An Act Of Murder (8 page)

The Millers were scheduled to drive back home together the next day, Sunday. But first they had to figure out how to get Steve's truck back to Laurel from State College. The problem was that when Kim left State College to go back to St. Michaels with Rachelle on Wednesday, they went in Rachelle's car. However, because Rachelle left Laurel before Kim did, Kim had to drive Steve's truck back because her own car was still in State College.

So the Millers and Kim decided that Mike would drive Steve's truck and Maureen would follow in their car.

“It killed him having to be in Steve's truck and smell him and see all his stuff that had been there the day he died,” Maureen recalled.

After the Millers dropped Steve's truck off at the Hrickos' house in Laurel, Mike and Maureen drove back to Easton together.

The day after Steve died, Kim's friend Rachel McCoy contacted Corporal Keith Elzey. She was scared and crying. Rachel told Elzey that she didn't think Steve's death was an accident. In fact, she believed Kim killed her husband. Ultimately Elzey set up an interview with Rachel at her workplace in Baltimore for the next day, Tuesday, February 17, at 11:00
A.M.

After speaking with Rachel on the telephone, Elzey called Dr. David Fowler at the medical examiner's office and told him there might be new evidence pertaining to the death of Stephen Hricko.

Norma Walz also called the state police on Monday regarding the Hricko case. Norma told Sergeant Karen Alt she believed Kimberly played a part in her husband's death. Norma then directed Alt to call Jennifer Gowen, who had more information about Kimberly's possible involvement. Alt contacted Jennifer and made arrangements to interview her and her husband, Sean, at their home in Silver Spring, Maryland, that evening.

During the interview Jennifer said that although Kim often talked about how bad her marriage was, she always made it seem like she had everything under control. But in the months before Steve's death, Kimberly became increasingly negative about her relationship with him. She even told Jennifer she was thinking of asking him for a divorce. Kimberly said the only way she would stay in the marriage was if Steve completely changed his ways. Jennifer thought Steve did just that, but apparently Kim didn't.

“Her opinions about him became more that he was like pathetic and she didn't think he would be able to go on if they got a divorce,” Jennifer said. “She came to see him as a nonperson and she said several times that she had no feelings for him. During many of our conversations she said he would be better off dead because there was no way that he would be able to maintain a life without her and Sarah.”

Kim was also afraid that if she divorced Steve, he might turn Sarah against her, or make her life miserable in other ways.

“Kim said many times that . . . she thought that this whole situation could be best reconciled if Steve was dead, and she told me that she would like my support as far as being there for her unconditionally, no matter what happened,” Jennifer said. “And she said things like, ‘If I knew that I could kill him and get away with it, I would do it tomorrow.' She would say that Steve needs to die. She said that she was tempted to tell Steve about the relationship she was having with Brad, so that he would get mad enough and kill himself because he had mentioned suicide in the past.”

But even if Steve committed suicide, Kim still wouldn't be happy, because she wouldn't be able to collect on his life insurance, Jennifer told Alt.

“So I think she really felt that the best way out of the situation was indeed to kill him,” Jennifer said.

Jennifer told Alt she and Kim were both surgical technologists. In fact, she said, that's how they met. Jennifer explained that their jobs consisted of getting the operating room set up for surgery, assisting the surgeon during an operation, breaking down the room after the surgery was completed, and preparing the room for the next case. As part of their jobs she and Kim had access to numerous drugs, Jennifer said.

“Did there come a time when you and Kim discussed drugs that could be used potentially to kill people?” Alt asked.

“Yes. I always thought it was an interesting fact that there was a drug so readily available, a nonnarcotic, or a noncontrolled substance, that was just sitting around on almost any anesthesia cart, that could be used as a weapon or as a drug, that, to the best of my knowledge, could paralyze someone's muscles, all of them, and they could die from a small amount of that drug,” Jennifer said. “We had discussed it, when Kim said, ‘Yeah, I need to get some good anesthesia drugs or Sodium Pentothal,' and I said, ‘Well, hey, if you're going to do it, I heard [about] a drug called succinylcholine,' and I related to her how I had heard of that drug used in the past as a weapon.”

Jennifer then explained how succinylcholine worked when given intramuscularly.

“To the best of my knowledge . . . I guess what could happen is that the person would lose muscular control over their functions, and for a time they're aware of what is going on because it takes a while for all your muscles to stop working. That would include the muscles that you use to breathe, and you stop breathing. Eventually you would be starved for oxygen and you would die because you couldn't take in a breath,” she said.

Jennifer said about a month before Steve's death, Kim talked about how she could use this drug to kill him.

“I know that Kim told me on [a] Friday night that she wanted my unconditional love . . . and that she didn't understand why I couldn't just accept the affair [with Brad] as something that people do,” Jennifer said. “She wanted to know why I couldn't accept the lying to Steve and why I couldn't accept that this is what she needed to do and she wasn't necessarily ready to end it—the whole relationship with Brad—in a quick manner, or to go back to Steve and try to reconcile their marriage.”

Alt asked Jennifer to explain Kim's definition of “unconditional love.”

“Kim felt that her definition of unconditional love was . . . that I could do anything, including—specifically—kill someone, and she would support me, and she asked that I support her in that way. . . . She didn't ask for me to support her in something she was going to do, but she asked me [if] I would support her, no matter what happened. And she ended the conversation by saying, ‘If you killed someone tomorrow, I would support you,'” Jenny said.

Later in the investigation Alt spoke with Kim's friend Teri Armstrong. Teri, who now lived in Pennsylvania, had lived next door to the Hrickos in Laurel for about two years. Sergeant Alt met with Teri at the state police barracks in Waterloo, Maryland.

Teri said she and Kim used to see each other every day until the Armstrongs moved away in August 1997. After that, Teri would spend every other weekend at Kim's house and they would also talk on the telephone several times a week.

Teri told Alt about a conversation she had with Kim the New Year's Eve before Steve died.

“She told me that she was going to be asking Steve for a divorce. I asked her if Steve had a girlfriend and she said no. I asked her if she was seeing anybody and she said yes, in a roundabout way,” Teri said. “And I asked her if they kissed and how they met and if they were having an affair, sexually, and she said no about that, but they had kissed. She said they weren't going to be seeing each other until the divorce was final, which I agreed with. She told me it was one of her friends' cousin and later I found out his name was Brad and he was in the military.”

Kim told Teri that when she asked Steve for a divorce, she knew he was going to try and take Sarah from her, but she wasn't going to let him do that.

“But in my heart I didn't believe Steve could do that,” Teri said. “I knew Kim enough to where I didn't find that to be true.”

It seemed to Teri that Kim just didn't want to deal with the hassles of a divorce—hassles from her parents and his family as well.

“She gave me the impression that she was under a lot of torment . . . but I just found this all to be out of sync,” Teri said.

Kim also told Teri that she had been thinking about several different ways of killing Steve, basically for the insurance money so she and Sarah could live well. Teri said a couple of months earlier, Kim had started feeding her negative information about Steve—about their sex lives and how he was raised and that his parents let him look at pornographic magazines.

“She said once when she came home from a trip, she caught him with things all over the house, sex magazines, and she was really embarrassed because she was with her girlfriend,” Teri said. “[Kim] also found out, without him knowing it, that he had been getting off with computer online [pornography]. Things like that. Like he only wanted to have sex in the morning—he didn't want it at night. He only wanted it when he wanted it. I didn't see Steve to be like that, but she never mentioned any of that stuff before. I just found it really strange, all of a sudden.”

During the interview Teri told Alt that she had spent some time alone with Steve about a month before he died. It was January 16 and Teri was supposed to meet Kim at the Hrickos' house. When she arrived, Steve told her that Kim wasn't home, so Teri spent about ninety minutes talking with Steve in the kitchen.

“He was a nervous wreck,” Teri said. “He was so upset. He was crying. He was just really sad.”

Steve told Teri that he wanted his marriage to work. He said he loved Kim and Sarah and really wanted to do better, and he promised he would do better. He said he was seeing a psychologist and taking antidepressants.

“I always told him that if he ever needed to talk to me, to do so,” Teri said.

While they were waiting for Kim, who was at Jenny's house, Steve called the Gowens to find out when she was going to be home. However, there was no answer, so he left a message. He called a couple of times more, but he hung up when no one answered, rather than leave more messages. Steve also called Kim's cell phone, but it was turned off. When Kim did finally come home, she looked like she had been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy. Although she looked tired and drained, Teri had a feeling she was faking.

“She was overdoing it. [She gave] me the impression that she was faking this, being ill, but she wasn't crying,” Teri said.

Soon Steve went to bed and Teri tried talking to Kim, but Kim really didn't want to talk about anything. Teri, though, wouldn't take no for an answer.

“Things had been bothering me because her relationship [with Steve] wasn't like it was before, and I had to let her know how I felt about the situation because we had always talked about things,” she said.

Teri told Kim to go easy on Steve—after all, he was trying. If she gave him a chance, he might even become the man he was when she fell in love with him. On the other hand, Teri told Kim to do what she needed to do. However, all the conversations Teri had with Kim in the weeks leading up to Steve's death led her to believe Kim wanted a divorce.

“She didn't want to work it out. She wanted to leave, but she knew that there was really no way out [by] getting a divorce,” Teri said. “She knew she was going to get a lot of hassles.... She was not wanting to hear what other people had to say, but she did ask my opinion of the relationship.”

Teri told Kim she thought the relationship was an unhealthy one. It seemed that Kim was always on the go, while Steve just sat around doing nothing except getting fat. According to Teri, Kim took care of everything around the house, including the bills. She said Steve was a couch potato.

“He watched television lying in bed,” Teri said. “And he was rude to a point—lazy rude. Even when I would come over and [he would answer] the door and I would say, ‘Is Kim here?' and he would say, ‘Yeah, she's upstairs,' and he would go and sit back on the couch, or his favorite chair. He never went to get her. I had to ask him if I could go get her.”

Teri last saw Kim and Steve together on Friday, February 13, the day before they left for Harbourtowne. Even though Teri arrived at the Hrickos' house late in the evening, she and Kim sat at the kitchen table and talked for about three hours. Steve went upstairs to bed and Sarah fell asleep downstairs, watching television.

“I didn't know what to say anymore. I didn't know how to handle it,” Teri said. “I didn't know what was going to be the right thing or the wrong thing because she just seemed to be a totally different person at this point. The Kim I saw that night . . . I mean, she just seemed to be changing every two weeks that I did see her. She was completely cold. She was cold.”

 

 

On Monday, February 16, Dr. Fowler had called Elzey and told him the autopsy indicated that there was no carbon monoxide in Stephen Hricko's blood, nor was there evidence of soot or burns in his trachea or related injuries to his lungs. That meant that Steve was either not breathing, or dead, before the fire in his room started. Fowler also said that, contrary to Kim's statements that Stephen had been drinking heavily, there was no alcohol in his blood. Fowler told Elzey he was awaiting the results of other tests to determine exactly how Steve died.

After speaking with Fowler, Elzey called Scott Patterson, the state's attorney for Talbot County, to update him on the Hricko case.

Later that afternoon Elzey and other members of his team, as well as members of the state police crime lab, went to Harbourtowne to do a search of the Hrickos' room and the surrounding area. While they were there, they also searched room 1016, where Kimberly was taken after the fire.

That evening Elzey got a call from Kimberly's friend Marsha Carter (pseudonym). Marsha had taken care of Sarah while the Hrickos were at Harbourtowne. Marsha told Elzey about Kim's affair with Brad Winkler. She said a couple of weeks before Steve's death, she and Kim went to a pub in Laurel, where Kim met up with Brad. When they left the pub, they all went back to Marsha's house, and Kim and Brad went upstairs to the bedroom and had sex.

Elzey also got a phone call from Marsha's boyfriend, who was unaware that she had already called the police. The boyfriend provided Elzey with essentially the same information that Marsha had.

The next day, Tuesday, Elzey and another state police trooper met with Rachel McCoy at the Baltimore bank where she worked. Rachel told them that she and Kim had been friends since 1986. They met when they worked at Hoss's Steak and Sea House. They quickly became best friends and roommates. Over the years they remained in touch, although they lost contact with one another for about a year-and-a-half when Rachel moved to Baltimore in 1988. They reestablished their friendship again shortly after Sarah was born. When the Hrickos moved to Maryland in 1991, Rachel and Kim once again became best friends. They talked on the telephone at least three times a week, went shopping, and went out to eat and to the movies.