THE LAUREL CHRONICLES
The Perfect Crime With One Flaw: Her Big Mouth
The Murder of Steve Hricko
By Kevin Leonard | December 28, 2020
The Fire
The news reports were progressively more horrific. The local paper, the Easton Star-Democrat, was the first to report the tragedy on Monday, February 16, 1998. Under the headline, “Guest dies in fire at golf resort,” the brief, three-paragraph article contained few details. “ST. MICHAELS ― Maryland State Police and the state fire marshal’s office are investigating a fatal fire at the Harbourtowne Golf Resort and Conference Center that may have begun on or near a bed in one of the guest suites early Sunday morning.”
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Three days later, the same paper identified the guest who died in the fire as Stephen M. Hricko, from Laurel, and provided some early gruesome details. “Hricko was burned from the torso up but the cause of his death has not yet been determined.” According to the State Fire Marshal’s office, the fire was contained to a small area “since the room was so well insulated, the fire appeared to have smothered itself.”
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According to the article, “Hricko and his wife, Kim, attended an audience participation murder mystery play at the resort last Saturday night … During the play, the bridegroom fell dead after the bride’s mother poisoned him. The fire was reported in one of the cottages several hours later, at about 1:25 a.m.”
That same day, Feb. 19, both the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun picked up the story of the tragedy, with the angle of the murder mystery play irresistible to headline writers. “Laurel Man, Wife Were on Murder-Mystery Weekend at Resort” was the headline in the Sun, while the Post’s was rather lame: “‘Whodunit’ Fan’s Death Stumps Police; Man Burned After Taking Part in Interactive Drama on Eastern Shore.”
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Even though both the Sun and the Post provided more detail as to what happened, it still seemed mysterious. “Stephen Michael Hricko of Belle Ami Drive in Laurel was declared dead in his room shortly before 2 a.m. Burned from the waist up, his body was found on the floor next to the bed,” according to the Sun. “‘It was an accident,’ said Mary Esther Hricko, the victim’s mother, reached by phone. ‘Of course, no one did it. We’re all upset.’”
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About three hours after the end of the play, continued the Sun, “according to hotel management, Hricko’s wife, Kimberly, 33, ran to the front desk asking someone to call 911 because of a fire in the couple’s room. Kimberly Hricko was questioned by investigators at the scene and again on Monday. She was unavailable for comment last night.”
COURT FILE PHOTO
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A room identical to the Hrickos’ room at Harbourtowne.
The Post interviewed Bobbi Benitz, an actress in the murder mystery play. “It was just very strange the way it happened. It’s just so bizarre,” she said. Other details were included in the Post’s article: “A state police spokesman said Hricko’s wife … was not in the room at the time of the fire.” Deputy State Fire Marshal W. Faron Taylor “said investigators had found no evidence of” an accelerant at the scene of the fire. “Hricko, 35, was the golf course superintendent at Patuxent Greens Country Club in Laurel.”
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The Laurel Leader described the events following the play. “Philip Parker, Jr., of Salisbury, another guest at the resort who had participated in the interactive play, said he, his girlfriend, and his family were leaving the resort’s bar nearly two hours after the play when Hricko’s wife ran in looking for members of the staff. She said her room was on fire and the door was locked so she couldn’t get in. According to Parker, Mrs. Hricko was ‘relatively calm’ and was fully dressed when she came looking for help.”
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Parker raced to the room and looked through the sliding glass door on the patio. He could see a body on the floor between the beds. He braved the flames and smoke and crawled in to pull Steve Hricko onto the patio. As Parker described Hricko’s body, “only his shoulders, chest and head had been burned” but “you couldn’t even see the features of the head or face.”
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So, what happened?
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The Investigation
Steve and Kimberly Hricko, who had an 8-year-old daughter, were in marriage counseling to address problems in their relationship. Kim had asked Steve for a divorce but reluctantly agreed to counseling first. Mike Miller, Steve’s best friend since childhood and the golf superintendent at Harbourtowne, suggested the Valentine’s Day weekend at the resort. Steve saw the weekend getaway as a major step in repairing their marriage, which he was desperate to do. It later came out that Kim didn’t want to go on a getaway with Steve—she wanted to get away from Steve.
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Kim was a hospital surgical technologist at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. Her duties included setting up operating rooms, handling surgical instruments and assisting during operations, and, most importantly, cleaning up after operations.
Starting immediately after the fire, as soon as Kim started talking to investigators, whether in a formal interview or not, suspicions were aroused. Things didn’t add up. Once investigators started interviewing family and friends, things got worse for Kim for one simple reason: she couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
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The book An Act of Murder, by investigative reporter Linda Rosencrance, is a detailed account of the case. In a phone interview, Rosencrance told me of another problem for Kim: she thought she was smarter than everybody else, including police investigators.
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By interviewing police, attorneys, court officials, family, and friends, Rosencrance in her book paints a much more complete portrait of events than was reported in the media. Many descriptions of events below, except for the quotes attributed to various newspapers, are culled from the book. Passages used verbatim from An Act of Murder are in quotes or indented.
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One of the first two police officers on the scene, Officer Stephen Craig from the St. Michaels Police Department, was evacuating other guests just minutes after Parker had pulled Steve’s body from the room. It was then he saw Kim for the first time.
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As Parker and Craig were talking, Kimberly approached Craig. She was holding her cell phone in her left hand. She kept saying she wanted “to see the body,” although she hadn’t yet been told that Steve was dead.
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Several hours later, Maryland State Police Trooper Clay Hartness and Father Paul Jennings, State Police Chaplain, informed Kim of her husband’s death. “‘Her response was not very emotional,’ Jennings testified later.” Then Trooper Hartness asked Kim what happened. It was the first time an investigator questioned her.
Kim told Hartness that after leaving the murder-mystery production, she and Steve bought some beer from the bar and returned to their room. Once in the room Steve began pressuring her for sex, she said. When she refused, Steve became “pushy” and was “groping” her. She said she continued to resist Steve’s advances and then they started arguing. She told Hartness “I didn’t want to get into it, so I got my keys and my purse, got in the car, and left.” She said she drove to Easton looking for the home of some friends, but she said she wasn’t familiar with the area and never found the house. She said she couldn’t even find Route 50 and had to get directions
back to St. Michaels. Kim told Hartness that when she got back to Harbourtowne, she realized she didn’t have her electronic key card to get back into her room.
She said she remembered that she and Steve had been using the sliding glass door and thought it might still be unlocked, so she went around to the back of the complex. Kim said she pushed the door open and was confronted by thick smoke. She said she screamed, pushed back the curtain, and felt around for the light switch, but couldn’t find it. She told the trooper she ran to the other rooms and knocked on the doors, screaming for help, but no one answered. Next she drove to the main building and went into the lobby, screaming that her room was on fire. She said several people who were in the lobby quickly ran to her room. She told Hartness she tried to go back to the room, but she was stopped by “someone in a uniform.”
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Her detailed story, told just a few hours after her dead husband was pulled from a fire, raised suspicions.
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Fire investigator Mike Mulligan arrived on the scene with his dog trained to detect accelerants. Per his usual procedure before leading the dog to a fire scene, Mulligan put a drop of gasoline on a random spot in the parking lot. When the dog passed it, “he gave me a hit where I put the drop of accelerant.” In the Hrickos’ room, the dog detected an accelerant between the beds where Steve died. “However, because lab tests did not detect any accelerant—Mulligan said it probably evaporated—he was not able to testify at trial as to what the dog detected.”
Mike Miller, best friend of Steve Hricko since the seventh grade. EASTON STAR-DEMOCRAT
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
COURT FILE PHOTO
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The burned bed where Steve Hricko died.
Investigators found that the fire was contained to the bed, headboard, and the wall above the bed. A pillow exhibited a silhouette of Steve’s head formed by falling soot. Another pillow—unburned—was found on the opposite side of the bed from where Steve was laying. A Playboy magazine opened to the centerfold was on the pillow. And under the pillow was a pack of Backwoods cigars, missing one cigar. Two nearly full beer bottles were on the nightstand.
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Around 5:00 am, two Maryland State Police Troopers, who had taken over in leading the investigation, interviewed Kim, who had been sleeping in another room. In this interview, she expanded the details:
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Kimberley explained that she and Steve had been having marital problems for about three months and decided to attend the Valentine’s weekend hoping to revive their marriage. According to Kim, Steve got “sloppy drunk” during the evening, drinking all but one glass from the complimentary bottle of champagne that was left in their room, as well as drinking wine at dinner, more champagne, and beer. And, after the dinner show, the couple purchased more beer to drink back at their room. Kim told the officers that Steve was taking several types of prescription medicine for his depression, including Xanax. She said he was also taking the over-the-counter liquid cold medicine Theraflu. According to Kim, Steve took the Xanax and Theraflu around 7:00 p.m., just before they went to dinner. Kim also told the officers that her husband regularly chewed tobacco and always smoked cigars when he drank. However, she said she didn’t think Steve bought or brought any cigarettes or cigars with him to Harbourtowne. She said she didn’t, either.
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Kim said when she and Steve got back to their room they watched the movie Tommy Boy and then started watching the 11:00 p.m. news when Steve began “pawing” her. Kim said she was surprised because she and Steve had agreed there would be no sex during the weekend. She also said she was surprised at her husband’s advances because when he wanted sex he usually turned to pornography, not her. She said she left the room because of the fight over Steve’s drunken behavior, adding that it wasn’t a physical fight. Kim explained that Steve had never been physically abusive toward her.
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The officers were surprised “that she exhibited little reaction” and that she “offered very detailed information to police—information that they had not asked for, and that was very unexpected.”
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Kim’s story began to fall apart as soon as investigators talked to friends and witnesses. Steve’s best friend Mike Miller told police that Steve didn’t smoke and that “there was no way he would have been drinking heavily that weekend.”
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Investigators questioned Henry Dove, Maryland Assistant State’s Attorney, who happened to be sitting at the Hricko’s table during dinner. Dove told police, “I couldn’t even swear he had one beer, but maybe he did, but he certainly wasn’t drinking heavily.”
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By Monday evening, two days after the fire, two friends had called police and said Kim “might have killed her husband by injecting him with a drug that would paralyze his muscles, preventing him from moving and leaving him helpless.” They also put police in contact with a third friend who could corroborate the story. How did they know this? Kim told them her plan.
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Jenny Gowen and Norma Walz worked at Holy Cross with Kim and were close friends, even though Norma had since moved to Washington State. Norma and Kim were bridesmaids in Jenny’s wedding in November 1997. During the wedding festivities, Kim met Jenny’s cousin, Brad Winkler, who was in the military. Unknown to her friends, Kim started an affair with Winkler.
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A few weeks after the wedding, Kim disclosed the affair to her friends, upsetting Jenny. Tellingly, “Kim was furious with Jenny for not supporting her. Kim felt Jenny was only worried about how the affair would affect her and her marriage … She didn’t seem to care about what Kim wanted.”
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Jenny and Norma had a phone conversation just before learning about Steve’s death.
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During their conversation, Jenny shared something with Norma that made her skin crawl.
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“Jenny said Kim was feeling like she would never be able to divorce Steve and it would be easier if he were dead.”
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Later, in a conversation about insurance, Kim told Norma that she had taken out a $250,000 smoker’s term life insurance policy on Steve, even though he didn’t smoke.
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Rachel McCoy was another very close friend of Kim’s dating back to their days in high school. After speaking to Rachel on the phone the day Kim returned to her home in Laurel after Steve’s death, she relayed the conversation to another friend, Maureen Miller, Mike’s wife, who was also a friend of Kim’s since college.
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She was visibly pissed off.
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“She thinks I killed Steve,” Kim said to Maureen.
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“What would give her that crazy idea?” Maureen asked.
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“Because we were out in a bar one night and I was drunk and I was mad at Steve about a fight we had and I said I wanted to kill him,” Kim said.
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The conversation with McCoy that Kim mentioned took place just two weeks before the Harbourtowne weekend.
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“She said she either had a drug or could get a drug at work that she would inject in Steve that would cause his muscles to become paralyzed and stop him from beathing,” Rachel said. “Kim said the drug couldn’t be traced.”
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To make it look like an accident, Kim said, she would light a cigar or candles and set the curtains in the house on fire and burn the house down with Steve in it. That way it would appear that he died as a result of the fire and smoke. Kim told Rachel that her life would be so much easier.
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Kim had also confided in a Laurel neighbor, Teri Armstrong, “that she had been thinking about several different ways of killing Steve, basically for the insurance money” to support her and her daughter.
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But the most damaging information about Kim came from a co-worker at Holy Cross Hospital, Ken Burgess, who told investigators about a conversation he had with Kim about a year earlier at the hospital.
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I had my back to her and she made a statement about wanting to have her husband killed and would I do it, or would I know somebody that would kill her husband.
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Thinking Kim was joking, Burgess turned around to look at her and made an off-the-cuff comment.
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“Why would you want to kill your husband?” Burgess asked. “You work in the operating room, why don’t you just give him some curare and put him to sleep.” I was kind of joking. When I turned around and I looked at her, I could tell she wasn’t joking. She just said she had to get it done.
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As the forensic investigation continued, the investigators’ suspicions proved correct. The Medical Examiner reported to police that “the autopsy indicated that there was no carbon dioxide 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.” The ME also reported that “there was no alcohol in his blood.”
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When Kim’s conversation with Burgess became known, the ME suspected that Steve was injected with succinylcholine, which is used as a muscle relaxant during surgery and to assist with intubation of a surgical patient. According to Rosencrance, “when injected into the body, it would take between four and six seconds to paralyze a person’s skeletal muscles and for the person to stop breathing and then die.” Amazingly, succinylcholine is considered a noncontrolled substance (since abuse results in death) so it is not subject to controls like other drugs used in operating rooms. Surgical technicians, like Kim, have access to the drug when cleaning the operating room. Unfortunately, in 1998 there was no forensic test to detect succinylcholine, because of the speed with which the body metabolizes the drug.
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Investigators found other problems with Kim’s story. None of the guests in the adjoining rooms heard anyone banging on doors or yelling “Fire!” until around 1:30, when the resort management did it.
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The pack of cigars on the bed was another clue. Police checked out 25 liquor and convenience stores in Laurel. They hit the jackpot when they visited Astor Home Liquors in the Laurel Shopping Center (not far from the Hricko home on Belle Ami Drive in Laurelton, next to Laurel High School). Not only did the State Police lab confirm the price sticker on the pack in the burned bed was the same as those on the shelf at Astor Home, but the cashier picked out Kim’s photo as the woman who bought the cigars.
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Fire investigators attempted to replicate starting the fire using the same cigars and the same bedding from Harbourtowne. Despite multiple attempts, they were not able to start a fire at all with those items.
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On Feb. 23, Maryland State Police investigators Sergeant Karen Alt and Corporal Keith Elzey confronted Kim with some of their findings.
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Sergeant Alt asked Kimberly if she was having an affair. She said she wasn’t. Alt then asked her if she knew a U.S. Marine named Brad Winkler. Kim appeared shocked, but she didn’t say a word. Alt and Elzey told her they knew about her affair with Winkler. Kim bowed her head, then looked up and acknowledged the affair.
Elzey asked Kim to tell him again how much alcohol Steve drank the night before he died. Kim said he was drinking heavily. Elzey then confronted her with the results of the medical examiner’s toxicology report, which indicated Steve had a blood alcohol level of 0.00.
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Kim appeared stunned and said it didn’t make sense.
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Next Elzey confronted Kimberley with the medical examiner’s report indicating there was no carbon monoxide or soot found in Steve’s body.
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Again Kim appeared stunned.
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“I don’t understand,” she repeated.
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Kim lowered her head and then looked up.
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“How can that be?” she asked, crying.
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“Please tell me the whole truth about what happened that night,” Elzey said.
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Kim bent over, put her head in her hands, and continued crying. Still crying, she got up, sat in another chair, and put her face in her hands.
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“If I tell you what happened, can I go home tonight and see my daughter?” she asked.
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Kim abruptly changed her mind and asked for a lawyer. Police allowed Kim to stay in Easton with Mike Miller and his wife.
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That evening, police served a warrant at the Millers’ house to search Kim’s car. While the search was underway, Kim was upstairs, ostensibly taking a bath. When Maureen Miller went in to check on her, “She’s talking and she’s slurring her words. And I knew she had taken something,” said Miller. She found “an empty bottle of pills that had Xanax written on it.”
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While the police were executing the search warrant, Kim was taken away in an ambulance. But all was not as it seemed.
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“Apparently Kim staged it to make it look like she was going to get in the bathtub, slit her wrists, and kill herself, because it turned that the medication she had actually taken was not Xanax, according to the toxicology report,” Maureen said. “Kim put something else in the Xanax bottle and that’s what she took.”
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The nurse at the hospital told Maureen that Kim would be fine. In fact, the nurse said that Kim would have been worse off taking a bottle of aspirin.
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In a search of their home in the Laurelton neighborhood conducted at the same time police were searching Kim’s car in Easton, Steve’s journal was found.
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Steve’s writings painted a picture of a man desperate to do whatever it took to make his marriage work—a man worried about his wife’s feelings, even as she was seeing another man and planning his murder.
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“I feel she doesn’t understand how deeply I love her—I mean real love. I am afraid I won’t get the chance to make the marriage right,” Steven said, adding that all his fears stemmed from his depression.
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Two days later, Kim was arrested. She was denied bail and placed on a suicide watch.
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The Trial
Kim Hricko’s trial began 11 months after the fire. Prosecutors lost some key pre-trial motions before Talbot County Circuit Judge William S. Horne. Two syringes—one found on the golf course and the other in the Hricko’s home—were ruled inadmissible. Kim’s lawyer successfully “argued that the needle was not relevant because an autopsy of Stephen Hricko did not reveal any needle marks,” according to the Star-Democrat. The fact that he was burned beyond recognition apparently didn’t matter.
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Also ruled out was any mention of Kim’s so-called attempted suicide at the Millers’ home. And fire investigator Mike Mulligan’s testimony was limited by the judge. He did testify about his failed attempts to replicate the fire but was barred from mentioning the results from the dog.
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In his opening statement, Special Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Dean summarized Kim’s actions, as reported in the Star-Democrat: “Her husband was poisoned by a drug that paralyzes, then burned beyond recognition. Exactly what the defendant wanted, exactly what she planned. To say it was cruel and sinister would be kind.”
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Defense attorney Harry Trainor countered in his opening statement that “loose talk and inappropriate conduct before the incident on the part of Kimberly Hricko was suspicious, but nothing more,” according to the Leader.
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But the headway made by the defense in the pre-trial motions was no match for the testimony from friends and co-workers. One by one, Jenny Gowen, Ken Burges, Norma Walz, Rachel McCoy, Teresa Armstrong, and Maureen Miller all testified that Kim talked about killing Steve.
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Kim did not take the stand.
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After a five-day trial, the jury deliberated for three hours and found Kim guilty of first-degree murder and arson. According to the Sun, “Defense attorney William Brennan Jr. said his legal team was unable to overcome testimony from former friends of Kimberly Hricko. ‘It was clearly not based on the medical or scientific evidence,’ Brennan said. ‘It was her near and dear friends who testified that made all the difference.’”
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“‘The defendant nearly committed the perfect crime,’ [prosecutor] Dean said. ‘But her tormented and brave friends knew what was going on and what they had to do.’” At her sentencing in March 1999, Judge Horne called Kim “a very dangerous person” and sentenced her to life in prison for murder and 30 years for arson, with the sentences to be served concurrently. In its coverage, the Sun noted that Kim “has never admitted guilt in the death” of her husband.
EASTON STAR-DEMOCRAT
EASTON STAR-DEMOCRAT
EASTON STAR-DEMOCRAT
The Appeal
In September 2000, a three-judge panel in the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland upheld Kim Hricko’s conviction. The court’s opinion, written by Judge Charles E. Moylan, Jr., contained an entertaining comparison of the Hricko case to the play-within-a-play of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Moylan, noting that the murder mystery play at Harbourtowne that Valentine’s Day was titled “The Bride Who Cried,” said the Hricko case “may well be called ‘The Widow Who Lied’.”
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Sprinkled throughout the opinion in between summaries of testimony and the investigation, Moylan printed quotes from Shakespeare. Some examples:
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“Why, I can smile,
And murder while I smile”
…Henry VI, Part Three
Act III, Scene ii
“O murderous slumber!”
…Julius Caesar
Act IV, Scene iii
“O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick”
…Romeo and Juliet
Act V, Scene iii
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Numerous times Moylan’s opinion mentioned Kim’s inability to keep her mouth shut:
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“A number of Kimberly’s close friends were also fully apprised of growing discord.”
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“Again incautiously, she could not contain the fact that she ‘was having an affair with Brad’ …”
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“Without warning, she blurted out that she wanted him to kill her husband.”
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“So did Kimberly’s apparent compulsion to share her budding mens rea with anyone who would listen.”
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Judge Moylan provided a point-by-point rebuttal to the defense’s explanations about what happened. He didn’t buy any of it. “Did Kimberly’s attempted explanation become part of the proof of her guilt? It most assuredly did.”
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Her lies piled up to the point that Judge Moylan stated, “In instance after instance, Kimberly’s attempted explanations simply generated greater and greater disbelief.”
His opinion ended with: “We hereby affirm the convictions for a crime that can only be described as ‘twas once described by the ghost of Old King Hamlet:
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“Murder most foul,
But this, most foul, strange, and unnatural.”
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The case spawned a slew of low-budget cable TV documentaries, true crime stories, blogs, and podcasts, most of which leave a lot to be desired as far as getting the facts straight. None come close to Rosencrance’s book for accuracy and completeness.
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Prison Life
From prison, Kim has written essays about prison life, whining about privileges. In one published in the Washington Post in August 2016, she complained about rules changes that no longer allowed her to hold her granddaughter during a visit from her daughter. She wrote: “I understand that most people have little sympathy for prisoners. We committed crimes. We have been convicted and are receiving the punishment we deserve. But we are still women. We are still mothers. Let us hold our children and grandchildren. They have committed no crime.”
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And in July 2016, her article on Vice.com complained about the rules concerning mail—what’s allowed and what’s not. Her snarky comments—following a reasonable explanation for the rules—were meant to be sarcastic but, considering her circumstances and history, are hard to accept.
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In the article she complained that prison censors cut a ribbon bookmark out of a Bible someone sent her (“There’ll be no six-inch pieces of fabric running amok on this compound!” she wrote) and did not allow her to receive a copy of Games of Thrones because, as she wrote, “it contained maps. Maps are contraband. I guess I won’t be escaping to Westeros!”
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Neither of her essays acknowledges that Steve can’t hold his granddaughter or read Games of Thrones, either, because Kim killed him and burned him beyond recognition so she could run off with her new boyfriend.
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In my interview with her, Rosencrance added a pathetic ending to the story. Reflecting on Kim’s motive—to get away from Steve and live happily ever after with Brad Winkler—Rosencrance noted that after she was arrested, “Brad wanted nothing to do with her.”
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Kim’s cause has been taken up by her roommate from college, Esther Goetz, who describes herself as “a wife, mom, daughter, women’s group leader, sister, marriage mentor, friend, speaker, and lover of Jesus” on her blog “The Dolly Mama.” Her blog is about, coincidentally, redemption. Goetz had lost contact with Kim for many years, but she reconnected about three years ago and stays in touch with Kim.
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I interviewed Esther over the phone because she writes that Kim “admitted that she did” kill Steven. She pointed me to one of her blog posts that contains a letter she received from Kim in prison, in which Kim described working with a “psychological expert” who “helped me speak out loud not only what I did the night of my crime, but how I got to the point where I believed that killing my husband was the only answer.”
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I have written to Kim at the Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup requesting an interview and offering her the chance to tell her story. If she consents to be interviewed, I’ll file a follow-up story here in “The Laurel Chronicles.”