As senior loan officer with CTX Mortgage, Erik Levy works with countless applicants each month. Phone calls come and go; new faces slip in and out of his office. Little did he know, though, that one of his clients would become the victim in a case that has sparked one of New Jersey’s most gruesome domestic murder trials in decades, and that a brief acquaintance would have the spotlight of the entire nation shining upon him.
Coastal Point • RYAN SAXTON:
Erik Levy has recently gotten some attention he wasn’t expecting.
On March 16, 2004, William McGuire stepped into Levy’s New Jersey office to discuss a mortgage, after recently closing on a $500,000 home in Warren County, N.J.
Just months later, McGuire was found dead, his body contained in three suitcases, floating in the Chesapeake Bay. Levy’s business card was in his wallet. McGuire’s wife, Melanie, a nurse and the mother of their two children, became the prime suspect in her husband’s death.
Levy received a call from New Jersey police.
“They asked me if I remembered the guy,” Levy said. “The name rang a bell, but I talk to people all the time. I looked at the application and then I started to recognize who I spoke to.”
In June 2005, Melanie McGuire was charged with the disturbing homicide, but it wasn’t until March 5, 2007, that her trial got under way. Levy was contacted by the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice on March 16 and instructed that he would need to testify in the case.
“They called me the next day, on Saturday, and began drilling me with questions,” said Levy. “‘Was he a likeable guy?’ ‘Did he stand out?’ ‘What do you do for a living?’ ‘What does it entail?’ ‘When you spoke to Mr. McGuire that day, did he rub you the wrong way?’”
Levy had lived in New Jersey prior to relocating to Sussex County, Del., two years ago — a move that brought him closer to his wife’s family. Arrangements were made to accommodate Levy’s travels for the trial and on Monday, March 19, he was brought to testify in Superior Court in New Brunswick, just blocks away from one of his offices.
Once inside the courtroom, Levy said, he was immediately directed to the stand and sworn in, just feet away from Melanie McGuire.
“All of a sudden, [Assistant Attorney General Christopher Romanyshyn] came up and started firing questions,” said Levy. “It was pretty nerve-racking. They had asked me a bunch of questions the week before, but they didn’t tell you what they were going to ask here. I wasn’t too rattled by the questions. What really got me nervous was seeing Joe Tacopina [Melanie McGuire’s defense attorney] sitting there.”
Tacopina has made quite a name for himself as a defense lawyer, representing such names as Frank Tyson, an associate of Michael Jackson; New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik; and Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch student suspected of involvement in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba.
“He’s really intimidating,” said Levy. “He’s like an animal; he’s [like] Johnny Cochrane.” But, after whispering to McGuire, Tacopina opted not to cross-examine Levy.
The trial, which has aired live on Court TV since its start, has just recently started to pick up pace and is expected to continue for several weeks. Levy said the entire experience has been surreal for him. “It’s all pretty wild,” he said, “and a little scary. I spoke to this man, who I had just met that one time, in the last 30 days of his life.”
Levy said his role in the trial and appearing on live national television came as nothing short of a dream state to him. “It was all such a strange feeling,” he said. “To a point, you feel like you aren’t even there. It was an out-of-body experience. You can actually see yourself sitting there, and it’s like it’s not even real.”
Continuing live phone interviews are expected throughout the remainder of the trial, though due to location, Levy said he probably will not be returning to the courtroom.
Levy had once served jury duty, and had appeared in the audience during several talk shows, but this was an entirely different experience. “It’s really something else,” he said. “It’s just crazy to be called in for something like this, a case that’s being followed daily on live television.”
Needless to say, he takes a little more notice these days in the people with whom he comes into contact. “In any retail business, you are going to have people that you remember,” he said. “Sometimes there are some who really stand out.” He added, however, that he never thought anything like this would come from a brief encounter with a customer. William McGuire originally applied for a mortgage on a property in New Jersey, but he settled with someone else in the end.
Levy left his staffing business five years ago, before he started work with CTX Mortgage. He and his wife, Kerri, relocated to their second home in Bethany Beach two years ago with the arrival of their son, Aidan. Their second child, Brianna, is due May 10.