Jon Hickey Murder Case: Daniel Greene’s Trial, Verdict, and Life Sentence

The Jon Hickey murder case ended with the June 2023 conviction of Daniel Greene, a former Prince George’s County firefighter, for shooting the 31-year-old volunteer firefighter and EMT in his Baltimore apartment on November 29, 2017. In February 2024, a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge sentenced Greene to life in prison plus 20 years. Prosecutors described the killing as a jealousy-driven “well-planned execution” by the ex-lover of Hickey’s new girlfriend.¹

Who Jon Hickey Was

Hickey had deep roots in Maryland’s firefighting community. He volunteered with departments across Baltimore County, including Woodlawn, Reisterstown, Owings Mills, Lansdowne, and Pikesville, and had been accepted into the Baltimore City Fire Academy to pursue the work full time.² His mother later said his grandfather had been a firefighter and had inspired his path. Friends also knew him as a photographer and a baseball player.¹ At the time of his death he had lived in the Upper Fells Point neighborhood for about three months.

How the Killing Happened

On November 29, 2017, someone broke into Hickey’s apartment on the 1800 block of East Pratt Street and shot him once in the head while he slept on his sofa.³ His girlfriend, Jennifer McKay, could not reach him for nearly two days and asked police to check on him. Officers conducting the wellness check on November 30 found his body inside the apartment.⁴ An autopsy confirmed he died of a gunshot wound to the head, and the death was ruled a homicide. The murder weapon was never recovered, and the state’s case was entirely circumstantial.⁵

The Motive: An Affair, a Breakup, and Weeks of Harassment

Daniel Greene, a Harford County resident, had worked as a Prince George’s County firefighter from 2002 to 2013.⁶ He was married with two children. He had also carried on a secret five-year affair with Jennifer McKay, whom he had known since childhood. McKay ended the relationship in early November 2017 and began dating Hickey the same month.⁷

In the days before the murder, prosecutors said, Hickey received strange spoofed calls and text messages, his car was keyed, and his brake lines were cut.⁵ Investigators later found that a laptop seized from Greene’s home had been used to search for Hickey’s address and to visit the Facebook pages of both Hickey and McKay repeatedly.⁸ At sentencing, a prosecutor called the killing a “well-planned execution” preceded by “stalking behavior.”¹

Greene’s estranged wife, Jennifer Greene, testified that her husband had been “living a double life.” She said he hid the affair with business trips, a corporate credit card, forged divorce papers, a fake custody agreement, and a staged bachelor’s apartment near the Pennsylvania border.⁹

The Surveillance Video and the Fight Over the Identification

A security camera on a neighboring building captured an intruder pacing in an alley, testing windows, and hoisting himself up through one to enter Hickey’s apartment. The footage, from what became known as “Camera 4,” showed the figure hesitating before the break-in.¹⁰ The video quality was poor, affected by night vision, and at times blurry.¹¹

On December 4, 2017, detectives brought McKay to the station to watch the footage. She identified the figure as “Dan,” pointing to his beard and build, but her identification wavered. She said things like “I see it, but I don’t see it” and noted the face looked “too skinny.” She also said the figure appeared taller than Greene and wore a jacket she didn’t recognize. Detectives at one point told her, “We aren’t in the I think business.”⁷

That identification became the central legal fight before trial. Greene’s defense moved to suppress it, and a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge agreed, throwing out both the out-of-court identification and any potential in-court one.¹¹ The state appealed and won. In January 2019, the Court of Special Appeals reversed, ruling that because McKay and Greene had known each other for years and been in an intimate relationship, her identification was “confirmatory” rather than “selective,” and the constitutional protections against suggestive police procedures did not apply. On June 9, 2020, the Court of Appeals of Maryland affirmed. It acknowledged the detectives’ conduct had been “heavy-handed” and involved “coaching,” but held that constitutional due process rules on eyewitness identification do not extend to confirmatory identifications by people who already know the suspect.⁷

The Trial and Verdict

Greene had been arrested in December 2017 and indicted on December 28, 2017.⁷ The appellate fight over McKay’s identification helped keep him in custody for more than five years before trial.

Trial began on June 15, 2023, in Baltimore City Circuit Court. Assistant State’s Attorney Rita Wisthoff-Ito led the prosecution, which had rejected a plea deal the day before jury selection.⁵ She told the court the pre-murder harassment was no accident: “It’s too much of a coincidence that the strange things start happening to Jon Hickey right before he was killed.”

McKay testified. Under cross-examination by defense attorney Warren Brown, she held to her identification. “You can berate me all you want. It’s Dan in the video,” she told him through tears.¹² Greene’s estranged wife also testified about the double life. The defense argued she was “angry and vindictive,” motivated by revenge against her unfaithful husband, and Brown maintained there was “no connection whatsoever” between his client and the murder, saying investigators had failed to pursue other suspects.⁸

On June 23, 2023, the jury found Greene guilty of first-degree murder, home invasion, firearm use in a felony violent crime, and possession of a handgun.¹

Sentencing: Life Plus 20 Years

Sentencing was delayed when Greene asked for new counsel and claimed new evidence had surfaced. His new attorney, Thomas Maronick Jr., filed a motion for a new trial citing contradictory witness testimony, a “coerced” identification, and photos he said proved innocence.¹³

On February 15, 2024, Judge Ronald A. Silkworth denied the motion and sentenced Greene to life in prison for first-degree murder, a consecutive 10 years for home invasion, and 10 years for the firearm conviction, with the first five years of the firearm sentence to be served without the possibility of parole. The total came to life plus 20 years. Silkworth called the killing “cowardly, brutal, unjustified.”¹

Kim Hickey told the court she had been “in a fog for six years” and wanted to “give up going on in life.” She called for the reinstatement of the death penalty, saying, “I want his parents to feel the pain of losing a child.” One of Jon Hickey’s fire department mentors made the same request. Greene’s estranged wife submitted a written statement calling him a “sociopath and a narcissist” and adding, “I hope for the sake of society you never leave prison.”¹ Greene’s father asserted his son’s innocence and said he planned to contact the Innocence Project. Maronick said Greene remained “resolute” in denying the crime and planned to appeal.¹³

Where Daniel Greene Is Now

As of early 2024, Greene was incarcerated at Maryland’s Western Correctional Institution, serving his life-plus-20-year sentence.¹⁴

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