A Denver District Court judge in an unusual move Friday ordered the body of the baby found dead in a Regis University professor’s home last month be held for 30 days instead of being released to the child’s family for cremation.

The baby’s father, Nicholas Myklebust, 44, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife Seorin Kim, 44. Police found Kim with fatal injuries and the couple’s 2½-month-old daughter, Lesley Kim, dead at the family’s home in the 3200 block of North Syracuse Street on July 29.

Seorin Kim suffered obvious blunt force injuries, police said, and Myklebust had bruises on his hands and scratches on his body. He claimed his wife must have fallen from a step stool, but the woman’s injuries did not match his account, police said.

Lesley was found with no visible external injuries, and the manner and cause of her death have not yet been determined. She is the second infant to die in Myklebust’s care — the couple’s first child, Bear Myklebust, died in 2021 at the age of 9 days. No charges were filed in his death, though he suffered skull fractures.

District Court Judge Ericka Englert on Friday ordered that Lesley’s body be held at the Office of the Denver Medical Examiner for 30 days even though pathologists there have finished their work.

“In this case, it is an unusual situation in that there is no manner of death, no cause of death provided,” she said. “We don’t yet have the autopsy report. The defense does not have the results of testing. And a release of the body right now would likely lead to, for lack of a better term, destruction of the evidence.”

Pathologists conducted a full autopsy on Lesley’s body, but expect the final autopsy report will not be finished for three to five months because of various testing that is underway, said Breena Meng, an attorney with the Denver City Attorney’s Office. She represented the medical examiner’s office in Friday’s hearing.

Myklebust has not been charged with his daughter’s killing, but might be, said his public defender, Rebecca Butler-Dines. Because of that potential, she asked that Lesley’s body be held until all the testing was completed so that the defense team could review the prosecution’s findings and then potentially pursue its own testing, she said in court Friday.

“Recognizing the complexity of child abuse cases, and specifically infant death cases, and how oftentimes the case comes down to a dispute between experts, we don’t think it is unacceptable for the medical examiner’s office to hold the child until we have reviewed additional information regarding their findings,” Butler-Dines said.

Prosecutor Anthony Santos, who called the defense request an “unprecedented situation,” said it was not appropriate for the medical examiner’s office to hold Lesley’s body “indefinitely” while the defense team mulled its options.

“If defense wants additional information from their expert, I’m all for it, but they need to do it,” he said. “They can’t just wait.”

Meng added that holding Lesley’s body would be “highly unusual” and that the medical examiner’s office strives to release bodies to family members as soon as possible to facilitate the grieving process.

“For us, keeping this (body) would be significantly out of our practice and procedure,” Meng said.

Englert took a short break before ruling that Lesley’s body should be held for 30 days before it is released to her family. She noted that the family needed Lesley’s body in order to find closure and said that was partly why she limited the hold to 30 days.

People who attended court in support of Seorin and Lesley Kim declined to comment after the hearing.

Seorin Kim, who described herself as a “dancer in the rain” on her Facebook page, posted videos on YouTube of herself singing and playing keyboard. She posted about writing and composing songs, including one song in 2011 about a pet rabbit named Mushroom Myklebust.

“This is a sweet and simple piano tune I composed and dedicated to this furry genius,” the video caption reads.

Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

Originally Published: August 9, 2024 at 3:50 p.m.