'She ain't my girlfriend': What Neptune victim said of other woman before she killed him

FREEHOLD - Natasha Johnson first became suspicious that her boyfriend was cheating on her with a teacher’s aide at their youngest son’s preschool in 2015, she told a jury Tuesday.

In January 2016, Johnson said she confronted the teacher’s aide about it.

"I believe I asked her, did she have a relationship with Joey, and she said, ‘yes,’" Johnson told the jury.

But Johnson said she stayed with Joseph Wilson Jr., with whom she had two sons, ages 3 and 6, because she loved him and thought they could make their relationship work.

But, within the year, the love triangle would lead to Wilson’s death.

Prosecutors allege the teacher’s aide, Monique Moore, fatally stabbed Wilson on Nov. 27, 2016, when he told her he was leaving her for Johnson.

Neptune murder or self-defense? 'Joey Wilson broke her heart, and she stabbed him in his'

Moore’s defense attorney contends the tables were turned and that Wilson viciously attacked Moore when she tried to break up with him and throw her out of her apartment, forcing her to defend herself.

At Moore’s trial for Wilson’s murder on Tuesday, Johnson testified that later in 2016, she again suspected her boyfriend of cheating on her with Moore, and she separated from Wilson in October 2016, moving out of his grandmother’s house in Neptune to Brick.

At Thanksgiving, Wilson told Johnson “the grass isn’t always greener," and said he wanted to be with only her, but Johnson said, “I had my doubts," she testified.

Days later, on Nov. 27, 2016, Wilson tried to talk Johnson into going out to dinner with him, but when she told him she couldn’t because she had to work the next day and their oldest son was sick, Wilson instead went to Moore’s apartment in Neptune, Johnson said.

The next morning, Johnson learned Wilson was dead, she said.

Moore, 29, of Neptune, is on trial for murder before Superior Court Judge Jill O’Malley.

Monique Moore case: Beating threat withheld from grand jury that charged woman with murder

Johnson testified that when she and her children spent Thanksgiving 2016 with Wilson’s family at his grandmother’s house, Moore kept calling Wilson, but he ignored her calls.

The next night, Wilson wanted Johnson to take him to the hospital because he was experiencing back pain, Johnson testified. She said she didn’t go with him, but lent him her car for him to drive himself. When he ignored her phone calls, Johnson said she later learned Moore had shown up at the hospital.

What followed was a series of text messages from Wilson to Johnson in which he apologized to her and said of Moore, "she ain't my girlfriend," Johnson testified, being questioned by Joseph Cummings, an assistant Monmouth County prosecutor. Johnson also said one of the texts from Wilson to her said, "My heart waits for you and you only,"

But cross-examined by defense attorney Michael Chazen about a statement she gave detectives a day after Wilson’s death, Johnson conceded she told them, “Joey was not yet ready to settle down; he still liked being with other women."

Earlier Tuesday, the trial testimony centered on what, if any, injuries Moore suffered on the night she stabbed Wilson to death

Moore told Neptune officer Evan Pollara that Wilson threw her into a table and was choking her, and bashing her head against the tiled floor in her apartment. That's when she grabbed a knife that had been knocked from the table and thrust it at his chest in self-defense, Pollara testified Friday.

On the witness stand for a second day, Pollara reiterated Tuesday that he did not see any injuries on Moore that were consistent with the attack she said she endured at the hands of Wilson. Pollara was aggressively cross-examined by Moore’s attorney.

“Did you tell the jury under oath that Miss Moore had no injuries?" Chazen asked the officer.

“Yes,” Pollara replied.

Chazen confronted Pollara with a report from the emergency medical technicians who examined Moore.

“Doesn’t it say, ‘It was discovered that the patient was in a fight and suffered injuries during the fight to her head and left leg?’" Chazen asked.

“I believe that’s what first aid wrote," Pollara responded.

Brian Rath, one of the emergency medical technicians with the Shark River Hills First Aid Squad who went to Neptune police headquarters to check Moore for injuries after she was arrested, testified the report of the assessment of Moore noted “no apparent illness/injury,"

And, Dr. Elliot Goodman, the emergency room physician who was working at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune when Moore was brought there that night, said the only injury discovered on her was a slight swelling on her scalp.

Goodman testified Moore was given a CAT scan and checked for skull fractures, swelling or fluids on the brain, and other signs of head trauma, but none were found.

"Someone can have a head injury that is not reflected on a CAT scan?" Chazen asked the physician.

"Yes," Goodman responded.

Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues, unsolved mysteries and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Monique Moore trial: Victim denied accused was girlfriend before death