An Act Of Murder (5 page)

Although Norma wasn't angry with Kim over her affair with Brad, Jenny was really upset with her. And 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 to Sean. She didn't seem to care about what Kim wanted.

But Jenny was also concerned about how Kim's affair with Brad would affect Steve. She didn't like the fact that Kim was deceiving her husband.

“Kim's point was that the affair really had nothing to do with Jenny and Jenny wasn't a ‘player' in the affair,” Norma said. “Kim felt Jenny's responsibility was to be a friend. So Kim felt somewhat betrayed by Jenny because she felt Jenny was being selfish.”

Kim asked Norma to talk to Jenny on her behalf, which she did. Although Norma was on Kim's side, Jenny helped her see the situation in a different light. Jenny felt Kim had never been completely honest about her marriage to Steve. Now, however, Kim was sharing information with her friends that put Steve in a bad light so they would be supportive of her and her affair with Brad. Because of that, Jenny felt manipulated by Kim.

“Kim slept with Brad for the first time at Jenny and Sean's home while they were away on their honeymoon,” Norma said. “Jenny was angry about this and felt she was being put in uncomfortable situations to cover for Brad and Kim. And I agreed that things were not as simple for Jenny in this situation, as Kim would like to believe.”

Sometime in late December 1997, or early January 1998, Kim told Norma she was going to ask Steve for a divorce. She was planning on doing it on a particular weekend when Sarah was going to be out of town. On Sunday of that weekend, Norma called Kim, but Steve answered the telephone and said Kim wasn't home. Norma was surprised that Steve sounded so pleasant and thought maybe Kim had changed her mind about asking him for a divorce. That wasn't the case. When Kim called Norma back, she said she had asked him for a divorce and that he broke down in tears when she told him.

“He wrote her a letter later that weekend begging for a chance to change—to work things out,” Norma said. “I was very impressed by the letter—she read it to me—and I was hopeful that their marriage could be saved. She told me he canceled some kind of business trip on Monday so he could get into his doctor to get a referral to a counselor.”

Kim told Norma she gave Steve a week to make an appointment to see a counselor. Even though Norma thought Steve seemed sincere in his efforts to make the marriage work, Kim wasn't impressed. Kim didn't think Steve could change and she felt he was smothering her, so she continued to see Brad.

During one conversation with Kim Norma told her about an annoying life-insurance salesman who was trying to sell her family a universal life-insurance policy, when they were set on purchasing term life insurance. Kim told Norma she should buy life insurance through the insurance agency she used. Kim explained that she took out a $250,000 term life insurance policy on Steve and said it was very inexpensive, even for a smoker's policy. Norma was surprised by Kim's comments because she knew Steve didn't smoke. Kim explained that because Steve chewed tobacco, she had to get a smoker's policy.

Shortly after talking with Kim about life insurance, Norma spoke with Jenny about Kim's continued affair with Brad. Jenny was extremely frustrated because Kim was still seeing Brad and not even giving Steve a chance to change his behavior. Jenny felt like Kim was playing Steve for a fool by letting him think their marriage had a chance to survive, when it was obvious, by her actions, that Kim wanted out of the marriage.

Even though Kim said she would stay married to Steve if he changed completely, she didn't mean it. If she had meant what she said, she wouldn't have continued sleeping with Brad.

“I could hear in her voice that she couldn't stand to be around Steve,” Norma said. “In my last conversation with Kim before Steve died, she sounded tired, like she was worn down by Jenny's disapproval of her actions. She said she had been in contact with some old college friends who were being more supportive of her and her position than Jenny was.”

 

 

While Maureen was waiting for Kim's mom and the counselor to arrive, she was walking around Kim's place, trying to figure out what to do next. She remembered that before she and Kim left Harbourtowne, Kim wanted to go to the funeral home to see Steve.

“In fact, she was almost angry that no one would let her go to see him,” Maureen said. “She wanted me to take her, but I refused. I told her that Steve was burned in the fire and that's not the way she wanted to remember him. I told her she didn't need to see him and that she could wait until the funeral home did what they needed to do before she saw him. But she was really mad. So while I was waiting, I called the morgue to see what was happening.”

After Maureen finished talking with the people at the morgue, Rachel called back.

“I said, ‘Oh, good, are you coming over?' But she said no and that she needed to talk to Kim immediately,” Maureen said.

Maureen asked Rachel why she wasn't coming to be with Kim, but Rachel said she didn't want to talk about it and repeated her request to speak with Kim. So Maureen woke Kim up and told her Rachel was on the phone. When Kim found out that Maureen had initiated the call to Rachel, she was none too happy.

“Why did you do that?” Kim asked.

Maureen explained that she needed someone to help her take care of Kim and Sarah. Kim angrily pulled the telephone out of Maureen's hand, stormed up the stairs, went into her bedroom, and slammed the door shut.

“I'm thinking this is the strangest shit,” Maureen said. “I could not figure out what was going on.”

While Kim was on the phone with Rachel, Maureen called Mike on her cell phone to see how he was doing. Although Maureen wanted to go home to help her husband deal with the death of his best friend, she knew she couldn't leave Kim alone. She had to wait until Kim's mother arrived from Pennsylvania.

After almost an hour Kim emerged from her bedroom and went downstairs. She was visibly pissed off.

“She thinks I killed Steve,” Kim said to Maureen.

“What would give her that crazy idea?” Maureen asked.

“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. “So she thinks I killed him.”

“She's crazy and that's nuts, Kim,” Maureen responded. “Why would she think that over just a stupid drunk conversation? Just forget about it.”

But Kim couldn't seem to forget about it. Still angry, she began to pace around the house like a caged animal. And once again she started talking about no one letting her see Steve. She was acting really crazy, but she still wasn't crying, Maureen said. Finally Kim's mother showed up with Sarah. Lois and her husband had picked Sarah up at the hospital, where she was taken after injuring herself at the home of the babysitter.

“But her mom is kind of a nervous Nellie and she was no help at all,” Maureen recalled. “All she could do was talk about how high her blood pressure was and how she was going to have a nervous breakdown, and she kept saying, ‘Oh, my God, what are we going to do?' And I'm thinking, ‘I'm never getting out of here.'”

At long last, the counselor arrived, and Kim, her mother, and the counselor took Sarah into the family room to tell her about her dad. Wanting to let them have some privacy, Maureen went into another room.

“To this day I have never heard anything more horrible than the way Sarah cried,” Maureen remembered. “She screamed so loud. It was so horrible I put my hands over my ears and hummed so I couldn't hear her.”

After hearing that her father was dead, Sarah went up to her room. For the rest of the day Kim slept. Maureen couldn't understand how she could sleep at a time like that, but she figured maybe she was mentally exhausted. While Kim slept, Lois and Maureen sat around and talked. Jenny finally showed up with her husband and daughter in tow—something Maureen thought was a bit strange. But she was kind enough to bring food for everyone.

“I found out the reason Jenny wanted her family along was because she knew that Kim knew that Jenny knew that Kim killed Steve because she had told Jenny the plan beforehand,” Maureen said. “And Jenny wouldn't come over alone because she thought if Kim could really go through with killing her own husband, who's to say she wouldn't kill Jenny as well to keep her quiet. She was terrified and she didn't want to come over unless her husband was with her. And Rachel didn't want to see Kim at all because Rachel was the person Kim laid out the entire plan to and she didn't know what to do.”

Like Jenny, Rachel never thought that Kim actually would go through with her plan to kill Steve. She was in a total state of shock. In fact, after Maureen called Rachel to tell her about Steve's death, Rachel called a friend who was a state trooper and asked for advice. The trooper said she had to turn Kim in.

“That's when Rachel called Kim back to say she knew Kim killed Steve,” Maureen said. “But Kim denied it and said it was a total coincidence that Steve died in the same way as her plan. Kim told Rachel she didn't do it.”

Sunday evening didn't go much better than the day had at the Hrickos' house. Maureen soon realized that Kim's mom wasn't in any condition to take care of Kim or Sarah, so Maureen decided to stay the night. Although she was worried about Mike, she knew that his parents would take care of him and their children.

The next day, Monday, Maureen made calls to the morgue, the funeral director, and Steve's family.

“That was not pretty,” Maureen said. “I called the funeral director and told him we needed to make arrangements for the funeral. But he said he'd been in contact with the Hrickos and they were having a problem because Kim wanted Steve cremated and the Hrickos didn't, because he was Catholic.”

Maureen had no idea what the funeral director was talking about, so she told him she'd talk to Kim and call him back.

Kim explained to Maureen that Steve wanted to be cremated.

“We were at Steve's grandmother's funeral and she had been cremated. While we were at the funeral, Steve said that's what he wanted. It was clean. It was neat. It was closure. And that's what I want to do for him,” Kim said.

Maureen bought Kim's explanation hook, line and sinker, so she called Steve's sister Jennifer and told her what Kim said.

“So he'll be cremated because Kim's his wife and that's what she's saying he wanted,” Maureen told Jennifer. But Jennifer insisted that Steve must not be cremated, because that wasn't what the family wanted.

“I thought I was doing Kim a favor being the liaison, because she was acting like she didn't want to talk to anyone because she was too upset,” Maureen recalled. “But I think it was really because she didn't want to fight with Jennifer.”

After going a few rounds with Jennifer, Maureen called the morgue again and asked when the medical examiner was going to release Steve's body, so Kim could make the final funeral arrangements. Maureen was surprised when the medical examiner said he wasn't releasing Steve's body immediately because he was going to do a postmortem examination of the body in order to determine the cause of death.

“Isn't it obvious? He died in a fire,” Maureen said.

The medical examiner explained it was just standard procedure and he wouldn't be releasing the body until Tuesday. Maureen then went upstairs and told Kim the medical examiner wasn't going to release the body until he performed an autopsy.

Kim went nuts. She just started flipping out.

“Why are they doing that? He was burned in a fire,” said an extremely agitated Kim. “They think I killed him. They think I did something.”

“Kim, they don't think you did anything, and, if anything, this will protect you, to make sure you didn't do anything,” Maureen said, trying to calm Kim down. “All they're trying to do is determine what the actual cause of death was and once they determine that, it will be fine. It's not a big deal.”

Even as she spoke, more little red flags were starting to go up in Maureen's mind, but she tried to put them out of her head.

“And all this time Mike's telling me something's not right here, Kim did something,” Maureen said. “But I said, ‘No, she didn't, Mike. You're Steve's best friend and she's his widow, and you need to operate like this is a terrible accident—you're just trying to make sense out of a bad situation.'”

Maureen, however, wasn't sure she believed her own words.

“I never told Mike about what Kim told me about the fact that she told Rachel that she wanted to kill Steve,” Maureen said. “But I felt so uncomfortable about it that I called another friend and told her the situation with Rachel was making me really nervous and I didn't know what to do. I asked her if I should tell Mike and she said no, all it was going to do was add fuel to the fire that she did something, and right now we all had to just get through the funeral.”

Knowing her friend was right, Maureen decided to wait before she talked to Mike about the whole Rachel issue.

Michael Miller and Stephen Hricko first met when they were about ten years old. Their fathers were in the same bowling league in State College, Pennsylvania.

“I went there one night with my dad and Steve was there with his dad, who was a doctor at the Pennsylvania State College Infirmary,” Mike recalled. “We had to be in fifth grade, but we went to different elementary schools. I didn't really talk to him. We said hello to each other and that was it.”

Mike and Steve really got to know each other in seventh grade, when they attended the same junior high school, Wesley Parkway Junior High School, in State College.

“We kind of formed a bond in seventh grade, where we became best friends,” Mike said. “In seventh, eighth, and ninth grade we played basketball and football. Steve was very bright.”

To prove his point, Mike recalled the day when Steve, who was probably around fourteen years old, started spouting off some complex medical terms.

“We were sitting around with a couple of other guys and talking about whether one guy's mom had a certain condition, I don't remember exactly what condition,” Mike said. “And Steve rattled off the condition. We wanted to know how he knew it and he said he read his dad's medical books.”

Stephen Hricko was as big as he was bright, and he could be intimidating, according to Mike. But, on the other hand, he was a big softy who'd do anything for his friends.

“He was [about] six feet two inches tall, but if you knew him, you knew he was pretty softhearted,” Mike said. “He'd do anything for you. But don't try to BS him—he'd see through you. He didn't care for that too much. If you were genuine, then Steve would have something to do with you—he'd want to be friends with you.”

Mike and Steve shared a very special bond—maybe it was their love of sports or maybe it was because each of them had three sisters and no brothers. Whatever the attraction, Mike and Steve remained best friends until the day Steve died. They even followed the same career path. They graduated from State College Area High School in 1981. While they were in high school, they both worked at the Pennsylvania State University golf courses. Mike got a job there because his great-grandfather and grandfather were involved in Penn State golf. Then Mike got Steve a job at the golf courses.

“So we basically worked there during the summers,” Mike said. “We maintained the golf course, cutting greens, weed eating, raking bunkers, pretty much anything that needed to be done. We worked there all through high school and part of college.”

After high school the friends parted ways for a while. Mike went to Allegheny College in Reedville, Pennsylvania, for about two years, then transferred to Penn State in 1985. He graduated in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in photography and graphic arts. He met Maureen O'Toole, his future wife, while he was at Penn State.

While Mike was away at Allegheny College, Steve stayed at Penn State and continued working at the golf courses. In the early 1980s Steve enrolled in the Penn State Turf Grass Manager program, a training program for golf course superintendents. From 1987 to 1989 Mike tried to make a living doing freelance photography for a local newspaper in State College, and also working for a local company doing graphics work, but he eventually decided that wasn't the career he really wanted. Mike talked to Steve about his future and Steve convinced him to enroll in Penn State's Turf Grass program.

“He said if he could get through the turf grass program, any dummy can get through it,” Mike said. “But he was a little brighter and he understood all that scientific stuff.”

However, Maureen and Mike—who married in June 1989—talked it over and he decided to go for it. Mike entered the two-year program in September 1989.

Maureen met Kim Aungst in 1988 while she was going to college and working as a waitress at a Hoss's Steak and Sea House in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Maureen was twenty-three and Kim was twenty.

“I actually didn't have a whole lot of interaction with her until her cat died one day and she was very upset and hysterical and I tried to help her out,” Maureen recalled. “And I took her home because she was just too upset and we became friends from that point.”

Kim had been attending college, but really never took it seriously, so at that point she was working full-time with the intention of going back to school, but she never did, Maureen said.

“She was quite the partyer,” Maureen said.

Soon Maureen and Kim, who was also a waitress at the restaurant, started going out together after work.

“We started spending a lot more time together,” Maureen said. “I was dating Michael at the time and she was just in one bad relationship after another—she'd fall madly in love with somebody and they'd just treat her like crap. I think it was probably because she was meeting them in the wrong places. She was kind of looking for a nice relationship, so we fixed her up with one of Mike's friends, Steve Hricko.”

Maureen and Mike figured that Steve and Kim would either really, really like each other, or really, really hate each other. They were complete opposites—Kim loved to party and socialize, Steve kept pretty much to himself. He wasn't really very outgoing, nor was he someone who would walk into a room and light it up with his presence. People would notice him because of his size and stature, but he wasn't the type of person who would make a grand entrance into a room. How their relationship fared depended on how much Kim really wanted to straighten her life out.

“If she really wanted a serious relationship, then she was going to have to mature a little bit,” Maureen said.

Steve and Kim started dating around the middle of 1988. They had been dating for four or five months when she got pregnant. Steve did the right thing and asked her to marry him. They decided to have their wedding in March 1989.

“He was head over heels in love with her. There was no question about it, and she was in love with him,” Maureen recalled. “However, I think if the relationship was allowed to take its own course, I don't know if he would have married her, only because at that time Kim was trying to mature. She was trying to straighten out her life and I don't know whether or not that was something she was truly going to end up doing.”

When Maureen found out that Kim and Steve were going to get married, she was just about finished making arrangements for her June marriage to Mike, so she told Kim she'd help her plan her wedding.

“I had the thing planned from beginning to end in three days,” Maureen remembered. “I made all the phone calls—I did mostly everything by the phone.”

Everything went off without a hitch, except for one small matter—Steve was deathly ill. The night of his wedding he was running a temperature of 103 or 104. He sweated bullets through the entire wedding, but he never let anybody know he was sick.

Steve and Kim got married at the Eisenhower Chapel at Penn State. Mike was Steve's best man and Maureen was Kim's maid of honor. Maureen recalled a humorous moment during the ceremony.

“Steve had forgotten the ring, so I ended up taking off my engagement ring and slipped that to him instead and he used that to put on her finger,” Maureen said. “It was kind of a funny thing.”

The newlyweds had their reception at the Fire Hall in Boalsburg, a small town next to State College. The Hrickos didn't really have much money in those days, so their honeymoon was an overnight stay at a local hotel.

When they got married, Steve was working at Toftrees Resort & Four Star Golf Club, a golf course and conference center hotel complex, in State College. He worked there as an assistant superintendent and eventually became a golf-course superintendent at Iron Masters, a golf club near Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Beginning on Memorial Day, 1991, Mike worked as an assistant superintendent at Medford Lakes Country Club in Medford Lakes, New Jersey. During the two-and-a-half years he worked there, Steve was working at Iron Masters.

“Steve was very, very busy at work and there was a little bit of conflict between the two of them (Kim and Steve) before Sarah was born,” Maureen recalled. “They were getting the nursery ready and it seemed to be taking forever and Kim was a little frustrated with trying to get things done around the house.”

Sarah was born in August 1989—the busiest time of year for a golf superintendent. At first Steve was very intimidated by his daughter's size. She was so small and he was so big. He was very clumsy around her. Although he loved her very much, he just didn't know what to do for her. It didn't help that Sarah was an extremely fussy baby. Nevertheless, everything seemed to be going along just fine. When Steve got the job at Iron Masters, the Hrickos moved from State College to Hollidaysburg.

At the time Maureen was working as a sales representative for Bell Atlantic and was very busy at work and Mike was going to school, so the two couples would only see each other occasionally. But Mike and Steve talked on the phone quite a bit. And Maureen would sometimes travel to Hollidaysburg to see Kim.

“We didn't talk to each other every day, or as much as we had when they lived in town. And I really missed them,” Maureen said.

But things didn't go well for Steve at Iron Masters. “He had a problem with some of the board members,” Mike said. “Some of the older members wanted one of the older guys who worked under Steve to be superintendent. They felt this older guy could do the job as well as, if not better than, Steve—and do it for less money. They were looking to bump Steve out, but the younger guys knew that Steve had an education and they knew that he had done a lot for the course. So there was a little rift there and I don't remember if he was fired or stepped down, but he said enough is enough. He was tired of all the politics.”

So the Hrickos moved back to State College and into an apartment in Steve's parents' house. For six months to a year, while Steve was looking for another job, he stayed home and took care of Sarah while Kim went to school to get her surgical technologist license. As Steve became more comfortable with his role as a full-time dad, the clumsiness he once felt taking care of Sarah completely melted away. He spent every moment with her, reading to her, playing with her, and just doing everything for her. Steve truly fell in love with the idea of being a dad. He was like a big burly teddy bear.

“He was big and macho, but he even let Sarah put makeup on him,” Maureen said. “They'd play games and at one point he even said he could really get into being a full-time dad all the time.”

But when Kim graduated from school, the Hrickos ended up leaving State College and moving to the Baltimore area, where Steve took a job as an assistant superintendent at Sparrows Point Country Club in Dundalk, Maryland. After the Hrickos moved, the Millers, who were living in New Jersey, started seeing less and less of Steve and Kim, but they would get together when they could. Steve and Mike, however, always stayed in touch.

When Mike got a job at Harbourtowne as the golf-course superintendent and the Millers moved to Easton, they would sometimes spend the weekends with the Hrickos.

“Kim and I stayed friends with the girl she roomed with in college—Rachel McCoy,” Maureen said. “Kim stayed in touch with Rachel because she was in the Baltimore area and had married a distant cousin of Kim's. So they spent a lot of time with each other when Kim was living in Dundalk because they were both living and working in the Baltimore area. And they had become closer friends than Kim and I were at the time.”

During this time Mike and Steve would get together occasionally to play golf while Maureen stayed at the Hrickos' house visiting with Kim.

“Everything seemed to be good in their marriage,” Mike said. “He never said at that time that there was anything different. But sometimes Kim would get a little perturbed with him when he would go out and stay out late, but we didn't stay out that late. Steve was a homebody. He wasn't one to go out and get liquored up and raise Cain, or anything like that. But he liked to go out and have an occasional beer with the guys, play a little golf, that kind of thing.”

In June 1995 Steve got a job as the golf superintendent at Patuxent Greens and the Hrickos moved to Laurel, Maryland, where the course was located. Although Laurel was only about seventy minutes away from the Millers' home in Easton, the couples rarely got together.

“Our two kids and Sarah were getting older, and as we got more involved with our kids, we didn't see them as much because Maureen and I were both working and it got a little more difficult to spend time with each other,” Mike said. “But Steve and I talked on the phone at least three or four times a week— he'd call me about something in the business, or he'd call me about whatever, and we'd talk from ten to fifteen minutes to an hour depending on what we were talking about.”

Mike also would see Steve when he traveled to Baltimore to attend work-related seminars. And sometimes Steve would drive to Easton to play golf with Mike.

“Kim wouldn't always come along,” Mike said. “It got to a point where we weren't seeing or hearing a lot from Kim. I remember Maureen saying she had tried to keep in touch with Kim, but Kim wasn't returning her calls. So Maureen said if Kim didn't want to keep in touch with her, she wasn't going to keep wasting her time trying to get a hold of her. She'd call and leave messages and Kim wouldn't call back.”

Even though Kim was distancing herself from the Millers, Steve never gave Mike any indication that anything was wrong with his marriage.

But in the winter of 1997, Mike discovered that the Hrickos were having some serious problems.

“From my perspective it happened really fast,” Mike said. “I don't think Steve even realized how bad things were until Kim asked him for a divorce. Around wintertime Steve called me and said Kim wanted a divorce. He was very upset. I don't ever recall Steve being that upset, to the point of crying.”