Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:28, 3 January 2025

On September 10, 1985, in Warren, Ohio, 12-year-old Warren Boy Scout Raymond Fife (January 27, 1973 – September 12, 1985) disappeared after he was last seen going outdoors to meet his friend, and after it was discovered that he never made it to his friend's house, Fife's family went to search for him. The search lasted for more than four hours before Fife's father discovered his body at a wooded field behind a supermarket on Palmyra Road; Fife died from his injuries, presumably from a physical assault, two days after he was found. An autopsy report ruled that Fife's death was due to a homicide and it confirmed that the boy was raped before he died.

The investigations led to the arrests of two men, Timothy Combs and Danny Lee Hill. The duo were put on trial and convicted for raping and murdering Fife, but out of the two, only Hill, who was 18 when the killing occurred, was sentenced to death while Combs was spared the death sentence due to his age of 17 at the time of the murder and hence, he was sentenced to life in prison. Combs died in prison in 2018 at the age of 50, while Hill, whose appeals against the death sentence failed, is currently facing imminent execution on July 22, 2026.

Murder investigation

On September 10, 1985, in Warren, Ohio, a 12-year-old boy, Raymond Fife, was last seen leaving his house on a bicycle at approximately 5:15pm. Fife was supposed to visit his friend Billy Simmons, but by 5:50pm, Fife had not reached Simmons's house. As a result, Fife's family went to search for the missing boy.

More than four hours after Fife went missing, his father found the naked body of Fife at a wooded field behind a supermarket on Palmyra Road. Fife, who sustained multiple injuries caused by a severe physical assault and had burn wounds on his face, and his groin was swollen and full of bruises. The boy's underwear was found tied around his neck and appeared to have been lit on fire. Fife was subsequently taken to a hospital, but two days after he was hospitalized, 12-year-old Raymond Fife died.

An autopsy report showed that the cause of death was "cardiorespiratory arrest secondary to asphyxiation, subdural hematoma and multiple trauma." The coroner's report revealed that before his death, Fife had been strangled and suffered a brain hemorrhage, typically caused by trauma or brain injury. The victim also had several burns, injuries to his rectal and bladder areas, and bite marks on his penis. The autopsy doctor confirmed that Fife had multiple external injuries and abrasions, along with a ligature mark around his neck. Additionally, the doctor observed significant bleeding from the victim's rectal area, indicating that an object had been inserted through the anus, piercing the rectum and reaching the urinary bladder.

On September 12, 1985, the same day Fife died, an 18-year-old man named Danny Lee Hill visited the Warren Police Station to ask about a $5,000 reward being offered for information related to the murder. Hill told Police Sergeant Thomas Stewart that he witnessed several individuals riding a bicycle belonging to Fife, although the statement aroused suspicion from Sergeant Stewart as he found that Hill apparently had more knowledge about the crime than whatever information he provided, specifically the underwear and bicycle linked to Fife's murder.

Four days after he provided his testimony, on September 16, 1985, Hill was accompanied by his uncle, Warren Police Detective Morris Hill. Hill confessed during the interrogation that he was present when Fife was being raped and battered by another person, whom he identified as 17-year-old Timothy Combs. Combs was subsequently arrested for the rape and murder of Fife, while Hill himself was similarly arrested as an accomplice of the murder.

Trials of Danny Lee Hill and Timothy Combs

After their arrests, both Danny Lee Hill and Timothy Combs were charged with kidnapping, rape, aggravated arson, felonious sexual penetration, aggravated robbery and aggravated murder. For the most serious charge of aggravated murder, the legal punishment under Ohio state law was either the death penalty or life imprisonment.

Based on the evidence and prosecution's case, it was presented at trial that both Hill and Combs had abducted and attacked Fife while he was riding his bicycle, before they both sexually abused the boy and subsequently subjected Fife to a violent assault, which led to Fife being mortally wounded and eventually died two days after the attack.

Conviction of Hill

On January 7, 1986, Hill waived his right to a jury trial, and on January 21, 1986, Hill stood trial before a court of three judges for the charges he faced in relation to the rape-murder of Raymond Fife.

In Hill's confession, he pinpointed Combs as the principal offender, stating that Combs had first knocked Fife off his bicycle, held him in a headlock, and threw him onto the bike. Hill also stated that Combs was responsible for various acts of violence, including hitting Fife, choking him, and burning him with lighter fluid. While Hill did not admit to directly participating in the assault, he acknowledged staying with the victim while Combs left to retrieve items used in the attack.

However, at trial, Hill's involvement in the sexual assault and murder was found to be more than what he admitted to in his statement, given that Dr. Curtis Mertz, a forensic odontologist, testified in court that there were bite marks found on the genitals of Fife, and the teeth marks were matched to the teeth of Hill. An eyewitness Donald Allgood testified that he saw both Hill and Combs coming out of the wooded field (where Fife's body was found), and he witnessed Hill tossing "something" into the woods. Detective Sergeant William Carnahan of the Warren Police Department corroborated Allgood's testimony and said that he found a broken stick, allegedly used by the killers to sexually abuse Fife, in the place where Allgood seen the two men walking out of. Dr. Howard Adelman, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy, testified that the stick found by Detective Carnahan closely matched the size and shape of the opening in the victim's rectum. He compared the fit of the stick to a key in a lock.

On February 26, 1985,

On March 5, 1986,

Conviction of Combs

On May 5, 1986, the jury found Combs

Combs's imprisonment and death

Appeal processes of Hill

Tentative execution date of Hill

In July 2022, Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins petitioned to the Ohio Supreme Court, seeking an execution date for Hill, whose regular appeals were all exhausted before the courts. On September 21, 2022, 37 years after the rape and murder of Raymond Fife, the death warrant of Danny Lee Hill was approved by the Ohio Supreme Court, and his death sentence was scheduled to be carried out four years later on July 22, 2026.

At that time, capital punishment in Ohio was indefinitely suspended since the state's last execution in 2018, after Governor Mike DeWine ordered the state to stop conducting executions via lethal injection, the state's sole legal method of execution, and the moratorium on all future executions shall remain in effect until the Ohio General Assembly approved a new execution method to replace lethal injection.

With the moratorium in place, it was possible that the original date of Hill's execution could be postponed should the state unable to find a suitable execution method in time to carry out his death sentence as scheduled. As of 2025, the execution date remains scheduled on July 22, 2026.

See also

• Capital punishment in Ohio
• List of death row inmates in Ohio
• List of people scheduled to be executed in the United States

References