Defendant convicted of murdering female escort's killer

It was a crazy, sordid mess:

A beautiful escort and aspiring real-estate agent named Michelle Nau, killed after a night of drugs and partying. Her body missing.

Then her killer, George Conway, 48, a drug dealer, shot to death a month later by a young man, Domenic Curcio.

Curcio, now 18, pleaded guilty Wednesday to third-degree murder in Conway's death.

"He's never denied his guilt," Brian McMonagle, Curcio's defense attorney, said yesterday. "From the beginning, he's been remorseful. He wanted to come in and accept responsibility for it."

Curcio, who grew up in New Jersey and most recently lived in Frankford, faces from five to 40 years in prison when he is sentenced April 18 by Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner.

Nau's disappearance grabbed headlines last year because the stunning 37-year-old woman was discovered to have worked as an escort for a Queen Village service. She had told her family she was a real- estate agent. Then, details surfaced about her involvement with drugs.

Police said Nau, who most recently lived in Oxford Circle, had been killed after partying and taking cocaine with Conway in his Mayfair apartment Feb. 4, 2006.

Curcio had seen Nau in Conway's apartment that day before her death and then later saw her body the morning after she was killed, police said. He was not present when Conway was said to have held her down, possibly killing her by asphyxiation, because she was acting erratically.

Conway had bragged to Curcio about how he had killed Nau, McMonagle said. According to testimony at Curcio's preliminary hearing last year, Conway told Curcio that he had cut up her body and threw out the pieces in South Jersey. But police did not believe that tale.

"Unfortunately, he was exposed to this horror and that's why he's now in a situation fighting for his life," McMonagle said yesterday, adding that Curcio had no prior record of arrests.

So Curcio, under the influence of PCP and cocaine, shot Conway in the chest and back in his apartment on March 1, 2006, killing him.

Police said the Michelle Nau case is closed.

But Nau's family is still searching for her body and would like to be able to bury her.

"Unfortunately, nobody wants to say anything," Nau's sister, Gabrielle Jaslow, said yesterday. "Somebody should come forward. Everybody deserves a final resting place," where the family can grieve. "We never got that." *