An Act Of Murder (11 page)

When this call ended, police decided to wrap it up for the night. But at about 11:15
P.M.
that night Kim paged Burgess, who immediately contacted police. Police then asked him to make another call to Kim, which they would also tape. Burgess called Kim back at approximately 11:57
P.M.
That call lasted about fifteen minutes.

“When Kim called Ken Burgess back, we knew we had her,” Gamble said. “I just wish we could have gotten her over the phone. If they kept playing phone tag, we were going to have Burgess say, ‘I won't go to [the] police if you give me some of the insurance money.' But it never developed into that. But she says at [the] end of [the] phone call, ‘Remember that advice you gave me, that was really good advice.' She was talking about the succinylcholine. Based on that phone call, we believed that Kim had injected Steve with curare or succinylcholine.”

The state police then talked again to David Fowler, the medical examiner, who said he was going to do a series of tests to check for the presence of succinylcholine. Fowler also shipped off some tissue to the FBI, but neither the medical examiner nor the FBI was able to find any traces of the drug in Steve's blood or tissue samples.

“That's because the ME said the body metabolizes it so quickly that it's very difficult to find and also we didn't even have an injection site,” Gamble said. “When the ME testified at trial, he said that the only way to find an injection site would have been to skin Steve at autopsy to see the subcutaneous injection site, which he didn't do. Even after death it's very difficult to find. There's no technology to find it yet. And we never found the syringe and we never could prove that Kimberly stole the drug because it's a noncontrolled substance. Ken Burgess told us there's no way to track the succinylcholine. It's not a drug you can abuse—if you abuse it, you're going to die. But, as a surgical technician, she had access to the crash cart, where the drug is kept.”

At 7:00
A.M.
, on February 23, Corporal Elzey met with his superior to review the three search-and-seizure warrants Elzey was preparing for Kim, her car (a 1995 Dodge Stratus), and her house on Belle Ami Drive in Laurel.

Shortly after going over the warrants, Elzey had them signed by a judge, who also agreed to seal them.

Around 4:20 that afternoon Elzey and Sergeant Alt met with Kimberly at the Easton Barracks. Elzey gave Kim her husband's wedding band and then asked her if she still wanted to go out to Harbourtowne. She said she did.

It was just about 5:30
P.M.
when Elzey, Alt, and Kim arrived at Harbourtowne. The first thing they did was go into room 506 so Kim could see where Steve died. Kim seemed calm and not at all affected by what she saw.

Elzey asked her if she wanted to go to another room to talk about the events surrounding Steve's death. She said yes, so she went with Elzey and Alt to room 606, where she again told them her story.

Kim said she and Steve went to Harbourtowne over the Valentine's Day weekend to try and work on their marriage. She said they arrived at Harbourtowne around 3:00
P.M.
on Saturday, February 14, and checked into room 506. Kim said Steve drank a bottle of champagne before they went to dinner and the murder-mystery play. During dinner she said Steve drank beer and wine. In fact, he was drinking heavily throughout the evening, she said. After the play was over, Kim said, they bought beer at the bar and brought it back to their room.

In addition, Steve had taken cold medicine and Xanax before dinner, she said. She also told police that Steve regularly chewed tobacco and smoked when he drank alcohol. But she said she didn't remember Steve buying any cigarettes or cigars to take on the trip, nor did she purchase any.

Kim said the couple watched the end of
Tommy Boy
on television and then the news came on. Kim told Elzey that she cut out the February 14 listings from
TV Guide,
which indicated that
Tommy Boy
was on TV that night.

Kim said she and Steve began arguing when he attempted to pressure her to have sex; she refused because her therapist had advised her not to use sex as a tool to help the marriage. Kim told police that Steve had agreed that they wouldn't have sex that weekend.

Kim and Steve argued for about ten minutes when she decided she wanted to get away from him. So a little after 11:00
P.M.
she grabbed her purse and car keys and left the room, planning to go to the Millers' house in Easton. However, she got lost. She said she tried to get directions to Easton from several people, but she was unsuccessful.

When she finally got back to Harbourtowne a little after 1:00
A.M.
, she realized she had forgotten her electronic key card. She walked around to the back of the building so she could enter through the sliding glass doors, which she remembered she had left open.

When she opened the door, she was hit with thick smoke. She ran around to the front of the building and started banging on the doors of the other rooms in the 500 complex to get help, but failed. Then she jumped in her car and drove to the main building. When she got there, she ran into the lobby, asking for help because her room was on fire. At the same time she was calling 911 on her cell phone, she said.

During the interview 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.

Kim explained that she started seeing Winkler several months earlier. She said she met him through her friend Jennifer Moore, who married Winkler's cousin, Sean Gowen. She admitted she was having sex with Winkler, but said she never planned to leave Steve for him. She said Steve did not know about 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.

Kim appeared stunned and said it didn't make sense.

“Why don't you explain to me, if Steve consumed so much alcohol, why didn't it register?” Elzey asked.

“I don't understand. I don't understand,” Kim said, visibly shaken.

Next Elzey confronted Kimberly with the medical examiner's report indicating there was no carbon monoxide or soot found in Steve's body.

Again Kim appeared stunned.

“I don't understand,” she repeated.

Kim lowered her head and then looked up.

“How can that be?” she asked, crying.

“Please tell me the whole truth about what happened that night,” Elzey said.

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.

“If I tell you what happened, can I go home tonight and see my daughter?” she asked.

Sergeant Alt told Kim if she told them the truth, she wouldn't be able to see her daughter. Finally Kim said she wanted to tell the police what happened, but she wanted her lawyer with her. Elzey and Alt then ended the interview and read Kimberly her Miranda rights.

“Kim was almost ready to confess, but Karen Alt screwed up,” Gamble said.

“Kim says to Karen, ‘If I tell you the truth, will you let me go see my daughter?' Karen tells her, ‘You know if you tell us the truth, you won't be able to see your daughter.' What she should have said—and one of the reasons we now have a homicide unit—is ‘Absolutely, we'll take you right now,' and then jump in the car and she's in custody and you have her weeping all the way there and you have her confession,” Gamble said.

“I think she wanted to confess,” Gamble said. “I think Alt needed to be a little more swift on her feet and say, ‘Absolutely—you'll be able to see your daughter.'”

After the interview was concluded, Kim left Harbourtowne and went to the Millers' house for dinner.

“We had made plans that Kim would come down to our house on Monday, after she met with the police, who had called her and said they wanted to take her down to the hotel so they could explain to her what happened and how Steve died,” Maureen said. “She was meeting them at the Easton Barracks at ten
A.M.
, and was supposed to come back to our house when she was done and stay for dinner.”

When 6:00
P.M.
rolled around and the Millers still hadn't heard from Kim, Maureen called the Easton Barracks of the state police to find out what was going on. A trooper told her that Kim was still at Harbourtowne with two troopers, but he didn't know when they would be finished and he couldn't interrupt them.

While the Millers waited, Kim's mother, who was in Laurel taking care of Sarah, was calling Maureen, also trying to find out when Kim would be home.

Finally, around 7:30 in the evening, Kim came strolling through the door.

“What the hell is going on?” Maureen asked.

“They think I killed him,” Kim said.

Maureen couldn't believe what she was hearing.

“That's where I've been all day long,” Kim said. “They've been interrogating me. They've been trying to make me say I killed him—that I was a battered wife and Steve beat me, so I killed him. They told me I might as well come clean and confess because they know that I killed him. They said all my friends had come forward and they had buckets of evidence against me.”

Not knowing quite what to say or do, Maureen tried to calm Kim down.

“What would give them the idea that you were abused?” Maureen asked. “Steve never hit you, did he?'”

“Never. He would never, never hit me,” Kim responded.

“Then why would they say that?” Maureen wanted to know.

“Because they're trying to get me to confess,” she said. “They're trying to get me to say I killed him.”

“Kim, you need to call a lawyer. This is going too far,” said Maureen, who, at this point, still thought Kim was being falsely accused.

But Mike knew something just wasn't right. He'd suspected Kimberly was involved in Steve's death from the beginning. And now he was more convinced than ever.

After rambling for a while longer, Kim told Maureen she was tired and didn't want to talk anymore. She said she wanted to lie down.

“I told her to go to sleep, but told her in the morning we were going to sit down and talk about what was going on, because I didn't like what she was saying. And I told her again she had to contact a lawyer,” Maureen said.

Kim agreed, so Maureen moved her daughter into the master bedroom and put Kim in her daughter's bed. Once Kim was settled, Maureen called Kim's mother, Lois, and told her Kim was going to spend the night. While Maureen was speaking with Lois, there was a knock on the Millers' front door.

Taking the portable phone with her, Maureen went to the door. She was surprised to see the Maryland State Police standing there. The troopers said they needed to talk to Kim Hricko because they needed to serve her with a search warrant.

“I told Lois I needed to go because the police were at the door and they have a search warrant, and I have to go wake up Kim,” Maureen said.

At that very moment Lois started screaming hysterically into the phone.

“The police are here, the police are here!” she shouted. “There are four police cars and they're knocking on the door.”

“Well, open the door,” Maureen said, exasperated.

“I'm going to have a heart attack. I'm going to have a nervous breakdown,” Lois said frantically.

“Lois, open the door for them,” Maureen said, forcefully.

Maureen later found out that the state police had timed their arrivals to the minute, so they could execute both search warrants at the same time.

“There are four policemen here and they want to come in and search the house,” Lois said again.

Maureen told her she had to let them in if they had a search warrant.

“I'll call you back,” Maureen said, trying to get off the phone so she could deal with the troopers in her own home. “I'm really pissed because now I know I'm being lied to by Kim.”

 

 

At the Hrickos' house Lois had just prayed with Sarah and tucked her in bed when the police knocked at the door to serve the search-and-seizure warrant.

“There were a number of police and I asked them to let me call my prayer partner,” Lois said. “They made [us] sit for four hours—they dumped everything out. I was so upset. We were scared, so Sarah and I just sat there and read the Bible. There was a policeman sitting with us because we weren't allowed to move. They were there a number of hours. When they left, Matt took me to the emergency room because I have high blood pressure.”

Some of the items police confiscated at the Hrickos' home included letters to Kim from Steve, two pamphlets about life insurance, a white box containing sympathy cards, the cremation certificate for Steve's body, miscellaneous papers and business cards, a letter to Steve from Kim, a Bell Atlantic Mobile phone bill, a checkbook register, and articles printed from the Internet pertaining to divorce and custody.

During the search of the Hrickos' house, police also found two life-insurance policies on Steve, totaling $450,000, which they believed Steve never signed.

“We believe that Kim signed them,” Gamble said.

As part of the investigation Gamble learned that on December 8, 1997, Steve allegedly filled out a benefits enrollment card increasing his life insurance through work to twice his normal salary. As part of its benefits package, Patuxent Greens provided its employees with a term policy that would pay out one year's salary to an employee's beneficiary. The accidental death benefit of Steve's new policy was $200,000, twice his annual salary.

Police learned that Kim took out a $250,000 life insurance policy on Steve in November 1996. As the owner and primary beneficiary of the policy—Sarah was the contingent beneficiary—Kim was making the quarterly payments of $114.08. Kim's mother said the payouts from the life insurance policies have been put in a trust for Sarah.

After ending the call with Lois, Maureen went into the master bedroom and woke Kim up, telling her that the police were there to serve her with a search warrant.

“You need to get up out of bed right now,” Maureen told her.

So Kim got up and sauntered down the hall like she didn't have a care in the world.