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“All you had to do was stop,” said Tanya Fandrich, the widow of Kenny Fandrich, in a victim impact statement she delivered in Washington County Circuit Court during the Feb. 18 sentencing of her husband’s killer, former Oregon City veterinarian Steven Milner.
Nearly two years ago, WW recounted how Milner stalked Kenny Fandrich for four years after Tanya ended an affair with the town vet (“The Good Doctor,” May 31, 2023). The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office repeatedly dismissed the Fandrichs’ concerns, even after Milner planted a GPS tracking device under Tanya’s car.
On Jan. 27, 2023, Milner broke Kenny Fandrich’s neck in a parking garage at Intel, where Fandrich worked as a pipefitter. In recent weeks, he was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
In her 20-minute statement, first reported by The Oregonian, Tanya Fandrich called Milner “a monster” and blamed sheriff’s deputies for ignoring her and Kenny’s pleas. “The truth is, justice failed us,” she said. “From the start, we never stood a chance.”
Read Tanya Fandrich’s full statement below:
For years, you tormented Kenny and me, leaving us as your victims. But the pain that you have caused extends far beyond us. What you have done and what you have become—a killer and a cruel individual—have shattered countless innocent lives.
My heart breaks for your mom and dad. They didn’t deserve to hear the awful things you wrote about them. And what about your children? How could you betray them like this? Everyone who ever cared for you has been scarred forever by your selfishness and your cruelty. You have dreadfully failed at being a decent human being. All you had to do was stop.
In the beginning when Kenny and I started getting hate mail coming to our home, I confided in you because I believed you to be a friend. Friends don’t do the things that you have. You planted the very idea that coworkers were behind this flood of hatred. You cultivated that false storyline. You made me question my sanity. It was all too easy because I spoke the truth of what was really happening, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I sounded insane. But deep down, I knew it was real.
When I became suspicious that it was you behind these bizarre attacks, you started to lose control over me. It appeared to panic you, which prompted you to start confessing all of the hideous things that you had previously done to Kenny. In an attempt to get a response from me, you did those things all on your own. All you had to do was stop.
You expected me to be the fixer in your life. You would plead with me that you just wanted to be friends, but what you really wanted was access to groom me. What you have done is far from what friends do for each other. You hurt and harassed the person I love, and in doing so, you hurt me as well. You were never a true friend, just a wolf in sheep’s clothing. All you had to do was stop.
When I walked away from my job of nearly 20 years, despite your persistent attempt to convince me I belong there, given the sacrifices I made to help the clinic thrive, I began to see things more clearly. The further I distanced myself from you, Kenny, and I didn’t realize it at the time, as your grip on loosened, your true nature became even more apparent. The less control you had over us, the more dangerous you became. All you had to do was stop.
You were the worst kind of evil, pretending to be a friend when instead you were a manipulative stalker and a premeditated murderer. You said that Kenny was trying to convince me that you were a calculated predator, but he did not need to convince me. Your actions did that. You proved it with every manipulation and every attack. Now it is me standing here in front of you, and hear me clearly when I say: You are a vengeful, deceptive, manipulating, self-serving, aggressive, hateful, lying predator. All you had to do was stop.
Without my knowledge, you contacted my friends, my family, even my neighbors, in a calculated attempt to manipulate and insert yourself back into my life. You even had your sister call to talk about domestic violence, all while you were the one trying to convince others that I was being abused. When I told her my biggest issue in my marriage was not my husband, but rather your constant interference into our lives, she immediately apologized and confessed that she had suspected this all along. I never heard from her again. All you had to do was stop.
I lived with an alcoholic, but not a wife beater. There is a significant difference. My husband struggled with alcoholism and yes, we fought, but your defense team took that vulnerability and his disease, a disease of medical standards, and twisted it to assassinate Kenny’s character and discredit the truth of our lives and our marriage. Was the murder of my husband not enough? Your lawyers paraded a string of lies in this very courtroom as if they could erase the love Kenny and I shared. I love Kenny. Kenny loved me. We weren’t perfect, but there was no shortage of love, commitment, and partnership between us. And you couldn’t stand that. You became the root of our problems. I feared you, not Kenny. You’re continued, relentless, intrusive interference in our lives drove Kenny to drink more. When he drank, he would blame me for your interfering in our lives as if I had any control over you. He drank because of you. We fought because of you. Kenny is dead because of you. This is all because of you. All you had to do was stop.
You were the reason why we argued. He blamed me for your intruding in our lives. I never told you that you were the source of our arguments because that information would’ve encouraged you to continue harmful tactics, making our lives even more difficult. I believe that if you’d known that the little things you were doing actually caused us marital problems, it would’ve only encouraged you. It is for this reason and many others, I did not want to have anything to do with you. It was never me running to you to share the details of my marriage. You presumed to know what our lies were like. All you had to do was stop.
I will never believe that you thought my life was in danger. This is a lie based on deception. You needed a defense for the savage and brutal way you killed Kenny. The truth is you lost all control, not just of your life, but of yourself. This made up version of Kenny coming after you was an absurd and desperate fabrication of the truth, and the jury clearly recognized your deceitfulness. I have witnessed your insatiable need to be seen as a hero, which you clearly are not. You are a weak, self-centered man with a hero’s complex that lacks self-control and honesty. You did not have a defense, so you made one up. No one believes you. I doubt that even the attorneys you paid to defend you believed you. They could not, nor did they even try to deny what you have done. Their only defense strategy was to persecute Kenny and me. All you had to do was stop.
Kenny was never the aggressor in this situation. He never stopped you. He never put trackers on your cars, never called you pretending to be someone else, never attempted to lure you from the safety of your home, never trespassed onto your property, never planted condoms in your car, never sent you hate mail, never called your friends and family behind your back, never tried to get you arrested for driving, never followed you to work, never put plastic bags in your gas tank, never hired a prostitute or a private investigator to get dirt on you. That was you being the aggressor, tormenting us. Somehow you knew things that were going on in our lives that no one else would know unless they were spying on us. That was you hunting us. All you had to do was stop.
During the last couple of years, we came to realize that you were deliberately and aggressively trying to cause us marital discord and we banded together. This caused you to lose even more control of your life. Everything about you is based on the level of control you hold over a situation and a person you had already lost control over your ex-wives, your clinic, your kids control over me, even of yourself. When Kenny and I started to prevail, it caused you to lose even more control. You could not control yourself. You knew you were losing control over your very own life, and you blamed Kenny. Another narcissistic characteristic: always blaming others. Nothing is ever your fault. You could not control your deep-rooted ever-growing hatred for Kenny. All you had to do was stop.
You and your defense team created a storyline to make yourself look like the good guy, the hero. That is the very definition of a narcissist: someone who views themselves as a hero or a victim instead of the villain that they are. The truth is, during the periods of time when you left us alone, Kenny drank less. We fought less. He went to rehab and AA meetings. He was working on himself for us. Because of your assumptions, you planned and executed Kenny’s senseless murder. You were wrong. The only one we needed saving from was you. All you had to do was stop.
You manipulated us with lies, coercion and deception. You’re calculated, cunning and vengeful. And during this trial, you attempted to manipulate the jury and the judge using a meek, confused persona, asking for questions to be rephrased or repeated. I used to pity you when you acted like that. You played me for a fool, made me feel stupid and manipulated me. But now I see you for what you truly are: a monster. All you had to do was stop.
My husband was murdered, and yet it was Kenny and I that were persecuted throughout this trial. Your defense’s closing arguments should have been focused on discrediting the overwhelming evidence against you deliberately carrying out a premeditated murder. Instead, the focus was to attack Kenny and me in an attempt to discredit us and, sadly, to further victimize the victims. I believe the people in this courtroom saw your true colors. No matter how you imagined our lives to be, you had no right to end Kenny’s life or to ruin mine. Under no circumstances did you have the right to track us, to spy on us, to insert yourself into our lives and, above all, no right to viciously attack and kill Kenny. All you had to do was stop.
I plan to work on strengthening our stalking orders. I have ideas so that stalking orders are taken more seriously, but also more importantly, that they’re made more effective. A simple piece of paper titled “stalking order” is ineffective and does absolutely nothing to protect someone who is truly being stalked. The officer that stayed with me the night of Kenny’s death told me that stalking orders make things worse by giving the victim a false sense of safety, while in turn aggravating the stalker. He continued to say it just paints a larger target on the victim’s back. Stalkers should be made to wear ankle monitors that it immediately alerts the victim’s cell phone and the police department when the proximity has been breached. This would provide real time data and allow immediate intervention. That is what a stalking protective order should be: something that actually protects the victim, not a worthless piece of paper. All you had to do was stop.
People keep claiming that justice has been served, but don’t confuse a guilty verdict for true justice. We wouldn’t be here today if justice had been carried out when Kenny and I reported the tracking devices, the stalking, the harassment, and you following Kenny. We repeatedly reported you to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office. The truth is justice failed us. This so-called “justice” allowed a predator to remain free, continuing to torment us for years. Yet no one is addressing how the system failed to take us seriously, failed to protect us even after we had a protective order in place. All you had to do was stop.
Clackamas County law enforcement should be ashamed of how they dismissed our concerns every time we reached out about your unwanted actions. Just because you had a personal connection with several officials or provided care for their pets, it seemed to give you an unfair advantage. They treated us as if we were the ones instigating your harassment. You had a presence in the community that we didn’t, and it was clear that you were protected. Your pal Deputy Steve Wilcock would often spend long hours in your office casually visiting. Ironically, it was Deputy Wilcock who served you our restraining order in August 2019. From the start, we never stood a chance. Clackamas County’s bias made us the underdogs. Thankfully, there were still people with integrity and common sense in the Washington County law enforcement who finally took our situation seriously.
Kenny’s death was entirely avoidable. You assumed to understand what was happening in our lives and you were wrong. All you had to do was stop. Everyone told you to stop: Your therapist, your friends, your family law officials, judges, my friends, my family, your own hired private detective. And above all, I told you, repeatedly. Every single one of us urged you to stop. Not one person in this entire world has encouraged you. Because you couldn’t or simply chose not to, the jury has made the choice for you. All you had to do was stop.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to Judge Boucher, the DAs John and Hailey, the detectives Devin and Stephanie, the victim’s advocates, Santita and Minerva, the jury, my family and friends, and everyone who worked tirelessly behind the scenes from this nightmare’s beginning to this very day of sentencing. I thank you wholeheartedly for your dedication, your commitment, and your hard work and, finally, for making him stop.
The morning of January 27th, 2023, Kenny set his cologne on his bedside dresser for the last time. I leave it sit there where he last placed it. Each time I enter our room, I can smell him. He is with me. Even in death, Kenny lives on, because he is woven into the fabric of who I am. I will carry him in my heart for all of time. You may have taken him from this world, but you will never succeed in taking him from me. All you had to do was stop.
Since you have given us a life sentence without Kenny, I ask and I pray that the judge gives you the maximum allowable sentence. For you do not deserve to ever have an ounce of hope or freedom in your life ever again.