A retired Oregon veterinarian will serve the remainder of his life in prison for killing his ex-lover’s husband, whom he pursued and attacked before strangling him in the parking lot of his place of employment and arranging his body in his own car to make it appear as though he passed away naturally.
Prosecutors said in a press release that Steven Neil Milner, 58, was informed of his fate on Wednesday in the death of Kenneth Fandrich, 56. In January, he was convicted on seven counts of breaking a court-issued stalking protection order, second-degree murder, and stalking.
According to investigators, the murder started when the defendant, a certified veterinarian in Oregon City, became intimately involved with Fandrich’s wife, a longstanding employee.
After Fandrich found out about the romance, tensions increased, and his wife broke off her marriage to Milner. At that point, according to the prosecution, the defendant developed an obsession with her and began to stalk both her and Fandrich.
After years of Milner’s harassment, the couple’s case had gotten worse by the spring of 2022, when the court issued a stalking protective order.
According to Willamette Week, it grew so severe that even Fandrich said Milner would kill him.
According to police records cited by the newspaper, Fandrich’s wife informed Hillsboro police that “he’s a psychopath.” “He promised to tear me to pieces, and he’ll make sure it takes days to do it.”
Prosecutors claimed that Milner persisted in his stalking in spite of the protective order. He fitted the couple’s cars with GPS trackers. He entered their property covertly. He accompanied Fandrich more than a dozen times to his residence and his place of employment, the Hillsboro campus of Intel Corp.
He went to the Intel campus parking garage in December 2022 and sprayed security cameras to block them from displaying the spots where Fandrich typically parked. In order to surreptitiously follow Fandrich, he observed his victim’s routines as he went to and from work and even purchased cars under fictitious names, according to officials.
At the start of Fandrich’s work shift on January 27, 2023, Milner walked to the Intel parking structure and waited until his time was complete. When the victim got back to his car, Milner, wearing a hard hat, dark glasses, and a construction outfit, came up behind Fandrich, placed him in a chokehold, and strangled him.
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The defendant staged the victim’s body in his car after the murder and drove off. Later, police discovered Fandrich’s body. He had sustained injuries to his spine and neck. Days later, Milner was taken into custody.
The jury rejected Milner’s defense of self-defense throughout the trial, claiming the victim had attacked him.
Milner, the veterinarian, was popular. According to one pet owner, “everyone liked him.” According to reports, he kept a box of tissues in his office and would cry with the distraught owners of the dogs and cats he put to sleep.
Another pet owner referred to Milner as a “Jekyll and Hyde” after learning of the murder.
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Fandrich was known for being an outdoor enthusiast. According to his obituary, he relocated to Alaska to pursue commercial fishing on the Bering Sea after graduating from high school. There, he met and married his sweetheart and founded an underwater welding business.
After they relocated to Oregon, he launched a second company, joined the local union, and began “building and forging a life time of lasting friendships.”
