Jonathan Nyce: Manslaughter Case and Canine Cancer Drug Fraud

Jonathan Nyce is a former New Jersey pharmaceutical executive who has been convicted in two separate criminal cases nearly two decades apart. In 2005, he was convicted of passion-provocation manslaughter for killing his wife, Michelle, in their Hopewell Township home and staging her death as a car accident. In 2022, years after his release, a federal jury convicted him of running a scheme that sold fraudulent cancer drugs to the owners of dying dogs, defrauding roughly 900 pet owners of nearly $1 million.

Career and Marriage Before the Killing

Nyce trained in pharmacology and worked as a university professor before founding EpiGenesis Pharmaceuticals in Cranbury, New Jersey. The company focused on respiratory disease and developed a drug candidate called EPI-2010 that entered clinical trials as a possible once-weekly asthma preventative.¹ Over his career he reportedly raised about $65 million for drug research.² EpiGenesis ultimately failed, and Nyce was ousted from the company about a year before his wife’s death.

He had met Michelle Rivera through a pen-pal advertisement she placed in a Philippine newspaper in the late 1980s. He was about 40 and she was about 20 when they met in person, and he later acknowledged misrepresenting his age by nine years during their courtship. They married in the Philippines, moved to the United States, and settled in a large home on Keithwood Court in Hopewell Township. The couple had three children, Samantha, Alex, and Trevor, ages 5 to 12 at the time of Michelle’s death.²³

As the family’s finances deteriorated, Michelle took a job selling cosmetics at a Macy’s in Quaker Bridge Mall.³ She began an affair with a landscaper, Miguel DeJesus, who had been hired to plant trees at the property.⁴ In the summer of 2003, Jonathan told police someone was trying to extort him with recordings of the affair, and a restraining order was placed against the landscaper.²

The Death of Michelle Nyce

On a cold morning in January 2004, Michelle’s body was found inside her SUV at the bottom of a creek about a mile from the family home. The vehicle had gone off a back road and down an embankment. It was still running. A suitcase of women’s clothing sat inside. And footprints in the snow led about 150 feet from the crash site back to the road.²

Jonathan first told police he had last seen Michelle at 4 p.m. the previous day. During a car ride with Detective Dan McKeown, he let slip that the two had argued “last night” about her leaving him. Brought in for a second interrogation, he broke down and admitted confronting Michelle in their garage on the night of January 16, 2004, after she returned from seeing DeJesus. He said she lunged at him and that he threw her down, causing her head to strike the concrete floor. He then placed her body in the driver’s seat of her SUV and used an ice scraper to work the pedals, steering the vehicle into the creek to stage an accident.²

Investigators later found cut-up boot soles hidden throughout the Nyce garage. Reconstructed, the size-14 soles matched the tracks in the snow near the crash site.² A baseball bat with traces of blood was also recovered from the home.⁵

Manslaughter Trial, Sentence, and Release

Nyce was charged with murder and tampering with evidence. His five-week trial in State Superior Court in Mercer County began in June 2005.⁴ Prosecutor Doris Galuchi argued that the killing was not a spontaneous act but the culmination of Nyce’s need to control an increasingly independent wife, and sought the maximum sentence of 11½ years.⁶ DeJesus testified about the yearlong affair and said Nyce had called his cellphone in July 2003 and told him, “You put your hands on my wife again, you’re going to be a dead man.”

Defense attorney Robin Lord called Michelle’s death a “pure accident” from a fall during a struggle, conceded that Nyce had staged the crash, and attributed the staging to panic. The defense also portrayed DeJesus and Michelle as co-conspirators in an extortion scheme.²

After three days of deliberation in July 2005, the jury rejected the murder charge and convicted Nyce of the lesser offense of passion-provocation manslaughter and of tampering with evidence.² On September 22, 2005, Judge Wilbur H. Mathesius sentenced him to eight years, with parole eligibility in roughly five and a half. The judge said he was troubled by Nyce’s “dissembling” and rejected the defense’s account of the death as an accident.⁶

A New Jersey appeals court upheld the conviction on May 7, 2009, rejecting arguments about an illegal search and the admissibility of his statements.⁷ Nyce was released from state prison on December 5, 2010, after just over five years.⁵ He continued to maintain that the landscaper, not he, had killed Michelle.⁸

The Canine Cancer Drug Scheme

Beginning in 2012, Nyce operated out of a facility on Arcola Road in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, running companies he called “Canine Care,” “ACGT,” and “CAGT,” and marketing products named “Tumexal” and “Naturasone” as cancer-curing drugs for dogs. The products were not approved by the FDA and consisted of bulk ingredients Nyce blended himself.⁹

Promotional materials claimed “Tumexal is effective against a wide variety of cancers” and would “almost always restore a cancer-stricken dog’s appetite, spirit and energy.” Nyce also falsely told customers that his research was “funded in part by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” Using company websites, email, and phone calls, he reached pet owners whose dogs were terminally ill, charged them hundreds or thousands of dollars, and convinced some to pay additional large sums so their pets could join clinical trials. In total, the scheme defrauded approximately 900 pet owners of nearly $1 million.⁹

Federal Conviction and 2024 Sentence

Nyce was indicted in February 2020 on federal charges of wire fraud and interstate shipment of misbranded animal drugs.¹⁰ A federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania convicted him on both counts in December 2022.⁹

None of the 900-plus victims testified for the prosecution. Three customers appeared as defense witnesses and said they had been satisfied with the products. Nyce’s daughter Samantha, then 25, also testified for him, telling the court, “He’s the most lovely man that I know.”¹¹

On February 16, 2024, U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone sentenced Nyce, then 73, to 97 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, a $500 special assessment, and restitution of nearly $1 million.¹¹⁹

At sentencing, Nyce insisted his research had genuine merit and had “the potential to revolutionize what we know about cancer.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Parisi called him a “prolific con man” and “snake-oil salesman” whose dedication “was not to research and science … It was to making a quick buck.” Judge Beetlestone credited the government’s characterization of the science as “bogus nonsense” and said, “The best that can be said is that [he] is deluded by his own brilliance.” U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero said Nyce “deliberately exploited people’s emotions, their love for their ailing dogs, purely for his own financial gain.”¹¹⁹

1
New York Times. Entrepreneur Confesses to Killing Wife, the Police Say
2
NBC News. Jonathan Nyce Case
3
Forensic Files Now. Jonathan Nyce
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New York Times. Case Unfolds Against New Jersey Man in Wife’s Death
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Forensic Files Now. Update on Jonathan Nyce
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The Ledger. Ex-Pharmaceutical Executive Sentenced
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NJ.com. Hopewell Man’s Manslaughter Conviction Upheld
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The FilAm. Jonathan Nyce Case
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U.S. Department of Justice. Collegeville Man Sentenced to 97 Months in Prison for Scheme to Sell Fraudulent Canine Cancer Drugs to Pet Owners
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PhillyVoice. Jonathan Nyce Indicted for Selling Fake Cancer Drugs for Dogs
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Philadelphia Inquirer. Jonathan Nyce Sentenced for Dog Cancer Treatment Scheme