Teen admits role
in Michelle Nau case

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

The lone surviving figure in a triangle of drug abuse, prostitution and murder pleaded guilty last week to killing the Tacony man suspected of strangling Oxford Circle resident Michelle Nau and disposing of her body early last year.
Nau’s remains have never been found, but homicide investigators believe that 48-year-old drug dealer George Conway killed her on Feb. 4, 2006, during a binge of cocaine use in his Princeton Avenue apartment.
Conway later bragged to other drug customers about killing the attractive 37-year-old escort and aspiring real estate agent, witnesses told authorities.
The comments pushed one of those buyers, Domenic Curcio, of the 1100 block of Foulkrod St. in Northwood, over the edge. He was just 17 at the time.
Curcio pleaded guilty last Wednesday to shooting Conway to death on March 1, 2006, inside the same apartment where police believe Conway ended Nau’s life.
Curcio and a friend were to buy more drugs from Conway that night, the friend testified during a preliminary hearing late last March. Instead, Curcio shot Conway fatally in the chest and back.
Prostitutes hired by Curcio and his friend after the Conway murder led detectives to Curcio, who was arrested about two weeks after the crime. The hookers told police that the two men spoke of the Conway killing as they partied at a Days Inn in the Lower Northeast that night.
Curcio pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. He had been charged with a general murder count, which included the possibility for a first-degree murder conviction and the death penalty.
As a capital-crime defendant, Curcio has been ineligible for bail and has remained in jail since his arrest.
Police believe that Nau had taken large amounts of drugs leading up to her death and may have been acting erratically. A witness heard commotion coming from Conway’s second-floor apartment around the suspected time of Nau’s slaying.
Curcio had seen Nau alive in Conway’s apartment in the hours before her killing and returned later to see her dead, authorities have said. Investigators believe that Conway kept her body for days in the apartment or on an exterior balcony before setting it on fire in a Fishtown Dumpster that eventually was delivered to a Chester trash-to-energy plant. The contents were incinerated there.
Conway, meanwhile, bragged about dismembering the woman and scattering her remains around South Jersey. No physical evidence of that scenario has been found.
Police have interviewed numerous drug users who were around Conway and his apartment around the time of the Nau murder and have received conflicting stories.
Curcio faces five to 40 years in prison and is due to be sentenced on April 18 by Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner. ••
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com