An Act Of Murder (15 page)

So on March 20, Gamble visited approximately twenty-five liquor and convenience stores in Prince George's County in the Laurel area, where the Hrickos lived. Approximately one-quarter of the stores sold the Backwoods cigars, but most of them did not use price tags. Although some stores did use price tags, they weren't the right size. Gamble then checked Astors Liquors in the Laurel Shopping Center, which was located about three miles from the Hrickos' house on Belle Ami Drive.

“I had the package of Backwood cigars with me with the pricing label of two dollars forty-nine cents—back then, people weren't using barcodes, so the sticker was unique,” Gamble said. “I found this pack sitting on a shelf with a higher price on the tag, but I also found one that had two price stickers on it—one higher than the other. I peeled the first one back, which was two ninety-nine, and there is my two forty-nine, plus tax, sticker. The price had gone up in the two weeks since Hricko died.”

Gamble then talked with Peggy Delis, the owner of the store, and asked her if those particular Backwoods cigars had previously been priced at $2.49. After checking her records Delis said the price had been raised from $2.49 to $2.99 sometime during the week of March 15.

Delis showed Gamble a Monarch Marking tag maker model 1115 that her employees used to price items in the store. Delis showed Gamble that the pricing gun could be set to produce the identical $2.49+tax sticker that was on the package of cigars taken from the Hrickos' room at Harbourtowne.

“I bought the package of cigars with the two ninety-nine price tag overlapping the two forty-nine price tag and told the manager that I wanted [the] pricing gun, which I then took back to the state police crime lab, along with some pricing stickers,” Gamble said. “The state police forged-documents person looked at the gun and determined it produced the sticker on the package of Backwoods cigars found in the Hrickos' room at Harbourtowne.”

Delis also told Gamble that although Astors Liquors was equipped with a video-surveillance camera, the store did not have any surveillance tapes for the days before Steve's death. However, Delis said Gamble could show pictures of Steve and Kimberly to her employees to see if they could remember if either of them had purchased the cigars.

“I had put together a photo spread with Kim and five other pictures of similar-looking people with reddish hair or a reddish tint to their hair, and I did the same for Stephen, and I showed them to each of the clerks at Astors Liquors, but no one knew them,” Gamble said.

But luck was on Gamble's side. There was one more Astors employee he hadn't yet interviewed—Doris Grave Coles, who was the cashier on duty Friday, February 13—Kim didn't work that day—and Thursday night, February 12. Gamble went back to the liquor store on March 24 to interview her.

When Gamble showed her the photo lineup, Coles immediately pointed to Kim's picture and said she recognized her, but she could not pick out Steve from the photos Gamble showed her. Coles told Gamble that Kimberly came into the store and bought cigarettes, a pack of cigars, and beer. Gamble asked her if she remembered what kind of cigars Kim purchased. Coles went to the rack and removed a package of Backwoods smokes—the packs come in two colors, dark brown and light brown—but she picked up the wrong-color package. Instead of picking up the light brown package, which was the color of the package found in the Hrickos' room, she picked up the dark brown pack.

“She said those were the cigars Kimberly bought,” Gamble said.

Gamble then asked Coles why she remembered Kimberly?

“I asked her for some ID and then I asked her where she got her hair colored,” Coles said. “And when I said I liked her hair color and where did she get it colored, she turned into a bitch and told me that her hair was a natural color. She grabbed the driver's license out of my hand and said she didn't dye her hair.”

Coles later testified to that in court. Her testimony was important because initially Kimberly said she didn't know Steve had those cigars. In fact, Kimberly said the cigars were on the table at home and she didn't even know Steve packed them.

Gamble later received the report from the Maryland State Police Crime Lab that concluded: “The marketing tag marker used to prepare the known price tag samples and the marketing price tag marker used to prepare the questioned price tag stamp are one and the same tag marker.” The examiner also concluded that the ink used on both price tags was the same.

On Wednesday, April 1, Mike Miller called Corporal Keith Elzey at the Easton Barracks to tell him he had found a hypodermic syringe on the Harbourtowne golf course. Elzey then drove to the golf course and met Mike in the maintenance shop to recover the syringe. Mike told Elzey that one of the employees found the syringe in a ditch on Deep Water Point Road, which is located next to the golf course's fifth hole, and is about a mile from room 506. The employee found the syringe on Tuesday, March 31, while he was looking for a golf ball. He then threw it in a trash can at the shop for safety reasons. When the employee told Mike about it, Mike immediately retrieved it from the trash can and placed it in a plastic Baggie.

Mike said Steve used the road where the syringe was found as an alternate route into Harbourtowne because it was the road the maintenance shop was on.

“I told the police officer the road they found the syringe on would have been the road Steve drove into on Valentine's Day,” Mike said. “It's not the main entrance, it's the road the maintenance building is on. The syringe was found right off the edge of the road—a little farther past the maintenance building. And anytime Steve came to visit me, that's the way he would drive into the golf course and he would drive to the hotel that way. So if he came in that way during the day, then I would think that would be her way to go back out. And maybe she would have tossed the syringe out the window there.”

Elzey sent the syringe to the Maryland State Police Crime Lab to be tested for the presence of succinylcholine or curare. The tests did not turn up any trace of the drugs.

 

 

While the police were working the case, Deputy Fire Marshal Mike Mulligan continued his investigation into the fatal fire at Harbourtowne. He spent much of his time trying to get the medical examiner's report to find out the cause of Steve's death.

“I was trying to get the ME's report, but because of the way the case went down with Paul [Schlotterbeck] calling me in there to do the canine investigation, and then giving me the origin-and-cause investigation, it was a little complicated as to who was the primary officer because Paul got the original call,” Mulligan said. “Whenever you have a fatal fire, one of the most valuable, if not
the
most valuable piece of information you have, is the medical examiner's report. What you're looking for is evidence of soot in the airways, because that indicates that the person was breathing at the time of the fire. You're also looking for the level of carbon monoxide in the blood, because that indicates how long the person was breathing in that environment.”

Mulligan was anxious to get the ME's report, but the state police were holding it back, and he wanted to know why.

“We weren't cooperating,” he said. “We were conducting two separate investigations from the time they interviewed Kim. My feeling was that they had the same feeling Paul did—that this was not on the up-and-up—there was something suspicious here and they went full-bore trying to prove it.”

But Mulligan felt that because Steve's death involved arson as well as homicide—and the expertise of the police was not in fire investigation—the police should have been more willing to work with his agency.

“So they went to good old-fashioned police work and they did a good job. I'm not criticizing them for that,” Mulligan said. “But I recall calling over to the barracks trying to find out if the ME's report was back yet so I could get a copy of it. If the state police weren't involved in it, I would have had it within forty-eight hours. But this went on for a week-and-a-half and I don't know if I had it yet by the time I did the burn test with the cigars.”

In terms of the investigation Mulligan said he started out trying to prove a negative.

“First you read your burn patterns and you try to find your point of origin and you're trying to eliminate ignition sources,” he said. “So in the middle of that room, you could very quickly eliminate electricity, heating, and air-conditioning. The woodstove was a little bit of a problem. And because of the cigars, there was a suspicion that the fire could have been started by accidental smoking.”

In order to prove or disprove that theory, Mulligan went to some resources in his department to learn about what materials could be ignited by a cigarette ash.

Mulligan learned that cotton, for example, could ignite with a cigarette, but, most likely, polyester wouldn't burn. But his research hit a snag. Mulligan said he was looking for information relating to cigar ash, but soon he discovered there had never been any testing pertaining to cigars.

The only thing he could do was conduct his own tests. So Mulligan went to a local Rite Aid drugstore and bought a pack of Backwoods. He then obtained from Harbourtowne the same type of pillowcases and pillows that were in the Hrickos' room when Steve died. Mulligan took the materials to the Salisbury fire company's burn tower, where the company does its training.

“The idea was to give me a place to set fires without any influence from the wind and the weather to try to duplicate the same environment where the fire took place inside the room,” Mulligan said. “And Jake Kinhart came down and helped me photograph it.”

First Mulligan placed one cigar on top of the pillows and pillowcase, but it burned out. He continued relighting cigars and putting them on the pillowcase—still nothing. Next he took the pillowcase off and folded the pillow up and did everything he could to get the cigar to ignite the pillow.

“I guess this went on for about an hour-and-a-half until I got nauseous—I'm a cigar smoker, but those were cheap cigars,” Mulligan said. “We tested the pillow and the pillowcase at this time. Then when prosecutor Bob Dean got involved, he said he'd like to have some tests done on the bedspread and the victim's coat, which was in the pile of stuff around the point of origin.”

Mulligan said he conducted those tests at a later date, but still he couldn't get the cigar to light any of the materials on fire.

“Everybody was suspicious of this fire—sometimes there are inarticulable [
sic
] feelings you get at a fire scene,” he said. “In Baltimore City they used to say you get a hinky feeling—something's not right here. It's a combination of your past experience and reading a fire scene, but when you looked at that scene with the
Playboy
magazine and the type of individual you're dealing with, it didn't quite fit,” he said.

As part of their investigation police also spoke with Brad Winkler about his relationship with Kimberly.

Winkler first met Kim and Stephen Hricko on October 31, 1996, during a Halloween party at the Silver Spring, Maryland, home of his cousin Sean Gowen. Winkler only spoke with them once that evening, for about two minutes, and didn't see them again for the rest of the night.

Winkler didn't see Kim again until sometime around November 22, 1997, at the bachelorette party for Sean's fiancée, Jennifer Moore. At the time Winkler was living with his aunt in Silver Spring. Jenny and Kim had gone there to invite Winkler to Jenny's party. The trio first went to Jenny's house because she had to drop something off for her husband. Later that evening the group went to Time Out, a bar in Easton, to continue the party. Maureen Miller, who had had a previous engagement, met them at the bar. At closing time Winkler, Moore, and Kim went back to Maureen's and spent the night there before heading home the next day.

He spent Thanksgiving at the Hrickos', then saw Kim again at a brunch for the Moore-Gowen wedding party on November 28.

“There we started to show interest in one another for the first time,” Winkler said. “We just flirted with one another. Later that night during a party for my relatives and my cousin's relatives at my aunt's house, we flirted a little more.”

The next day, the day of the wedding, Winkler didn't see Kim until he arrived at the reception. But the pair didn't get much of a chance to talk because Stephen and Kim's brother, Matt, were also there. In fact, Steve and Matt sat at the same table with Winkler and his sister-in-law while Kim sat at the bridal table.

On December 1 Winkler ran into Kim at his aunt's house. That's when their relationship started to kick into high gear. The couple talked for nearly two hours, mostly about Kim's relationship with Steve. Kim wanted to know if Winkler thought she was doing enough to make her marriage work. Winkler said yes and no.

“I told her that in my relationship with my ex-wife, I gave it a lot of time and tries. Even when I didn't think and even knew there was nothing left,” Winkler said. “I just tried, so that I would know, down the road, I gave it my all and that there would never be a question in the back of mind, what if.”

Even though Kim told Winkler she understood, he continued to tell her about what he went through in his marriage. He stressed counseling as a way to improve her marriage, but he reminded her it was a two-way street and both she and Steve had to be willing to give it their all. Kim explained that she had been to counseling, but Steve always seemed to have a reason for not going. The conversation was cut short when Winkler's parents showed up at his aunt's house. Kim left shortly after they arrived but later that night she called Brad's aunt to see if she needed help taking care of Sean and Jenny's daughter, Sharon (pseudonym). Winkler and his aunt, Sean's mother, were taking care of Sharon while the Gowens were on their honeymoon.

Kim met Winkler at his aunt's house the following day so she could show him where to pick Sharon up from the babysitter's. During the two weeks the Gowens were away, Winkler was busy with work and school and taking care of Sharon, so he and Kim really didn't get to spend much time together. In fact, they only saw each other for an hour or two every day.

“Our seeing each other usually consisted of just hanging out while I fed Sharon, or played with her, or prepared her for a nap. I always picked Sharon up and met Kim at the Gowens' town house,” Winkler said.

When they were together, Winkler did most of the talking, particularly about what he wanted for the future. Winkler told Kimberly about his close relationship with his family and when he thought he might be ready to have a family of his own. Kim loved to hear Winkler talk about himself. She especially loved it when he told stories about how he put the needs of everyone in his life ahead of his own, and how he was so humble about it.

The first time Winkler and Kim were intimate was on December 5. It was a Friday night and Kim stopped by to see Winkler after a Christmas party at Holy Cross Hospital. After that, they didn't see much of each other until the next Wednesday, December 10, when they spent seven hours together, much of the time having sex. For the next several days they saw quite a bit of each other, having sex or just talking. Then they didn't see much of each other until December 22—although they did keep in touch by telephone—when Kim dropped by to give Winkler a Christmas card.

When Winkler went home to Charlotte, North Carolina, to spend Christmas with his family, Kim called him there and they talked for about five minutes. Winkler stayed in North Carolina until New Year's Eve. He got back to his aunt's house about 6:00

P.M.
that evening and hung out there all night watching movies.

Except for spending about thirty minutes together in the parking lot of a Laurel shopping mall, Winkler didn't see Kim again until January 14, 1998. That day they spent their time having sex. After that meeting the two saw each other once or twice a week for about an hour or an hour-and-a-half. Winkler, it seemed, was busy with work and school and didn't have much time for socializing.

“Since we only saw each other on the average of once a week, it was no big deal,” he said. “I never saw her on a weekend again, once my cousins returned from their honeymoon.”

Winkler said Jenny put a lot of pressure on the pair to end their relationship. He said he would discuss his feelings about the situation with both Jenny and Kim.

“They both understood that I was in no way, form, or fashion ready to take on marriage to anyone or a committed relationship with my schedule and the things I wanted to do—my career comes first,” Winkler said. “Their concern for me was not to get hurt. My concern for them was to stop worrying about me.”

Winkler said because he and Kim were together for such short periods they spent most of that time in bed. When they did find time to talk, they mostly engaged in small talk. They never really discussed Kim's relationship with Steve.

However, Winkler said he did know the couple was in counseling. And he said Kim had asked him if he thought she should divorce Steve, but he always tried to steer her away from having that conversation.

“I didn't think she had given it her all yet,” he said. “Even so, she could never make up her mind about divorce or working things out.”

Winkler said Kim told him that she did try to make her marriage work, but that Steve was no help. Winkler, though, told Kim that Steve had taken a big step by agreeing to go into counseling.

“[Kim] said he gets on her nerves following her around the house all day. She said she couldn't handle a one-eighty-degree turnaround, like everything in the past had not happened,” Winkler said. “I didn't know about their past or much about Mr. Hricko other than the fact things were not good between them.”

Kim told Winkler that for the past six or seven years, she had to do everything around the house by herself, including raising Sarah. And Steve always ignored her whenever she tried to get his attention or initiated lovemaking, Kim told Winkler.

“I don't know, nor did I know, much about their lives, so I could only go on what she told me,” Winkler said. “I had become [Kim's] happy place, where she could come and slip away from reality or her problems.”

Winkler believed his relationship with Kim was one of convenience for both of them. He never went out of his way to see Kim, he said.

“I never had to alter my schedule to make time for Mrs. Hricko,” he said. “For her, I can't really say, but I think it was a convenience as well. We didn't see each other every day and the days we did it was for maybe thirty minutes to an hour before she had to leave to pick up Sarah, or make dinner, or had a doctor's appointment. As messed up as the circumstances were for both of us meeting the way we did, the relationship was not a burden and was convenient for both of us.”

Winkler said there were times when he told Kim he couldn't see her, because he wanted to go out with his friends, and she never had a problem with it. In fact, she encouraged it, he said. She even told him to let her know if the situation became too much for him to handle. It never did, he said, because he didn't have to change his lifestyle in order to be with Kim.

The last time Kim made that statement to Winkler was February 2.

“It was important because that prior weekend my cousin Mrs. Jennifer Moore Gowen and I talked about my relationship with [Kim],” Winkler said. “In that conversation I had stated that the relationship was almost all physical now and that I [didn't] feel like she could work things out, or attempt to, as long as I was in the picture.”

Not only that, but Brad said he knew what he was doing was wrong and he wasn't usually the type of person to do something that was so wrong. He decided the relationship needed to end because it just wasn't good for him anymore.

So Winkler mustered up the courage to tell Kim it was over. That was on February 6, the last time Winkler and Kim had sex together. Problem was, when they were together, he chickened out.

“Basically I was enjoying things and I did care for Mrs. Hricko,” he said.

Winkler saw Kim for the last time on Wednesday, February 11, just four days before Steve's death. The pair spent about thirty minutes together talking about Winkler's new job and the fact that he'd probably have less free time to see Kim than he previously had.

“Mrs. Hricko knew this when I interviewed for the job, so it was no big surprise,” he said. “I knew I needed to let things end until I was ready and she decided what direction she was going in. Plus, I needed to start focusing on school.”

Kim called Winkler the next day and they talked a little about his job and the fact that he was going to North Carolina for the weekend. Kim told Brad she needed to give him something before he left, but Brad said he wouldn't be home until after work on Friday. After exchanging several pager messages on Friday, Winkler told Kim he was going out with some coworkers after work and wouldn't be home until later that evening. Kimberly then told him she had left a gift for him on his door. Winkler said he was pretty drunk when he finally got home, but he remembered taking the gift off the door.

“I went in, took it up to my room, and I went straight up to bed,” he said. “When I woke up the next morning, I really forgot all about it. I didn't pay much attention to it. I think I looked at it and I might have dumped the bag out. Then I went to Charlotte. It wasn't until when I got back from Charlotte that I actually read the note and realized what it was.”

Winkler said his cousin Sean Gowen telephoned him in Charlotte on Sunday night, February 15, to tell him that Steve had died. All Sean knew was that Steve had burned to death.

“I didn't really believe him at first and was really shocked and thought he was joking around,” Winkler said. “And he was calm, and said, ‘Brad, no, I'm serious.' Then he told me the generic story that Mrs. Hricko had told everyone. I didn't believe the story right off. It sounded very fishy.”

When Winkler returned from North Carolina on Monday, February 16, he went straight to the Gowens' town house, where he met Sergeant Karen Alt and another state trooper. The troopers questioned Winkler about his relationship with Kim. They asked him if she had ever told him that she was going to kill Steve, or that she was going to get someone else to kill him for her. Winkler said Kim never talked that much to him about Steve, and she certainly never talked to him about murdering Steve.

The troopers also asked Winkler if he and Kim ever talked about a future together. Winkler told them yes and no.

“It was weird because it never was a direct question from Mrs. Hricko,” he said. “Instead, she asked how I felt about children whose parents were divorced and their parents getting into other relationships or possible marriage. My response was just about how two people have to do a lot of communicating for it to work for the child or children.”

Winkler also said Kim might ask him about his future, but never directly about marriage.

“From what Mrs. Hricko had told me, she could never make up her mind whether or not to stay in or get out of the marriage. Plus, just hearing me talk . . . she knew and was well aware that I was in no position to take on a family. Not just financially, but that there were a lot of things careerwise I could not do with a family that I wanted and am going to do,” Winkler said.

“So at a minimum she knew it would be three years before I was ready, regardless of our situation. I had been married already. I know what I missed out on and what I need to do before I take on that commitment for the rest of my life again,” he said. “We both knew the whole situation with us was a messed-up one and that there was too much that needed to happen before even thinking about the future—as in marriage. We, or I should speak for me, were just enjoying the time we were having. It was convenient.”

Winkler didn't hear from Kim again until February 24 when she paged him, leaving only her home telephone number on his pager. Winkler didn't call Kim back. Instead, he called Sergeant Alt to let her know Kim was trying to contact him.

Nearly a week later, Winkler received a note from Kim, who was in the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center. In the note Kim told Brad she hoped he wouldn't get hurt and that she knew he'd be okay.

Later in the investigation Winkler gave police a number of cards and notes Kim gave to him during their relationship. It seemed that while Steve was professing his love for Kim and promising he'd change for her, Kim was professing her love for Winkler.

In one of her notes Kim told Brad that she wanted to be with him night and day and that she wanted to experience all of him. She said she could only dream of the day when they could be together. She told Brad he was a wonderful man who was full of the best kind of love and she wanted to make him happy for the rest of his life.