The bizarre case of Duane Hurley and Daniel Kovarbasich

Donna Kovarbasich

At approximately 8 a.m. Terry received a phone call from Danny on his cell phone that could only be described as shocking and disturbing. Danny, clearly in an agitated state, told his father that Hurley "had tried to kill him." Responding to the urgency of Danny's call, Terry quickly drove to the street where Duane Hurley lived where he found his son on the street corner. Danny's hands were covered in blood, and he was "freaked out" about something—Terry was about to find out why. Although Danny did not want to return to Hurley's house, Terry insisted. He wanted to know what had happened that morning in the space of the previous thirty minutes. After not getting a response from Hurley, Terry saw from the area of the front door that Hurley was lying motionless in blood, a lot of it, on the inside landing of his two-story home. Hurley appeared to be dead. Terrified, Terry and Daniel drove to Marc's, a discount supermarket where Donna worked, located less than two miles from Hurley's house. Terry had called Donna at 8:21 a.m. to inform her that something terrible had happened, and that he and Danny were heading her way. She met them outside in the parking lot. Danny's behavior was alarming to the point that it frightened his mother and father.

"Danny was jumping all around," Donna would later say. "He was letting out screams and jumping around and hitting his head on the glass. It was like he was losing his mind."

Unable to get Danny to calm down, Donna urged Terry to take him to a hospital. Terry called 911 while en route to the hospital to let the authorities know that emergency personnel were needed at Duane Hurley's house and that he was taking his son to the hospital. By then it was approximately 8:46 a.m.

"I thought my son was one step from the rubber room," Terry recalled later during an interview that he and his wife had with In Session.