Baltimore Woman Given Life in Prison for 2006 Dentist Murder

Author: Y. Peter Kang
Posted: February 7th, 2012
Filed Under: BLOG

A Baltimore woman admitted in court yesterday that she arranged to have her employer killed in order to cover up her theft of more than $17,000, according to news reports.

Shontay Joyner Hickman, 36, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Dr. Albert Woonho Ro, who was from a family well-known in the local Korean American community. Hickman was sentenced to life in prison.

Co-defendant Dante Jeter will be tried in May on the same charges. Jeter, 24, was convicted of first-degree murder for an unrelated murder and is currently serving a 60-year sentence.

Hickman apologized to members of the Ro family in the courtroom on Monday. “I have destroyed a lot, his family and mine,” she said, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Ro’s relatives told the court his death has changed their lives forever.

“Any time one of us will pick up the phone, fear will overwhelm us,” said James Ro, who stood by his brother, Thomas, and spoke of the pain of losing their father, who was 51. His father was not alive to see him marry, and he said every occasion and holiday is marked by grief. He cannot even look at family photo albums, he said.

In a statement read in court, Ro’s brother, Michael, wrote that he “had to give up my medical practice for fear of suffering the same fate.” Their bond was as brothers, but also as friends, he wrote.

“No one deserves to experience what we have experienced,” said Annie Kim, whose mother, Susan, was married to Ro for three years.

She said she had never seen such a loving relationship as theirs, and that Ro’s life revolved around family, church and work. In the aftermath of her husband’s death, Susan Ro lost her home and business, went bankrupt, moved in with a friend and remains depressed, her daughter said.

“She really lost everything,” Kim said.

For years, the murder of the Glen Burnie, Md., dentist went unsolved after police found his badly beaten body with 39 stab wounds and every face in his bone broken, according to the Baltimore Sun.

The Capital Gazette reported that a break in the investigation occurred in 2010 when a fingerprint found on a box of toothbrushes led police to Jeter, who was in jail in Baltimore awaiting trial for an unrelated 2008 murder.

Shortly before the killing, Ro was informed of discrepancies in his billing files. A week before his death, Ro hired a new receptionist, Heather Murphy, to look into the situation and fix any problems. After Ro’s death, detectives determined that Hickman stole 28 checks totaling $17,660 and deposited them into her Bank of America account, prosecutors said.

Ro emigrated from South Korea with his parents in 1970. He graduated from Washington College and received his dental degree from the University of Maryland in 1982, according to a 2006 Baltimore Sun article.

He received his Maryland dental license in 1984, according to the Maryland State Board of Dental Examiners. He served as a captain in the Air Force for about three years. During a yearlong tour in South Korea, he became reacquainted with members of his extended family who still lived in that country, his brother said. After leaving the military, he opened a general practice in Lutherville. In 1986, he opened a second office in Glen Burnie.