Nurse testifies she had affair with Ohio doctor accused of poisoning wife with cyanide in 2005

Nurse: Ohio doctor had affair before wife’s death

CLEVELAND — A nurse testified Friday that she was the mistress of a doctor accused of killing his wife with cyanide and said he asked her if she would stay “if something bad were to happen.”

Nurse Michelle Stephens told a Cuyahoga County jury in Cleveland that emergency room doctor Yazeed Essa asked her the question the day before his wife died in 2005.

Essa, 41, has pleaded not guilty to murder. He is accused of giving his wife, 38-year-old Rosemarie Essa, a cyanide-laced calcium capsule on Feb. 24, 2005. She died that day after her SUV crashed into an oncoming car near the couple’s suburban home in Gates Mills.

Stephens said he was at her apartment and asked, “If something bad were to happen, would you stay?”

She testified that she had said yes to Essa’s question, believing he planned to leave his wife. She said she received a call from him the next day, but she couldn’t understand his shouting before he hung up. Stephens called him back and he told her his wife was dead after a car accident and that her recent complaints of heart palpitations might have caused the crash, she said.

Stephens, who was unmarried and called Michelle Madeline in 2005, said Essa loved his wife but was not in love with her. He complained that she was a cold woman, Stephens said.

Essa’s lawyers have said that he had many affairs, that he and his wife were trying to have a third child and that he would not have killed her for Stephens.

Stephens testified that she met Essa in 2000 when they worked together at Akron General Hospital. She said their affair began in 2004 and that he gave her expensive gifts and flowers and took her on a lavish trip to New York City.

Stephens said she helped Essa after the death by talking to him on the phone and watching his children, and he told her he would tell others about their romantic relationship the following fall.

Essa disappeared in March, and his case was delayed for years. Essa, a U.S. citizen whose family is from a Palestinian territory, was arrested in 2006 in Cyprus.

Stephens said Essa proposed marriage to her, “if you want to call it a proposal. It was via e-mail while he was on the run.”

Information from: The Plain Dealer, www.cleveland.com