NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Shortly before her husband was murdered, Melanie McGuire was seeking information about getting a divorce, a colleague testified Monday at the fertility clinic nurse's trial.

Joyce Maloney, a registered nurse who shared a clinic office with McGuire and had been through a long, contentious divorce of her own, said McGuire told her she was trying to help a friend who was thinking about ending her marriage. Maloney said, however, that questions McGuire posed during the phone conversation in April 2004 seemed to refer to McGuire's own marriage.

She said McGuire, 34, wanted to know specifically whether it was better from a financial perspective to divorce while owning a home or while renting one.

McGuire and her computer analyst husband, William, 39, had been looking at properties for months and closed on their first house April 28, 2004, the last day he was seen alive.

Maloney said she told McGuire what she could about state laws concerning division of property, advice that state Superior Court Judge Frederick DeVesa barred her from repeating to a jury.

Story continues

She was allowed to testify about her response when McGuire asked how much she could expect to pay for a divorce.

"I told Melanie that my divorce was over $100,000," Maloney recalled.

McGuire filed for divorce three weeks after her husband went missing, charging in court papers that he had abandoned her and their two children after a violent argument about the new house.

Prosecutors allege that she concocted the story after killing him. Her defense insists she is innocent and blames the murder on the victim's alleged gambling debts.

Dr. Richard Scott, the medical director and managing partner of Reproductive Medical Associates, the clinic where McGuire worked for seven years, offered the first detailed testimony Monday about the defendant's affair with a married physician there.

Scott said he suspected McGuire and Dr. Bradley Miller, another partner, were lovers and twice confronted Miller, whose partnership agreement prohibited such a relationship. Both times, he said, Miller denied it.

He testified that, after McGuire's arrest, Miller acknowledged the affair and was asked to leave the clinic. He is expected to testify for the prosecution later this week.

The defense has hinted that Miller may be responsible for William McGuire's murder. Under questioning by prosecutors, Scott said clinic records indicate Miller was seeing patients and performing in vitro fertilizations in the days after the victim's disappearance.

Asked if the physician ever behaved erratically, Scott said, "I worked with Dr. Miller virtually every day, and I certainly didn't notice that."

Scott also reviewed two apparently phony prescriptions written on Miller's prescription pad in April 2004. One, for the sleep aid flurazepam, was made out in the name of the victim's deceased mother, Ruth McGuire. Another, for the sedative chloral hydrate, was made out in the name of a patient who previously testified that she never received such a prescription.

Scott said Miller's signature appeared to be forged and that there was no medical reason for chloral hydrate ever to be prescribed at a fertility clinic. Prosecutors allege McGuire used the sedative to disable her husband before shooting him.

Asked if McGuire wrote out orders for medicine prescribed orally by doctors, he replied, "I never saw Melanie write a prescription for Dr. Miller, but I have come to learn that it was common practice in our practice for all our nurses to do that."

The testimony of Maloney and Scott reinforced the central mystery of the case: How a nurse with an unblemished reputation for compassion could be implicated in a gruesome murder. Both described her abilities in tones that bordered on reverential.

"Melanie was an excellent nurse and had an excellent rapport with her patients," Maloney said.

Scott recalled McGuire's "extraordinary work ethic."

 "She was an extraordinarily reliable nurse," Scott said, adding that fertility clients were generally anxious and quick to complain about the nursing staff, but "in spite of that, Melanie virtually never had a complaint."

Under cross-examination, he said that he thought so highly of McGuire's skills even after her arrest, that he hired her as a consultant to teach new staff members.

"She was a great nurse," he agreed, turning in the witness box to face McGuire. He smiled at her and said, "She is a great nurse."

McGuire smiled back at him.

Also Monday, prosecutors asked the judge for permission to show jurors a copy of the Stephen King novel "Dolores Claiborne" that McGuire allegedly inscribed to a friend in 1995. The plot concerns a woman who gets her abusive husband drunk and then kills him.

Outside the presence of the jury, Assistant Attorney General Patricia Prezioso said McGuire had given the gift to a nursing school classmate for Christmas with the inscription, "Now here is a story of a woman with true strength and wisdom. You can learn a lot from her. I did."

Another prosecutor, Christopher Romanyshyn, said McGuire "used a similar methodology" to the title character by sedating and then shooting him, but DeVesa was unconvinced.

"It doesn't sound like it to me," the judge said, saying that, while he had not read the King book, he understood that in the fictional murder, the intoxicated victim was tricked into falling into a well.

When the prosecutor persisted, saying that both were "incapacitation and murder," the judge said the description fit many murders. He barred the book as evidence.

Testimony continues Tuesday morning. The trial is being streamed live on Court TV Extra.