Kim Hricko is a Maryland woman serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of her husband, Stephen Hricko, at a resort on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A surgical technologist with access to operating-room drugs, she poisoned her 35-year-old husband during a Valentine’s weekend getaway and set their cottage on fire to disguise the death as accidental. A Talbot County jury convicted her of first-degree murder and first-degree arson in January 1999, and she remains incarcerated at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup.
The Valentine’s Weekend at Harbourtowne
In February 1998, Kim and Stephen Hricko traveled to the Harbourtowne Golf Resort and Conference Center near St. Michaels, Maryland, for a romantic weekend package. She was 32 and worked as a certified surgical technologist. He was 35 and worked as a golf course superintendent at Patuxent Greens Country Club in Laurel. They had an eight-year-old daughter.
The centerpiece of the weekend was a murder-mystery dinner theater production called “The Bride Who Cried,” in which a groom is poisoned at his own wedding reception. The Hrickos attended the performance on the evening of February 14, then returned to cottage 506 between 10:00 and 10:30.
Kim later told police she and Stephen argued, that she left to drive to a friend’s house in Easton, got lost for nearly two hours, and returned to find the room filled with dense smoke and her husband dead. She reported the fire to the resort’s night duty manager at approximately 1:20 a.m. on February 15. A guest who entered the cottage through a rear sliding glass door found Stephen’s body on his back between two twin beds, badly burned from the mid-chest up.
Why Investigators Doubted Her Story
The forensic findings contradicted the account of a man who died in a fire. Deputy state medical examiner Dr. David Fowler determined that Stephen had no alcohol in his blood, despite Kim’s claim he had been drinking. He had no carbon monoxide in his system and no smoke damage to his respiratory tract, meaning he was already dead when the fire started. Dr. Fowler ruled the cause of death a homicide by “probable poisoning.”
A pack of cigars was found in the room, though friends said Stephen did not smoke. A store clerk near the couple’s Laurel home identified Kim as the purchaser. Prosecutors theorized she used the cigars or a candle to ignite the room’s curtains. A Maryland State Police officer found no trace of ignitable liquids at the scene, but the fire’s origin and the locked door pointed to someone inside the room setting it deliberately.
Kim was charged with murder and arson on February 24, 1998. During interrogation the day before, Maryland State Police confronted her about an affair with Brad Winkler, a 23-year-old Marine sergeant stationed at the Pentagon whom she had met at a coworker’s wedding in November 1997. She initially appeared shocked but eventually acknowledged the relationship. After her arrest she reportedly attempted suicide by prescription drug overdose and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. She was held without bail.
The Poison That Left No Trace
The suspected murder weapon was succinylcholine, a powerful muscle relaxant used in surgical settings. The drug paralyzes skeletal muscles and can stop breathing within seconds when administered intravenously, or under a minute when injected into muscle. It is extremely difficult to detect after death because the body breaks it down almost immediately into compounds that occur naturally.
FBI forensic chemist Marc LeBeau testified that within minutes of administration the drug can become undetectable in blood specimens. Eight FBI lab tests on Stephen’s urine found no trace of the substance, and no needle marks were found on his body. Dr. Timothy Wex, an anesthesiologist at Holy Cross Hospital, confirmed that the drug was routinely available in operating rooms and was not inventoried as strictly as narcotics, making it accessible to surgical technologists responsible for disposing of unused medications after procedures.
How Prosecutors Proved a Case Without Direct Evidence
Without forensic proof of the poison, the prosecution built its case on the testimony of Kim’s own friends and coworkers, who described months of statements in which she discussed killing her husband. Special prosecutor Robert Dean, a former Montgomery County state’s attorney, tried the case over five days in Talbot County Circuit Court in January 1999 before Judge William S. Horne.
Coworker Kenneth Burgess testified that in December 1997, Kim asked him to kill her husband for a payment he recalled as either $5,000 or $50,000. When he refused, he suggested she could “just put him to sleep” given her access to operating-room drugs. Close friend and coworker Jennifer Gowen testified that Kim told her she could use succinylcholine because the drug would be “untraced,” and had said, “if I could kill Steve and get away with it, I would do it tomorrow.” Former college roommate Rachel McCoy testified that on January 30, 1998, roughly two weeks before the murder, Kim described a specific plan: paralyze her husband with the drug, stop his breathing, and set the curtains on fire with a candle or cigar so the death would appear to be from smoke inhalation. When McCoy asked about divorce, Kim reportedly said killing him would be “easier.” Former neighbor Teri Armstrong testified that on New Year’s Eve 1997, Kim said she “had even been thinking of ways to kill” Stephen.
Prosecutors laid out motives to match the talk. Kim was the beneficiary of two life insurance policies on Stephen totaling roughly $400,000 to $450,000. When a friend asked why she would kill her husband, she reportedly said the money would let her and their daughter “live their life the way they wanted.” She had also expressed fear that a divorce would result in Stephen gaining custody of their daughter or turning the child against her. On the night before leaving for the fatal weekend, Kim left Winkler a note that read, “I look forward to seeing you soon. Happy Valentine’s Day, sir. I love you so very much.”
The defense, led by attorneys William Brennan Jr. and Harry Trainor Jr., succeeded in excluding some evidence, including two syringes found in the case (the autopsy revealed no needle marks), testimony about the post-arrest suicide attempt, and an arson investigator’s mention of an accelerant-detecting dog. Trainor argued in his opening that Kim’s “loose talk and inappropriate conduct” before the killing were suspicious but nothing more. After the verdict, Brennan told reporters, “It was clearly not based on the medical or scientific evidence. It was her near and dear friends who testified that made all the difference.”
Sentence and Appeal
On March 19, 1999, Judge Horne sentenced Kim to life in prison for the murder and the maximum thirty years for arson, to run concurrently.
She appealed to the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland, represented by Christopher A. Griffiths, arguing that the evidence was legally insufficient to support the arson conviction, that it was insufficient to support the murder conviction, and that the medical examiner should not have been permitted to testify that the cause of death was “probable poisoning.” On September 27, 2000, the appellate court rejected all three arguments and affirmed both convictions.
Claims of Innocence
Kim has maintained her innocence from prison. The wrongful-conviction publication Justice Denied published an article on her behalf noting the absence of physical evidence directly linking her to the crime, the failure of eight FBI lab tests to detect succinylcholine, the lack of needle marks on the victim, and the inability of fire investigators to pinpoint the fire’s origin or find accelerants. Supporters have offered an alternative theory: that Stephen died from an accidental overdose of antidepressants and a muscle relaxant called cyclobenzaprine, and that a faulty wood stove or his own carelessness caused the fire.
The article also questioned the trial process, noting extensive pretrial media coverage of roughly fifty local news stories without a defense motion for change of venue, that Judge Horne dismissed two jurors for sleeping during proceedings, and that the trial was compressed into daily sessions running from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. It also challenged the credibility of Kenneth Burgess, who had a prior welfare fraud conviction and could not recall whether the alleged payment was $5,000 or $50,000.
Life in Prison
Kim entered prison when her daughter was eight. In a 2016 Washington Post essay titled “I’m the inmate. Why is my granddaughter being punished, too?” she wrote about the impact of Maryland’s prison visitation policies on children of inmates, noting she had been locked up for more than eighteen years at that point. She described meeting her granddaughter for the first time in a prison visiting room in May 2015 and holding the child during a Family Day event the following September. She remains at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup.