Uncovering Motive and Securing Conviction

Murder mystery dinner shows are often a fun way for amateur sleuths to test their crime busting skill while enjoying a meal with friends. This is the story of a man killed. Just hours after leaving the theater. Despite some good acting. Killer was no match for the skills of real-life forensic scientists. St. Michaels, a small waterfront community on the Maryland shore. Spectacular views of the Miles River and Chesapeake Bay provide a relaxing escape from the hectic pace of daily life. Valentine's Day in 1998, a local resort offered couples the opportunity for a romantic getaway weekend. A chance to unwind, relax, play some golf. and enjoy one another. The weekend also included an audience participation event, a murder mystery dinner theater production. The first hour is generally a cocktail hour, and the actors are emoting during this whole hour and the the uh audience can very readily see who is who's the bad guy, who hates who and why. In the audience that night were Steve and Kim Rico from Laurel, Maryland. Steve was a golf course ground superintendent. Kim a hospital surgical technician. Ironically, the Ricos were seated next to a real life prosecutor and his date, a probation officer. Kim and her husband Steve were sitting there and she jumped right up to said, Hi, my name's Kim and this is Steve. I was like, oh, this is gonna be a good table to sit at. Yeah, she's a friendly person. She was very active in terms of trying to figure out what was going on in the play, uh, talking to uh various of the actors, uh trying to get insights into who might be about to commit the murder that was gonna happen in the play and later on who did it. all accounts the evening was a success. Afterwards, Steve Rico went back to the hotel room, and Kim left the resort briefly to run an errand. When she returned, at 130 in the morning, she saw flames coming from their room. Fighters pulled 35-year-old Steve Rico from the floor of the hotel room. He was in his pajamas. Burn to death. There were empty beer bottles and some cigars found in the hotel room. It appeared that Steve was drinking, reading a Playboy magazine, and smoking a cigar when he fell asleep with the cigar possibly starting the fire. I remember just coming back from a walk with my family and getting the phone call from my sister and physically collapsing into the ground. So um it was very tough. And um when it was an accident still it was just hard. There was too many questions that were unanswered and it just It really was a shock. And this was viewed as a I don't say routine, but it was viewed as a routine smoker's accident. That the smoker fell asleep. A fire started and the smoker died. And that's kind of how the police took it and understood it to be. In addition to his wife, Steve Rico left behind an eight-year-old daughter, Anna. He's a great man. Uh, cared m a lot about his family. Uh most important things in his life were his daughter and his wife, and his job. Fire investigators noticed a melted plastic soda bottle on the table next to Steve's bed. Investigators call this a pointer because it usually points in the direction of the fire. But other clues in the room would point to an entirely different direction. News of Steve Rico's death shocked friends and co-workers who recalled how much Steve was looking forward to the weekend getaway with his wife. Sometimes it's hard to get past thinking right now of just his last moments. But um I try to get past that and a lot of times, especially when my family gets together, we think of the good times still and I remember just him, like I said, he was my big brother. I mean, I remember um dancing with him at my wedding and Excuse me. I'm always telling me that he'd always be there for me. And uh there's been a lot of times that I needed him, so It's been tough. Deputy Fire Marshal Michael Mulligan was assigned to investigate the fire. The physical fire damage to the hotel room was minimal. It was so well insulated that the fire didn't have enough oxygen to spread. One cigar was missing from a new pack near the bed. It appeared that the fire started on the bedroom floor where Steve was lounging at the time of the fire. We eliminated a possible electric uh source of ignition. The the heating and air conditioning units were eliminated, the lightning and uh and There was nothing else at the point of origin. With the most common causes of the fire eliminated, it looked as if a lit cigar might have been the cause. But investigators could find no evidence of the cigar butt or ashes. Dr. David Fowler, the deputy chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland, immediately performed the autopsy. Blood tests revealed that Steve had a normal concentration of carbon monoxide in his system. Extremely unusual for someone who died while breathing the carbon monoxide produced by a fire. The next step was to examine his airway passages for signs of smoke inhalation. You have this layer of mucus which lines the inside of your airway to trap foreign particles of which sort is one. And it gets stuck onto that and it stays there. And we can find that very easily at the time of the autopsy. I found absolutely no sort. Well, now I have two tests which are both telling me exactly the same thing, that he was not breathing at the time of the fire. To see if it was possible for a lit cigar to start a hotel fire, investigators conducted an experiment. We got a pillow and a pillowcase, and we did our own burn test. Went out and got a hold of some backwood cigars. lit the cigars and placed them on the uh pillowcase and then directly on the pillow made a crease in the pillow and we did this repeatedly Usually use bed coverings treated with flame retardant chemicals in order to prevent this very scenario. At no point could we get the uh the pillow, the pillow uh case or the bed spread to burn. Another contradiction. Steve was not known to be a smoker. He didn't smoke. He didn't smoke at all. In fact, at one time during a uh golf banquet, uh a sales meeting, he was offered some very fine cigars by one of the salesmen who were selling some some equipment for long care, and uh he refused and told his friend, I I don't know why people would even smoke those things. But if Steve Rico was dead when the fire started... What killed him? As investigators continued their look into the mysterious hotel fire that killed Steve Rico, accelerant sniffing dogs identified a flammable liquid on the bedroom floor at the foot of the bed. but chemical tests on the debris from the hotel room could not identify the accelerant. Therefore, the findings of the accelerant sniffing dogs would not be admissible in court. None the less, the fire marshal ruled the fire. Arson. There were empty beer bottles in the hotel room, and Kim said Steve was drinking heavily at dinner. The autopsy found no alcohol in his system. Background check revealed Steve had over $400,000 worth of life insurance with his wife Kim as the beneficiary. Interestingly, Kim purchased an additional $250,000 policy on Steve's life shortly before he died. Detectives also learned that Kim Rico was having a sexual affair with a man 10 years younger. And discovered love letters in Kim's personal papers to prove it. Kim Rico denied she was involved in her husband's death. but admitted the couple was having marital problems. Kim said they went to the resort to work on their marriage. But after the dinner theater performance, the two argued over sex. Her story was that uh he wanted to have sex with her that night and she had turned him down. They had an argument and she left the scene because of his frustration and his disappointment with her. Steve stayed behind. According to Kim, he was drinking, reading a Playboy magazine, and smoking a cigar. But investigators discovered evidence that Kim was seeking to end their eight-year-old marriage, not fix it. Kim was an extrovert, Steve a homebody. And Kim told friends and relatives the two were incompatible. She kinda played games with him at the end because she told him she was not happy and she I think she told us that she was considering divorce. And then she ex said that he's gotta work on himself. He's gotta make improvements, he's gotta um do a bunch of things. And he did start doing all those things. because he did want to save the marriage and he admitted, okay, I need to spend more time with my family, I need to, you know, if that's what you know I do love them. And he started working on all those things. And then she killed him. Kimberly's co-worker informed us that Kimberly had come to him. She believed what he believed in a joking manner, that uh Kimberly wanted this co-worker to kill Steven. Still. I got a little cab for you. Oh yeah? What's that? You can kill my husband, Party. worker thought that she was joking, thought that they had just been having normal marital problems. So the co worker told Kimberly, you know, just laughed and said, uh oh just why don't you just put him to sleep with succinyl choline. And he'll go to sleep forever. It may have been an unfortunate joke. Succinylcholine is a drug Kimberly Rico would have had access to as a medical technician. It's used to relax the muscles before placing an intubation tube down a patient's throat. In large doses, it is lethal. Succinylcholine is broken down by human enzymes almost immediately and is therefore untraceable. Kimberly being a medical technician assisted in surgery. And we we knew that, and we learned that succinyl choline is on the cart there, but it's not accounted for as narcotic drugs are required to be accounted for. No traces of succinyl choline. Police contacted laboratories throughout the United States to see if there was a test to find succentylcholine in human tissue. And they found none. Investigators tried to locate the store where Steve purchased the cigars found in the hotel room. Sergeant Joe Gamble visited 26 convenience stores in the vicinity of the Rico's home. In one. He found the same brand of cigars. When the clerk was shown pictures of Steve and Kim Rico, She identified Kim as the one who purchased the cigars and beer. She remembered she came in and bought a package of cigars and beer. And I asked her why did you remember that? And the lady told me that she liked the color of Kimberly's hair. Kimberly has red hair. And she asked Kimberly where it was where she had her hair dyed. And Kimberly got very upset with her and told her this is my natural color. By Kimberly getting upset with the clerk, the clerk, it embedded in her memory, you know, when she saw the picture, she knew and she thought it's strange that this woman was buying a pack of cigars. She actually identified the same cigars. So at that point, I felt that we we had her. The cigars in Steve's hotel room had a price sticker printed with ink that matched the printing ink used by this convenience store, confirming the cigars were purchased here. The state's case was very weak without scientific proof that an accelerant was used or that Steve had been injected with succinylcholine. Yeah. She's married a man that she loved, and then she went about a cold calculating way to kill this man in his prime of life, uh leads me to believe that she's one of the most cold blooded murderers that I've been involved with. Thirty-two year old Kimberly Rico was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and arson in the death of her husband. She pleaded not guilty. With no way to prove successyl choline was in Steve's body and no scientific evidence an accelerant was used to start the fire, prosecutors were forced to use a process of conclusion by exclusion. They had to rule out all other possibilities for how the fire started in an effort to convince the jury that Steve Rico was murdered. This was a healthy young man who was in his mid-30s, worked as a outdoor person, very fit, um, who had died suddenly, unexpectedly. There was absolutely no medical disease process or natural disease process that was identifiable in his death. And that he was in fact not into the And in fact he had died before the fire. And so from my point of view, I could come up with a large list of exclusions. Um Which led me to believe that in fact he had been um poisoned with succinyl choline or some similar type of agent, which we could not trace. Prosecutors believe Kimberly Rico planned her husband's murder long in advance. The evidence? The purchase of the additional $250,000 worth of life insurance, the purchase of the beer and cigars, and her sexual affair with another man. What we're able to hear in court was many of her friends testified because she spoke to several of her friends and told them her plans to kill Mr. Rico. Um some in detail. couple of her friends she told in detail of her plans. Prosecutors believe Kim confiscated a vial of sucinylcholine from the hospital where she worked. After the murder mystery performance, Kim waited for Steve to go to sleep. injected him with a lethal dose of succinyl choline. She then staged the scene to make it look like an accident. She placed empty beer bottles in a trash can and on the nightstand. She moved Steven's body to the floor and placed a Playboy magazine and the cigars nearby. She pulled her husband's t-shirt over his head, used an accelerant identified by the accelerant sniffing dogs, and started the fire. There was no carbon monoxide in Steve's bloodstream or any sign of smoke inhalation. Proof that Steve was dead before the fire started. And there was no alcohol found in his system. Tests would reveal that the cigar was not enough to ignite the flame retardant fibers of the pillowcase alone. Kim left the resort to create an alibi and returned around 130 a.m. and reported the fire to hotel employees. The motive. Kim wanted to get rid of her husband so she would be free to pursue the relationship with her lover. The defense argued that Steven Rico's death could have been caused by the fire, and that his lack of consciousness might have been caused by the accumulation of chemicals he inhaled through his work at the golf course. Jury found Kim Rico guilty of first degree murder and first degree arson. She was sentenced to life in prison. This whole thing now is in the hands of the jury. Without the science, Steven Rico probably would have been buried and And uh we would have all thought this would this was just a horrible, tragic fire death. And and his case probably would have been labeled accidental death and he would have been buried and nobody would have ever known. Just know that his life was valued and um nobody deserves such a thing and he was a very good man and most of all he was a good father. And um he loved his family and we loved him very much and we're very proud of him and I'd give anything to have him back. Since this case went to trial, scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and now in the United States have developed protocols enabling the identification of sucinylcholine even in embalmed tissue. One of the many scientific forensic advances that occur almost daily.