On the 911 call, Nicholas Myklebust counted aloud with a dispatcher as he performed CPR on his infant daughter.
“1, 2, 3, 4,” he chanted, groaning and breathless. “1, 2, 3, 4.”
He told the 911 call-taker that he’d been asleep, he’d heard a noise in another room, he’d gone in to find his wife dying and his baby dead. His wife must have fallen from a step stool while wearing their baby in a front carrier, he said. She must have smothered their daughter under her while he was asleep on a couch nearby.
“Wake up, babe, babe,” he pleaded on the 911 call. First responders later described him as distraught, emotional, hysterical and in shock. He vomited in a kitchen sink several times.
Prosecutors played the 911 call in a Denver courtroom Friday at the start of a preliminary hearing in the murder case against Myklebust — then spent the next hours pulling apart the man’s story.
Myklebust, 45, 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.
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.
Seorin Kim died from blunt-force injuries, prosecutors said Friday.
Her skull was fractured, her ribs and facial bones broken. She suffered a brain bleed and was covered in bruises — on her legs, her arms. There were two distinct bruises on the front of her shoulders, like someone held her down as she fought to get up. Myklebust had blood on his sweatshirt, and on a T-shirt under that.
“Ms. Kim was severely beaten over a period of time,” prosecutor Anthony Santos said. “Almost every inch of her body was affected by an injury. …This is a beating that was not impulsive, it was not something where this was one hit or even two hits. This was a sustained, vicious attack.”
The skull fractures appeared to be from an object, maybe a half-inch or inch wide, Denver police Detective Ernest Sandoval testified Friday. Police tested two hammers in the family’s home; neither had blood on them, he said. No such weapon has been found.
Investigators believe Myklebust washed the sheets on the couple’s bed after the attack: investigators pulled back a duvet and spotless white sheets to reveal a blood-soaked mattress. Police found a bloody white linen glove in a trash can, five more clean gloves in a dryer. They found traces of cleaned-up blood on a washing machine and dryer.
“Mr. Myklebust cleaned up while Ms. Kim bled out,” Santos said.
Myklebust sat silently with his public defenders during the hearing, staring down at the table in front of him. He occasionally wrote on a notepad or glanced at photos as they were entered into evidence.
His public defenders sought to cast doubt on the police’s claim that the crime scene was cleaned up. Seorin Kim and Lesley were warm to the touch when first responders arrived, they said.
“Ms Kim was not laying there for hours while Mr. Myklebust deliberately cleaned up a crime scene,” attorney Sara Wafai said. “…It doesn’t make sense.”
The blood on the mattress could be from Seorin Kim’s postpartum bleeding, his attorneys said. A footprint on the step stool was compromised when firefighters moved it, so investigators couldn’t match it to Seorin’s shoes to corroborate Myklebust’s account.
The chemical that investigators used to show the cleaned-up blood can give false positives for other substances, like cleaning supplies, Sandoval acknowledged on cross-examination. None of the first responders reported smelling bleach; no empty cleaning bottles were found in the home.
Prosecutors pointed to a broader pattern of ongoing domestic abuse. Seorin Kim worked as a forensic accountant at the FBI in Denver, and colleagues there told police Seorin was often injured.
“They mentioned that she would say she was clumsy, she fell, she had trouble walking or standing so she had fallen, there were also statements made that she always seemed to have a medical appointment for something,” Sandoval testified. “It was odd the number of times she would go to the doctor. Rarely did she wear clothing that would reveal her arms or legs, she wore overcoats or long sleeves.”
Seorin Kim’s colleagues organized a meal train after Lesley was born, bringing dinner to the couple. But she never came out to meet them. They never saw her after she gave birth. Myklebust came down and collected the meals.
District Court Judge Martin Egelhoff allowed the case to go forward Friday, finding prosecutors presented enough evidence to support both the first-degree murder charge and the tampering with evidence count. Myklebust will appear for an arraignment on May 8.
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