A 52-year-old career thief and mother of six was convicted yesterday of secretly stealing thousands of dollars from her boyfriend and stabbing him to death before his body was found burning along an Anne Arundel County road.
Two weeks before her trial was to begin, Cynthia J. McKay entered a guilty plea to charges of second-degree murder and felony theft, ducking a possible life sentence in a crime that ensnared two of her sons. She now faces a maximum penalty of 30 years.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys involved in the case said piecing together not just the death of Anthony Fertitta, whose body was found ablaze not far from McKay's Millersville townhouse in February 2006, but McKay's past made the case one of the most complicated they had ever handled.
"It was a complex case, and we had a complex defendant," said prosecutor Virginia Miles.
McKay's previous husband died in a Christmas Day fire in 2002, and she pleaded guilty in 2003 to stealing more than $200,000 from a Catholic seminary in Baltimore. With her plea yesterday, she has been convicted a dozen times, spanning more than 20 years and several counties.
Released from prison in July 2005 after stealing from an elderly Delaware woman, McKay moved to Millersville and began dating Fertitta in the fall. The 50-year-old UPS driver and warehouse worker did not know he was dating a convicted con artist, prosecutors said.
Investigators assembled volumes of evidence linking McKay to the killing: Fertitta's blood was found under a bleach-soaked rug in her dining room, and surveillance tapes showed her purchasing gasoline and bleach from local stores. More blood was found in his loaner truck, along with McKay's cell phone and a knife from her kitchen.
But prosecutors said the evidence did not include proof of premeditation, a required component of first-degree murder.
"We believe we got a conviction for exactly what we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt," said prosecutor Kathleen Rogers.
McKay's two youngest sons -- Christopher Haarhoff, 21, and Matthew Haarhoff, 20 -- were also arrested in connection with the crime. Christopher Haarhoff received five years in prison in January after pleading guilty to accessory after the fact charges. He told prosecutors that he helped his mother dispose of the body and that she said she had killed Fertitta because he threatened to go to police after discovering her thefts.
