An Act Of Murder (21 page)

Prosecutor Bob Dean was first to give his closing statement.

“As I indicated to you on Monday, a trial is designed to re-create an event that occurred in the past,” he told jurors. “What we have seen this week in this courtroom and what we have brought to you in this courtroom is by every count tragic, heartbreaking. But at the same time, ladies and gentlemen, it's cold-blooded and sinister.”

Dean told the jury that just over a year earlier, Kim had set a course of action in motion that eventually would lead to despair, destruction, and death—the death of a young man, her husband, who was so desperately in love with her, and who was the father of their nine-year-old daughter, Sarah.

The evidence was clear, however, that the marriage was over and that Kimberly wanted out. As far as she was concerned, Steve was no longer any fun—he never went out anymore, nor did he help Kim around the house, Dean said. To put it simply, Kim was tired of Steve and she wanted a change. In fact, Steve repulsed Kim, Dean said. He made her sick.

Dean said it was through the testimony of Kim's friends that police and prosecutors were able to reconstruct the journey that she embarked upon in late 1997 and early 1998. A journey, he said, that ultimately led to the tragedy that brought everyone together in the Talbot County Courthouse.

Even though Kim's friends loved her, Dean said, they understood that they had an obligation to tell police what they knew about what Kim was doing, about what she was thinking. Dean told the jury that it must have been pure agony for them to come forward.

Dean then explained to the jury the difference between first-degree murder and second-degree murder. First-degree murder required premeditation; some thought beforehand, he said. It didn't matter whether it was ten minutes or twenty minutes, or longer. What mattered was that the perpetrator planned to kill someone before he actually did it.

“If ever, ladies and gentlemen, there is a situation involving premeditation, it is the situation that we are dealing with in this courtroom today,” Dean said.

He told the jury that the arson charge against Kimberly simply meant the burning of a dwelling, such as an apartment, a house, or a hotel room. First-degree murder and arson were the two charges that were before the jury, he said.

Now, Dean said, it was the jury's role to assess the evidence and answer two questions: Was he murdered? And if so, who did it?

“Why did this man die? There's a reason behind everything,” Dean told the jury. “How did he die? What caused this guy's death? There's some very basic facts, and from those basic facts we can logically reach a conclusion.”

Dean then asked the jurors to take a look at a couple of aspects of the case.

“When did Stephen die?” he asked.

Dean said there was roughly a two-hour window in which Steve could have died—from a little after 11:00

P.M.
, on Saturday, February 14, to a little after 1:00
A.M.
, on Sunday, February 15.

“By about one twenty-five
A.M.
, when Philip Parker went in there with Elaine Phillips, who worked there at Harbourtowne, and dragged that poor man out of the room, he was dead,” Dean said. “And I suggest to you he'd been dead for some time because rigor had already set in.”

Dean said he believed Steve died closer to midnight.

Dean called the jurors' attention to the medical examiner's testimony and reminded them that Steve had no soot, or injuries caused by fire, in his breathing passages or lungs. That meant that Steve wasn't breathing when the fire started. He was dead, Dean said.

“Why was he dead?” Dean asked.

The evidence showed that the only other person in the room that night was Kimberly, he said.

“How did the fire start? Of course, Steve's already dead,” Dean said. “Was it electric? Was it spontaneous—it just started? Was it cigar ashes on the pillow or bedspread? I suggest to you the fire marshal tried every which way in the world to get those pillows and the bedspread to light with cigar ashes.”

Dean told the jury the fire's point of origin was in the area on the floor by the foot of the bed—where the pillows were, where his head would have been. All that remained after the fibrous filling of the pillows had burned was the brittle brown substance left on the floor, he said.

“But, ladies and gentlemen, how did that pillow ignite?” he asked. “Wasn't by a cigar ash. It was not by a cigar ash.”

But back to Steve, he said. Dr. Fowler did an exhaustive study on Steve's body, but couldn't find any reason for him to be dead, he continued. There was no evidence of trauma, no dangerous substances detected. Fowler did find some cold medicine and antidepressants in Steve's body, but they were within therapeutic levels. Dr. Fowler didn't find any alcohol in Steve's bloodstream and his heart was the normal size and weight, he said. The lungs, the liver, the brain—everything was intact; everything was in order, Dean said.

“This is now where we have to leave the autopsy table and we need to leave the toxicology lab and go out and examine the people that Steve had interaction with,” Dean said. “This is where we now must look at the defendant. What was going on in her life that led up to that night in St. Michaels?”

Dean told the jurors that the evidence showed that in her own twisted way Kim developed a motive to kill Steve. And she had the means, the motive, and the opportunity, he said. Her marriage had gone sour, she was getting sick and tired of Steve, and she wanted out. She made that very clear to her closest friends, he said. She even wanted and needed them to understand and support her in her plan to kill her husband.

All the while, Steve was trying desperately to make the marriage work, Dean said. He even wrote about his torment in his journal. But Kim's answer was to complain that now Steve was smothering her, following her around the house and making her sick. She said he disgusted her, Dean told the jury.

Kimberly sought physical and emotional love, Dean said, but in the arms of Brad Winkler, not her husband. At this point Dean read some of the notes Kim and Brad had sent to each other.

“Now, this is going on, folks, at the same time that Steve is desperately trying to put this marriage back together,” Dean said.

Dean said although it was sad to pry, in a murder case it was important to examine closely what was going on in the lives of the people involved. He said even though he didn't take any pleasure in presenting Kim's deep, dark feelings to the jury, he had to do it so she would be held accountable for what she did to her husband.

Why didn't Kim just divorce Steve? Because she convinced herself that murdering Steve was the best way out of her situation. Dean reminded the jury that Kim offered Ken Burgess $50,000 to kill Steve for her and she wasn't joking about it. She also told Teri Armstrong that Steve would be better off dead. And one day she told Jenny Gowen if she could kill Steve and get away with it, she'd do it the very next day.

Kim certainly didn't want to push Steve into committing suicide, because then she wouldn't be able to collect the $450,000 from his two life-insurance policies. Kim told Teri Armstrong that she and Sarah would be able to live the way they wanted to live with that money. Dean reminded the jury that Kim told Jennifer Gowen that she had been thinking of ways to kill Steve without getting caught. Kim told Jenny about succinylcholine and how some people had used it as a murder weapon in the past because it couldn't be traced.

“Late January, just two weeks before that fatal Harbourtowne visit, Kim realized suddenly, ladies and gentlemen, that she could do it. She could do it,” Dean said. “And she would do it.”

Next, Dean told the jury to step back in time to January 30, 1998, the night in the Hrickos' town house when Kim told Rachel McCoy about her plan to kill Steve. Rachel just stood there listening to Kim, appalled, scared, and confused. Kim told Rachel about a drug that she could easily get at work—a paralyzing drug. She said she was going to inject Steve with the drug and then she was going to set a fire to finish him off. And Rachel was trying to poke holes in Kim's plan, Dean said, but Kim had an answer for everything. She said the drug couldn't be detected in the body, so she could kill Steve and not get caught.

“Imagine the feeling that Rachel McCoy, a decent woman if there ever was one, felt upon hearing her best friend say this,” Dean said.

The final piece to the puzzle, Dean said, was how Steve died.

“Why is it there was nothing left in his body to tell us the way he died?” Dean asked the jury. “No bullet, no wound, no deadly chemicals detectable. No illness. No disease.”

It was because Kim had access to a drug at her job that could help her commit the perfect murder, he said. It was a deadly, quick-acting drug that left no trace. Kim's motive was to be free of Steve—to be free of the guy who was making her sick. To be free to make Brad happy forever. In the process she would become somewhat wealthy, he said.

Dean said Kim had the perfect opportunity to kill Steve at Harbourtowne. They were alone and away from home. It was late. Kim was the last person to see her husband alive, he said. Dean told the jury Kim created her own bogus alibi about a ninety-minute-to-two-hour odyssey she took from St. Michaels to Easton trying to get to the Millers' house. But she told some people she was going home, while she told others she was just driving around and got lost.

Dean derided Kim's statement that she got lost, saying she had driven to the Millers' a couple months before Steve died and it wasn't hard to find their Elizabeth Street home in Easton.

“She needed to have a reason to be away from that room, quite obviously,” Dean said. “She's staging an accident. She's creating her own bogus alibi. She tells everyone he's drunk. He's not. Her plan—create a scene, a drunk husband with cigars. Easy enough to explain. The careless guy had an accident. Problem is, folks, he was dead before the fire started.”

Dean said time and again she told her friends basically the same story. She and Steve got into a fight because he wanted to have sex and she didn't. She got angry and left the hotel room. She got lost looking for the Millers' house and ended up driving around for ninety minutes to two hours.

“Of course, she never, she never called, did she?” Dean asked the jurors to recall the meeting Kim had with the state troopers Keith Elzey and Karen Alt at Harbourtowne on February 23, 1998. She told them the same version of the story that she told police when Steve died, with the exception of a few changes, he said.

“And finally Detective Elzey says, ‘Kimberly I want the truth.' And then Kimberly says, ‘I want to tell the truth.' Note that Kimberly didn't say she had told the truth,” Dean said. “Kimberly said she wants to tell the truth and then she asks the detective, ‘If I tell the truth, can I go home to see my daughter? Can you promise me that?' Detective Elzey couldn't do that and the interview was over.”

Dean said what was implicit in Kim's exchange with Elzey was that up until that point she had been lying to everyone.

The prosecutor now shifted his focus to Kim's actions in the weeks after Steve's death. First she made sure his body was cremated, ending any chance of an additional forensic examination. He reminded the jury that when Teri Armstrong visited Kim after her arrest, Kim told Teri that she had remorse for what had happened to Steve. During their conversation Kim told Teri she knew it was Rachel who called the police because she told her exactly what she planned to do to Steve. After her arrest Kim also asked Maureen Miller to call Teri, Rachel, and Jenny Gowen to find out what they said to police. Why did she ask Maureen to call those three people? Because those are the people she told about her plan to kill Steve, Dean said.

“It's a curious request, isn't it? And it speaks volumes,” Dean said.

The jurors were reminded that while in custody, Kim told Jenny, “I don't care what anyone says—it wasn't for the money.”

“That screams at you, folks,” Dean said. “It screams at you.”

Dean shifted gears again back to Kim and Steve's relationship.

“The evidence shows clearly, overwhelmingly, disturbingly, that Kim and her husband—from different perspectives, nevertheless—were each kind of living their own hell those last few months leading up to Valentine's Day last year,” Dean said.

Steve was desperate to make his marriage work. He was desperately in love with Kim. He was in emotional turmoil. He had ups and downs. The marriage was crumbling. He was taking antidepressants and getting counseling because he wanted the marriage to work, Dean explained, but Steve was on the bad end of a bad marriage. Kim, meanwhile, had her sights set on other things, and those things didn't include saving her marriage. She made it clear she wasn't anxious to go to Harbourtowne that weekend. She had a new star in her life and a new goal. She wanted to be with Brad.

“Her infatuation, I would suggest to you, her obsession, he was everything in her twisted mind.... Brad was everything that Steve wasn't,” Dean said. “Cared and played with the kids and went out and helped out with the dishes and hung around with the girls. He was a great party guy. Went out all the time. Not her husband.”

The evidence showed that in the weeks and months before Steve's murder, Kim was becoming more and more convinced that the only way to get rid of Steve, and have the life she wanted was to kill him, Dean said. Then she could collect the insurance money and live happily ever after with Brad Winker. She was looking forward to making Brad the happiest guy in the world. She was looking forward to over $400,000 in insurance money.

“The case is sad,” Dean said. “It really is very sad.”