Strangling Victim's Three Children Were `Everything To Her'

She wasn't allowed to call her mother or write a check. And when she dared to drink coffee at McDonald's, her husband blew up.

Bernard "B.J." Hletko wanted to control his wife Terri completely, friends and family say.

When Terri Hletko finally got the courage to leave him, prosecutors say, he strangled her.

Bernard Hletko, 45, was charged with first-degree murder yesterday in King County Superior Court.

The 29-year-old mother of three was found last Friday under a pile of clothes in her van parked less than four miles from her Kent home. She had been missing for 10 days.

Her husband tried to kill himself the next day.

Terri Hletko's mother, Marie Macey of Lake Stevens, said her daughter had been vacillating about whether to end her eight-year marriage.

"She was stuck in a situation and didn't know how to get out," Macey said. "She didn't have any money. We would have helped her, but she didn't want to come to our house or her brother's house, because she was afraid he'd find her and retaliate."

A DEVOTED MOTHER

Macey said Hletko repeatedly threatened his wife that if she ever left him, he would take their children away from her.

And Terri Hletko's children, ages 3, 5 and 7, were her whole life.

Parents and teachers at the Kent preschool her younger children attended said she was always reading to her youngsters, taking them to literature festivals and volunteering to help at the school.

"Those kids were everything to her," said Kathy Scholl, who used to chat with Hletko outside the classroom while they waited to pick up their children. "Everyone will remember her smile," Scholl said. "We're all going to miss her very much."

Hletko worked part time at Fred Meyer so she could buy her children Christmas presents, something her husband refused to do, said Barb Wilson, another parent from the preschool and a co-worker at Fred Meyer.

Every time she tried to leave her husband, Bernard Hletko would find out about it and find a way to stop her.

"Once, he told her she'd leave with her feet up," Wilson said. "Another time, he hid all the baby pictures of her children. He even took them out of her wallet. He knew she wouldn't leave without them."

The former Terri Urban, barely out of her teens, met her future husband when both worked at US West. Macey said her daughter was attracted to Hletko because he was older and had his own house, the very picture of stability.

But their life together was anything but picturesque.

"He was a hollow shell. I never saw any compassion in him. He never once put his arm around her, never a nice word. He could only criticize what she did wrong," Macey said.

Because Hletko would not allow toys in the back yard for the children, Terri Hletko would frequently take the kids to McDonald's, where they could play and she would drink coffee.

Macey said when Hletko found out about these excursions, he was furious.

"I'll buy her a coffee pot, and then she won't have to leave and spend money on coffee," Macey remembers Hletko saying.

"It was total domination."

Finally, Terri Hletko had enough. Prosecutors say she went to her parents' home May 19 so they could assist her in filling out paperwork for an apartment. When Hletko left her parents' home about 10 p.m., Macey urged her daughter to hide the papers so her husband couldn't find them.

She never saw her daughter again and tried for three days to reach her. Bernard Hletko said he didn't know what happened to his wife, Macey said. Finally, Macey filed a missing persons report, and Kent police found her van May 28 near railroad tracks in Auburn.

FUND FOR CHILDREN SET UP

Prosecutors are requesting $1 million bail for Bernard Hletko.

The couple's children are in protective custody with Child Protective Services. Macey and her husband Patrick, both 52, said they plan to raise the children.

"Those kids need some stability," Macey said. "And there's nobody else to take them."

To benefit the Hletko children, a fund has been set up by friends at Fred Meyer in Kent, where Terri Hletko used to work. People can find out more by calling First Interstate Bank in Kent 854-6693.

-- South Bureau reporter Wayne Wurzer contributed to this report.