'Till Death Do Us Part: Love, Marriage, and the Mind of the Killer Spouse (13 page)

On February 14, 1998, Kimberly and her husband Stephen arrived at the Harbourtowne resort in eastern Maryland for a Valentine’s weekend getaway. They had been married for nine years but, like many couples, had drifted apart—in fact Kimberly, thirty-two, wanted a divorce. Her husband, she said, had become distant and cold, and whatever passion they once had between them had long vanished. But Stephen, thirty-five, wanted a second chance and suggested a romantic weekend away, which he believed would revive long-lost feelings. Kimberly agreed, and after arriving to a champagne greeting at the deluxe resort they later enjoyed a dinner theater presentation of a murder mystery called
The Bride Who Cried.

Following dinner they returned to their cottage around 10:30
P.M.
., but two hours later Kimberly calmly walked into the lobby to tell the clerk that her room was on fire. Several employees ran to the cottage, which was filled with smoke. Inside was Stephen, lying in his pajamas between the twin beds, his upper torso and head badly charred. He was dead.

Kimberly told state police investigators that following dinner, Stephen, who had already drunk a bottle of champagne, picked up four bottles of beer before they returned to their cottage. They watched a movie together but then argued when Stephen pressed her for sex. Kimberly said, as part of their plan to resolve their differences, they had vowed not to be intimate during their “getting reacquainted” weekend. But Stephen had sought intimacy anyway, and Kimberly took the car keys and left the cottage, driving to visit their best friends, who lived fifteen minutes away. Kimberly said she couldn’t find the house, got lost, and drove around for two hours before returning to the cottage, only to find it on fire and filled with smoke.

The subsequent autopsy on Stephen’s body produced several unsettling results, most important the actual cause of his death. Despite the smoke and fire, there was no carbon monoxide in his lungs, which ruled out smoke inhalation. The toxicology report also indicated that his blood-alcohol level was 0.0, which meant he hadn’t had a drink that night. It appeared that Stephen was already dead before the fire started. He had been poisoned, most likely by some yet-to-be-determined drug.

All eyes turned toward Kimberly.

The couple had met in State College, Pennsylvania, where Stephen was a student at Penn State University and Kimberly worked as a waitress. Stephen was instantly smitten, and following an intense courtship they married in March 1989. They eventually settled in Laurel, Maryland, where Stephen worked as a golf course superintendent and Kimberly became a certified surgical technologist, assisting with operations. One of her responsibilities was removing and disposing of all unused drugs following an operation.

The couple had a child, but several years into the marriage investigators learned that Kimberly became restless, complaining to friends that her husband was uncommunicative and unemotional. Her growing discontent led to a heated affair with a twenty-three-year-old man, the cousin of one of her friends. The affair began in December 1997, just two months before Stephen died. Prior to leaving for the weekend getaway with her husband, Kimberly left her boyfriend a Valentine’s package and card proclaiming her love.

In the weeks before the deadly trip, Kimberly had made several shocking admissions, telling one friend she was involved with another man and telling others that she wished her husband were dead. When friends suggested divorce as a solution, Kimberly said Stephen would be so emotionally distraught he’d probably kill himself, negating any chance for her to inherit his $450,000 life insurance policy. At the time her friends thought the talk about killing her husband was a joke, and that she was simply blowing off steam. But following Stephen’s death, investigators learned that Kimberly’s plan had deep roots, so deep that one friend testified that Kimberly claimed she could get a drug that would paralyze her husband and stop his breathing, during which time she’d set fire to the room, ostensibly to show that Stephen died from smoke inhalation.

Additionally, a coworker at Holy Cross Hospital told investigators how Kimberly surprised him one day with a request: She wanted him to kill her husband. He, too, like the others, thought it was a joke, until Kimberly offered him $50,000. The friend declined. Kimberly told him to “forget about it” and to keep their conversation a secret. At that point Kimberly decided to take matters into her own hands.

Prosecutors said that upon Kimberly and Stephen’s return to their cottage following the dinner theater Kimberly injected her husband with succinylcholine, a drug found only in operating rooms, which causes instant paralysis and, in larger doses, death. Succinylcholine also wears off after just a few minutes and is virtually untraceable.

Kimberly, intending to paralyze her husband and see to his death via smoke inhalation, instead injected him with a far greater dosage, which killed him almost immediately. She then placed his six-foot-three, 245-pound body on the floor between the twin beds, resting his head on two pillows, which she set on fire. She left behind a cigar to give the impression that Stephen had been smoking in bed. Kimberly left the room, and then returned, ignoring neighboring cottages to run across the road to the front desk, where she coolly told employees there that her cottage was on fire. There was no emotion in her voice then or after they pulled her badly burned and dead husband out of the room. Kimberly’s only concern over the next week was ensuring that Stephen was cremated.

With no blood alcohol level, investigators knew Stephen had not drunk that night. And he didn’t smoke. Investigators tracked the package of cigars to the store where it was purchased, and discovered that Kimberly had bought it.

Three months after Stephen’s death, Kimberly was charged with his murder. She was later tried, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison.

* * * * *

K
ILLING
for money, power, and material gain has been happening since the beginning of time, and women are certainly among such killers. To deny that women kill for money is not true. The reality is that people do not always make the wisest decisions when it comes to greed and taking care of themselves. The Black Widow and the Profit Killer have been studied in depth by researchers. What shocks the public about these killers is that they seem to defy our image of women as being naturally wired to be “all good” mothers and nurturing life partners. These women are also thought to be some of the most intelligent, imaginative, and vigilant killers when it comes to domestic homicide. In fact, many such crimes go undetected because they are so cleverly executed. These lady killers are known to use a variety of methods to murder and tend to be dispassionate about the homicides they commit.

According to the book
Female Crime and Delinquency,
by Coramae Richey Mann, women have always been viewed as psychologically different from men. In a classic study conducted by Cesare Lombroso and William Ferrero, females were observed as encompassing “all the criminal qualities of the male plus all the worst characteristics of women, namely cunning, spite, and deceitfulness.” Some of these earlier authors even believed that women may be more cruel, vengeful, cold, and ferocious than men.

Professor Otto Pollack refers to a few reasons he thinks that women can get away with crimes more easily than their male counterparts. He believes this is due to underreporting, underdetection, and the paternalism of the police and the court system. Pollack’s views take on a more suspicious tone when he suggests that female criminality is masked and that women, especially criminal women, are deceitful by nature. He believes that their deceitful and manipulative ways are encouraged by their ability to fake orgasms, feign sexual pleasure, and pretend to desire a man. Concealment of their monthly menses, in his estimation, also indicates women’s inherent ability to be secretive, which makes them difficult to trust. Since the 1970s there has been an increasing and disturbing rise of violent crimes committed by women, and this rise may suggest something has drastically changed in our society.

Historically women have always been viewed as either good or bad, and such views seemed to lack any middle ground. Sometimes this dichotomy has been understood in terms of the Madonna/whore duality, or attitudes that stem from Judeo-Christian ideology or pagan mythology. It may also be based on the way men are affected by a woman’s sexuality. The Madonna aspect of a woman refers to her ability to produce children and maintain the family unit. The whore side of the duality suggests that a woman’s power to excite a man’s passions, thus interfering with his ability to control himself, makes her very dangerous.

In modern society women are frequently viewed as victims when a homicide occurs within the context of an intimate or marital relationship. American culture also has a tendency to view a woman as weak compared to the domineering, all-powerful, and overcontrolling man. Women have even enjoyed more lenient sentencing because of the idea that they are less malevolent than men and hence are more prone to be dominated by them. Women are still considered more likely to feel remorse for their crimes than are their male equivalents. Although this may be so in some cases, in others, such as that of Kimberly Hricko, it could not be further from the truth.

Kimberly was as dispassionate as they come. While not a stereotypical Black Widow, her lack of remorse after carefully carrying out the murder of her husband clearly makes her a Profit Killer. After all, she felt bored by him. Shouldn’t a passionless marriage be grounds for murder anyway? Kimberly had tried to talk with friends about her restlessness and her miserable marriage, but they never really had any good recommendations for her. They would tell her to divorce her husband. Divorce? Then how would she get all the money from his insurance plan? Kimberly felt entitled to get what she wanted. The problem is, she did not have the idea that she should have to pay the consequences of the “wrong” choices she had made. If she got divorced, she would not get the same amount of money as she would if her husband were dead. She was not prepared to take responsibility for her choices, hence she felt entitled to get everything she wanted, even if it meant she had to commit murder. She needed to erase who she did not want in her life so she could survive and thrive.

Kimberly experienced her husband as stopping her from having the life she wanted and was meant to have. He was simply in the way. Her affair confirmed how she was supposed to feel in a relationship. Her new lover made her feel sexy. This only supported her conviction that her husband had only one place in her life, in the ground six feet under and away from her. Only when her husband was dead could she enjoy the big fat insurance check that was meant to be hers. If she plotted things correctly, she could have her freedom and a nice amount of money to boot.

She just knew it, but first her husband had to die.

6

The Narcissistic Killer

A
CCORDING
to Greek myth, Narcissus was a boy who fell madly in love with his reflection in the surface of a pond. Because of his intense self-love he rejected the advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment for callously rejecting Echo he was cursed by the gods to endlessly pine for himself even as he fell deeper in love with his own unobtainable image. Narcissus longed for this unattainable spirit until he could stand it no more. He ultimately jumped into the water and drowned. The ill-fated Narcissus came to symbolize the unfortunate plight of those addicted to a malevolent self-love. This condition is believed to cause a narcissistic personality disorder, and in many cases irreversible self-destruction.

The person who suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder does not really love himself but only seems to. What he really loves is the reflection of himself or the image he projects. Loving the reflection, as opposed to the true or core self, poses several problems. When someone has this type of personality disorder, he overly depends on the availability of his reflection in order to feel self-love and self-acceptance. Because there is no realistic yardstick to judge his image it is impossible to tell whether it is accurate or not.

Instead of loving themselves, in reality narcissists only love other people’s impressions of them. They crave admiration and are junkies for positive feedback from others. It is through the reaction of others that the narcissist experiences himself. When narcissists do not get the desired reaction, it becomes virtually impossible for them to feel whole or complete, equivalent to feeling that without a mirror to reflect oneself, there is no self. The healthy individual knows that he exists, whether a mirror is there to reflect his image or not.

Although there is a genetic component to this type of personality disorder, environment also plays a significant role. The person with this disorder feels disappointed, hurt, and failed by his/her original caretakers. Instead of relying on others to love him/her, afflicted individuals decide loving themselves is the best way to feel love without being neglected or hurt. Many narcissists decide early on that the only reliable person is himself. Relationships are painful for the narcissist, which, as previously discussed, makes intimacy virtually unachievable.

Every personality has a narcissistic element. It is the part of our psyche that loves ourselves unconditionally. If it stays in check, this kind of self-love can actually be quite healthy and help us to survive. But if narcissism becomes pathological, it can be potentially lethal for both the narcissist and those around him.

Individuals who suffer from a narcissistic personality disorder tend to regard and treat other people as objects to be exploited. People are just there to feed their ego and provide them with a narcissistic supply otherwise known as constant adulation. Narcissists believe themselves entitled to “special” treatment because of their grandiose fantasies about themselves. This type of personality is not self-aware, and emotions and thoughts are greatly distorted as a result.