Going West: True Crime - Stephen Hricko // 87

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

In 1998, a Maryland couple went to a murder mystery dinner for the Valentine's Day weekend. After a fun evening at the show and a beautiful dinner alongside 100 other couples at a waterfront resort, their night ended in an eerily similar fashion as the dinner show's plot. And a real life "whodunit" story unfolded. This is the murder of Stephen Hricko. BONUS EPISODES: patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1999/01/11/the-case-of-the-amateur-sleuth/709d43e6-546f-4444-9439-2275512637fc/ https://murderpedia.org/female.H/h/hricko-kimberly.htm https://www.legacy.com/amp/obituaries/centredaily/20444080 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/120857775/stephen-michael-hricko https://krazykillers.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/valentines-day-mystery-murder-becomes-a-deadly-game/ https://caselaw.findlaw.com/md-court-of-special-appeals/1373905.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1999-01-15-9901150067-story.html https://deadlywomen.fandom.com/wiki/Kim_Hricko Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host Tee and I'm your other host Daphne and you're listening to Going West. Happy fall everybody or so excited for the fall season, especially here in Oregon, and gets all seasony, which I'm not used to being from California. So I'm really excited about it. Hopefully everybody else is too. Yeah, if you guys know anything about us,

we love fall, and especially Halloween. We just put up our indoor fall and Halloween decorations, and this we've got to put out our outdoor ones, but it's been raining. So we have a bunch of like headstones and creepy hanging guys that we're gonna put in the tree, so so excited about that. Yeah, and it's never too early. Today's case is something that really caught my eye with the murder mystery aspect of this

case. I love a good who done it. Unfortunately, this is a real story and it's super tragic nonetheless, so still we're excited to tell it to you guys. We just released a bonus episode over on Patreon for you guys to check out. It's on the murder of journalist Kim Wall over in Copenhagen, Denmark. It's a really, really crazy case. So if you guys are interested in checking out the bonus episodes that we have, head over to patreon.com slash going west podcast and Just subscribe. Yeah, that's a really unique case because the murder takes place underwater Which this is the first story that I've ever heard like that

So if you want to hear that and a ton of other bonus episodes if you're all caught up on going west Listen to Heath and check out patreon.com slash Going West podcast. Alright guys, without further ado, this is episode 87 of Going West, so let's get into it. In 1998, a Maryland couple went to a murder mystery dinner for the Valentine's Day weekend. After a fun evening at the show and a beautiful dinner alongside 100 other couples at a waterfront resort, their night ended in an eerily similar fashion as the dinner shows plot,

and a real life who'd done its story unfolded. This is the murder of Stephen Rico. Steven Michael Rico was born on November 22, 1962 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Mary and Michael Rico, and he had three sisters, Michelle, Lauren, and Jennifer. Steven's father Michael served during World War II and then went on to become a physician at Written-hour Health Center at Penn State. Michael was even a diplomat of the American board of Anesthesiology, and he raised his children to be members of our lady of victory Catholic Church. So all around just a very successful American family. So all around just a very successful American family. Steven and his siblings grew up in state college Pennsylvania,

which is a very charming college town of about 40,000 people, about an hour and a half from the capital of Pennsylvania, and the city Steven was born in, which is Harrisburg. And they lived in state college because that's where Penn State is, so Michael was very close to work and he got to raise his family somewhere nice in return. And Stephen ended up going to college there at Penn State after doing very well in high school where his six foot three height really helped him succeed in football and basketball. Despite his big exterior, he was known to be a super gentle guy who wouldn't

hurt a fly. Steven attended Penn State for two years and that's when he met a young woman named Kim Wolff. Kim Wolff was born on April 29, 1965, so she was about two and a half years younger than Steven. She grew up with her brother Michael in Altoona, Pennsylvania, which is actually just a few towns away from state college. Kimberly was also raised in a religious household, seemingly a bit more religious than Stephen's family, and she attended a Christian high school in Altoona before heading off to Penn State just 45 minutes away. Kim had a rather traumatic childhood. Her father was out of the

picture and her mother went on to marry a man who physically and sexually abused Kim. So Kim had a terrible experience with men throughout her upbringing and never expected to meet a nice man. But then, she met Stephen. During Kim's time at Penn State, she worked at a stay-couse in town and became best friends with one of her co-workers, Maureen. Maureen was dating a guy named Mike Miller and they later went on to get married, and Mike's best friend was Stephen Rico. So one night, the four of them went out on a double date and Stephen and Kim fell in love.

This was both their first relationship, but they waited a few years before they got married. Kim was known to be very bubbly and a good talker, so she and Stephen Godlongwell and began dating during these college days in the early 1980s. In 1989, Kim and Stephen Rico were married in their town of state college Pennsylvania, and within a year of their wedding, they had a daughter named Anna. Stephen always had a keen interest in golf since it was one of his dad's biggest hobbies, so it was something that they could do together. So after two years at Penn State, Stephen went on to become a super-intendant and manager of multiple golf courses in Pennsylvania and Maryland. And if you don't know,

US geography, Pennsylvania and Maryland, are right next to each other, so not far. And his best friend, Mike, did this job as well. So they got to work together. But in the early 1990s, the job took them both out of state for good. Mike going to New Jersey and Stephen going to Maryland. Since Stephen and Kim had lived in Pennsylvania all their lives, they decided to make a change and move to Laurel

Maryland where Stephen got a managing job at Patuxen Green's Gulf Course in town. Meanwhile, Kim worked on her medical career. Laurel Maryland is only a three-hour drive from state college by the way, so they weren't terribly far, which I'm sure made the move a bit easier. By the early 90s, Kim became a certified surgical technologist and in 1995 got a job in the operating room at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. So just about a 30 minute drive from their home. She worked there for two years until December of 1997, when she

started working at a different local hospital, suburban hospital. At this time, Steven and Kim bought a townhouse in Laurel, and things seemed to be going very well for them. And the new neighbors thought that they were a perfect family. Both Steven and Kim worked, but would come together and cheer on the sidelines for Anna during her soccer games. Steven was madly in love with Kimberly, but around 1997 is when their relationship really started to go downhill. At this point, they had been together for over 13 years, but their new lives just didn't really mesh well.

Kim was really involved with her job at the hospital while Steven's passions lied at the golf course, and Steven wasn't a fan of Kim's co-workers and new surgeon friends. They just kind of grew apart, but Steven didn't want to let her go. Kim had brought up the topic of divorce and Steven refused to go there. He just felt like they needed some time alone to kind of reconnect. Steven was talking to his good buddy Mike Miller on the phone in January 1998 and just venting to him about he and Kim's relationship. Steven was desperate to make everything better between them, so Mike suggested that they go on a special Valentine's Day getaway.

Since February 14th fell on a Saturday that year, Steven wanted to go away with Kim for the weekend to have some fun and work on their marriage, and he's settled on Harbor Town Resort in St. Michael's Maryland. That weekend, the resort was hosting a murder mystery dinner, and they planned to attend for a fun and unique Valentine's Day. And let's talk about this resort for a second. I posted photos on social media so that you guys can see because it's stunning. And Heath, I don't know if you saw photos of it,

but I think you would, like, this is like your dream destination, I think. It's such like a waterfront island person. Like it looks like an island resort. Yeah, I really am that guy. I actually looked at photos of this place and it is beautiful. Yeah, it's right there on the bay.

And St. Michael's is a very safe waterfront town hosting about 1,000 residents. And it's known as the heart and soul of the Chesapeake Bay. But today, Harbor Town Resort is actually closed. So you can't go there today, but you can look at pictures or you can just go to St. Michaels. On February 9th, so a few days before Valentine's Day, Steven wrote in his journal, It Read,

Life at Home is Improving, and I'm looking forward to Valentine's Weekend at Harbor Town with Kim. She called twice today and said, I love you without me saying it first. I was very happy. Kim and I have not made love in a while and I want to, but I'll wait as long as it takes. I love her. I believe I know what being in love really is. We've been married nine years, but I feel like we just started dating.

A few days later on Valentine's Day, Kim and Stephen arrived at Harbor Town in St. Michael's at 3pm and they checked into their cottage, which was Cottage 506. A hundred other couples would also be attending this very exciting dinner event, and they were promised champagne, a beautiful meal, and breakfast the following morning. The murder mystery show was titled The Bride Who Cryed, and it asked for the audience's participation, so it was very interactive. The show is about a mafia wedding party where the groom is poisoned with champagne, and he dies after the toast. Once the audience met all the characters, they came to the conclusion that the mother-in-law

was the murderer, and they were right. And Kim and Steven actually had a great time at this dinner by all accounts. According to the people sitting at their table, Kim was very into the whole thing and was doing a great job trying to figure out who'd done it. After dinner in the play, Steven and Kim went back to their room at around 10pm. And Stephen made sure to get them a beautiful waterfront cottage overlooking the Miles River. At 120am, Kim walked into the lobby of the resort by herself. She walked right up to the front desk with her upside down cell phone to her ear, and in a calm tone said,

I need to speak to someone who works here. The employee then said, yes, may I help you? Kim replied with, my room is on fire. The employees quickly became frantic and confused and asked for her room number and name, which Kim gave them. One of them, Elaine, called 911, while the other, Philip, continued to question Kim. Philip asked Kim if there was anyone else in the room, and she responded again, very calm, my husband. Meanwhile, 911 said someone had already called them, Kim had. The Night Duty manager, who is Elaine, then ran to cottage suite 506 with Philip.

Philip saw smoke right away and crawled under it looking for Stephen when he suddenly saw a pair of legs amongst the smoke. 35-year-old Stephen Rico, who was wearing a t-shirt and pajama bottoms, was lying on the floor badly burned. Philip dragged his body out of the room and noticed that Steven, who had suffered bad burns to his face, chest, and upper arms, was dead. ‎‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ There were obviously a lot of questions regarding Steven and Kim's evening. What happened between 10pm and 120am and how did the room catch fire? About 50 minutes after Kim reported the fire, so around 2.30 a.m., she spoke with a state trooper

about what happened. And then she spoke to a different state trooper at around 5 a.m. Kim explained to them that after dinner, she and Steven bought four bottles of beer from the resort's bar and brought them back to the room. When they got to the room, they caught the end of the 1995 comedy Tommy Boy and then watched the news.

Kim explained that after this, Steven tried to have sex with her and she wasn't interested since they had agreed before going that they wouldn't engage in sex, so then they got into a fight. The fight lasted about 10 minutes until Kim had enough, so she grabbed her keys and her purse and then she left. She decided then that she would go visit their friend's Mike and Maureen Miller, mind you it's around midnight on Valentine's Day, but then she got lost. She stopped and asked multiple people for directions but never actually called Mike or Maureen to ask them.

After she was unable to figure out where she was going, she went back to the resort and didn't arrive to the room until just after 1am. Kim said that in an angry hurry to leave, she forgot her key card. So she had to go around back in hopes of entering through the sliding glass door of the room, but when she got there, she noticed thick smoke. So she called 911 and rushed over to the lobby to inform the staff of a potential fire in her room and then they knew the rest. But police immediately became suspicious of Kim's story. Earlier, we said that Mike's work had taken him to New Jersey,

but he did eventually move to Easton, Maryland, which is just a 15-minute drive from St. Michael's, where Kim and Steven were staying on Valentine's Day. The strange part about her getting lost is that she had been to their house just a couple months prior. And not only that, but her brother, who she was very close with, also lived in Easton, and

just two blocks away from Mike and Maureen's house. Sure, she had never driven there from St. Michael's before, but it didn't make much sense why she drove around lost for two hours when she was less than 15 minutes away from their house. And she didn't call Mike Maureen or her brother Michael for help getting there, despite having her cell phone with her. When Mike and Maureen arrived at the resort early in the morning on February 15th after discovering what happened, Maureen also questioned this.

She asked Kim why she didn't call her and ask her for directions, and Kim said that since it was late, she didn't want to wake her up. And this is really strange because she was going to their house, so they would have been woken up anyway. After Steven's death, Kim went to see Steven's parents and began arranging the funeral with the help of Maureen. Within a week of his death, Kim called the local police office to see if there was an update on Steven's autopsy report, but there wasn't.

And this was a bit strange to police because they didn't know what would be in the report that she would want to know. To them, this was a pretty clear cut, death-by-smoke inhalation case caused by Stephen's cigar hitting his pillow and lighting the room on fire. But Stephen's blood alcohol content was 0.00, meaning he didn't have any alcohol in a system when he died. Yet, Kim claimed that he was drunk. But we'll get more into Stephen's autopsy here in a bit. Now that investigators knew that Stephen didn't have alcohol in his system when he died,

they asked the bartender and server that night if they remembered how much Stephen had to drink. They said he had maybe one beer, but the entire table he was at basically didn't drink at all. In fact, Stephen and Kim's bar tab only told old to $5.51, which would be the price of about two beers. Meaning that Stephen had maybe one full drink while eating dinner, and it was out of his system by the time he died a few hours later. So Kim stating that he had an entire bottle of champagne, multiple drinks at dinner, and drinks at their room afterwards is impossible and false. When investigators question Kim about this, all she said was, I don't understand that.

Another big red flag here was the fact that, according to the employees, Kim showed absolutely no signs that she was upset in any way when she walked up to them about the fire. And she didn't even initially mention that her husband was potentially in danger. She walked slow and without purpose and spoken a way that would never indicate something terrible was happening. Like you would imagine if your husband is in your fired up room, you know, like you would be freaking out, you would be like screaming and running, but she's just like pranced up to the desk and was like, my room's on fire. Well, it's pretty clear that she's a bad actress

because if she really wanted to pull this off, she probably would have done a better job of like, I don't know, like running to the lobby with some urgency or having a scared or terrified tone to her voice, but she simply just didn't really care. And on top of that, you have your, you have your cell phone upside down to your head. Come on.

Yes. Thank you for bringing that up again, because I keep forgetting about that detail, but one of the employees, I think it was a lane notice that her cell phone was upside down. And she was like, that's kind of strange. And Kim had to drive from her room to the lobby, because this was such a big resort. And they saw her just park outside the lobby and just slowly get out of her car and walk up. You know, she wasn't like,

like you would throw your car in park and like fly out of the car and run towards the door if it was something that was this serious. And they saw the whole thing happen. And once they found out that there was a fire, they were like, wait, this is not calculating. Yeah, definitely. It just, the whole thing kind of, well, especially the cell phone thing being upside

down, that just reminds me of like a sketch from like a comedy movie, where it's like, oh, like she's trying to make it seem like she's on the phone, but the phone is upside down like, kind of thing, you know, it's just kind of goofy. Yeah, it's so weird. Not only did all of this just sound so suspicious, but on top of that, police also found out that Kim had been wanting out of their marriage for at least a couple years at that point. She felt Stephen was unmotivated and didn't help around the house, and he also never wanted to go on dates or go out with her. She apparently tried to get them to go to counseling in the summer of 1997, but they never

went. In late November of 1997, just about three months before Steven's death, Kim met a man named Brad. One of her closest friends, Jennifer, was getting married, and Kim was to be her maid of honor, so Kim hosted a bachelorette party for her, and then a wedding shower at her house. The wedding shower was close friends only, so it was a relatively smaller group. But one person that was there was Brad Winkler, who was the bride's 23-year-old cousin, and a US Marine Corps sergeant. Brad and Kim spoke a lot that evening and really hit it off, and Brad also got along well

with Kim and Steven's 9-year-old daughter Anna. 32-year-old Kim later discussed Brad's marriage, which had just ended pretty badly, to one of her other friends who attended the party. Kim talked on and on about how nice and sweet and great Brad was, and that whoever he ended up with would be a pretty lucky woman. Stephen had seen them speaking that evening quite a bit, and he became really jealous by it and even brought it up to Kim later that night. He felt that Brad hung around a little later than he should have, and felt like he and Kim hit it off a little too well.

Which is normal. I mean, this is your wife and she's talking to this much younger man. After the wedding, Brad offered to house it and babysit while his newly married cousin Jennifer and her husband Sean went off on their honeymoon. And during this time, Kim made herself available to help give Brad tips when it came to the one-year-old baby he was watching. But that's not the only thing that she did while she was there. She ended up cheating on Stephen and kissing Brad. And this carried on even after the baby sitting was over. She and Brad would get together and hook up at Brad's aunt's house where he was living at the time. This only made her less and less interested in her husband, Steven, because now she had

this new, like I said, much younger guy in her life who she was excited by. And she even shared this affair information with all of her friends. But even further, she hinted that a divorce wasn't what she wanted. She wanted Steven dead. Wow, I mean, we talk about this all the time. If you're in a relationship that you don't like, maybe just get a divorce. Maybe just get a divorce. It's so funny that your reaction was to do like a little sing song because that was mine too. But yeah, seriously, don't fucking kill your partner. Get a divorce. Don't kill your

fucking partner. And we're gonna get into this about why she thought murder was better than a divorce but it's not gonna make any more sense than it does right now. In December of 1997 so weeks into her affair with Brad, Kim blatantly brought up her interest in Steven's death to a co-worker. A man named Kenneth worked with Kim as a surgical technologist at the Holy Cross Hospital, so this was before she left and went on to work for suburban hospital. Kenneth was standing in the hall outside of the women's locker room when Kim walked

up to him and she said that she wanted to talk to him about something. His back was still facing her before he was able to turn around when she said, I want you to kill my husband. Kenneth turned around quickly, apparently thinking it was a joke, but her face didn't look like it was a joke. She looked completely serious. She even offered Kenneth $50,000 to do the job, but he said absolutely not you fucking psycho, okay he didn't say that, but that's what he should have said. He said that that's definitely not something that he would do and that she shouldn't do that either. She should just work on her marriage or she should end it. Get a divorce.

But Kim kept pushing. She even asked him if he knew anyone else who could do it, but he said he didn't. Kim went to end the conversation with, never mind, forget I said anything, and don't tell anyone that I asked. But as she was about to walk away, Kenneth said something along the lines of, you work in the operating room, you could just put him to sleep. And Kenneth later stated that he said this as a joke, but he knew that Kim was acting very seriously about this murder for higher plot. So for him to suggest this even as a joke seems like the wrong thing to do.

Yeah, I mean, maybe he was just trying to not make the conversation awkward, but yeah, probably not the best way to respond to somebody asking you to kill their husband. This is his whole recount of the conversation, so I mean, for her to offer him $50,000 and then ask him if he knows anybody else who could do it, and for him to be like, absolutely not, and say that seriously, and then end it with, you work in the operating room, you could just put him to sleep. Like, all right, that's, that's just not what you say. You just say, what are you, are you serious? No, by like, well, you don't say, you don't make a freaking suggestion.

Yeah, definitely. That was not a good idea, Kenneth. Other than this conversation, Kim also brought up his death on a couple other occasions to friends. So it really feels like she was a huge talker because she didn't keep her affair or her interest in Seven's death a secret from people in her life at all, just from Steven himself. On New Year's Eve, going into 1998, she told her friend a neighbor that she was very frustrated with her relationship and she'd been thinking of different ways she could kill Stephen.

She also mentioned a divorce in this conversation so her friends didn't really think she was serious about the death part, but then her neighbor asked her what she would get out of it, meaning Stephen's death. And Kim said something along the lines of, well, the insurance money, so Anna and I could live our lives the way we want to. And it turns out that Kim had a $450,000 life insurance policy on Steven, and she was the sole beneficiary. And by the way, she had recently doubled that because it had previously been worth just over $200,000.

So here's another little suspicious thing she doubled the life insurance policy. Yeah, she knew what she was doing. She was prepared to kill this guy. But you just, like, you don't tell people you're going to go through with it and then double the life insurance policy and expect that you're not gonna get caught. I mean first of all, I mean number one, just don't fucking kill people. Two, if you are planning on killing somebody, don't go telling all your friends. That's what's so weird about this case is we're not done by the way of her little chatty chatty-ness.

But the amount of people that she brought this up to before the fact is like, cheese lady, how freaking dumb are you? The other time that it was mentioned was to one of her other co-workers. She had mentioned previously that she wanted to divorce Steven, but then it advanced to her wanting to kill him. And the reason why she wanted him dead, verse the divorce, is because if they got a divorce, he could potentially get custody of their daughter Anna and maybe even turn Anna against her. She also mentioned that Steven really didn't have a life outside of her, so he was better

off dead than divorced anyways. And what a selfish thing to say, like as if, well, if I'm not in his life, then he's got nothing to live for. Yeah, seriously, God, this lady. So she also mentioned that if she did divorce Steven and tell him about her affair with Brad, he could potentially kill himself since he was so in love with her. And then she wouldn't get his life insurance money because it would be a suicide. Bitch, oh my God.

This is so irritating. During the conversation, she said that she wanted to kill him with succinocholine, which is a muscle-relaxin anesthesia that is typically used in pre-surgery. And she said the reason she wanted to use it was because it disappears from the body almost instantly, so it wouldn't be able to be traced. Because your body's natural defenses break down the drug into two components that can be found naturally in your body, so succcecoline can't be detected in a blood sample. Kim also apparently added, if I could kill Steve and get away with it, I would do it tomorrow. Kim didn't know if her fling with Brad was

gonna last, but she was enjoying it nonetheless and hoped for it to become more serious. But she did tell one of her friends that he was just good for sex. But something tells us otherwise because on February 13th, so the night before Steven's death, slash the night that they went to St. Michaels, she went to Brad's aunt's house to leave some Valentine's Day gifts for him in his bedroom, because he wasn't there. Next to the gifts, she wrote a note that read, Brad, I really wanted to give you all these gifts in person, but I guess the pentagon had a different idea. I'm so proud of what you do, so I'll just go on missing you. Have a nice weekend

at home, baby. I look forward to seeing you soon. Happy Valentine's Day, sir. I love you so very much. Hugs and kisses, Kim. So this two and a half month relationship was clearly getting pretty serious, meanwhile she is married. Oh, man. And if Brad only knew, like, the circumstances of her wanting to kill her husband, like,

I'm sure he would be like whoa I don't know about dating you exactly two weeks before Steven's death Kim called an old friend Rachel in hysterics saying that she needed her to come over immediately Rachel didn't know what it was about but she wanted to be there for her friend, so she rushed over from her Baltimore home, which was about a 30 minute drive from Laurel. Kim had been drinking and was very upset, telling Rachel that she wanted Steven dead and that it would make her life so much easier. She then explained a plan to Rachel on how she would kill Steven without getting caught.

Kim said that she had access to a drug that would paralyze Steven and stop him from breathing. After he was knocked out, she would set the curtains on fire with the candle or a cigarette so that the room would catch on fire and his official cause of death would be ruled as smoke inhalation. Rachel was shocked to hear all of this because Kim had a legit plan. So, to help deter her from doing it, Rachel tried to point out flaws in the plan, but Kim had an answer for everything that she said. And what a cruel way to want to kill somebody is that you paralyzed them and then set the room on fire so they're just laying there. They can't breathe because their lungs are paralyzed and they just basically just die in fear.

Oh my god, yeah. This honestly side note, this reminds me of the movie Serpent in Rainbow with Bill Pullman. Basically just quick little runoff. Basically what happens is there's this drug that paralyzes people and Bill Pullman gets buried alive while he's paralyzed and it's one of the most crazy, intense, and anxiety-inducing scenes in a movie, I think. Oh my god, that just makes me sick. Sick, sicker. Yeah, and you can only imagine what Stephen is laying there thinking. I mean, if he's paralyzed, he's watching this room go up in flames, and there's literally nothing he can do.

Oh my God. Like, to think of this plot and to wanna do this, to somebody that you once love and the father of your child who is not even like a bad dude, like he's a super nice guy. She just thinks he's annoying and like, doesn't do enough. And I'm not in their relationship, obviously,

so I don't know what happened behind closed doors, but there was never any reports of abuse. It's not like he't do enough. And I'm not in their relationship obviously, so I don't know what happened behind closed doors, but there was never any reports of abuse. It's not like he was a monster. You're gonna do this to just this innocent nice guy who loves you? Oh my God, what a horrible thing. Yeah, that's some monster shit right there. So Rachel obviously kept trying to convince

a very inebriated Kim not to kill her husband and just kind of pointed out like all the bad things that could happen if she did it. Then Kim went to use the restroom and was taking a long time. So Rachel went upstairs to check on her. To Rachel's surprise, Kim was in her in Steven's bedroom just standing next to the bed where Steven laid a sleep. She was staring at Stephen with her arms down at her side, just watching him. Rachel didn't even realize that Stephen had been home at all, so she was really surprised

by this, because meanwhile they're having this conversation downstairs about her wanting to kill Stephen and he's upstairs. She grabbed Kim and went with her downstairs where Kim continued to cry in devastation about her life. Rachel told her that she just needed to get some sleep and not to do anything. So Kim went upstairs to go to bed and Rachel actually stayed downstairs in the house for 20 minutes to make sure that Kim didn't do something to Steven since she was so drunk. Then she drove back home to Baltimore. Little did Rachel know this was the last time

she would speak to Kim before Steven's death. And the last thing that Kim said was, I don't know what I'm gonna do, Rachel. So Rachel was confident that she was just upset and drunk and wasn't seriously going to murder her husband. As police collected these reports, they were absolutely stunned. And strangely enough, Kim had asked her good friend Maureen to call specifically all of those people.

Kenneth, the neighbor Teresa, her friend Jennifer and Rachel to see if they had spoken to police yet. And if they had, what did they say? Later, during a phone conversation with her neighbor, Teresa, Teresa asked her how she was feeling about what happened, and Kim said she was feeling a lot of remorse, which really confused Teresa. Less than 10 days after Steven's death, on February 23, Kim had another interview set up with the same officer who interviewed her the night

of. The officer told her that they knew she was having an affair with Brad Winkler, and Kim just sat there and stared off into space before covering her face with her hands and admitting, yes. Then, she was given the information regarding Steven's autopsy. In the report, it stated that there was no carbon monoxide or soot found in Steven's body at all, meaning he had not died from smoke inhalation like everyone had thought. This also meant that he had either been dead or not breathing before the fire started,

and of course, that was suspicious because that begged the question, how did Stephen Rico die? Well, the medical examiner felt that Stephen's death was homicide and that the cause of death was probable poisoning. He wasn't able to determine what poison, but as we know, succcecoline leaves the system immediately. So, I think we can all agree that that's a pretty likely contender. Uh, yeah.

So Kim sat there and cried while the officer practically begged her to tell him what happened the night Steven died. She just continued to cry and not say anything, but he kept asking her. Finally, Kim said, if I tell you what happened, can I go home tonight and see my daughter? The officer didn't respond to that specifically. He just asked her again to please tell him what happened. Then Kim said, I want to tell you, but I want to see my daughter first. He told her that he would arrange for her to see her daughter, but she needed to tell him what happened. Kim then said, I really want to tell you the truth, indicating that the story she had been feeding them all this time

wasn't the truth, but she didn't say another word and asked to leave. So she pretty much confessed without confessing. Yeah, well, I think at this point she knows that she is trapped in a corner and she's got nowhere to go. So later that evening, police had enough to search the Rico's home and Kim's car for any further evidence. While this was happening, Kim was at Mike in Maureen's house and overdosed on tranquilizers and was rushed to the hospital by her friends when they found her. The following day when she was discharged from the hospital,

police arrested her for the murder of her husband, Stephen Rico. The following year, in January of 1999, 33-year-old Kim Rico stood trial for her crimes, Arsene and Murder. Many of Kim's friends did the right thing and testified at trial, telling the courtroom all the bad things that Kim had done and said about her husband, Steven. Brad Winkler testified and explained their short affair in complete detail. Kenneth, Kim's old coworker, discussed their conversation at work regarding killing Steven, and the other people in Kim's life described eerie conversations. All the signs were there, but no one thought Kim

would actually kill Stephen, because she was looked at as such a nice and happy person. She just didn't wanna be married to Stephen anymore. No one expected her to become a killer. Her coworker who she discussed using succicolene with told their whole conversation to the court and said, as a surgical technician, which she and Kim both were, it was very easy to access succce Colleen along with all

the other drugs that were obviously in the hospital. With Kim's job at suburban hospital, one of her responsibilities included disposing of all unused medicines and drugs after an operation. So yeah, this would be a very easy situation for her to just pocket the drugs. But it was difficult to prove that she had injected Steven with anything since there were no injection sites found on his body. But since she clearly had this all planned out, the popular theory is that she injected it somewhere no one could see, like possibly in his genital region, and that's why they couldn't find it, because there's no other explanation

for his cause of death, and the plan was exactly the same one that she told Rachel about. So she had to have injected him somewhere, and the medical examiner just couldn't find it. Another possibility is that Kim made sure that Steven's face and upper body were totally burned to destroy any injection marks on his skin there. So maybe she injected his neck or something or his mouth, I don't know. And because his skin was so badly burned, they wouldn't have been able to detect those kind of injection marks anyway. So that's also a possibility. That's kind of my theory on this is maybe the burns from the fire had covered up the injection site

because if you think about it, like how would she have injected him? Like if like let's say, I mean she could definitely inject him in the genital region, but that is probably not going to kick in like right away, I would think, I don't know. I'm thinking maybe she came up from behind and maybe injected him like in the neck or the face or something like that. And I don't know. Yeah, that's the whole thing with this case is I didn't really see any theories online

like to kind of piece that evening together cause obviously he was in his nighttime pajama clothes so he was probably getting ready for bed, so she must have like snuck up and surprised him in some way. But that's the thing is, if it was in his genital region, like how would she have done that inconspicuously? That's why, to me, I think it was definitely

in the area where he was burned. I also wanna know how quickly succocolean like takes effect in the body. Like I know we said it was pretty quick. Didn't we say it was immediately? Yeah, well that's the thing when you inject things that's usually immediate, you know? Okay, yeah, totally.

So that makes, I guess that makes sense because she could really inject him, I guess anywhere because it's not like he's gonna fight back or anything if it kicks in literally immediately. I would imagine within seconds. So especially with this drug paralyzing him within seconds, he would be completely immobile. And then she could set the fire and lay him where she wanted to and set the scene with the pack of cigars and put the cigar on the pillow and then leave the room

and pretend that they had just gotten into a fight, get lost so that you have an alibi and you can ask strangers what directions are for the place you're going and then come back and find the scene. Yeah, and I always love it when some complete douche puts together a plan like this and they think they're like it's full-proof. I'm definitely gonna get away with this and then they get caught. It's just like the sweetest justice. Well that's what's funny about this is that Rachel was when they were having the conversation when Kim was really drunk at her house. Rachel was like, well, what about this? What about this? And Kim acted like she had all the answers and it's like, LOL.

You failed. Yeah, you didn't. You didn't have all the answers. So let's talk about the fire for a second. Something the prosecution tried to prove was that the fire had to have been started on purpose. They did all these tests where they lit a cigar and tried to ignite the pillow, and it just would not catch fire. It would char the pillow a bit, but they didn't see how it would be at all possible for a cigar to light the pillow up and cause an entire room to catch on fire.

However, they weren't able to determine how the fire started because there was no detectable accelerant found, but this is where Rachel's testimony regarding Kim's plan, including the fire, really helped. Also, Stephen didn't smoke, in fact, he hated smoking. And many of the people close to him testified this, that they knew him to specifically not be a smoker, and that he declined cigarettes and even expensive free cigars every time he was asked. Even further, Stephen and Kim were staying in a non-smoking room. Investigators were even able to determine who really bought the cigars, and it was

Kim. After combing all of Laurel Maryland for stores that sold backwards cigars, which was the brand that was found in the resort room, police came across Astor liquor store, which was close to the Rico's house. The store clerk knew Kim just by looking at a photo of her presented and stated that she would come in every once in a while. And in fact, she had come in a few weeks prior to buy a pack of Backwood cigars. And they were able to confirm this after matching the price sticker found on the cigar pack to the rest of the items in Astor Liquor. That is some detective work. Oh yeah.

During the trial, Kim said backhanded things to her friends who told the truth about her, and the judge threatened to kick Kim out of the room if she didn't behave. Because here's all of her friends saying, Kim told me this, and telling the truth, and Kim is obviously mad at them, because they're outing her, which they should. Yeah, good for them though.

They absolutely did the right thing. Exactly, I agree. So meanwhile, Kim's defense team tried to paint the picture that Kim was the one who was drunk the night Steven died, and that after Kim left for Mike in Maureen's house, Steven killed himself, which makes no sense because the medical examiner couldn't even determine cause of death, so how did he kill himself then, huh? Anyways, after five days on trial, Kim Rico was found guilty of both Arsene and first degree murder of her husband, Steven Rico.

She was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, but immediately filed for an appeal, although it was denied. Kim never actually admitted to killing Steven and still never has. She still maintains her innocence after everything that's happened. Kim is currently 55 years old and remains in Maryland's Women's Prison in Jessup to this day. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much and next week we'll have an all-new case for you guys to dive into. As interesting as I think this case is and as much as we kind of poked fun at Kim for being stupid, it's

a very, very tragic case. She did a horrible, horrible thing to an innocent man. So our thoughts go out to Steven's poor family who had to deal with this freaking crazy lady. Yeah, and also to Anna for having, you know, having to grow up without her father. Now it is time to get into the shout out. So thank you so much everybody who left us a five-star review on Apple Podcast this week. Thank you so much to Rachel and Atlanta Georgia,

Jerrica and Pennsylvania and Anita in Cleveland, Ohio. In a big thanks going out to Jessica and Boise Idaho, Brooke in More Park, California, and Teresa in Gresham Oregon. Thank you so much to Amanda and Indiana, Brittany and Corona California, and Zarr in Caves Beach, Australia. And last but not least, big thanks going out to Victoria

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Yeah, we really appreciate you guys. We just released a bonus episode on the murder of Kim Wall. I have another great bonus episode coming out this month. It's honestly super crazy. So guys stay tuned for that one. Alright guys, for everybody out there in the world, cheerio and don't be a stranger.