Steven Howard Oken was born on January 22, 1962, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was adopted by a Jewish family and grew up in a middle-class household. He attended Randallstown High School, graduating in 1980.

Despite his seemingly normal upbringing, Oken struggled with substance abuse from an early age. He frequently stole drugs from his adoptive father’s pharmacy and had a history of heavy alcohol consumption.

Between November 1 and November 16, 1987, Steven Oken committed a series of violent rapes and murders in Maryland and Maine, claiming the lives of three women.

On November 1, 1987, Oken attacked 20-year-old Dawn Marie Garvin in her White Marsh, Maryland, apartment. He brutally raped her before shooting her twice in the head at close range. Her father discovered her naked body, with a condiment bottle inserted into her vagina, and blood covering her face. The autopsy confirmed that the gunshot wounds caused her death.

Less than two weeks later, Oken targeted his own sister-in-law, 43-year-old Patricia Hirt. He sexually assaulted and murdered her inside his White Marsh townhouse. After the killing, he discarded her body along White Marsh Boulevard and fled the state.

Oken escaped to Kittery, Maine, where, on November 16, 1987, he attacked 25-year-old Lori Ward, a desk clerk at the motel where he was staying. He sexually assaulted and murdered her before being arrested the next day, on November 17, 1987.

Oken was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in Maine for Ward’s murder. He was then extradited to Maryland, where he was tried separately for the other two murders. In 1991, he was convicted and sentenced to death for Garvin’s murder. He later pleaded guilty to Hirt’s murder and received a life sentence.

After 17 years on death row, Steven Oken was executed by lethal injection on June 17, 2004, at 9:18 p.m. at the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore. His last meal was the standard prison meal for the day: a chicken patty with potatoes and gravy, green beans, marble cake, milk, and fruit punch.