The Oregonian | By Zane Sparling | February 01, 2023
A retired veterinarian accused of obsessively stalking the husband of a woman with whom he had an affair was arrested Tuesday on charges of killing the man.
Steven N. Milner, 55, was already facing charges for allegedly violating a stalking order to keep away from Kenneth C. Fandrich when Fandrich was found dead last Friday in his car at Intel’s Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro, according to police and court records.
Fandrich, 56, worked as a contractor for Intel, according to police. The cause of death was listed as blunt compression trauma to the neck.
“We told the court this is a dangerous man,” said Michael Fuller, who represented Fandrich in a $245,000 civil lawsuit accusing the retired veterinarian of waging a “psychotic” campaign of harassment.
In a timeline of the alleged five-year stalking campaign provided by his attorney, Fandrich said Milner had planted “five or six” tracking devices beneath his vehicles, left a condom in a car under Fandrich’s wife’s work gloves, attempted to have Fandrich arrested for drunken driving and sent him threatening text messages and letters, including a bogus one using his union’s letterhead.
“He will not stop!” Fandrich wrote in the log. “Stating he will cut me up into tiny pieces and it will take a long time.”
In an April 2 police report provided by Fuller, Hillsboro officer Joseph Edwards wrote that he observed Milner closely tailing Fandrich in his car and pulled both drivers over. The officer said he warned Milner that he was “very close to going to jail for stalking.”
Fandrich, of Oregon City, told the officer that he and his wife had previously sought a stalking order against Milner but dropped it because Milner flexed his wealth as a veterinary surgeon and threatened to “‘take them’ for all they had financially” in court, according to the police report.
Milner, meanwhile, claimed he had been friends with Fandrich’s wife for 20 years and suggested Fandrich was the one posing a threat to her, Edwards’ report says.
“It seemed like Milner was not receptive to what I was saying and felt like he was the only person ‘willing’ to protect Fandrich’s wife,” the officer wrote.
Milner was arrested last August on charges of violating a restraining order to stay away from Fandrich and unlawful use of a GPS device in Clackamas County and released later that day, court records show. It’s not clear when the stalking order was granted.
Intel spokesperson Elly Akopyan said the chipmaker is fully cooperating with the investigation.
Milner, also of Oregon City, is being held without bail at the Washington County Jail on charges including second-degree murder. Hillsboro police Officer Zoe Anderson declined to comment on the stalking allegations beyond noting they had a “history of problematic interactions.”
