Denver prosecutors on Friday formally charged an associate professor at Denver’s Regis University with the murder of his wife after police found the woman with fatal injuries and the couple’s baby daughter dead at the family’s Central Park home this week.
Nicholas Myklebust, 44, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Seorin Kim, 44. He is also charged with tampering with evidence. Prosecutors allege he attempted to clean up the crime scene before calling police.
Myklebust called 911 just before 7 a.m. Monday from his home in the 3200 block of North Syracuse Street and said he’d found his wife on the ground with blood coming from her head and their daughter not breathing, according to an arrest affidavit.
Police later determined Kim suffered blunt force injuries that were not consistent with a fall, and noted that Myklebust had bruises on his hands and scratches on his body. He denied killing his wife in an interview with police and said she must have fallen from a step stool, according to the affidavit.
Myklebust has not been charged with the death of the couple’s two-and-a-half-month-old daughter, Lesley Kim, and it remains unclear how the girl died. She did not have any visible injuries but died at the family’s home, according to the police affidavit.
The cause and manner of her death are pending, the Denver Office of Medical Examiner said Friday.
Lesley is the second infant to die while in Myklebust’s care, prosecutors have said. The couple’s first child, Bear Myklebust, was just nine days old when he died on Oct. 4, 2021, after suffering skull fractures, according to prosecutors and the medical examiner’s office.
Bear was taken to Children’s Hospital Colorado at 6:29 a.m. by ambulance from the 2800 block of Roslyn Street, according to the medical examiner’s office.
The office performed an autopsy at that time and ruled Bear’s cause and manner of death to be undetermined, the office said in a news release Friday.
Denver police also investigated Bear’s death, but no charges were filed. Police this week declined to provide any details of the 2021 investigation, citing the ongoing case.
Myklebust appeared in court for an advisement Friday, handcuffed and in a gray jail uniform. He sat quietly with his head bowed while Denver District Court Judge Karen Brody read his rights to him.
More than a dozen people showed up to court in support of Kim on Friday; they declined to speak with members of the media. Three of Myklebust’s colleagues from Regis University also attended the proceedings.
Father Kevin Burke, a professor of theology, said the trio from Regis attended “to be a compassionate presence for everyone who is affected.” He declined to discuss Myklebust, saying the university had asked employees not to speak publicly about the case.
Brody declined to grant a request from the defense to issue an order prohibiting anyone involved in the case from speaking about it, which she called a request for a “complete gag order.”
“All I am prepared to rule on today with that motion is that the prosecution and anybody implicated complies with the ethical obligations and with the law,” Brody said. “Beyond that I will not impose additional requirements.”
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Originally Published: August 2, 2024 at 12:41 p.m.
