Selma Hill Murder Trial: Ex-husband Was ‘Terrified’ During Assault

The ex-husband of a woman on trial for murdering his grandmother gave notable testimony Wednesday at the Rene C. Davidson courthouse in Oakland, describing an assault that took place in his grandmother’s Dublin home before police arrived.

Eric Hill said he arrived at the home on Peppertree Road with his daughter shortly before 6 p.m. Jan. 7, 2009, to find Jeff Rowe, the son of his grandmother’s boyfriend, and his wife on his property, inquiring about his grandmother’s whereabouts. She had failed to answer her boyfriend’s daily call.

Investigators say Selma “Sally” Hill, 91, was Tased several times and strangled to death before being wrapped in a tarp and stuffed into a trashcan that was later found by police in a shed in the back yard.

Eric Hill went into the home with the Rowes to look for his grandmother.  He testified that he went upstairs and into his grandmother’s room with his daughter in his arms. As he entered the dark room, Eric turned on the light to find Mei Li, his former mother-in-law, crouching in a corner close to the closet. 

He said he recognized her immediately and felt “confused and worried.”

“She shouldn’t have been there,” Hill said.

He said he became even more wary after Li said his grandmother was out shopping.

“I knew something was not right,” he said. “I got scared; I thought something had happened to my grandmother.”

Leaving his daughter with Li, Hill said he left his daughter with Li and rushed out of the room to search the rest of the home but was “charged” by his ex-wife, Rosa Hill, who had run out of another room in the hallway.

What ensued was a messy fracas that Eric Hill tried to describe in detail Wednesday. His responses were short and measured, often separated by long pauses. At one point when describing the assault, Hill lost his composure and the court took a 15-minute recess. Rosa Hill and Li showed little emotion as they watched Hill testify, though Rosa Hill was writing constantly on her notepad.

Eric Hill said he recognized his ex-wife even with a mask because she wore glasses.  The first injury he said he felt was a thud to the back of his head that sent him to the floor. Hill said he was dazed and “was being hit many times.”

Hill said his ex-wife shocked him with a stun gun while Li beat him with a collapsible baton.

“I started to see blood dripping onto the floor,” he said.

Hill said the sight of the blood made him flail at the women in self-defense: “I realized I was in a fight for my life.”

After a series of shoves, falling down and getting back up, Hill said he managed to grab the baton and swing it. Although later reports show that he hit Li, he said the struggle was so frenzied that he did not know who or which part of the body the baton struck.

Hill said after he was shocked by the stun gun again, he kicked his ex-wife into another room and started grappling with Li.

“I wasn’t able to fight her very well,” he said. “I was terrified … I was tired.”

According to Eric Hill, Rosa Hill then emerged from the room with a gun trained at his heart, ordering him to stop moving. He said that when he obeyed, Li put the baton on his throat and started choking him with it while Rosa Hill stood over him with the gun barrel still touching his chest.

Hill said he then heard police sirens and pushed Li away but found he couldn’t stand. Deputies with Dublin police that they found the trio in the hallway with Eric Hill crawling on the floor.

The incident stemmed from a child-custody battle between the Hills over their daughter, Elizabeth, who was 2 years old at the time. In the first part of Hill’s questioning by Casey Bates, deputy district attorney, he was asked how he met his ex-wife.

Hill, a social services worker, said he met his ex-wife, a native of China who immigrated in childhood, in late 2002 through an introduction by Mei Li.  Li and Hill were co-workers at the county’s social services center in east Oakland, where both were eligibility technicians at the time.

The couple married in April 2005 and had their daughter, but separated in March 2007. Hill said he then moved to his grandmother’s Dublin home. 

Rosa Hill had custody of Elizabeth when the couple first separated until Eric Hill sought visitation rights in May 2007. Hill said he was granted 50 percent physical custody of Elizabeth that summer; throughout child-custody proceedings he said he maintained at least 50 percent physical custody of his daughter. At the time of the murder, Hill said he had full legal custody and 85 percent physical custody.

Rosa Hill's attorney, Bonnie Narby, started cross-examination Wednesday and focused on Eric Hill’s history of mental problems. , Narby said Rosa Hill was pushed to the brink by the custody disputes, growing worry over her family’s safety and an increasingly unstable husband.

Eric said Wednesday that he wasn’t sure why his wife had left him.

“She never gave me a full explanation,” he said.

Narby then cited an email from Rosa Hill to Eric Hill dated March 12, 2007; the couple would separate later that month. In it, she stated, “Not only is what you told me scary, but it can also threaten the family if untreated.” 

Narby said the e-mail was referring to a conversation Eric Hill had with his wife in which he admitted he had “auditory hallucinations” that were ordering him to “push annoying schoolchildren into traffic.”

Hill said he remembered telling Rosa Hill about those hallucinations but added that he was not certain that it was that conversation to which she was referring in the e-mail.

Testimony will continue at the Rene C. Davidson courthouse this week in Oakland.