Inset, top to bottom: Nicholas Myklebust (Denver Police Department) and a man being escorted from the crime scene by police after having his hands wrapped (KUSA). Background: The apartment building where Myklebust allegedly killed his wife (KUSA).
A 44-year-old college professor in Colorado was arrested this week and accused of killing his wife, allegedly beating the older woman to death and claiming that she fell inside the home where their 2-month-old daughter was also found dead.
Nicholas Myklebust, who teaches English at Regis University in Denver, was taken into custody on Monday and is being held for investigation on one count of first-degree murder for the slaying of his wife, authorities announced.
Due to Myklebust’s familial relationship with the two victims, authorities said they will not release their names until they have appropriate time to notify their next of kin.
According to a news release from the Denver Police Department, officers and emergency medical personnel responded on Monday at 6:52 a.m. to a 911 call at a home in the 3200 block of North Syracuse Street. Police said the call came from Myklebust, who told the emergency dispatcher that “he found his wife on the ground bleeding and their infant daughter not breathing.”
Upon arriving at the scene, first responders located an injured woman who appeared to be suffering from numerous blunt-force injuries. She was taken to a hospital, where she died shortly after arriving at the facility.
Authorities said they also found Myklebust’s infant daughter dead inside the home. Police noted that the child had “no visible injuries.”
Officers then transported Myklebust to police headquarters for questioning, where he apparently attempted to tell investigators that his wife’s injuries were due to a fall.
But through the course of the investigation, detectives said they learned that the Myklebust’s dead wife had suffered injuries that were “inconsistent with a fall.”
Additionally, detectives said they also noticed “bruising and blood on Myklebust’s knuckles along with scratches on his neck,” the release states. Based on the information available at the time, he was detained on suspicion of murdering his wife.
The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner will perform autopsies on the two victims to determine the manner and cause of death.
The Denver District Attorney’s Office will determinate the formal charges Myklebust will face, and the decision on any potential additional charges will not be made until after the conclusion of the investigation being conducted by the Medical Examiner’s Office, police said.
Authorities emphasized that the investigation remains ongoing and urged anyone with information relevant to the case to contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.
A neighbor spoke to Denver NBC affiliate KUSA and said the ordeal hit “way too close to home” for him. The neighbor said he watched authorities outside of the apartment building tending to an adult male who appeared to be vomiting and getting his hands wrapped by medics. It was not clear if that individual was Myklebust, but the neighbor said that after having his hands wrapped, the man was put into the back of a police vehicle without handcuffs.
The neighbor filmed the commotion and told the station it was “unnerving” when he later learned what had happened.
Myklebust received his Ph.D. in medieval languages and literatures from the University of Texas at Austin, where he then worked as a lecturer and instructor. His Regis University biography states that he is a “linguist and interloper in the literatures of post-classical and medieval cultures who reconstructs prior visions of the world and the texts through which past civilizations rose to consciousness of themselves.”
“His research models the complex metrical cultures of eleventh- and fifteenth-century poets to map the processes by which cognitive bias drives innovation in literary forms and, in particular, how a fortuitous glitch in the neural life of the human person, rooted in subcortical motor regions of the brain, offers a more complete history of English literary history as a game-theoretic enterprise and outlines a road map for the clinical rehabilitation of motor disorders,” the bio states.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
