John Jefferson
Inset: Steven Neil Milner (Washington County District Attorney’s Office). Background: The parking structure where Milner’s victim, Kenneth Fandrich, was killed (KOIN).
A retired veterinarian in Oregon will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing his ex-lover’s husband, who he stalked and ambushed, strangling him in his workplace parking lot before staging the body in his own vehicle to make it look like he died of natural causes.
Steven Neil Milner, 58, learned his fate on Wednesday in the death of Kenneth Fandrich, 56, prosecutors announced in a press release. He was found guilty in January of second-degree murder, stalking, and seven counts of violating a court’s stalking protective order.
The events leading to the murder began after the defendant, a licensed veterinarian in Oregon City, developed an intimate relationship with a longtime employee — Fandrich’s wife, officials said.
Tensions flared after Fandrich learned of the affair, and Fandrich’s wife ended her relationship with Milner. Prosecutors said that’s when the defendant became obsessed with her and started stalking her and Fandrich. The situation had worsened by the spring of 2022, when the couple was granted a stalking protective order from the court after years of harassment from Milner.
It got so bad that even Fandrich predicted Milner would kill him, Willamette Week reported.
“He’s a psychopath,” Fandrich’s wife told Hillsboro police, the newspaper reported, citing police records. “He told me he’s going to chop me into a million pieces — and make sure it takes days to do it.”
Despite the protective order, Milner continued his stalking, prosecutors said. He attached GPS trackers to the couple’s vehicles. He sneaked onto their property. He followed Fandrich to his home and his workplace — an Intel Corp. campus in Hillsboro — more than a dozen times.
In December 2022, he went to the Intel campus parking structure and spray-painted security cameras to prevent them from showing areas where Fandrich usually parked. He watched his victim’s patterns as he came and went from work, even buying cars under false names to secretly tail Fandrich, officials said.
On Jan. 27, 2023, Milner went to the Intel parking structure at the beginning of Fandrich’s work shift and waited until his shift was over. When the victim returned to his car, Milner, in a construction uniform, hard hat and dark glasses, approached Fandrich from behind, put him in a chokehold and strangled him.
After the killing, the defendant staged the victim’s body in his vehicle and left. Police found Fandrich’s body later. He had suffered an injury to his neck and spine. Milner was arrested days later.
At trial, Milner claimed self-defense, saying the victim attacked him, but the jury didn’t buy it.
Milner was a well-liked veterinarian. “Everybody liked him,” one pet owner said. He reportedly kept a box of tissues in his office and would weep with grieving owners whose cats and dogs he euthanized.
After hearing about the murder, another pet owner described Milner as a “Jekyll and Hyde.”
Fandrich was remembered as an outdoorsman. His obituary said that after graduating high school, he moved to Alaska to fish commercially on the Bering Sea. He started an underwater welding company there and met and married his soulmate.
They moved to Oregon, where he started another business before joining the local union and “building and forging a life time of lasting friendships.”
“Kenny enjoyed being an accomplished outdoorsman,” the obituary said. “He was a master of hunting, fishing, snow machining, four wheeling, skiing, and snowboarding, working on his property and home, making fishing lures (which his nieces referred to as ‘man jewelry’).”
“Above all, he most enjoyed sitting in front of the fire or in his beautifully landscaped backyard with his friends, family, and fur babies,” the obituary added. “He was kind, compassionate, and had a huge heart. He would be the first to lend a helping hand, whether he knew you or not. He felt blessed to be able to help rescue fur babies and was known to have as many as six dogs at one time!”
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