Steven L. Zirko
Cruise Ship Piano Player To Face Jury
In Murder And Murder For Hire Trial June 7, 2009
If you listen to Cook County prosecutors, they will tell you that Steven L. Zirko, a man who played piano on Florida cruise ships was so angry at the mother of his children, that he tried to get a chiropractor to find a hit man and asked a fellow in his anger management class to kill her.
This reasoning will be argued beginning June 3, 2009 in a jury trial.
Mary Lacey, 38 and her mother Margaret Ballog, 60, were brutally murdered on December 13, 2004 and prosecutors say that a man with anger-management issues, Steven Zirko is the man who committed the heinous crime.
Lacey was shot and stabbed more than 40 times in an attacked in her home in the 2600 block of North Sheffield Avenue in Glenview community of Chicago, Illinois. Lacey, who was on Social Security disability, had moved to the home only four months prior from the Wilmette home she once shared with Zirko to the Glenview residence she rented from a relative.
A week later, only days before Christmas, police did a most unusual act in their investigation. They put up a blockade for two hours and were stopping motorists to question them about what they may have seen or heard the day the mother and daughter were murdered.
It would seem, that they wanted the community to have a visual image that they were taking an active role in a case, that soon would have a very different light shined upon it.
Lacey and Zirko had a long history of domestic violence, according to several complaints and orders of protection Lacey filed during the prior eight years. The couple began living together in June 1995 then were married in a Florida church in 1997, but never got the marriage license. In the eyes of the government, they were cohabitants, not married.
Shortly after Lacey became pregnant and gave birth to the first son, their second son followed a year later. Lacey has two other older children from an earlier marriage.
Court records outline a troubled relationship, one that endangered Lacey, and she sought on numerous occasions to get law enforcement and the courts to help with. In 2002, the couple parted, Lacey had moved her residence three times and had sought help from at least three police agencies and the Cook County Circuit Court in connection with a series of domestic incidents involving Zirko.
In July 25, 2003, Lacey, who by then was living in the Chicago area, sought an order of protection against Zirko after he threatened to beat her face, authorities said.
In December 2003, he plead guilty to a domestic battery charge. A week before pleading guilty, another incident arose in which he sideswiped Lacey's car and threatened to kill her. Lacey's children were in the car with her, Cenar said. Lacey sought another order of protection after that incident. Zilko was arrested.
On December 9, 2003, Lacey received a two-year plenary order of protection against Zirko. That order was to be in effect until December 9, 2005. The order prohibited Zirko from physically abusing, harassing, or interfering with Lacey’s personal liberty. The order also required Zirko to stay away from Lacey.
The order was, pursuant to statute, entered into the Law Enforcement Automated Data System. See 750 ILCS 60/302(a) (West 2002). As a result, police officers, their departments and the villages all had knowledge of Lacey’s order.
The prosecution says when Lacey wouldn't let Zirko see the two boys, largely due to the protection order and the fear for her life, he became enraged and began plotting her death. This is exactly what the police had been told before Lacey's death, a fact that came up in a civil suit against the police department.
Lacey's survivors filed a lawsuit that claimed, was in fact never denied, that the police department had advance notice that Zirko had allegedly requested his chiropractor, Chad Larson, whose office was in Palatine, find a hit man to kill Lacey, and that it took place while an order of protection was in place.
On October 21, 2004, Detectives Bertnik and Tulley of the Palatine police interviewed Zirko. Zirko attended the interview with his attorney. Zirko’s attorney told Bertnik that Zirko would not answer any questions and would not make any statements.
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