Selma Hill Murder Trial: Defendant Takes Stand in Murder Trial

In Oakland's Rene C. Davidson courthouse on Wednesday, Rosa Hill described a picturesque upbringing in her native China. Her life now is anything but — she is charged with murdering her 91-year-old grandmother-in-law, Selma Hill.

Hill took the stand and described a turbulent marriage to Eric Hill, Selma Hill's grandson. 

Her attorney, Bonnie Narby, has argued that the marriage and a child-custody battle pushed Hill to the brink and that what was intended as an attempt to get her 2-year-old daughter back from her husband at Selma’s home escalated into a violent encounter in January 2009. Deputies arrived at the Peppertree Road home to find Rosa and Eric Hill and Mei Li, Rosa Hill’s mother, engaged in a struggle. Authorities found Selma Hill’s body after detaining the trio.

Deputy district attorney Casey Bates did not begin cross-examination Wednesday, but said that Rosa Hill and Li planned the break-in for months, making pages of copious notes, to-do lists and documents that called for buying Tasers and stun guns. Selma Hill was found stuffed in a trashcan with Taser-like injuries and broken bones in the throat area that a coroner ruled as the cause of death.

Rosa Hill began her testimony by describing a “studious” adolescence. At age 11, she moved to the United States with her family, who had enjoyed a "comfortable lifestyle" in Hong Kong. She graduated from San Leandro High School with honors, scored in the 1300s on her SATs (out of 1600) and attended UC Davis on the pre-medical track before graduating with an applied mathematics degree.

“I was pretty studious in grade school throughout college,” said Hill. She wore a white blazer and glasses, and her often-muted tone prompted Judge Kenneth Burr to ask her several times to speak louder.  “I enjoyed learning,” she said.

In 2003, according to Hill, post-college employment with Bay Area engineering firms left her with about $100,000 in savings and the space to plan for the future, even with the dot-com bust that wrought havoc on the industry at the time.

“I was thinking about going back to grad school, getting a PhD. and starting some businesses,” she said, adding that other plans included taking the GRE, completing personal engineering projects and attending retreats to explore joining a religious order.

By that time, Hill had become acquainted with Eric Hill, who worked with her mother. She said he started attending church with her, a practice he began after showing up unexpectedly for Christmas Eve Mass with the family in 2002.

After a first date, Eric called almost daily, said Hill, adding that she was conflicted about the budding romance.

“I thought getting involved with him was a temptation to me and it was sidetracking me,” she said. “We shared interests like hiking and we liked the same movies. But at the same time, he was calling a lot and interfering with my study plans and projects, so sometimes I found him a bit annoying.”

Rosa Hill said the relationship advanced to a first kiss in May 2003 that she said was “hard to describe” before settling on “really special” and “electric.”

But that same month, Hill said she saw what would become the first of many signs of mental illness that plagued their relationship. On a trip to Yellowstone National Park, Eric became incensed at motorists in traffic, according to Hill.

“[H]e started freaking out in traffic, having these panic attacks, cussing out and tailgating drivers inches away from them to the point that I thought my life was in danger,” she said, adding that on the drive back from the trip Eric had taken a “few wrong turns and started freaking out and screaming ‘we’re going to die,’ repeating it over and over and over.”

“To me, that’s not normal,” Hill said. “It showed me that he needed to go see a psychologist or psychiatrist.”

Despite the troubles, Hill testified that she spent the next two years with Eric before they married in 2005. When Narby asked if she had romantic feelings for her husband, Hill said, “it was very complicated.”

She said that Eric threatened suicide several times when she suggested breaking up. Hill acknowledged that she did “love him and really care for him.”

After one episode in 2004 in which Eric was almost forced into commitment to a hospital for mental treatment, Hill said he was able to enroll in an outpatient program instead because she promised to supervise him.

She said it was at Eric’s insistence that she agreed to keep watch over him in lieu of commitment.

“He was looking at me pleading and I just didn’t have the heart to let them lock him up in a mental ward,” she testified.

Eric Hill testified for the prosecution  early last month, by his wife and mother-in-law in his grandmother’s home and .

Dublin Patch coverage continues with more of Rosa Hill’s testimony on Thursday.