Glenview double murder: Jury told of careful, smart killer

Trial gets under way in 2004 deaths

By Jeff Long

Tribune reporter

June 9, 2009

Steven Zirko was careful not to leave behind a gun, knife or fingerprints when he killed his ex-girlfriend and her mother in 2004, prosecutors said Monday, but he wasn't meticulous enough to cover all his tracks.

During the first day of testimony in a murder trial delayed four years by legal wrangling, prosecutors painted contrasting images of a cautious killer, yet one brazen enough to try to solicit a hit man.

"It was planned," Cook County Assistant State's Atty. Robert Heilingoetter said of the slayings. "Someone was cautious. Someone was smart. Someone knew not to leave obvious clues at the scene of this crime."

Zirko, 47, told police he was home sick at his parents' Chicago house on Dec. 13, 2004, when the bodies of his girlfriend, Mary Lacey, 38, and her mother, Margaret Ballog, 60, were found in the Glenview home Lacey had moved into just two months earlier. Lacey was shot and stabbed more than 40 times while her two youngest children were at school, police said. Her mother was shot repeatedly, an autopsy showed.

Heilingoetter told jurors evidence will show Zirko had been at his new girlfriend's home and later made cell phone calls traced to locations around the Chicago area.

Defense lawyer Barry Spector said Zirko talks tough but isn't a killer.

"He's full of hot air," Spector said during his opening statement.

No physical evidence ties Zirko to the crime scene, he said.

Zirko, a former cruise-line piano player who had lost his job before the murders, has remained in Cook County Jail without bail. He faces six counts of first-degree murder and two counts of home invasion, as well as charges of solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit murder for hire.

Heilingoetter said Zirko tried to recruit people he met during court-ordered domestic counseling to find him a gun, or someone to intimidate his wife. Later, he offered $50,000 to have her killed, the prosecutor said. None of the people Zirko approached agreed, and prosecutors contend Zirko did the job himself.

jjlong@tribune.com

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