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On September 10, 1985, in Warren, Ohio, United States, 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 A. Combs (c. 1968 – November 9, 2018) and Danny Lee Hill (born January 6, 1967). 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 Raymond Fife, while Hill himself was similarly arrested as an accomplice of the murder.

Trials of Danny Lee Hill and Timothy Combs

Criminal charges and prosecution's stand

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. It was further reported that both Hill and Combs had criminal records for petty offences under the juvenile system of Ohio.

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. Both Hill and Combs claimed trial in separate courts for their respective roles in the killing of Fife.

Trial and conviction of Danny Lee 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. Three Warren Western Reserve High School Students also testified that they witnessed both Combs and Hill at the area where Fife disappeared; one had seen Combs pulling up the zipper of his blue jeans and another heard a child's scream.

After being on trial for 11 days, Hill was found guilty of kidnapping, rape, aggravated arson, felonious sexual penetration and aggravated murder. On February 26, 1985, a mitigation hearing was held to determine whether Hill should receive the death penalty, and the panel agreed to issue the death sentence.

On March 5, 1986, the court sentenced 19-year-old Danny Lee Hill to death for the most serious charge of aggravated murder. On top of the death sentence, the court imposed custodial sentences of ten to twenty-five years' imprisonment for both aggravated arson and kidnapping, as well as life imprisonment for both rape and felonious sexual penetration. The judges cited that the brutality and cold-blooded nature of the murder were among factors that made it appropriate to subject Hill to capital punishment.

Trial and conviction of Timothy Combs

Combs was the second offender of the case to stand trial after Hill, but unlike the latter, Comb was put on trial before a 12-member jury at the Portage County Court of Common Pleas. On May 5, 1986, the jury found Combs guilty of all five counts, mainly one each of kidnapping, rape, aggravated arson, felonious sexual penetration and aggravated murder.

On May 13, 1986, the court confirmed the jury's verdict. Under the law, Combs was ineligible for the death sentence, given that he was three months shy of his 18th birthday when he committed the murder of Fife, and hence, the only possible sentence he could face for the murder charge was life imprisonment. Combs was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences by Judge Joseph Kainrad for charges of aggravated murder, rape and felonious sexual penetration. Additionally, ten to 25 years were each added to his life terms for the other offences of aggravated arson and kidnapping respectively.

Combs's imprisonment and death

After his trial and sentencing, Combs was transferred to the Grafton Correctional Institution, where he was incarcerated from 1986 to 2018 while serving his life sentences.

On December 2, 1988, Combs's appeal was rejected by the Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals. On August 12, 2005, the same court rejected another appeal from Combs, whose attempt to seek post-conviction DNA testing to overturn his conviction was not accepted, after they found that there would have been sufficient evidence to convict Combs of murdering Raymond Fife in the absence of forensic evidence linking Combs to the murder. On April 19, 2018, Combs's legal motion to vacate his conviction was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

On November 9, 2018, Timothy A. Combs died at the age of 50 at the Select Specialty Hospital. The cause of his death was not immediately known to the public.

Appeal processes of Hill

After he was sentenced to death, Danny Lee Hill was incarcerated on death row at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution since March 1986.

Throughout his decades on death row, Hill appealed more than 30 times against his death sentence and conviction for murdering Raymond Fife. In fact, for more than once, Hill's death sentence was overturned more than once before it was reinstated. In recent years, the major grounds of appeal by Hill was that he was not supposed to be executed due to mental incapacity or intellectual disabilities, which were factors that would prevent a condemned inmate from undergoing execution.

1980s and 1990s

On November 27, 1989, Hill's appeal against his conviction was rejected by the Ohio 11th District Court of Appeals.

On August 12, 1992, the Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed Hill's appeal against his conviction and sentence.

Hill's second appeal to the 11th District Court of Appeals was rejected on June 20, 1995. On November 28, 1995, the Supreme Court of Ohio once again rejected Hill's second appeal to overturn his death sentence and murder conviction.

2000s

On February 23, 2000, the Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals rejected Hill's appeal to vacate his conviction.

On February 15, 2006, Hill was found to be not mentally or intellectually disabled and his appeal was therefore rejected by Visiting Judge Thomas P. Curran.

On July 11, 2008, the Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals rejected the appeal of Hill.

2010s

On April 17, 2014, Hill appealed to the federal appellate courts to grant him a new trial. On June 26, 2014, Federal Judge John R. Adams ruled that Hill was mentally fit to be executed and upheld the death sentence.

On June 8, 2016, Visiting Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove allowed Hill to petition for a new trial; Hill had questioned the reliability of bite mark evidence used against him in his original trial and therefore asked for a new trial to assess the validity of his conviction, which the prosecution opposed in response. The petition for a new trial was denied on October 4, 2016.

On February 5, 2018, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Hill should not be executed. The prosecution appealed against this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and on January 7, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in Hill's case and sent the case back to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals for re-hearing. A separate appeal for a new trial in 2018 was rejected on December 4, 2018.

On June 13, 2019, the Ohio Supreme Court once again declined to hear another appeal from Hill.

2020s

On May 21, 2020, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Hill's appeal and overturned Hill's death sentence. The decision, however, was vacated in favour of a re-hearing on July 16, 2020.

On August 20, 2021, by a 9-7 vote, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the death penalty for Hill and threw out his appeal.

On July 1, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Hill's appeal. This was the final regular avenue of appeal in Hill's case and with this outcome, Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins applied to the Ohio Supreme Court to schedule an execution date for Hill that same month, and eventually secured a tentative execution date of July 22, 2026.

On November 8, 2023, Hill appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to conduct a new hearing to assess whether his execution should be staved off on account of intellectual disability or mental incompetency.

On December 12, 2023, Hill's appeal was allowed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, for which the judges agreed that Hill should not be executed and a new hearing was warranted to determine whether he was mentally incompetent to face the death sentence.

On December 27, 2023, the Ohio Assistant Attorney General Stephen Maher filed two separate appeals to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking to have Hill executed and disprove his claims of mental incompetency to face execution.

On May 14, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to approve Hill's petition for a new hearing to review the bite mark evidence used to convict him of the murder of Raymond Fife.

On November 26, 2024, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed to process an appeal filed by Ohio Solicitor General Thomas Elliot Gaiser to review a decision from the 11th District Court of Appeals.

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.

Aftermath

In the aftermath of her son's death, Miriam Fife, Raymond Fife's mother, became a crime victims' rights advocate and worked for the state prosecution's office. She remained on the job for 25 years before she retired at the age of 74 in 2015. Fife's father died at the age of 89 on September 11, 2006.

In light of the death of Combs in 2018, Mike Semple, Burton Cole and Andy Gray, reporters who worked for the Tribune Chronicle, recalled the case of Raymond Fife's murder, and they commented on the brutality of the crime that left an indelible mark in their careers.

In 2019, Fife's mother spoke about her son's death. She said that her son was a "very ornery child" who loved both bowling and baseball, and possessed a great sense of humor. Fife's mother added that her late husband was unable to witness the execution of their son's killer, and she still continued to wait for the day to come when Danny Lee Hill would be put to death for murdering her son, which she firmly supported despite having let go of her hatred a long time ago. A 2022 interview revealed that Fife's mother remained hopeful that justice would prevail when the pending application to schedule Hill's execution date was brought before the courts. Even after decades since the murder of Fife, his mother and four siblings (one brother and three sisters) continued to remember and commemorate him.

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

1. ^ "Danny Lee Hill, on death row for 37 years, has execution date set in four years". WFMJ. September 21, 2022.
2. ^ State v. Hill , Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals (United States).
3. ^ "Sitting on Death Row: Danny Lee Hill". WKBN. October 15, 2019.
4. "Hill indicted on six charges in Fife murder". The Vindicator. September 23, 1985.
5. "2 teen-agers charged in Fife's death have juvenile records". The Vindicator. September 18, 1985.
6. "Hill waives right to trial by jury, seeks 3-judge panel in Fife case". The Vindicator. January 8, 1986.
7. "Hill ordered to die for Fife's murder". The Vindicator. March 1, 1986.
8. "Danny Hill must die, judges say". The Vindicator. March 1, 1986.
9. "Brutality of the crime led to death sentence". The Vindicator. March 1, 1986.
10. ^ State v. Combs , Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals (United States).
11. "Jurors convict Combs in 2-hour session". The Vindicator. May 5, 1986.
12. "Combs gets life sentences". The Vindicator. May 13, 1986.
13. "Setnece teen to triple life". The Bryan Times. May 13, 1986.
14. ^ "Timothy Combs, co-defendant in Raymond Fife murder, dies". Tribune Chronicle. November 15, 2018.
15. Combs v. Eppinger , U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio (United States).
16. ^ "Journalists recall 1986 Timothy Combs trial". Tribune Chronicle. November 26, 2018.
17. "Timothy Combs, convicted in 12-year-old Raymond Fife's murder, dies in prison". WKBN. November 14, 2018.
18. "Conviction upheld for Warren man". The Vindicator. November 28, 1989.
19. "Appeals court denies man's petition for relief". The Vindicator. June 20, 1995.
20. "Ohio high court denies killer's appeal". The Vindicator. November 29, 1995.
21. "Court of appeals denies killer's request". The Vindicator. February 24, 2000.
22. "Judge rules Hill not mentally retarded". The Vindicator. February 16, 2006.
23. State v. Hill , Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals (United States).
24. "Killer wants a new trial". Tribune Chronicle. April 17, 2014.
25. "Death row inmate loses another appeal". Tribune Chronicle. June 27, 2014.
26. "Judge: Death row inmate Danny Lee Hill can seek new trial". Tribune Chronicle. June 8, 2016.
27. "Death row inmate Danny Lee Hill seeks new murder trial". Tribune Chronicle. June 14, 2016.
28. "Prosecutor Watkins asks judge to reject new trial for Danny Lee Hill". Tribune Chronicle. June 17, 2016.
29. "New trial denied in murder case". Tribune Chronicle. October 4, 2016.
30. "Appeals court says Danny Lee Hill unfit for execution". Tribune Chronicle. February 6, 2018.
31. "Appeal made to Supreme Court in Danny Lee Hill case". Tribune Chronicle. July 10, 2018.
32. "Death penalty back on the table for Danny Lee Hill". Tribune Chronicle. January 7, 2019.
33. "Danny Lee Hill appeal for new trial denied". Tribune Chronicle. December 4, 2018.
34. "Ohio Supreme Court declines to hear convicted Warren killer's appeal". WKBN. June 13, 2019.
35. "Ohio's top court refuses to hear Hill appeal". Tribune Chronicle. June 14, 2019.
36. "Danny Lee Hill's death sentence overturned again". Tribune Chronicle. May 21, 2020.
37. "Hill's case goes to full 6th Circuit". Tribune Chronicle. July 16, 2020.
38. "Court upholds death sentence for Danny Lee Hill". WFMJ. August 20, 2021.
39. "Federal court denies Hill's appeal". Tribune Chronicle. August 21, 2021.
40. "U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Danny Lee Hill case, death sentence upheld". WFMJ. July 1, 2022.
41. "Ohio Supreme Court sets execution date for Trumbull County murderer". Cleveland. September 21, 2022.
42. "Court hears latest appeal in Danny Lee Hill case". WKBN. November 8, 2023.
43. "Danny Lee Hill wins latest appeal; prosecutor plans challenge". WKBN. December 12, 2023.
44. "State responds to Danny Lee Hill". Tribune Chronicle. December 28, 2023.
45. "Supreme Court refuses to review Danny Lee Hill appeal". WFMJ. May 14, 2024.
46. "Ohio Supreme Court to look at lower court ruling on murderer Danny Lee Hill case". WFMJ. November 26, 2024.
47. "Danny Lee Hill case returns to Ohio Supreme Court". Tribune Chronicle. November 27, 2024.
48. "Dennis Watkins wants Danny Lee Hill execution date set". Tribune Chronicle. July 15, 2022.
49. "High court sets Hill's execution date". Tribune Chronicle. September 21, 2022.
50. "Trumbull victim advocate retires after 25 years". Tribune Chronicle. March 12, 2015.
51. "Two women wait for justice as Trumbull Co. murderers spend over 30 years on Death Row". WKBN. October 15, 2019.
52. "Raymond Fife's mom keeps waiting for justice". Tribune Chronicle. July 17, 2022.
53. "Family remembers freckle-faced prankster". The Vindicator. September 6, 2020.

• 1980s missing person cases
• 1985 in Ohio
• Capital punishment in Ohio
• 1985 murders in the United States
• Child murder in the United States
• Deaths by person in Ohio
• Formerly missing people
• Incidents of violence against boys
• Missing person cases in Ohio
• Murder in Ohio
• Violence against children in the United States