36:55.960 --> 00:36:57.719
No, he doesn't know how to stage a crime scene,

696
00:36:57.800 --> 00:36:59.159
and he doesn't know how to clean it up.

697
00:36:59.440 --> 00:37:01.880
The mansion was no longer a dream home. It was

698
00:37:01.920 --> 00:37:05.480
a laboratory of murder. Jonathan's desperate attempts to clean up

699
00:37:05.480 --> 00:37:09.280
the scene had been futile. We'll be back after a break.

700
00:37:16.400 --> 00:37:20.400
By Sunday morning, January eighteenth, the walls had effectively closed

701
00:37:20.400 --> 00:37:23.480
in on Jonathan Nice. He arrived at the police station

702
00:37:23.599 --> 00:37:27.119
with his father and brother. Still attempting to control the narrative,

703
00:37:27.480 --> 00:37:30.840
he tried to resurrect the Enno frame up theory, claiming

704
00:37:30.880 --> 00:37:34.039
Michelle was so terrified of Enyo's wife that she had

705
00:37:34.079 --> 00:37:37.559
disabled the garage lights, thinking that she was being followed home.

706
00:37:38.039 --> 00:37:41.519
The detectives were unimpressed. To them, the idea of a

707
00:37:41.559 --> 00:37:44.880
third party killing Michelle inside her own home and then

708
00:37:44.960 --> 00:37:47.840
staging her car in a creek was, as they put it,

709
00:37:48.039 --> 00:37:51.599
the dumbest frame up. Ever, when Jonathan realized the police

710
00:37:51.639 --> 00:37:55.119
had enough probable cause to arrest him, the negotiator in

711
00:37:55.239 --> 00:37:57.880
him emerged. He tried to broke her a deal for

712
00:37:57.960 --> 00:38:01.360
a short sentence in exchange for a state. The detectives

713
00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:04.599
refused to play. They leaned on his ego once more,

714
00:38:04.639 --> 00:38:08.159
telling him that a man as logical and analytical as

715
00:38:08.199 --> 00:38:13.079
he was should see how lopsided the evidence had become. Jonathan, Ever,

716
00:38:13.159 --> 00:38:17.639
the scientist agreed, saying he probably wouldn't believe himself either.

717
00:38:18.119 --> 00:38:22.000
A brief legal hurdle appeared when Jonathan's attorney, Lee Engelman,

718
00:38:22.239 --> 00:38:25.239
called the station. He left a message with the police

719
00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:28.840
saying he wanted to represent Jonathan and advising him not

720
00:38:28.960 --> 00:38:32.280
to speak with the police. After consulting with the assistant

721
00:38:32.360 --> 00:38:36.079
district attorney about their legal obligation in the situation, the

722
00:38:36.119 --> 00:38:39.679
police told Jonathan that Engelman had called, but they didn't

723
00:38:39.719 --> 00:38:43.000
tell Jonathan that his lawyer had left a message advising

724
00:38:43.079 --> 00:38:45.559
him not to speak. So this is kind of interesting

725
00:38:45.639 --> 00:38:48.000
and I am not a lawyer at all, but so

726
00:38:48.159 --> 00:38:51.800
this lawyer calls them up while they're interrogating Jonathan, says

727
00:38:51.840 --> 00:38:54.559
I want to represent him, tell him not to talk

728
00:38:54.599 --> 00:38:58.400
to the police. And the police said that his lawyer called,

729
00:38:58.440 --> 00:39:00.960
but they didn't say the part about him lawyer advising

730
00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:03.559
him not to call the police. I'm not sure how

731
00:39:03.800 --> 00:39:06.159
ethical or legal that is, but it seems a little

732
00:39:06.159 --> 00:39:07.639
bit of a gray area.

733
00:39:08.480 --> 00:39:10.559
Had he called his attorney.

734
00:39:10.320 --> 00:39:12.599
This is the attorney he called. He just grabbed the

735
00:39:12.639 --> 00:39:14.880
Yellow Pages while they were trying to get him to

736
00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:17.519
leave the house, and he just this was an attorney

737
00:39:17.559 --> 00:39:19.400
I think he had worked with once before on something

738
00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:22.639
mentioned other matter, but it wasn't someone he had worked

739
00:39:22.639 --> 00:39:26.599
with regularly. The police did read Jonathan his Miranda rights,

740
00:39:26.679 --> 00:39:31.079
but Jonathan, perhaps believing he could still outsmart his interrogators,

741
00:39:31.320 --> 00:39:34.039
declined to speak with his lawyer. He said he just

742
00:39:34.119 --> 00:39:37.599
wanted to be helpful to the investigation. The breaking point

743
00:39:37.679 --> 00:39:41.119
came when Jonathan asked the one question that still haunted

744
00:39:41.159 --> 00:39:44.639
his ego. Had Michelle been with eno that night? When

745
00:39:44.639 --> 00:39:49.199
the detectives confirmed that she had, Jonathan's composure shattered, he

746
00:39:49.280 --> 00:39:53.800
began to hyperventilate, spiraling into a sobbing breakdown. The knowledge

747
00:39:53.840 --> 00:39:56.599
that she had chosen the gardener over him and had

748
00:39:56.639 --> 00:39:59.599
declined his call while in that motel room was the

749
00:39:59.599 --> 00:40:03.679
final ego wound that he couldn't sustain. Through the tears,

750
00:40:03.800 --> 00:40:06.880
the confession finally came, though it was wrapped in a

751
00:40:06.920 --> 00:40:10.480
new layer of make believe. Jonathan claimed he had acted

752
00:40:10.519 --> 00:40:14.360
in self defense. According to his taped statement, he was

753
00:40:14.400 --> 00:40:17.280
in the kitchen at two am making some warm milk

754
00:40:17.320 --> 00:40:20.639
for Samantha when he heard Michelle's car. He met her

755
00:40:20.639 --> 00:40:23.480
in the garage, where he claimed she was acting high

756
00:40:23.519 --> 00:40:26.599
and aggressive. He alleged that she lunged at him with

757
00:40:26.639 --> 00:40:30.239
a sharp, shiny object, a stiletto or a letter opener

758
00:40:30.480 --> 00:40:33.239
from her chanel bag. He claimed he threw her to

759
00:40:33.280 --> 00:40:36.320
the concrete floor to protect himself and her head hit

760
00:40:36.440 --> 00:40:40.679
with a sickening funk. Jonathan insisted he spent fifteen minutes

761
00:40:40.679 --> 00:40:43.440
trying to save her, but that she kept flailing and

762
00:40:43.480 --> 00:40:46.760
trying to stab him even as she bled. He claimed

763
00:40:46.800 --> 00:40:50.159
he only staged the accident to protect the children from

764
00:40:50.199 --> 00:40:52.639
the knowledge that their mother had tried to kill their father.

765
00:40:53.159 --> 00:40:56.880
He blamed his foggy decisions like stuffing wet pajamas behind

766
00:40:56.960 --> 00:41:00.000
a couch on the heavy dose of lazapam he had

767
00:41:00.119 --> 00:41:03.199
taken earlier. Are you buying this story? Self? Noice?

768
00:41:03.519 --> 00:41:06.880
And sometimes my eyes just roll up so far into

769
00:41:06.920 --> 00:41:09.239
my head that it's shocking.

770
00:41:09.320 --> 00:41:11.760
Well, I think the police weren't buying it either. At

771
00:41:11.760 --> 00:41:14.360
the end of the nearly two hour interview, Nice was

772
00:41:14.480 --> 00:41:17.119
arrested for a first degree murder and his bail was

773
00:41:17.159 --> 00:41:20.960
set at two million dollars cash. While Jonathan Nice had

774
00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:24.480
sat in an interrogation room spinning a tale of stiletto

775
00:41:24.559 --> 00:41:28.400
lunges and self defense, the investigators were piecing together their

776
00:41:28.440 --> 00:41:31.199
own theory of what happened that night, one based on

777
00:41:31.280 --> 00:41:35.079
the evidence the detectives believed that Jonathan didn't wake up

778
00:41:35.079 --> 00:41:38.559
by accident. He had been waiting since early December. He

779
00:41:38.559 --> 00:41:41.639
had been seething, and on the night of January fifteenth,

780
00:41:41.760 --> 00:41:45.320
his patients finally evaporated. After tucking the kids in at

781
00:41:45.400 --> 00:41:48.639
ten pm, he didn't sleep. He sat in the darkened

782
00:41:48.679 --> 00:41:52.880
dining room watching the driveway. When Michelle's land cruiser finally

783
00:41:52.920 --> 00:41:56.199
pulled into the garage at twelve forty five am, Jonathan

784
00:41:56.360 --> 00:41:59.400
was already moving. He met her at the garage entrance.

785
00:42:00.039 --> 00:42:02.360
As she stepped out, he hit the button to close

786
00:42:02.400 --> 00:42:06.400
the garage door, sealing them inside. The argument was immediate.

787
00:42:06.760 --> 00:42:09.760
He smelled her Chanelle twenty two perfume and knew exactly

788
00:42:09.840 --> 00:42:13.559
where she had been. As the shouting escalated, Michelle pushed

789
00:42:13.599 --> 00:42:16.519
past him, heading for the master bedroom to pack. She

790
00:42:16.719 --> 00:42:20.039
was done. She grabbed the large black suitcase and began

791
00:42:20.159 --> 00:42:24.000
throwing clothes inside, declaring that she was leaving him in

792
00:42:24.039 --> 00:42:27.599
the master bathroom. A scuffle resulted in a broken wineglass,

793
00:42:27.920 --> 00:42:31.239
bleeding and in her stocking feet. Michelle dragged the heavy

794
00:42:31.239 --> 00:42:34.320
suitcase back down to the garage, desperate to get to

795
00:42:34.400 --> 00:42:37.920
her car. It was there that Jonathan snapped. He yanked

796
00:42:37.920 --> 00:42:40.519
her from the vehicle with such force that he left

797
00:42:40.559 --> 00:42:43.920
finger shaped bruises on her arm. Then he reached for

798
00:42:43.960 --> 00:42:46.719
the baseball bat he swung with the full weight of

799
00:42:46.760 --> 00:42:50.480
his six foot four frame, fracturing her skull. Michelle didn't

800
00:42:50.519 --> 00:42:53.960
die instantly. She put her hands up, fighting for her life,

801
00:42:54.239 --> 00:42:57.079
sliding through her own blood on the concrete floor. As

802
00:42:57.159 --> 00:43:00.559
she tried to crawl away, Jonathan caught her, grabbed her

803
00:43:00.559 --> 00:43:03.559
by the shoulders, and drove her head face first into

804
00:43:03.559 --> 00:43:07.000
the concrete again and again until he heard the sickening

805
00:43:07.039 --> 00:43:10.760
thud that signaled the end of her resistance. Then he

806
00:43:10.840 --> 00:43:13.119
tried to stage her death as a car accident on

807
00:43:13.159 --> 00:43:16.920
a slick, snow covered road. He lifted Michelle's lifeless body

808
00:43:16.920 --> 00:43:19.719
into the driver's seat of her land Cruiser and tossed

809
00:43:19.719 --> 00:43:24.199
her blood soaked suitcase into the back around two fifteen am.

810
00:43:24.320 --> 00:43:26.880
Wearing only a T shirt and pajama bottoms in the

811
00:43:26.920 --> 00:43:30.280
six degree cold, he used a plastic ice scraper to

812
00:43:30.320 --> 00:43:33.320
work the car's pedals while sitting on or next to

813
00:43:33.519 --> 00:43:36.880
his wife's body to steer. He drove to a specific

814
00:43:36.920 --> 00:43:40.239
opening in a white picket fence, a spot that investigators

815
00:43:40.280 --> 00:43:43.320
believe he may have scouted earlier. He let the car

816
00:43:43.480 --> 00:43:46.880
roll down the fifteen feet into the frozen creek, then

817
00:43:47.119 --> 00:43:50.280
stepped out of the passenger side, leaving the engine running

818
00:43:50.480 --> 00:43:53.519
and his dead wife behind. The walk home had been

819
00:43:53.559 --> 00:43:57.280
a nightmare of adrenaline and freezing water. At one point,

820
00:43:57.320 --> 00:44:00.920
the ice on the creek broke, soaking his customid moccasins.

821
00:44:01.280 --> 00:44:04.519
When he finally reached the house, the cleanup began a

822
00:44:04.519 --> 00:44:07.639
frantic attempt to scrub the garage and hide the evidence

823
00:44:07.679 --> 00:44:11.960
in fireplace flues and behind couches. After he accidentally tripped

824
00:44:11.960 --> 00:44:14.920
the burglar alarm in his basement, Jonathan knew it was

825
00:44:14.960 --> 00:44:17.840
only a matter of time before the police arrived. He

826
00:44:17.920 --> 00:44:20.960
went back upstairs and climbed into bed with his sleeping children,

827
00:44:21.280 --> 00:44:24.159
waiting for the phone to ring. However, when the officer

828
00:44:24.239 --> 00:44:26.800
showed up just after six, he just looked around the

829
00:44:26.840 --> 00:44:29.920
perimeter of the house, and, seeing nothing out of the ordinary,

830
00:44:30.239 --> 00:44:33.519
assumed it was a false alarm. It wasn't until Jonathan

831
00:44:33.559 --> 00:44:36.280
returned from taking his son to school that the police

832
00:44:36.320 --> 00:44:38.400
had arrived to tell him that his wife had been

833
00:44:38.440 --> 00:44:39.039
found dead.

834
00:44:39.559 --> 00:44:43.800
At his arraignment, Jonathan pleaded not guilty, but immediately began rambling,

835
00:44:43.840 --> 00:44:47.519
attempting to explain his confession until the judge silenced him.

836
00:44:47.840 --> 00:44:51.280
Though he claimed to be indigent and requested a public defender,

837
00:44:51.519 --> 00:44:54.599
the court, noting his one point six million dollar home

838
00:44:54.840 --> 00:44:59.079
and passed executive salary, denied the request, forcing him to

839
00:44:59.119 --> 00:45:03.760
find the funds or private defense. Meanwhile, the investigators returned

840
00:45:03.760 --> 00:45:07.440
to the mansion with a singular focus. The shoes. The

841
00:45:07.519 --> 00:45:11.480
size twelve wavy prints leading away from the passenger side

842
00:45:11.480 --> 00:45:14.599
of Michelle's car were the missing link, and they hadn't

843
00:45:14.599 --> 00:45:17.440
been found in the initial search. This time, though, in

844
00:45:17.480 --> 00:45:21.039
the basement, they discovered a forensic puzzle. They found a

845
00:45:21.039 --> 00:45:25.039
single piece of rubber near the scroll saw, then another

846
00:45:25.239 --> 00:45:29.199
and another hidden behind a workbench. They recovered the soulless

847
00:45:29.280 --> 00:45:34.079
leather moccasins. Detectives eventually recovered all fourteen pieces of the

848
00:45:34.079 --> 00:45:37.559
cut up souls, fitting them back together like a jigsaw puzzle.

849
00:45:37.880 --> 00:45:41.719
The fit was perfect. The scientists had tried to destroy

850
00:45:41.800 --> 00:45:45.440
the evidence, but he had only succeeded in creating a

851
00:45:45.519 --> 00:45:49.239
clearer trail of his own guilt. As the story went national,

852
00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:53.840
the perfect history of the Nice family was systematically debunked,

853
00:45:54.119 --> 00:45:57.480
the story of the Hawaii scuba diving accident was revealed

854
00:45:57.559 --> 00:46:02.039
as a total fabrication. Investigat discovered they had actually met

855
00:46:02.079 --> 00:46:05.960
through a Filipino dating site, a revelation that led to

856
00:46:06.239 --> 00:46:09.400
Michelle being cruelly branded in the press as a male

857
00:46:09.519 --> 00:46:15.360
order bride, a label that devastated her friends. Detectives reinterviewed Enyo,

858
00:46:15.480 --> 00:46:19.199
who admitted his aliases were used to dodge Child's support,

859
00:46:19.480 --> 00:46:22.239
but claimed he had never tried to extort Jonathan for

860
00:46:22.280 --> 00:46:25.280
a half million dollars. No evidence of a sex tape

861
00:46:25.400 --> 00:46:28.960
or an extortion plot was ever found. For six weeks,

862
00:46:29.000 --> 00:46:32.480
the Nice family shielded the three children from police. When

863
00:46:32.480 --> 00:46:35.800
they were finally interviewed in the presence of a psychiatrist,

864
00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:38.599
they were unable to help the police. They may have

865
00:46:38.639 --> 00:46:41.239
slept through the attack that killed their mother, they may

866
00:46:41.280 --> 00:46:43.960
have blocked out any memories, or they may have been

867
00:46:44.039 --> 00:46:47.800
coached on what to say. Michelle's friends were left reeling.

868
00:46:48.039 --> 00:46:50.760
The happy, go lucky woman they had known had been

869
00:46:50.800 --> 00:46:55.159
living a triple life of shame, secrecy, and survival, one

870
00:46:55.199 --> 00:46:58.119
that none of them had been aware of. While Jonathan

871
00:46:58.239 --> 00:47:01.440
Nice sat behind bars, an a new war erupted over

872
00:47:01.480 --> 00:47:03.960
the three children left in the wake of the violence.

873
00:47:04.400 --> 00:47:08.039
Just six days after the arrest, the Riviera family announced

874
00:47:08.079 --> 00:47:11.800
their intent to seek custody of Alex, Trevor, and Samantha.

875
00:47:12.119 --> 00:47:14.679
They wanted to bring the children back to the Philippines,

876
00:47:14.800 --> 00:47:18.519
to the culture and family Michelle had so desperately missed.

877
00:47:18.920 --> 00:47:22.079
If I remember correctly, they had never visited the Philippines

878
00:47:22.119 --> 00:47:23.960
because Jonathan had kind of blocked it.

879
00:47:24.039 --> 00:47:25.199
Yeah, he wouldn't let them go.

880
00:47:25.599 --> 00:47:29.280
The divide between the two families became a chasm. The Nices,

881
00:47:29.360 --> 00:47:32.840
who were caring for the children in Pennsylvania, withdrew their

882
00:47:32.880 --> 00:47:36.199
offer to pay for Michelle's funeral after a dispute over

883
00:47:36.239 --> 00:47:41.320
her remains. Jonathan's family pushed for cremation. Theodoro, guided by

884
00:47:41.400 --> 00:47:43.960
his faith and a father's grief, wanted to bring her

885
00:47:43.960 --> 00:47:47.760
body home for a traditional burial. In a staggering show

886
00:47:47.800 --> 00:47:51.960
of community support, Michelle's friends Larissa and Jean took over.

887
00:47:52.400 --> 00:47:56.840
They raised the thirteen thousand dollars needed to transport Michelle's

888
00:47:56.840 --> 00:48:00.280
body across the globe. But even in death, Michelle was

889
00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:03.440
a piece of evidence. Her body remained under police guard

890
00:48:03.559 --> 00:48:07.000
while Jonathan's legal team insisted on a second autopsy to

891
00:48:07.159 --> 00:48:11.119
hunt for proof. Of his self. Defense claims that tributes

892
00:48:11.159 --> 00:48:13.920
to Michelle painted a picture of a woman far removed

893
00:48:13.920 --> 00:48:18.039
from the unstable caricature Jonathan had presented. At a service

894
00:48:18.079 --> 00:48:21.960
in Princeton, Larissa described a woman whose laughter could warm

895
00:48:22.039 --> 00:48:25.159
your heart and who treated everyone from the rich to

896
00:48:25.239 --> 00:48:28.239
the poor, with the same down to earth grace. On

897
00:48:28.280 --> 00:48:32.039
February thirteenth, funded by donations from the Victims of Crime

898
00:48:32.159 --> 00:48:36.480
Compensation Board, Michelle finally began her journey home. When she

899
00:48:36.679 --> 00:48:40.280
arrived in the Philippines, her family held a traditional funeral,

900
00:48:40.559 --> 00:48:43.920
though the casket remained closed. The brutality of the attack

901
00:48:43.960 --> 00:48:48.079
had been so severe that morticians could not reconstruct her face.

902
00:48:48.800 --> 00:48:52.639
On Marge fifteenth, sixty three year old Theodora Riviera flew

903
00:48:52.679 --> 00:48:55.920
back to Newark Airport with just six dollars in his pocket.

904
00:48:56.159 --> 00:48:59.559
He moved into a studio apartment found by Larissa, vowing

905
00:48:59.559 --> 00:49:02.679
to find work and create a home for his grandchildren.

906
00:49:03.199 --> 00:49:06.920
He faced immediate pushback from Jonathan's defense team, who accused

907
00:49:06.960 --> 00:49:11.719
the rivieras of being after the money. Tyodoro strongly denied this.

908
00:49:12.079 --> 00:49:14.360
He was there for justice and for the children, and

909
00:49:14.440 --> 00:49:18.320
he believed they were being brainwashed. The children hadn't ever

910
00:49:18.360 --> 00:49:21.280
been told their father was charged with murder. They were

911
00:49:21.280 --> 00:49:24.239
being fed a narrative that their mother was bad.

912
00:49:24.639 --> 00:49:29.480
Really admire Theodoro's efforts here to try to get custody

913
00:49:29.519 --> 00:49:31.559
of the children, but it was really an uphill battle.

914
00:49:31.840 --> 00:49:34.400
He was coming from halfway around the world that children

915
00:49:34.440 --> 00:49:36.840
had never been to the Philippines at all, and here

916
00:49:36.920 --> 00:49:39.320
he was. He's like, I'm going to move there. I'm

917
00:49:39.360 --> 00:49:40.960
going to find a job, I'm going to work, I'm

918
00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:42.440
going to build a home there. I mean, he was

919
00:49:42.559 --> 00:49:45.440
really dedicated to trying to make it work.

920
00:49:45.599 --> 00:49:49.400
Heartbreaking. Jonathan knew he would need serious help to overcome

921
00:49:49.440 --> 00:49:53.039
the mountain of evidence in his own confession. In February

922
00:49:53.039 --> 00:49:56.480
two thousand and four, he hired Robin Lord, a flamboyant,

923
00:49:56.559 --> 00:50:01.119
sharp tongue defense attorney with a reputation for winning unwinnable cases.

924
00:50:01.440 --> 00:50:04.559
Lord was the perfect match for Jonathan. She was one

925
00:50:04.559 --> 00:50:08.159
of the few people with a personality large and controlling

926
00:50:08.280 --> 00:50:11.519
enough to keep the former CEO in check. Lord was

927
00:50:11.559 --> 00:50:15.000
a polarizing figure in New Jersey's legal circles. She was

928
00:50:15.079 --> 00:50:18.400
known for her vehement anti police stance and what seemed

929
00:50:18.440 --> 00:50:21.400
to be her hobby of humiliating officers on the stand

930
00:50:21.760 --> 00:50:24.159
despite being married to a deputy.

931
00:50:23.760 --> 00:50:28.280
Sheriff, and her husband apparently was an aspiring actor as well,

932
00:50:28.320 --> 00:50:30.599
who had appeared on One Life to Live at a

933
00:50:30.599 --> 00:50:32.559
certain point. But I wasn't able to track down anymore

934
00:50:32.559 --> 00:50:35.760
about her husband whether his acting career became a success

935
00:50:35.840 --> 00:50:36.079
or not.

936
00:50:36.440 --> 00:50:40.679
I used to watch One Life to Live every day. Yeah, well,

937
00:50:40.719 --> 00:50:42.320
I don't know if I watched it every day, but yeah.

938
00:50:42.760 --> 00:50:46.719
She was simultaneously the bane of the Mercer County Prosecutor's

939
00:50:46.760 --> 00:50:50.440
office and a patron saint for those facing insurmountable odds.

940
00:50:50.679 --> 00:50:54.280
She once famously gave a judge the fingering during a disagreement,

941
00:50:54.440 --> 00:50:56.760
and she made no secret of her belief that most

942
00:50:57.000 --> 00:51:02.280
police officers lied to secure conviction. Lord's strategy was immediate

943
00:51:02.440 --> 00:51:06.599
and aggressive. She beefed up the defense team with heavy hitters,

944
00:51:06.599 --> 00:51:12.559
including Maria Noto and the famous forensic pathologist, doctor Michael Boden,

945
00:51:12.760 --> 00:51:16.559
who conducted a second autopsy to hunt for self defense evidence.

946
00:51:16.920 --> 00:51:20.960
She launched a pr campaign to humanize Jonathan, telling reporters

947
00:51:20.960 --> 00:51:24.159
he spoke to his children daily from jail. Also that

948
00:51:24.159 --> 00:51:27.880
makes them a good person. She successfully fought to allow

949
00:51:27.960 --> 00:51:31.239
Jonathan to post bond rather than straight cash, though the

950
00:51:31.320 --> 00:51:34.519
judge countered by raising the bail to two million dollars.

951
00:51:34.920 --> 00:51:39.320
Most significantly, Lord hired John Coy, a veteran of the

952
00:51:39.360 --> 00:51:42.920
Trenton Police Department, with a specific mission dig up dirt

953
00:51:42.960 --> 00:51:46.280
on Michelle. Lord knew that a self defense claim from

954
00:51:46.519 --> 00:51:49.039
a six foot four man who had beaten his five

955
00:51:49.119 --> 00:51:53.000
foot four wife to death was a nearly impossible cell

956
00:51:53.400 --> 00:51:56.599
to win. She couldn't just defend Jonathan. She had to

957
00:51:56.599 --> 00:52:00.599
put Michelle's lifestyle on trial. She aimed to transform Michelle

958
00:52:00.599 --> 00:52:04.880
from a victim into a provocateur, a woman whose secret

959
00:52:04.920 --> 00:52:08.199
life could be used to explain, if not justify, Jonathan's

960
00:52:08.239 --> 00:52:09.480
explosion of a violence.

961
00:52:09.760 --> 00:52:11.480
One of the things that really bothers me about this

962
00:52:11.599 --> 00:52:14.599
case is this this whole I understand the defense team

963
00:52:14.719 --> 00:52:17.599
is going to do whatever it can to get their

964
00:52:17.639 --> 00:52:21.599
client acquitted, but just this character assassination. It really bothers

965
00:52:21.639 --> 00:52:23.639
me because they really tried to paint a picture of

966
00:52:23.679 --> 00:52:25.920
Michelle as first of all, she's a mail order bride,

967
00:52:25.960 --> 00:52:28.519
which you know, they kind of made sure that that

968
00:52:28.719 --> 00:52:32.679
sounded really awful, and just that she was having an affair,

969
00:52:32.719 --> 00:52:34.400
and it just seemed like they were really out to

970
00:52:34.639 --> 00:52:37.000
paint a picture of her as really a bad person.

971
00:52:37.280 --> 00:52:39.719
I know that's their job, but it is like, how

972
00:52:39.719 --> 00:52:40.639
do you sleep at night?

973
00:52:40.800 --> 00:52:41.360
Yeah.

974
00:52:41.400 --> 00:52:44.719
As two thousand and four progressed, the legal battle shifted

975
00:52:44.719 --> 00:52:47.480
from the crime scene to the bank accounts, and March,

976
00:52:47.599 --> 00:52:50.760
a judge dealt Jonathan a significant blow by freezing his

977
00:52:50.840 --> 00:52:54.000
assets at the request of the Riviera family. They are

978
00:52:54.079 --> 00:52:57.679
attorneys argued that Jonathan shouldn't be allowed to liquidize his

979
00:52:57.840 --> 00:53:01.199
estate to fund his high priced defense while his children's

980
00:53:01.239 --> 00:53:03.960
future was at stake. That happens a lot, and I

981
00:53:03.960 --> 00:53:08.760
think that's such a good point. Simultaneously, the custody battle intensified.

982
00:53:09.079 --> 00:53:13.360
Jonathan's brother Michael, filed for temporary legal custody, arguing that

983
00:53:13.400 --> 00:53:16.320
the children, who had never been to the Philippines were

984
00:53:16.360 --> 00:53:20.280
better off in the suburban Pennsylvania life they knew. Robin

985
00:53:20.360 --> 00:53:24.599
Lord took the offensive, leveling a shocking and unproven accusation

986
00:53:24.840 --> 00:53:29.000
against sixty three year old Theodoro, claiming he was involved

987
00:53:29.159 --> 00:53:33.480
in a male order bride scheme. Theodoro, speaking in broken

988
00:53:33.559 --> 00:53:37.679
English at a press conference, vehemently denied the slanderous claims,

989
00:53:37.719 --> 00:53:40.719
asserting he was only there for his grandchildren, and that

990
00:53:40.760 --> 00:53:45.199
it was Michelle's generosity, not Jonathan's, that had supported his family.

991
00:53:45.760 --> 00:53:49.840
In a pre trial maneuvering, Lord attempted to suppress Jonathan's

992
00:53:49.960 --> 00:53:53.719
one hundred three minute tape confession, arguing that police had

993
00:53:53.800 --> 00:53:57.199
violated his rights. She made several other motions, trying to

994
00:53:57.239 --> 00:54:00.159
suppress evidence gathered from the house as being part part

995
00:54:00.159 --> 00:54:02.639
of an illegal search and seizure, and trying to get

996
00:54:02.639 --> 00:54:06.440
the charges thrown out Altogether. The judge ruled against Lord

997
00:54:06.679 --> 00:54:10.440
on nearly every front. She did succeed, however, in getting

998
00:54:10.480 --> 00:54:14.320
his bail reduced again. On August sixth, two thousand four,

999
00:54:14.519 --> 00:54:18.519
after his family scraped together seventy five thousand dollars, Jonathan

1000
00:54:18.559 --> 00:54:21.320
walked out of jail. He moved in with his parents

1001
00:54:21.360 --> 00:54:25.920
in Collegeville, tethered to a GPS inkle monitor, and allowed

1002
00:54:25.960 --> 00:54:29.920
only supervised visits with his children. The most heartbreaking update

1003
00:54:29.960 --> 00:54:33.320
before the trial came from Jonathan's mother, Emma. She claimed

1004
00:54:33.360 --> 00:54:36.320
the children had come to terms with the tragedy, but

1005
00:54:36.400 --> 00:54:40.400
the reality seemed more like a systemic erasure. Six year

1006
00:54:40.440 --> 00:54:44.159
old Samantha had recently drawn a family portrait that included

1007
00:54:44.199 --> 00:54:48.119
everyone except her mother. She simply wrote the word mommy

1008
00:54:48.199 --> 00:54:51.320
in the empty space where Michelle should have been. As

1009
00:54:51.400 --> 00:54:54.920
Jonathan spent his days writing bairy tales for his children

1010
00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:58.320
and preparing his defense, the woman who had actually given

1011
00:54:58.400 --> 00:55:01.920
them life was becoming a ghost in her own family.

1012
00:55:02.480 --> 00:55:03.920
Very sad story.

1013
00:55:04.239 --> 00:55:06.800
Yeah, that is very sad. You just wonder in all

1014
00:55:06.840 --> 00:55:09.960
these cases, like how do you do this to your children?

1015
00:55:10.079 --> 00:55:12.199
Like the literally the worst thing that you can do

1016
00:55:13.039 --> 00:55:17.920
is take away your children's parents. We'll be back after

1017
00:55:17.960 --> 00:55:18.440
a break.

1018
00:55:25.800 --> 00:55:28.559
On June seventh, two thousand and five, the trial of

1019
00:55:28.639 --> 00:55:32.960
Jonathan Nice began in a courtroom thick with anticipation. Judge

1020
00:55:32.960 --> 00:55:36.679
Bill Mathesius presided over a jury of sixteen, four of

1021
00:55:36.719 --> 00:55:39.559
them later to be named as alternates, while a gallery

1022
00:55:39.639 --> 00:55:43.320
packed with curious onlookers and press came to watch things unfold.

1023
00:55:43.639 --> 00:55:47.480
The prosecution's message was simple, Yes, Michelle had been having

1024
00:55:47.559 --> 00:55:51.159
an affair, but the price of infidelity shouldn't be your life.

1025
00:55:51.639 --> 00:55:55.360
Robin Lord's defense was equally clear. This was a tragic

1026
00:55:55.440 --> 00:55:59.400
accident born of a confrontation with an unfaithful wife. The

1027
00:55:59.440 --> 00:56:03.480
trial became a masterclass in courtroom theater and forensic sparring.

1028
00:56:03.920 --> 00:56:08.400
In a dramatic clash Lord humiliated the medical examiner, asking

1029
00:56:08.440 --> 00:56:11.000
if she was aware that medical journals say that you

1030
00:56:11.079 --> 00:56:15.159
can't tell the difference between post mortem and anti mortem bruises.

1031
00:56:15.599 --> 00:56:19.679
The medical examiner, doctor Rafat Ahmad, said that that wasn't true.

1032
00:56:20.199 --> 00:56:22.719
Then Lord pointed out that a Mod was carrying with

1033
00:56:22.760 --> 00:56:25.280
her a copy of the nineteen ninety three edition of

1034
00:56:25.320 --> 00:56:29.760
the Standard Forensic Pathology textbook. Lord produced the latest two

1035
00:56:29.800 --> 00:56:32.800
thousand and one edition and showed a Mod the updated

1036
00:56:32.880 --> 00:56:37.079
chapter indicating that post mortem and anti mortem bruising couldn't

1037
00:56:37.119 --> 00:56:41.079
be distinguished in most cases. A Mod stammered, I didn't

1038
00:56:41.119 --> 00:56:44.880
read that chapter. The point wasn't especially relevant either way.

1039
00:56:44.960 --> 00:56:48.119
But the jury took a note of the medical examiner's blunder.

1040
00:56:48.360 --> 00:56:51.960
That is a really interesting point, and you would think

1041
00:56:52.000 --> 00:56:56.079
that it's probably really easy to bruise a body post mortem.

1042
00:56:56.280 --> 00:56:59.719
Yeah. Lord successfully lobbied for the jury to visit the

1043
00:56:59.719 --> 00:57:03.840
craft site. The strategy worked. Several jurors, seeing the steep

1044
00:57:03.880 --> 00:57:07.719
embankment for themselves, began to question if the police photographs

1045
00:57:07.800 --> 00:57:11.519
had been deceiving. The embankment was steeper than they had realized.

1046
00:57:11.880 --> 00:57:15.960
The defense's expert, doctor John Adams, testified that Michelle's injuries

1047
00:57:16.000 --> 00:57:19.440
were classic fall injuries, which could have resulted from the

1048
00:57:19.480 --> 00:57:23.840
car's descent down the embankment. However, the judge became extremely

1049
00:57:23.920 --> 00:57:27.679
troubled when it was revealed that Adams had repeatedly revised

1050
00:57:27.679 --> 00:57:31.559
his reports after back and forth exchanges with the defense team.

1051
00:57:32.000 --> 00:57:34.360
So we talk about this a lot of expert witnesses,

1052
00:57:34.559 --> 00:57:37.239
you know, they basically say whatever they're paid to say.

1053
00:57:38.039 --> 00:57:40.400
That well, I don't know if that might be a

1054
00:57:40.440 --> 00:57:44.880
little overly cynical, yes, but in this case, the judge

1055
00:57:44.920 --> 00:57:48.360
found that this expert had actually revised what he was

1056
00:57:48.400 --> 00:57:51.480
going to say after phone calls with the defense attorney.

1057
00:57:51.760 --> 00:57:53.000
And the other thing I was going to point out

1058
00:57:53.039 --> 00:57:56.159
here is doctor Michael Boden, who had been involved. He

1059
00:57:56.280 --> 00:57:58.639
was no longer involved at the trial, so I don't

1060
00:57:58.639 --> 00:58:01.159
know if he did not to the conclusion that the

1061
00:58:01.199 --> 00:58:04.119
defense team wanted, and so they dismissed him and brought

1062
00:58:04.119 --> 00:58:06.440
in this other guy who was a little more willing

1063
00:58:06.480 --> 00:58:08.119
to say what they wanted him to say.

1064
00:58:07.960 --> 00:58:10.199
But also his schedules because he's.

1065
00:58:10.760 --> 00:58:14.320
Very busy, base very true. In a major setback for

1066
00:58:14.400 --> 00:58:18.280
the prosecution, the judge barred Michelle's father and sister from

1067
00:58:18.320 --> 00:58:21.400
taking the stand. As a result, the jury never heard

1068
00:58:21.440 --> 00:58:24.320
from the two people who could have spoken most directly

1069
00:58:24.360 --> 00:58:27.440
to the reality of the marriage, Teodora, who had lived

1070
00:58:27.440 --> 00:58:31.639
with the couple and witnessed Jonathan's temper firsthand, and Melodia,

1071
00:58:31.719 --> 00:58:35.760
Michelle's sister, to whom Michelle had privately confided her fears

1072
00:58:36.159 --> 00:58:38.519
there's another thing that really bothers me. Both of them

1073
00:58:38.599 --> 00:58:41.159
flew over from the Philippines to be at the trial,

1074
00:58:41.519 --> 00:58:44.639
and then the judge said, no, you can't testify, And

1075
00:58:44.719 --> 00:58:47.199
part of his reason was that their English wasn't great,

1076
00:58:47.239 --> 00:58:49.400
and he was like, well, I think people might misinterpret

1077
00:58:49.400 --> 00:58:51.280
what they had to say. And it almost sort of

1078
00:58:51.599 --> 00:58:54.519
feels a little bit racist that he didn't allow them

1079
00:58:54.519 --> 00:58:57.960
to testify against him, because there's no reason why they

1080
00:58:57.960 --> 00:59:00.840
shouldn't have been able to. Yeah. As the trial reached

1081
00:59:00.880 --> 00:59:05.039
its climax, the most controversial moment occurred during jury instructions.

1082
00:59:05.480 --> 00:59:08.800
Robin Lord successfully argued that the jury should be allowed

1083
00:59:08.840 --> 00:59:12.800
to consider several alternatives to first degree murder. They could

1084
00:59:12.840 --> 00:59:18.559
find Jonathan guilty on lesser charges, including aggravated manslaughter, reckless manslaughter,

1085
00:59:18.960 --> 00:59:22.800
or passion provocation manslaughter. If you ever heard of passion,

1086
00:59:22.920 --> 00:59:25.840
provocation manslaughter. I had never heard of it either, but

1087
00:59:26.199 --> 00:59:29.239
it is the least serious of those charges. It carries

1088
00:59:29.280 --> 00:59:32.000
a five to ten year sentence, and it's defined as

1089
00:59:32.039 --> 00:59:35.679
an intentional killing committed without malice in the heat of

1090
00:59:35.760 --> 00:59:39.639
passion following a provocation, so it occurs when a reasonable

1091
00:59:39.639 --> 00:59:43.119
person could lose self control due to being provoked and

1092
00:59:43.159 --> 00:59:46.000
the killer didn't have time to cool off before acting.

1093
00:59:46.480 --> 00:59:49.320
In an even bigger blow to the prosecution, the judge

1094
00:59:49.320 --> 00:59:54.599
agreed to explicitly name marital infidelity as a reasonable provocation

1095
00:59:55.000 --> 00:59:57.519
that could drive a person to kill in the heat

1096
00:59:57.559 --> 00:59:59.880
of passion. But basically the judge is saying, well, you

1097
01:00:00.039 --> 01:00:02.800
can consider this lower charge. And one of the reasons

1098
01:00:02.800 --> 01:00:05.000
why someone might kill this way is because they found

1099
01:00:05.000 --> 01:00:07.559
out their wife was having an affair, which basically feels

1100
01:00:07.599 --> 01:00:11.079
like the judge was just leading the jury to this conclusion.

1101
01:00:11.760 --> 01:00:14.840
In her closing statement, Lord didn't hold back, launching a

1102
01:00:14.880 --> 01:00:18.719
final assault on Michelle's character. She painted Michelle as anything

1103
01:00:18.760 --> 01:00:22.239
but a normal sweet woman, citing her red thong and

1104
01:00:22.280 --> 01:00:24.800
rent by the our motel rooms as evidence of a

1105
01:00:24.840 --> 01:00:27.960
lifestyle that would drive any man to the brink. She

1106
01:00:28.199 --> 01:00:31.760
argued that if a brilliant scientist like Jonathan had premeditated

1107
01:00:31.800 --> 01:00:34.320
to kill his wife, he would have used some invented

1108
01:00:34.400 --> 01:00:37.039
drug or the gun in his office. He wouldn't have

1109
01:00:37.119 --> 01:00:39.039
killed her in a clumsy garage brawl.

1110
01:00:39.480 --> 01:00:43.320
I know she's doing her job, but that really enbriages me.

1111
01:00:43.599 --> 01:00:47.880
Yes, me too. The prosecution pleaded for common sense, reminding

1112
01:00:47.920 --> 01:00:50.280
the jury that Michelle was a human being with a

1113
01:00:50.360 --> 01:00:53.719
right to life regardless of her flaws. They argued that

1114
01:00:53.840 --> 01:00:57.159
Jonathan's ego simply couldn't handle being left for a gardener.

1115
01:00:57.480 --> 01:01:01.519
The passion provocation manslaughter charge didn't makes sense. Jonathan had

1116
01:01:01.519 --> 01:01:05.079
known about Michelle's affair long before that fateful night. It

1117
01:01:05.159 --> 01:01:07.800
wasn't something he just learned about that night, causing him

1118
01:01:07.800 --> 01:01:10.679
to snap. The jury was left with a choice. Was

1119
01:01:10.760 --> 01:01:13.920
Jonathan Knice a cold blooded murderer who staged a crash,

1120
01:01:14.239 --> 01:01:16.960
or a provoked husband who snapped in a moment of

1121
01:01:17.000 --> 01:01:20.960
passion and then panicked. After fourteen hours of deliberation over

1122
01:01:21.039 --> 01:01:24.639
three days, the jury returned their verdict. They found Jonathan

1123
01:01:24.679 --> 01:01:30.000
Knice guilty of the lowest possible homicide charge, passion provocation manslaughter,

1124
01:01:30.280 --> 01:01:34.400
along with tampering with physical evidence. The jurors were largely

1125
01:01:34.480 --> 01:01:38.079
unconvinced by the state's medical examiner, whose sparring match with

1126
01:01:38.199 --> 01:01:42.280
Robin Lord had effectively neutralized her testimony. One juror told

1127
01:01:42.280 --> 01:01:45.960
The New York Times they believed Jonathan simply overheated in

1128
01:01:46.000 --> 01:01:50.079
an angry moment, while another noted that Jonathan's high intellectual

1129
01:01:50.119 --> 01:01:54.000
capability seemed coupled with an inability to deal with people,

1130
01:01:54.400 --> 01:01:58.360
especially women. The sentencing on September twenty second, two thousand

1131
01:01:58.360 --> 01:02:03.199
and five, became a final explosive battlefield. Jonathan used his

1132
01:02:03.239 --> 01:02:06.960
final statement to paint himself as the savior of Michelle's family,

1133
01:02:07.360 --> 01:02:11.639
describing them as starving squatters he had rescued. He expressed

1134
01:02:11.760 --> 01:02:15.400
no remorse for Michelle's death, focusing entirely on his own

1135
01:02:15.480 --> 01:02:18.039
love and support for her, in a move that drew

1136
01:02:18.119 --> 01:02:22.639
heavy criticism. The judge agreed that Jonathan's PhD and status

1137
01:02:22.639 --> 01:02:27.400
as a pharmaceutical executive could be considered mitigating factors. When

1138
01:02:27.440 --> 01:02:30.719
the prosecutor asked if a doctorate degree meant a more

1139
01:02:30.840 --> 01:02:33.920
lenient sentence than a high school dropout, the judge bluntly

1140
01:02:33.960 --> 01:02:39.320
answered yes. Jonathan repeatedly interrupted the sentencing proceedings, shouting from

1141
01:02:39.360 --> 01:02:42.159
his seat when the prosecutor mentioned his failure to pay

1142
01:02:42.239 --> 01:02:45.639
for Michelle's funeral or his lack of interest in his children.

1143
01:02:46.159 --> 01:02:49.719
The judge sentenced Jonathan to seven years for manslaughter and

1144
01:02:49.800 --> 01:02:53.840
one year for evidence tampering, to be served consecutively, with

1145
01:02:53.960 --> 01:02:57.519
credit for time served and good behavior. Jonathan Nice would

1146
01:02:57.559 --> 01:03:01.039
be free in less than five years. Less than two

1147
01:03:01.119 --> 01:03:04.599
hours after being sentenced, Jonathan allowed to wear a business

1148
01:03:04.599 --> 01:03:07.920
suit instead of prison Orange did an interview with Dateline

1149
01:03:07.960 --> 01:03:10.880
from his lawyer's office. The next day, there was an

1150
01:03:10.920 --> 01:03:14.199
outcry that Mercer County Sheriff Kevin Larkin had allowed the

1151
01:03:14.239 --> 01:03:17.960
interview to happen. The Mercer County Prosecutor's office, which had

1152
01:03:18.000 --> 01:03:22.320
known nothing about the interview, launched an immediate investigation. Sheriff

1153
01:03:22.400 --> 01:03:26.199
Larkin apologized, saying in retrospect, he was wrong to have

1154
01:03:26.280 --> 01:03:29.519
allowed it. The story of Jonathan Knice did not end

1155
01:03:29.599 --> 01:03:33.559
with his twenty ten release from prison. Shortly after his release,

1156
01:03:33.760 --> 01:03:36.920
he told the press, all my training is in cancer research,

1157
01:03:37.039 --> 01:03:39.599
so I'm going back to my roots. But this time,

1158
01:03:39.639 --> 01:03:43.400
he said he was going to treat canine cancer. Starting

1159
01:03:43.400 --> 01:03:47.159
in twenty twelve, Jonathan launched a company called Canine Care

1160
01:03:47.679 --> 01:03:51.119
to desperate pet owners across America. He was a brilliant

1161
01:03:51.159 --> 01:03:55.159
scientist who had found the breakthrough the pharmaceutical giants had missed.

1162
01:03:55.519 --> 01:04:00.239
He marketed two cancer curing drugs to Mexol and Naturizone,

1163
01:04:00.360 --> 01:04:03.719
with claims that would move any despairing dog owner to

1164
01:04:03.840 --> 01:04:08.360
Mesol will almost always restore a cancer stricken dogs appetite, spirit,

1165
01:04:08.519 --> 01:04:11.960
and energy. But the miracle drugs were nothing more than

1166
01:04:12.000 --> 01:04:16.559
a random collection of bulk ingredients that Jonathan blended together himself.

1167
01:04:16.840 --> 01:04:20.199
He even falsely claimed his research was funded in part

1168
01:04:20.239 --> 01:04:23.320
by the US Food and Drug Administration to add a

1169
01:04:23.440 --> 01:04:28.079
veneer of government sanctioned legitimacy. The reality was a multi

1170
01:04:28.159 --> 01:04:32.559
year scheme of predatory cruelty. Around nine hundred pet owners

1171
01:04:32.599 --> 01:04:36.320
were defrauded of nearly a million dollars in total. He

1172
01:04:36.400 --> 01:04:39.639
induced families to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege

1173
01:04:39.639 --> 01:04:44.920
of having their dying pets included in trials that didn't exist. Ultimately,

1174
01:04:45.119 --> 01:04:47.920
the drugs were found to have zero medical value and

1175
01:04:48.039 --> 01:04:51.760
no FDA approval. He was selling hope to the hopeless

1176
01:04:51.920 --> 01:04:55.639
while their pets continued to suffer. In February twenty twenty,

1177
01:04:55.760 --> 01:04:59.079
the FDA and the Department of Justice finally shut him down.

1178
01:05:00.280 --> 01:05:03.800
Now in his seventies, was federally indicted for wire fraud

1179
01:05:04.079 --> 01:05:08.239
and the interstate shipment of misbranded animal drugs. In December

1180
01:05:08.280 --> 01:05:11.440
twenty twenty two, a jury convicted him on all counts.

1181
01:05:11.920 --> 01:05:15.639
On February sixteenth, twenty twenty four, at age seventy three,

1182
01:05:15.960 --> 01:05:19.760
Jonathan Knice was sentenced to ninety seven months over eight

1183
01:05:19.840 --> 01:05:23.159
years in federal prison. It was a sentence longer than

1184
01:05:23.159 --> 01:05:25.440
the one he had received for killing the mother of

1185
01:05:25.480 --> 01:05:29.280
his children. A search of the federal inmate system indicates

1186
01:05:29.320 --> 01:05:32.679
that Knics died five months after being sentenced in July

1187
01:05:32.840 --> 01:05:36.320
twenty twenty four, at age seventy four. No cause of

1188
01:05:36.320 --> 01:05:39.639
death was given. I can't one hundred percent confirm that

1189
01:05:39.719 --> 01:05:41.800
he died, but you know, I always search like I

1190
01:05:41.840 --> 01:05:45.039
do an inmate search, and the record for him it

1191
01:05:45.119 --> 01:05:46.679
just had a little thing at the bottom that said

1192
01:05:46.760 --> 01:05:49.599
date of death blah blah blah. So I assume that's accurate.

1193
01:05:49.599 --> 01:05:52.079
But I didn't find any other news reports on that.

1194
01:05:52.599 --> 01:05:56.599
Jonathan Nice's legacy is defined by a lifelong pattern of

1195
01:05:56.679 --> 01:06:00.800
deception and a refusal to take responsibility whether he was

1196
01:06:00.800 --> 01:06:04.639
inflating the value of a failing pharmaceutical company, or casting

1197
01:06:04.719 --> 01:06:08.679
himself as a savior to justify a brutal murder. Jonathan

1198
01:06:08.760 --> 01:06:12.760
consistently prioritized his own image over the truth. Even at

1199
01:06:12.760 --> 01:06:15.480
seventy three years old, facing his final years in a

1200
01:06:15.519 --> 01:06:19.039
federal self or defrauding pet owners, he remained the same

1201
01:06:19.119 --> 01:06:21.760
man the public first met in two thousand and four,

1202
01:06:22.320 --> 01:06:27.119
Articulate and highly intelligent, but fundamentally incapable of empathy. He

1203
01:06:27.159 --> 01:06:30.280
didn't just break the law, he exploited the desperation of

1204
01:06:30.320 --> 01:06:34.639
people who trusted his scientific credentials, choosing to profit from

1205
01:06:34.679 --> 01:06:37.960
their desperation rather than face the reality of his own

1206
01:06:38.000 --> 01:06:41.760
professional and personal failures. But the heart of this story

1207
01:06:42.039 --> 01:06:45.400
isn't Jonathan Nice. It's the woman who once planted six

1208
01:06:45.480 --> 01:06:49.079
thousand tulips in her driveway. Michelle Nice was far more

1209
01:06:49.079 --> 01:06:51.800
than a headline or a cruel caricature of a male

1210
01:06:51.920 --> 01:06:55.000
order bride or a cheating spouse. She was a mother

1211
01:06:55.199 --> 01:06:58.559
who worked to build a community for herself despite years

1212
01:06:58.599 --> 01:07:02.039
of isolation, a daughter who remained deeply loyal to her

1213
01:07:02.079 --> 01:07:04.960
family in the Philippines, and a woman who was finally

1214
01:07:05.000 --> 01:07:08.519
finding the confidence to live her own life. Michelle didn't

1215
01:07:08.519 --> 01:07:11.679
die because she provoked her husband. She died because she

1216
01:07:11.760 --> 01:07:15.280
made the choice to leave him and start her own life. Today,

1217
01:07:15.440 --> 01:07:17.960
while she is buried in her home village, her memory

1218
01:07:18.000 --> 01:07:20.559
is kept alive by the family and friends who fought

1219
01:07:20.639 --> 01:07:23.840
to tell her side of the story. Honoring Michelle means

1220
01:07:23.840 --> 01:07:27.199
looking past the cold, perfect image that Jonathan tried to

1221
01:07:27.199 --> 01:07:30.440
project and remembering the warmth and the personality that she

1222
01:07:30.559 --> 01:07:32.920
brought to a house where she was never allowed to

1223
01:07:32.960 --> 01:07:37.159
be truly independent. Rest in peace, Michelle. There's a few

1224
01:07:37.159 --> 01:07:39.960
things we should discuss before we wrap up. First of all,

1225
01:07:40.199 --> 01:07:43.320
what do you think about the verdict, the passion, provocation,

1226
01:07:43.480 --> 01:07:44.519
manslaughter verdict.

1227
01:07:44.880 --> 01:07:47.159
I mean the fact that he got five He was

1228
01:07:47.199 --> 01:07:49.679
in prison for five years, right, that's disgusting to me.

1229
01:07:50.280 --> 01:07:52.880
He ended Michelle's life. She had a lot of years

1230
01:07:52.960 --> 01:07:54.880
left to live. She should have been able to live

1231
01:07:54.920 --> 01:07:56.920
those years with her children, and that was not an

1232
01:07:56.920 --> 01:08:01.320
adequate sentence in my opinion. Just don't like the passion plea.

1233
01:08:01.880 --> 01:08:05.599
You ended someone's life, right, you get one chance at life.

1234
01:08:05.679 --> 01:08:09.239
He took her life away, and to me, it doesn't

1235
01:08:09.280 --> 01:08:13.199
matter what the circumstances were. You ended a woman's life.

1236
01:08:13.320 --> 01:08:15.800
Yeah, I completely agree with you, and just the like

1237
01:08:15.880 --> 01:08:20.079
the definition of this passion provocation manslaughter charge, it's like, well,

1238
01:08:20.159 --> 01:08:22.439
it almost sounds like you're excusing it, like, well, he

1239
01:08:22.560 --> 01:08:25.119
was provoked, he you know, he was upset, he was

1240
01:08:25.199 --> 01:08:27.159
just like it just makes no sense to me that

1241
01:08:27.159 --> 01:08:30.880
that carried such a light sentence and almost seems like you're.

1242
01:08:30.720 --> 01:08:32.640
Just you know, but it almost seems like it's white

1243
01:08:32.680 --> 01:08:33.399
privileged too.

1244
01:08:33.600 --> 01:08:35.159
Yeah. I do think there was a lot of that

1245
01:08:35.199 --> 01:08:37.239
in this case. You know, here's this woman from the

1246
01:08:37.399 --> 01:08:41.319
an immigrant from the Philippines. Her character was assassinated, and

1247
01:08:41.399 --> 01:08:41.800
yet just.

1248
01:08:41.880 --> 01:08:45.159
Because he was articulate and he was a scientist, a

1249
01:08:45.199 --> 01:08:48.079
failed scientist, I might add, it doesn't mean his life

1250
01:08:48.199 --> 01:08:49.399
is worth more than hers.

1251
01:08:49.600 --> 01:08:52.279
Yeah. Well, just the fact that the judge said that

1252
01:08:52.560 --> 01:08:54.560
he could take into account the fact that he had

1253
01:08:54.560 --> 01:08:57.680
a PhD and was a scientist, and he could take

1254
01:08:57.680 --> 01:09:01.000
that in account in the sentencing, and that basically saying

1255
01:09:01.159 --> 01:09:04.159
his life mattered more than someone who, you know, was

1256
01:09:04.199 --> 01:09:07.720
a lowly gardener or worked some manual job. That really

1257
01:09:07.760 --> 01:09:10.640
I think the judge in this case was not very fair.

1258
01:09:10.840 --> 01:09:14.520
I'm an adamant believer in it doesn't matter where you

1259
01:09:14.560 --> 01:09:16.479
went to school, It doesn't matter how much money you have,

1260
01:09:16.560 --> 01:09:19.399
it doesn't matter where you were born. Like, we are

1261
01:09:19.439 --> 01:09:23.319
all equal. We should, we should all especially the same

1262
01:09:23.520 --> 01:09:26.000
when it comes back to the same rights. Just because

1263
01:09:26.039 --> 01:09:28.800
you have a college degree. And even if he did

1264
01:09:28.840 --> 01:09:32.039
invent a cure for cancer, it doesn't mean that, you know,

1265
01:09:32.079 --> 01:09:35.119
he shouldn't have served a life prison centerence.

1266
01:09:35.159 --> 01:09:37.760
Yes, especially when it comes to justice that we should.

1267
01:09:37.760 --> 01:09:39.680
We should all be equal in the eyes of the

1268
01:09:39.760 --> 01:09:42.560
law and in the justice system. We talked about this

1269
01:09:42.600 --> 01:09:46.399
a little bit already, but Robin Lord, his defense attorney,

1270
01:09:46.520 --> 01:09:49.520
was very aggressive and a big part of our strategy

1271
01:09:49.760 --> 01:09:53.479
was to basically assassinate Michelle's character make it seem like

1272
01:09:53.600 --> 01:09:57.279
Jonathan was somewhat justified and provoked. What do you what

1273
01:09:57.319 --> 01:09:59.159
do you think about that defense? I know we kind

1274
01:09:59.159 --> 01:10:01.479
of talked about it all right, but you know, is

1275
01:10:01.520 --> 01:10:03.880
it as a defense lawyer, it's your job to do

1276
01:10:03.920 --> 01:10:06.319
what you can to get your client acquitted.

1277
01:10:06.439 --> 01:10:08.840
I mean, she was doing her job. I don't feel

1278
01:10:08.880 --> 01:10:10.600
like I don't really have a problem when her doing

1279
01:10:10.640 --> 01:10:13.800
that because her sole job, you know, her goal is

1280
01:10:13.840 --> 01:10:16.079
to get him off and whatever it takes to do that.

1281
01:10:16.199 --> 01:10:17.159
I don't like it, but.

1282
01:10:17.560 --> 01:10:18.760
You know, it's just kind of part of it.

1283
01:10:18.840 --> 01:10:22.840
I'm curious because she obviously is one of those attorneys

1284
01:10:22.880 --> 01:10:25.319
that is worth her weight in goal, right, is really

1285
01:10:25.319 --> 01:10:29.039
good at manipulating the jury. So how did he pay

1286
01:10:29.079 --> 01:10:30.680
for that or did she work pro bono?

1287
01:10:30.840 --> 01:10:32.439
You know, I don't I wasn't able to find that

1288
01:10:32.479 --> 01:10:35.039
out because I do know that his assets were frozen.

1289
01:10:35.079 --> 01:10:36.439
We talked about that a little.

1290
01:10:36.199 --> 01:10:38.439
Bit and did he he still had assets?

1291
01:10:38.439 --> 01:10:40.159
He had assets. I don't think he was, you know,

1292
01:10:40.199 --> 01:10:43.600
super wealthy, But I don't know whether she was paid

1293
01:10:43.720 --> 01:10:45.840
or whether she just did it for the because it's

1294
01:10:45.840 --> 01:10:48.119
such a high profile case. It was you know, in

1295
01:10:48.600 --> 01:10:50.800
the media nationwide at the time, so she may have

1296
01:10:50.840 --> 01:10:52.840
done it for that case. But yeah, I wasn't able

1297
01:10:52.840 --> 01:10:54.920
to find out if she was paid or not. The

1298
01:10:55.000 --> 01:10:57.399
last thing I want to ask you is about his

1299
01:10:57.399 --> 01:10:59.399
his fake cancer drug for.

1300
01:11:01.039 --> 01:11:02.479
Grow disgusting.

1301
01:11:02.680 --> 01:11:04.399
Yeah, I mean, what does that say about him as

1302
01:11:04.439 --> 01:11:07.920
a person, Like, you know, he killed his wife, went

1303
01:11:07.960 --> 01:11:09.560
to jail for it, and then he comes out and

1304
01:11:09.600 --> 01:11:11.479
does this other fraud.

1305
01:11:11.560 --> 01:11:14.399
And people love their pets so much, and it's so

1306
01:11:14.479 --> 01:11:17.720
traumatic to have an ill pad that you love, and

1307
01:11:18.520 --> 01:11:20.840
people will spend any amount of money to keep their

1308
01:11:20.880 --> 01:11:21.359
pet alive.

1309
01:11:21.439 --> 01:11:24.920
So it's really disgusting. Yeah, and I do think like

1310
01:11:25.000 --> 01:11:29.399
he may have had some talent scientifically early in his career,

1311
01:11:29.479 --> 01:11:33.000
but apparently by that time he was just basically out to.

1312
01:11:33.399 --> 01:11:35.760
A snake oil salesman is what we call him.

1313
01:11:35.880 --> 01:11:38.920
Yeah, exactly, horrible. Well, last thing, I just want to

1314
01:11:38.920 --> 01:11:41.279
give a quick shout out to my main source in

1315
01:11:41.319 --> 01:11:44.920
this case was a book by John Glatt, which is

1316
01:11:44.960 --> 01:11:47.039
called Never Leave Me from two thousand and six.

1317
01:11:47.239 --> 01:11:49.479
John Glatt writes a good true crime novel.

1318
01:11:49.560 --> 01:11:52.279
Oh really, I've never read one of his books before. Yeah,

1319
01:11:52.359 --> 01:11:56.359
but it was very good, very detailed, and really well written.

1320
01:12:03.319 --> 01:12:06.079
Before we go, I have compiled a list of the

1321
01:12:06.119 --> 01:12:10.920
top ten most eccentric scientists of all time. We have

1322
01:12:10.960 --> 01:12:12.960
been talking a lot about science, and it does seem

1323
01:12:13.039 --> 01:12:17.159
like scientists in general. Maybe this is stereotyping, but it

1324
01:12:17.199 --> 01:12:20.399
do seem to be a pretty eccentric lot by and large.

1325
01:12:20.640 --> 01:12:21.479
Wouldn't you agree?

1326
01:12:22.720 --> 01:12:27.560
Okay, I don't really know. I would say inventors maybe,

1327
01:12:27.600 --> 01:12:30.399
but I guess scientists and inventors go hand in hand.

1328
01:12:30.439 --> 01:12:31.479
Whatever you say, Rich.

1329
01:12:31.399 --> 01:12:34.159
Well, Also, I just got I just got done watching

1330
01:12:34.199 --> 01:12:35.680
Frankenstein on Netflix.

1331
01:12:35.880 --> 01:12:36.279
Oh, did you.

1332
01:12:36.319 --> 01:12:38.760
It was of course about a mad scientist as well.

1333
01:12:38.840 --> 01:12:40.199
So did you enjoy that?

1334
01:12:40.520 --> 01:12:42.720
I did, Yeah, it was it was very good. I

1335
01:12:42.760 --> 01:12:43.720
thought it was very well done.

1336
01:12:43.880 --> 01:12:46.920
I don't have time for cinema when love is blind.

1337
01:12:47.520 --> 01:12:49.520
I know you've got your Love is Blind schedule is

1338
01:12:49.560 --> 01:12:50.079
pretty full.

1339
01:12:50.800 --> 01:12:50.920
Well.

1340
01:12:50.960 --> 01:12:54.239
Here here are some very eccentric scientists throughout history. The

1341
01:12:54.319 --> 01:12:57.279
first one Nikola Tesla, as we all know, the inventor

1342
01:12:57.319 --> 01:13:00.600
of the electric vehicle. Not really, but Esla was the

1343
01:13:00.640 --> 01:13:05.560
father of alternating current electricity. He was a germophobe and

1344
01:13:05.760 --> 01:13:10.039
he had a very specific hatred of a type of jewelry.

1345
01:13:10.279 --> 01:13:13.199
He would refuse to speak to any woman wearing this

1346
01:13:13.279 --> 01:13:15.159
type of jewelry. So what do you what do you

1347
01:13:15.199 --> 01:13:20.560
think that might have been? No, it was pearls, and

1348
01:13:20.720 --> 01:13:22.439
maybe I was trying to think of why would that be.

1349
01:13:22.680 --> 01:13:24.279
I think the pearls were listening to him, or.

1350
01:13:24.399 --> 01:13:27.680
Maybe because he's a germophobe and pearls come from an

1351
01:13:27.760 --> 01:13:30.439
oyster like maybe it grossed him out or something. I

1352
01:13:30.479 --> 01:13:32.960
don't know. But he also claimed to talk to pigeons.

1353
01:13:33.279 --> 01:13:35.560
He had a deep affection for pigeons and he claimed

1354
01:13:35.600 --> 01:13:37.359
to be able to talk to them and He was

1355
01:13:37.399 --> 01:13:40.279
so obsessed with the number three that he would walk

1356
01:13:40.319 --> 01:13:43.399
around a building three times before he would enter it.

1357
01:13:43.840 --> 01:13:48.760
Oh wow, that's that's kind of ocd ish. Henry Cavendish,

1358
01:13:48.880 --> 01:13:51.600
who was the man who discovered hydrogen, He was so

1359
01:13:51.800 --> 01:13:55.479
painfully shy that he would do anything possible to avoid

1360
01:13:55.800 --> 01:13:59.960
talking to his housekeeper. He actually added a second staircase

1361
01:14:00.079 --> 01:14:02.840
to his house just so he could avoid running into

1362
01:14:02.840 --> 01:14:05.600
his housekeeper, and if he wanted dinner, he would just

1363
01:14:05.680 --> 01:14:07.720
leave her a note on the table rather than actually

1364
01:14:07.720 --> 01:14:08.359
talking to her.

1365
01:14:08.800 --> 01:14:10.960
He was actually with everyone or yeah.

1366
01:14:10.760 --> 01:14:14.640
I think so, it's very sad. William Buckland. His life's

1367
01:14:14.640 --> 01:14:17.960
skull was to eat every animal on earth. So he

1368
01:14:18.039 --> 01:14:21.960
basically started going through the animal kingdom and tried to

1369
01:14:22.000 --> 01:14:25.079
taste every animal he could possibly eat.

1370
01:14:25.319 --> 01:14:26.840
Do you think that included insects?

1371
01:14:27.119 --> 01:14:30.000
It did, Actually, yeah, there was. I think he said

1372
01:14:30.039 --> 01:14:33.840
that the least favorite animal that he ever ate was

1373
01:14:33.880 --> 01:14:39.680
a blue bottle fly. Apparently, Yeah, we've all had a

1374
01:14:39.720 --> 01:14:43.680
bad experience with the blue bottle fly. Jack Parsons, who

1375
01:14:43.760 --> 01:14:46.600
was the founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a brilliant

1376
01:14:46.680 --> 01:14:51.079
rocket scientist. He practiced sex magic in his backyard and

1377
01:14:51.119 --> 01:14:55.359
he performed occult rituals before every rocket test because he

1378
01:14:55.399 --> 01:14:59.279
thought that that would ensure a successful launch, which seems wild,

1379
01:14:59.319 --> 01:15:02.960
like somebody being a scientist but also being really superstitious.

1380
01:15:03.359 --> 01:15:06.680
Right, strange, And there is some block involved in science.

1381
01:15:07.079 --> 01:15:09.039
Usually that's the episode of definite.

1382
01:15:11.560 --> 01:15:13.880
But when you're doing a rocket launch, I could see

1383
01:15:13.920 --> 01:15:15.680
you would want to do anything you could to be

1384
01:15:15.800 --> 01:15:20.319
sure it was successful. Oliver heavy Side quite an interesting name.

1385
01:15:20.479 --> 01:15:23.359
He was a mathematical genius. He was so eccentric that

1386
01:15:23.439 --> 01:15:27.119
he replaced all his furniture with giant granite blocks, and

1387
01:15:27.159 --> 01:15:30.760
he painted his fingernails bright pink, which is kind of nice.

1388
01:15:30.960 --> 01:15:31.600
Yeah, lovely.

1389
01:15:31.920 --> 01:15:35.399
Stubbins Firth the doctor who tried to prove that yellow

1390
01:15:35.479 --> 01:15:38.760
fever wasn't contagious, and he tried to prove that by

1391
01:15:38.840 --> 01:15:43.520
smearing fluids from his patients into his own eyes. Oh,

1392
01:15:43.560 --> 01:15:46.520
I know, that's really pretty gros. He didn't get sick.

1393
01:15:46.760 --> 01:15:49.079
He actually didn't get sick from that, so I guess

1394
01:15:49.119 --> 01:15:49.600
he was right.

1395
01:15:50.039 --> 01:15:52.640
What is you? I'm trying to remember what yellow fever is.

1396
01:15:52.680 --> 01:15:55.000
I don't really know what yellow fever is either.

1397
01:15:54.960 --> 01:15:57.159
Kind of like leprosy. A lot of people think like

1398
01:15:57.359 --> 01:16:00.680
leprosy isn't contagious either, Yeah, you don't.

1399
01:16:00.800 --> 01:16:03.119
Even if you're not sure if something's contagious or not,

1400
01:16:03.399 --> 01:16:05.079
don't don't rub it into your eyes.

1401
01:16:05.359 --> 01:16:07.359
Well he was right though.

1402
01:16:07.199 --> 01:16:10.960
He was. There was a scientist named hennig Brand who

1403
01:16:11.399 --> 01:16:15.560
spent months boiling fifteen hundred gallons of human urine in

1404
01:16:15.600 --> 01:16:16.279
his basement.

1405
01:16:16.880 --> 01:16:19.359
Okay, The question there is where did he get all

1406
01:16:19.439 --> 01:16:21.359
that urine exactly?

1407
01:16:22.039 --> 01:16:23.720
You know he did it? Do you know why?

1408
01:16:24.479 --> 01:16:24.720
Why?

1409
01:16:24.840 --> 01:16:27.199
He thought it would turn into gold if he did that.

1410
01:16:27.560 --> 01:16:31.159
But the year was this, I don't have I didn't

1411
01:16:31.159 --> 01:16:33.199
write down the year. This was a long time ago.

1412
01:16:33.239 --> 01:16:35.640
He was like an alchemist, so that kind of tells

1413
01:16:35.680 --> 01:16:37.359
you sort of the timeframe.

1414
01:16:36.840 --> 01:16:38.199
When I was asking what year it was.

1415
01:16:38.319 --> 01:16:42.359
Yeah, but he did actually discover phosphorus by doing that,

1416
01:16:43.000 --> 01:16:46.159
which is apparently a pretty important find. It's a very

1417
01:16:46.239 --> 01:16:50.640
valuable element to understand. All right. There's a couple more.

1418
01:16:50.760 --> 01:16:54.239
Tico Brahe who was an astronomer in the sixteenth century.

1419
01:16:54.600 --> 01:16:58.279
He lost his nose in a duel over a math formula.

1420
01:16:58.520 --> 01:17:02.439
He had a dispute with another signs they decided I

1421
01:17:02.479 --> 01:17:06.840
think they were using like swords and the one the guy. Yeah,

1422
01:17:06.880 --> 01:17:09.359
so he had a prosthetic nose for the rest of

1423
01:17:09.399 --> 01:17:12.760
his life. Wow, Pythagoras, you know Pythagoras.

1424
01:17:12.840 --> 01:17:17.960
Yeah, course A equals He had to be C over

1425
01:17:18.079 --> 01:17:18.560
four A C.

1426
01:17:19.119 --> 01:17:20.199
Wow, you nailed it.

1427
01:17:20.319 --> 01:17:23.479
Yeah, wait no, I help me out. A squared plus

1428
01:17:23.479 --> 01:17:25.079
B squared equals squared.

1429
01:17:25.199 --> 01:17:26.399
Yeah, the Pythagorean.

1430
01:17:26.800 --> 01:17:30.199
What about? Where's the like the what am I thinking of?

1431
01:17:30.319 --> 01:17:30.640
There is.

1432
01:17:32.880 --> 01:17:33.199
Or something?

1433
01:17:33.279 --> 01:17:35.039
I actually know what you're thinking of, but I can't.

1434
01:17:35.119 --> 01:17:36.039
I can't come over it.

1435
01:17:36.239 --> 01:17:39.000
Okay, don't. You don't have to email us, you don't

1436
01:17:39.000 --> 01:17:39.640
have to tell us.

1437
01:17:40.359 --> 01:17:42.279
We'll figure it out. But he was obviously a very

1438
01:17:42.279 --> 01:17:44.880
famous Greek thinker. He had his whole theorem. He was

1439
01:17:44.920 --> 01:17:47.720
also a cult leader. He had a cult which was

1440
01:17:47.720 --> 01:17:50.279
called Pathagorianism.

1441
01:17:50.119 --> 01:17:51.359
The Cult of Triangles.

1442
01:17:52.119 --> 01:17:55.039
It had a lot of bizarre customs, including that members

1443
01:17:55.079 --> 01:17:57.800
of the cult could not they couldn't take public roads,

1444
01:17:58.000 --> 01:18:01.640
they couldn't eat beans, they couldn't bake breads, and they

1445
01:18:01.720 --> 01:18:04.239
were not supposed to put their left shoe on first.

1446
01:18:04.399 --> 01:18:06.279
Well, I'm out, I am not going to know.

1447
01:18:06.880 --> 01:18:09.680
I like bread, both bread and beans. But he was

1448
01:18:10.079 --> 01:18:13.600
allegedly he was killed by an angry mob who had

1449
01:18:13.640 --> 01:18:16.199
pursued him to the edge of a bean field, and

1450
01:18:16.239 --> 01:18:18.119
he didn't want to go into the bean field, and

1451
01:18:18.159 --> 01:18:21.720
so they caught him and they beat him to death. Wow.

1452
01:18:21.840 --> 01:18:24.560
Believe that or not. I don't know. It's alleged, all right.

1453
01:18:24.640 --> 01:18:28.920
Last one Giovanni Aldini. So this one was inspired by

1454
01:18:29.039 --> 01:18:33.039
my watching Frankenstein. So he actually had this. He was

1455
01:18:33.079 --> 01:18:35.920
in the nineteenth century. He was a sensation. He would

1456
01:18:35.920 --> 01:18:40.000
travel across Europe and he would perform public reanimation experiments.

1457
01:18:40.359 --> 01:18:44.079
His most famous demonstration was where there was a person

1458
01:18:44.079 --> 01:18:47.039
who was executed, a criminal who was executed, and he

1459
01:18:47.079 --> 01:18:50.039
applied electrical currents to his body in front of a crowd,

1460
01:18:50.439 --> 01:18:53.319
which watched in horror as his muscles twitched and his

1461
01:18:53.439 --> 01:18:54.840
jaw quivered and stuff like that.

1462
01:18:54.960 --> 01:18:57.439
Sounds pretty horrifying. Was it fake though?

1463
01:18:57.600 --> 01:18:59.479
No, it wasn't fake. I mean it's basically if you

1464
01:18:59.520 --> 01:19:01.239
apply electrical stimulation.

1465
01:19:01.279 --> 01:19:03.199
They weren't a live He was just making their muscles.

1466
01:19:03.399 --> 01:19:05.760
It was making their muscles move. But people were freaked out,

1467
01:19:06.000 --> 01:19:09.199
and he apparently was believed to have been a major

1468
01:19:09.239 --> 01:19:12.560
inspiration for Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.

1469
01:19:12.720 --> 01:19:16.760
That makes sense. So you often tell us how you

1470
01:19:16.840 --> 01:19:17.640
are a genius.

1471
01:19:18.000 --> 01:19:21.520
I don't often. Often you often tell people that I tell.

1472
01:19:21.479 --> 01:19:24.239
Because you tell me that you're a genius. Are you

1473
01:19:24.279 --> 01:19:27.520
at all disappointed that, at your ripe old age that

1474
01:19:27.560 --> 01:19:32.039
you haven't I haven't had a major invention or discovery

1475
01:19:32.479 --> 01:19:35.159
upset other than this podcasts? Well, yeah, other than that,

1476
01:19:35.399 --> 01:19:37.039
you've produced a couple of great kids.

1477
01:19:37.279 --> 01:19:40.880
I've done that, Yeah, but I haven't had any major still,

1478
01:19:41.960 --> 01:19:42.399
do you think?

1479
01:19:42.680 --> 01:19:43.159
Yeah?

1480
01:19:43.199 --> 01:19:47.960
Absolutely, I don't have any weird eccentricities.

1481
01:19:47.159 --> 01:19:51.239
Even the big science guy. Actually, I mean, what do

1482
01:19:51.319 --> 01:19:51.520
you mean.

1483
01:19:51.560 --> 01:19:53.520
I'm not a big science guy. Am I like science?

1484
01:19:53.840 --> 01:19:57.640
A fan of science, but you're not. You're just I

1485
01:19:57.680 --> 01:20:01.079
don't know, Like in college. In high school, I took

1486
01:20:01.159 --> 01:20:02.640
tons and tons of science class.

1487
01:20:02.680 --> 01:20:04.800
I was not a biology or a chemistry or.

1488
01:20:04.760 --> 01:20:06.880
A chemistry guy. Yeah, and I took chemistry, a lot

1489
01:20:06.880 --> 01:20:09.199
of chemistry and a lot of biology because I was

1490
01:20:09.239 --> 01:20:12.279
going to pursue a medical degree, but I didn't.

1491
01:20:12.359 --> 01:20:15.399
Ye, So no, I always shied away from those I did, Like,

1492
01:20:15.520 --> 01:20:16.520
you know, physics.

1493
01:20:16.199 --> 01:20:17.920
You did a lot of You did more math where

1494
01:20:17.960 --> 01:20:20.239
I don't have as much math in my background.

1495
01:20:20.279 --> 01:20:23.960
But yeah, I'm going to keep working on that scientific.

1496
01:20:23.399 --> 01:20:26.279
Discs and we're going to hold you to it sounds good.

1497
01:20:26.680 --> 01:20:30.119
Before we go, I want to thank everyone who communicates

1498
01:20:30.159 --> 01:20:36.199
with us via Instagram and email and Spotify comments. It

1499
01:20:36.239 --> 01:20:39.479
all counts as engagement and it really does help us out.

1500
01:20:39.600 --> 01:20:41.960
And I always love to see your comments, and we

1501
01:20:42.079 --> 01:20:44.279
might not I think we respond to most of them.

1502
01:20:44.479 --> 01:20:46.760
I feel like if you have a question or a comment,

1503
01:20:46.840 --> 01:20:49.319
I try to respond if it's something relevant to my case.

1504
01:20:49.359 --> 01:20:53.319
And but yeah, we love hearing what you guys have

1505
01:20:53.359 --> 01:20:56.720
to say about these cases or you know, whatever you

1506
01:20:56.760 --> 01:20:58.239
have to say to us. I'd love to hear it.

1507
01:20:58.279 --> 01:21:01.960
And we just appreciate yourself in your friendship so much.

1508
01:21:02.199 --> 01:21:04.239
We thank you, Thank you so much to Carla for

1509
01:21:04.319 --> 01:21:07.840
the wonderful package. We love you and we're just grateful

1510
01:21:08.079 --> 01:21:10.800
for everyone. But she's just amazing.

1511
01:21:10.920 --> 01:21:13.439
Yeah, thank you, Carla. Well, thanks so much for hanging

1512
01:21:13.479 --> 01:21:15.119
out with us. And until next time

1513
01:21:15.439 --> 01:22:03.319
Don't kill your husband and don't kill your wife