Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

Cedar Rapids, Iowa - On an early December morning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, what was happening on the backside of the apartment complex didn't sound like the end of a marriage, and certainly not the beginning of the end of a life.

To the neighbors calling 911, it was more like a clumsy burglar stupidly making a ruckus.

(911 call)
Someone's out behind our building, and I don't know if he's trying to break in to one of the apartments...

Patrolman Rodney Shifflet and his partner caught the dispatch but didn't find anything.

Rodney Shifflet: We had gone over there initially, walked around the building that was in question. They advised that they had seen somebody with a gray hooded sweatshirt.
Dennis Murphy [Dateline correspondent]: Maybe a prowler?
Shifflet: Exactly. We didn't see anything. We walked around the building, drove through the parking lots and we cleared that call and went back into service.

But the two cops didn't get far because about 20 minutes later, at 5:34 a.m., the dispatcher was sending them back to the same address. It was a good one in Cedar Rapids, not the kind of place where you get what officers call a "domestic." And this one sounded bad when the call came in.

(911 call)
Caller: Yes, we need an ambulance ... a man's been punctured in his heart.
911: By what?
Caller: By me.
911: Did you stab him?
Caller: I stabbed him.

The officers cautiously treaded their way up to the third floor apartment, stopping to quick-check an exterior utility locker by the front door. It was clear.

Inside, they saw a middle-aged man sprawled on the kitchen floor and a woman in blue jeans and a grey fleece standing nearby with bloody hands.

Shifflet: There was blood on the floor. Some blood on his chest and everything. My partner says, "Who did this? What happened?" and she responded she had done that.
Murphy: Was he conscious?
Shifflet: He was conscious. Yes.
Murphy: Speaking to you?
Shifflet: He was trying to advise me that he was a doctor.

The doctor stabbed in the chest was Richard Nelson, the 54-year-old executive dean of the University of Iowa College of Medicine, a nationally regarded pediatrics specialist.

INTERACTIVE Doctor's apartment Photos from Dr. Nelson's Cedar Rapids apartment reveal new life away from family

The woman who'd admitted stabbing him -- both to 911 and to the arriving officers -- was his wife of 33 years, Phyllis Nelson, mother of their two grown daughters. She was also 54.

Somehow the couple -- she was a music teacher and a member of the choir at their Lutheran church -- had come to this bloody encounter in a sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment.

What had imploded in the marriage of two of eastern Iowa's best and brightest?

Newspaper reporter Elizabeth Kutter would spend many months looking for the answer.

Dennis Murphy: So this is a very prominent figure?
Elizabeth Kutter [reporter]: Prominent family.
Murphy: In the university ... in the medical school?
Kutter: Not only for their accomplishments, but for the kind of people that they were.
Murphy: Two nice kids.
Kutter: Nice kids.
Murphy: Nice house. They had a role in the community.
Kutter: Everything you would like to be as a grown-up or everything you would like your children to be.

They'd been high-school sweethearts since the age of 16, Dick and Phyllis.

Every year their friends could expect the Christmas letter from the Nelsons recounting their blessings, the girls graduating from prestigious colleges, Phyllis's volunteer work and Dick's ever growing responsibilities at the med school.

But now as the EMTs worked to stabilize Dr. Richard Nelson all those accompishments were turning to dust.

The patrolmen didn't know how to read the wife's removed composure as they sat her down in the couch.

Shifflet: You would think, if you had genuine feelings you'd be crying, a little hysterical but she really was ... showed no emotion whatsoever. I don't know. I tried to put myself in that situation. I think I would be a little emotional, especially if it's somebody you've been married to, had children with, had a relationship with.

Dr. Nelson was rushed to the emergency room with a single stab wound to the heart.

The weapon was obviously the bloody paring knife found in the kitchen, with a black plastic handle and a four-inch blade.

INTERACTIVE Her own words Phone calls reveal Phyllis Nelson's state of mind morning of stabbing

The investigators methodically photographed the apartment and bagged and inventoried what they found:

A bloody towel in the living room.

Clothes by the bed.

Books by the bedside table, one titled "After the Affair."

There was a woman's loafer on the floor.

And the other on the roof of the apartment outside.

What they didn't find any trace of was the doctor's lover of several years. The other woman. Phyllis told the police she knew she'd been there. She'd even seen her car parked outside when she arrived a little after 5 a.m.

Shifflet: I remember her saying that she just wanted to hurt him.
Murphy: She wanted to hurt him?
Shifflet: "I just wanted to hurt him."
Murphy: I just wanted to hurt him. I didn't want to kill him.
Shifflet: Yes.

But she had.

About four hours later, Dr. Richard Nelson died in the emergency room, a punctured heart beyond repair.

Patrolman Shifflet would look back on what the wife, Phyllis, had said as she was handcuffed in the back seat riding to the police station.

Shifflet: I can remember her saying that how he had hurt her heart and she just wanted to hurt him back.
Murphy: She talked about her heart?
Shifflet: Her heart being hurt and how he had hurt her heart and how she basically wanted him to feel the pain that she was feeling.

Phyllis Nelson said something else that morning. She hoped her name wouldn't get in the paper.

But Phyllis Nelson had become front-page news indeed.

Kutter: The fact that someone with his stature was killed here and in a love triangle made it very big news.

The doctor's wife was charged with first-degree murder.

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