The Night Hannah Hill Disappeared

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Speaker 3 I just can't see why someone we knew would want to hurt her.

Speaker 3 How could this happen? How could this happen to someone that we knew? It's been a very long 13 years.

Speaker 6 Homecoming Queen Hannah Hill was just 18 when she disappeared. Everybody's sweetheart.

Speaker 8 This doesn't happen to people like her.

Speaker 9 What? Why? Where? When?

Speaker 6 And who? Was it her boyfriend? They had fought before.

Speaker 10 Did you verbally abuse her?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 13 Did you physically abuse her?

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 16 Or was it another man in her life?

Speaker 7 They'd been together the night she died.

Speaker 6 More than 13 years would go by as Hannah's family fought for justice. Two possible suspects.

Speaker 17 Did you kill Hannah Hill? Absolutely not.

Speaker 18 Did your kid kill Hannah Hill?

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 3 Two trials. I was a wreck.
It was just very intense.

Speaker 6 Would there ever be justice for Hannah Hill?

Speaker 3 The truth always comes out.

Speaker 6 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with our story.

Speaker 23 She was a girl who made big entrances.

Speaker 9 She could walk in the room and light up a place.

Speaker 12 She'd make a whole room smile.

Speaker 3 She was always happy, just wanted to have fun.

Speaker 24 But it was her exit, her sudden disappearance, poof, gone from her house just like that, that enshrouded young Hannah Hill in mystery.

Speaker 30 Ms. Hill was last seen last Wednesday.
We're asking that anyone with any information contact the Akron Police Department Detective Bureau.

Speaker 24 She was 18 years old, just days from turning 19, and seemed to be in for the night.

Speaker 35 A former homecoming queen and her PJs, phoning a few friends from the basement bedroom at her mom and dad's in Akron, Ohio.

Speaker 37 It's too late now, but you wish she could answer just one question.

Speaker 28 Why'd you leave the house so suddenly that night?

Speaker 38 Her brother, Justin, doesn't know.

Speaker 8 She got dressed and said, Mom, go off for a little bit. I'll be back.
I love you.

Speaker 41 And that was it.

Speaker 8 Never seeing her again.

Speaker 44 The thing was, the next morning, a Thursday in May of 1999, was going to be a red-letter day for Hannah.

Speaker 32 She'd drive her Gold Geo Prism, the used car she was proud to be paying for, to her first day of full-time secretary work at Diebold, the company that makes ATMs.

Speaker 24 Her boyfriend of more than a year, Brad O'Born, expected her to swing by his place in the morning to pick him up.

Speaker 23 He says she was a no-show.

Speaker 46 I remember waking up with this eerie gut feeling that something wasn't right. I paged her, no answer, and she always called me back, always,

Speaker 5 and she didn't.

Speaker 24 The kids relied on pagers back then.

Speaker 49 Cell phones and text messaging were often the future for Hannah's circle of friends.

Speaker 49 Her mom, Kim, was a homemaker, and dad, Elza, was scratching out work as a boilermaker in the smokestacks of the Rust Belt. Dad loved his girl.

Speaker 53 Hannah, she was a very bubbly kid.

Speaker 9 She

Speaker 9 always

Speaker 53 loved everybody.

Speaker 52 She liked the Spice girls and signed her letters with tiny pink hearts.

Speaker 27 A nice kid.

Speaker 34 These friends of Hannah thought so.

Speaker 3 She was a very easygoing person, definitely someone you could tell you could be friends with very easily. She was a great friend.
She was a great girl.

Speaker 49 Tara Ferguson was the best friend forever.

Speaker 3 She's

Speaker 3 so fun and silly and funny.

Speaker 18 There was no doubt she was a very pretty young girl.

Speaker 54 Yes.

Speaker 3 She was a hopeless romantic and she was bound to trying to find that Prince Charming.

Speaker 51 Now, not every teenage girl has the same definition of Prince Charming.

Speaker 34 Hannah's boyfriend, Brad, for instance, was a high school dropout with more than a few rough edges.

Speaker 56 But by all accounts, Hannah was smitten.

Speaker 3 Definitely her one true love. She just really loved him and was really happy.

Speaker 44 And Brad, he remembers like yesterday, being captivated by the girl at the party with the lively brown eyes.

Speaker 36 They quickly became a couple.

Speaker 18 Did you think I'm really lucky to have this girl?

Speaker 5 I did. And we used to get compliments.

Speaker 46 People would say, you guys look so cute together.

Speaker 34 But by late spring 1999, Hannah's friends and family thought she was growing distant.

Speaker 56 They worried that Brad was tugging her into a world where she didn't belong.

Speaker 3 She trusted everybody.

Speaker 60 She saw the best in everybody.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 16 And didn't have a radar up?

Speaker 56 No.

Speaker 3 That's where we differed.

Speaker 25 And now Hannah Hill had vanished into the night.

Speaker 45 Out there somewhere.

Speaker 25 But where?

Speaker 49 Thursday turned to Friday.

Speaker 36 The close friends were frantic.

Speaker 3 Brad and I are calling each other back and forth. I'm calling the Hills.

Speaker 3 I'm paging her. She's not calling.
That just wasn't like her.

Speaker 40 We're freaking out now.

Speaker 8 So we make out thousands of flyers.

Speaker 40 And we're passing them out. Have you seen my sister?

Speaker 8 Has anyone seen my sister?

Speaker 18 And you're hearing no, no, no, no.

Speaker 9 Nothing.

Speaker 22 Brad O'Born, the boyfriend, took it a step further.

Speaker 61 He went down to the police station on that Friday, the first of several visits to the cops.

Speaker 5 My girlfriend's missing. It doesn't seem like the police are doing very much.

Speaker 29 Long days became longer nights, with no word from Hannah.

Speaker 60 By Tuesday evening, she'd been missing nearly a week.

Speaker 34 The police finally turned to the media.

Speaker 63 Well, an 18-year-old girl has vanished and tonight, police are asking for your help.

Speaker 3 When it came across the TV that she was missing, I got...

Speaker 3 It got really real.

Speaker 36 The very next morning, a breakthrough.

Speaker 38 News that police had located Hannah's car.

Speaker 36 It was parked on a quiet dead-end street called Cane Road.

Speaker 32 Akron PD Sergeant Jerry Hughes raced to the scene.

Speaker 26 Detectives popped the trunk.

Speaker 37 It was worse than he'd expected.

Speaker 18 You've seen a lot of stuff in a lot of years.

Speaker 27 How does this fit

Speaker 18 in the awful things that cops encounter?

Speaker 66 It's sickening.

Speaker 66 It's something you can't unsee. You will see that for the rest of your life.

Speaker 29 The body of Hannah Hill had been found naked from the waist down, posed, her shirt pulled up.

Speaker 30 I read at approximately 7:30 this morning that the auto belonging to missing person Hannah Hill had been seen parked on Cain Road.

Speaker 35 Pictures of her car being towed away made the evening news.

Speaker 3 Devastated?

Speaker 3 How could this happen?

Speaker 40 I just totally kind of blacked out. Every emotion just hit me all at once.

Speaker 25 What had happened to Hannah and why?

Speaker 6 And the even bigger question, who?

Speaker 16 Who had killed Hannah?

Speaker 6 Police quickly focused on one man, Hannah's boyfriend, Brad.

Speaker 66 We found out that he was a drug dealer and that he liked to chase other girls.

Speaker 18 You know, it takes you pretty closely into Mean's Mode of Opportunity Country.

Speaker 21 Who would think?

Speaker 29 Hannah Hill was buried in a family plot in Kentucky a day after what would have been her 19th birthday.

Speaker 56 For her friends back in Akron, Cane Road, the quiet residential street where her car had been found, became a place to honor her all-too-brief life.

Speaker 3 We put ribbons around a nearby tree in remembrance.

Speaker 71 For detectives, the heat was on to find her killer.

Speaker 23 The Akron Police Department was already facing intense scrutiny for taking a full week to find Hannah's car.

Speaker 37 There it had sat, abandoned in the night on Cane Road, where just hours after Hannah first disappeared, residents began calling police to come come take a look.

Speaker 72 At least five neighbors called police that we have a car in our neighborhood that's totally unexplained, and you need to come out here.

Speaker 34 Ed Meyer reported on the case for the Akron Beacon Journal.

Speaker 43 He says the neighbors saw car keys on the dashboard and Hannah's name clearly visible in two places.

Speaker 26 In a black eye for the department, police came and ticketed the car, but failed to make the connection.

Speaker 74 Major, how could this car have sat there since Wednesday and not be connected with Miss Hill?

Speaker 30 Well, I think that's

Speaker 30 entirely possible for a car to be parked for many days anywhere in the city.

Speaker 75 Did somebody drop the ball here, Captain?

Speaker 30 Well, again, like I say, that's under investigation.

Speaker 18 Was the investigation compromised horribly because of that delay? Condition of the body, the forensic results?

Speaker 58 Very possible.

Speaker 72 It gave time

Speaker 72 for whoever did this to cover his tracks.

Speaker 36 Who did do it? In the week after Hannah had vanished, all the while her body in the trunk of her car undetected, the police were trying to make sense of her boyfriend, Brad O'Born.

Speaker 34 When detectives checked him out with Hannah's family, they got an earful.

Speaker 66 Mr. Hill was never a fan of Brad O'Born.

Speaker 20 They knew very well who he was. Yes, yes.

Speaker 66 Mr. Hill didn't like him.
Man, Mr. Hill made no bones about it.

Speaker 53 I tried to pull her away from

Speaker 54 Brad O'Bourne.

Speaker 53 And you know, when kids get something in their head, the more you try, the further they get away from you.

Speaker 24 Hannah's friends saw things they didn't like about Brad, too.

Speaker 3 I probably told her she was better than that and she could do better, and he wasn't good for her.

Speaker 36 And when they met him, police were struck by Brad's demeanor.

Speaker 32 Before Hannah's car had been found, police officer Washington Lacey was pulling weekend duty when again into the station walked the fuming teenager demanding to know what was being done to find his missing girlfriend.

Speaker 74 First impression didn't like him. He was

Speaker 7 he just was abrasive.

Speaker 24 Brad's attitude wasn't the only thing to catch the officer's eye.

Speaker 74 Right away, noticed some scratches on him.

Speaker 74 We kind of raised our eyebrows at that.

Speaker 32 Sergeant Hughes was on duty that weekend, too.

Speaker 52 He made note of the angry boyfriend with the scratches.

Speaker 18 He's got physical injuries. He's coming on like a...

Speaker 21 house of fire. Right.

Speaker 66 Either he was completely innocent and concerned about his girlfriend and really loved her, or he had done something and

Speaker 66 was going to use us as a tool.

Speaker 34 Could have fallen either way. Right, right.

Speaker 17 The detective said Brad was visibly upset and told him he'd been a bad boyfriend, jealous, controlling.

Speaker 70 We found out, you know, that he

Speaker 66 was a drug dealer and that he liked to chase other girls.

Speaker 18 You know, it takes you pretty closely into Mean's mode of opportunity country.

Speaker 66 Who would think?

Speaker 48 Hughes had tough questions for boyfriend Brad.

Speaker 66 Take off your shirt. We need to get all your all your photos.
We want full fingerprints and palm prints.

Speaker 18 Is he saying, wait, wait, wait, slow down.

Speaker 19 I mean, I need to talk to a lawyer.

Speaker 52 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 66 Here's the thing. It's like, never once said anything about an attorney, his rights.

Speaker 31 Just find my girlfriend.

Speaker 66 Whatever you need, find my girlfriend.

Speaker 49 And then came the awful day they discovered Hannah's body.

Speaker 66 And now we're hammering him.

Speaker 7 We're peppering him, you know, if not you, who, basically.

Speaker 18 You think he's good for this crime?

Speaker 52 Not sure, but I want more information.

Speaker 66 Give Give me something to go on.

Speaker 36 To detectives, Brad was a puzzle, angry and abrasive on one hand, and yet cooperative and seemingly distraught about Hannah's death on the other.

Speaker 21 Just didn't click with Oborn.

Speaker 36 Questions still swirled around Brad in the hours after Hannah's body was discovered.

Speaker 24 But now the case was about to spin off in a whole new direction.

Speaker 51 Investigators had obtained Hannah's phone logs and learned she'd made four calls on her last night.

Speaker 36 One to a girlfriend, two to Brad, and another to a boy named Denny Ross.

Speaker 32 Denny Ross, does it mean anything to anybody?

Speaker 5 It doesn't mean anything to me.

Speaker 36 The detectives learned that this Denny Ross lived in a three-bedroom apartment next to a porn shop.

Speaker 25 They drove over and knocked on the door.

Speaker 66 Denny Ross answers the door. He's got a phone in his hand.
And I say, hey,

Speaker 66 Detective Hughes, I'd like to talk to you about this. And he goes, well, I've got my attorney on the phone.

Speaker 6 Attorney?

Speaker 66 Yes.

Speaker 12 I said, well,

Speaker 70 that's a little different.

Speaker 7 Coming up, there was an even more surprising admission from Denny Ross still to come about a visit from Hannah the very night she died.

Speaker 31 Her and I were conversating and, you know, things

Speaker 31 once you guys come.

Speaker 7 But did that lead to murder?

Speaker 16 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 45 Investigators looking into the murder of Hannah Hill had followed her phone logs to the doorstep of 20-year-old Denny Ross.

Speaker 51 Denny, it turned out, was a friend of Hannah's boyfriend, Brad O'Born.

Speaker 61 The kids knew Denny as the host at a non-stop funhouse and crash pad.

Speaker 18 Were you surprised Hannah was hanging around with that crowd?

Speaker 82 No, I mean, we hung out with

Speaker 37 people that didn't do some great stuff, but I guess we just kind of thought it was not that it was okay, but we weren't doing it, so i guess we were pretty naive too denny was days into probation on a drug charge and asked to have his lawyer present when detectives arrived for a conversation once the lawyer showed up detectives took out a tape recorder and began an interview would you say your full officer in penny for us denny told the detective he stayed in the night hannah disappeared but then volunteered an astonishing bit of information was there anybody here at the house with you when you stopped up for

Speaker 83 Hannah stopped over Wednesday evening? Yes.

Speaker 18 That makes him in police jargon the last known person to have seen her alive. Absolutely.

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 31 Her and I were conversating, and, you know, then there's

Speaker 12 one thing led to another.

Speaker 51 Denny offered up a tip for the cops.

Speaker 49 Take a look at Hannah's boyfriend, Brad O'Born.

Speaker 12 Why would he take it?

Speaker 83 You know, jealousy,

Speaker 83 fear that maybe she's seeing somebody else. I recall many occasions that he would basically have Hannah basically under control.
She could not go anywhere.

Speaker 43 But Denny, not Brad, was suddenly the person cops wanted to know a lot more about. At 3 a.m.
They returned to Denny's in forced with a search warrant.

Speaker 43 The officers charging up the exterior stairs said they heard a thud.

Speaker 29 It wasn't long before one of them found a garbage bag beneath Denny's window.

Speaker 28 In it, Hannah's missing clothing.

Speaker 18 Is that case closed?

Speaker 66 It's not case closed, but it's a big factor.

Speaker 72 I've always called that bag of evidence the key factor in this whole case, the magic bag.

Speaker 34 Critics of the police work in the case, like local journalist Ed Meyer, were skeptical.

Speaker 72 We didn't buy it. Why would he keep a potential bag of evidence that could hang him inside his apartment for a full week?

Speaker 48 Denny insisted he did not toss the bag out the window.

Speaker 34 His fingerprints weren't found on it, and it didn't match any of the garbage bags he had at home.

Speaker 28 The officers didn't check the temperature of the bag and couldn't say if it had been outside for minutes or for days.

Speaker 34 Still, the next day, Denny was charged with Hannah's rape and murder.

Speaker 75 Breaking news at this hour, an arrest has been made in the murder of 18-year-old Hannah Hill.

Speaker 17 The arrest of Goodtime Denny was incomprehensible to Hannah's friends.

Speaker 3 I just can't see why someone we knew would want to hurt her.

Speaker 29 Denny's father, Alan Ross, says he was stunned too.

Speaker 18 You tell me who your boy is. Who's Denny Ross?

Speaker 19 Denny Ross, well, a young kid who

Speaker 31 got himself in a situation by telling the truth.

Speaker 38 The father says Denny was an average, carefree kid, excited about a new job in internet marketing, not a killer.

Speaker 18 Personality, demeanor.

Speaker 60 If he walked in the door, who did we meet?

Speaker 31 You'd meet a person who just doesn't stop smiling.

Speaker 31 It doesn't matter who you are. You'll you'll feel at home when you're around him because he's just got that personality.

Speaker 24 The medical examiner ruled Hannah's death a homicide by asphyxiation, saying she was strangled to death.

Speaker 50 But little else was clear.

Speaker 22 For instance, the Emmy found semen inside Hannah's body during the autopsy, but said the sample wasn't useful because it had degraded so much during the week her body lay in the trunk of her car.

Speaker 24 And then there were what critics saw as investigative lapses.

Speaker 35 Police never checked boyfriend Brad O'Born's alibi the night Hannah disappeared, never checked her pager records, and never performed a key chemical test of the carpet in Denny's apartment, the luminol test.

Speaker 72 The police investigators can spray a chemical on this alleged evidence and it will luminesce and show as blood and therefore can be tested.

Speaker 72 That was never done.

Speaker 17 Visible blood spots were found on Denny's apartment walls, but in the dozens of samples of blood and fibers sent out for testing, none came back to Hannah.

Speaker 18 No DNA, no blood.

Speaker 18 You theorize that she was killed there. Right.

Speaker 2 In a bloody homicide, and yet there's no trace of her.

Speaker 76 Nor was there a trace of Denny on or in Hannah's car.

Speaker 13 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 26 Despite the ambiguous evidence, in October 2000, 21-year-old Denny Ross stood trial for the rape and murder of Hannah Hill.

Speaker 58 He pleaded not guilty and faced the death penalty if convicted.

Speaker 78 He beat her into submission so that he could rape her.

Speaker 26 Two young prosecutors argued their theory of the case.

Speaker 58 That inside that apartment, Denny had raped and killed Hannah.

Speaker 26 They faced off against what the papers were calling a million-dollar defense dream team hired by Denny's father.

Speaker 24 The lead defense attorney was David Chesnoff from Las Vegas.

Speaker 81 The police rushed to Denny and ignored everything else.

Speaker 29 The girl's mother was called to the stand, but not videoed.

Speaker 84 Those were her favorite pants.

Speaker 60 It all came down to the contents of the trash bag found beneath the window.

Speaker 34 Of all the DNA tests run on Hannah's clothing spotted with blood, only one came back to Denny. A small semen stain on the girl's underwear.

Speaker 76 Hardly proof of a crime, said Denny's lawyer.

Speaker 46 They're kids.

Speaker 9 They're fooling around. That doesn't mean he raped her.

Speaker 18 The case went to the jury.

Speaker 42 And in the midst of deliberations came a stunning turn.

Speaker 26 The judge quite unexpectedly walked into the jury room and declared a mistrial.

Speaker 42 She said she took that drastic measure because she was getting a report that one of the jurors was talking about a lie detector test, not in evidence.

Speaker 42 A lie detector test Brad O'Born, Hannah's boyfriend, had taken and passed. Well, that, said the judge, was jury misconduct.

Speaker 85 Court finds that

Speaker 30 the jury

Speaker 85 is unable to fulfill the obligations required by law.

Speaker 26 The prosecution team was stunned.

Speaker 66 It was not a good day.

Speaker 51 Nor was it a good day for the defense.

Speaker 31 Everybody was brokenhearted, including Denny.

Speaker 24 Denny's team was even more heartbroken to learn that when the judge interrupted the jurors, they had already reached a decision on the major counts.

Speaker 76 Dateline spoke with four jurors after the trial, and they said they had already signed and sealed the ballots on all of the charges except the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Speaker 19 Rape.

Speaker 21 Not guilty.

Speaker 3 Not guilty.

Speaker 21 Murder.

Speaker 3 I voted not guilty. Not guilty.

Speaker 37 Denny had come oh, so close to being acquitted in Hannah's murder.

Speaker 60 Because jurors had voted in his favor, his lawyers went back to the courts to contest his being tried again on grounds of double jeopardy.

Speaker 20 How does Juan get tried again for a crime that he was found not guilty of?

Speaker 44 Denny waited in jail for over a year while the courts tried to sort out what to do with him.

Speaker 7 In September of 2001, he was released on a $1 million loan.

Speaker 78 It's great to finally be out of either.

Speaker 36 But Denny's freedom would be short-lived.

Speaker 39 You'll hear more about that later.

Speaker 51 For Hannah's friends and family, the shock of her violent death, followed by the inconclusive trial, took an enormous toll.

Speaker 59 Brad Oborn now lived under a shadow of suspicion, with people still wondering if he had killed Hannah.

Speaker 52 He tumbled deeper into drugs and even did time for robbing a bank.

Speaker 34 Maybe hardest hit of all was Hannah's mother, Kim.

Speaker 40 She went into a shell.

Speaker 40 I mean,

Speaker 53 it ripped our family apart.

Speaker 44 Several years years after Hannah's murder, the figure of an angel appeared in a tree near where her car had been found, a small shrine to Hannah's memory.

Speaker 43 And for Hannah's best friend, Tara, it wasn't that she ever stopped thinking about her sweet friend, but found she couldn't talk about it.

Speaker 49 Emotions all bottled up. Hannah, frozen forever at 18.

Speaker 18 So you went on with your life?

Speaker 54 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 46 you have babies? Yes.

Speaker 18 She never got to know that, did she?

Speaker 56 No.

Speaker 26 The case, meanwhile, was mostly in the deep freeze, making a glacial procession through the courts.

Speaker 28 Seasons passed with no resolution, but that was about to change in startling fashion.

Speaker 7 Coming up, a second trial. But at times, it was hard to know exactly who was the defendant.
Was it Denny Ross?

Speaker 86 He was choking me from behind and just squeezing.

Speaker 21 Or Hannah's boyfriend.

Speaker 13 Did you blame yourself for Hannah's murder?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 29 The trial of Denny Ross for rape and murder had collapsed.

Speaker 36 Years passed, with the Akron Police Department getting kicked in the teeth for losing the conviction with what so many people called sloppy police work.

Speaker 18 People that remember remember the case, it goes down as an acronym fumble.

Speaker 66 Unfortunately, that's probably the way it's remembered by most, but defending ourselves is not what we're concerned with. Solving the case is what we're concerned with.

Speaker 26 With a team of detectives and prosecutors, Jerry Hughes, now Lieutenant Hughes, toiled away in hopes of a second chance at convicting Denny Ross.

Speaker 72 The case went careening into years of appeals in the state,

Speaker 72 federal, and the Ohio Supreme Court.

Speaker 43 Finally, the Ohio Supreme Court overturned lower court decisions and ruled that Denny Ross could be retried for Hannah's murder. And so, 13 years after Hannah's death, the second trial began.

Speaker 43 Hannah's mother was dreading it, said best friend Tara.

Speaker 84 Kim said, I have to be here every day.

Speaker 84 And I know that was probably hard for her.

Speaker 84 But that's just what she felt she had to do.

Speaker 11 The evidence will show that on that fateful evening of May 19th, 1999, prosecutors Anna Feralia, Matt Meyer, and Brian Radigan laid out their theory of the crime.

Speaker 52 That Hannah Hill was lured over to Denny Ross's bachelor pad for what would be a fatal encounter.

Speaker 85 Do you solemnly swear?

Speaker 24 Nearly 70 witnesses were called.

Speaker 61 Some of them testifying off-camera to things Denny had told them over the years about Hannah's death.

Speaker 31 Denny had made a comment to me that

Speaker 88 he was gonna s ⁇ Hannah. And he said

Speaker 88 we were all having sex and I was

Speaker 88 having sex with this girl and I ended up choke her and excuse my language. She died.

Speaker 57 Yes, Johnny.

Speaker 44 This woman was a stripper back then and a regular at Denny's place.

Speaker 58 For 12 years, she denied being there the night Hannah died.

Speaker 24 But just months before the second trial, she changed her story, saying now she was there that night and hadn't spoken up earlier because she'd been afraid.

Speaker 89 While you were there what did you observe? What did you hear? What did you see?

Speaker 64 Denny and Hannah were in the bedroom.

Speaker 11 Did you know what was going on in that bedroom?

Speaker 89 I had kind of a good idea.

Speaker 64 I knew they were around and then when I heard her make weird sounds I just said f this I don't want to be a part of any crime scene and left.

Speaker 32 But would you believe these kids?

Speaker 18 I mean if they told you the sun was going to come up in the east you get a second opinion.

Speaker 90 You know what? 10, 13 years later I think you look at somebody for who they are when they come before you. The jury can believe some all or none of what these people testified to.

Speaker 63 Those are swabs.

Speaker 47 And then there were expert witnesses, like this pathologist, who said that DNA testing had advanced so much in the years since Hannah's death that now they could detect Denny's DNA in blood droplets on Hannah's pants discarded in that trash bag and even on the t-shirt found on her body in the car.

Speaker 63 The DNA profile from item 9.5, which is one of the cuttings from inside the pockets, is consistent with Denny Ross.

Speaker 32 The new evidence, his blood on the victim's clothing, seemed to belie his account of two teenagers making out, kissing and stuff.

Speaker 13 In the intimate relationship, there really isn't an exchange of blood, unless it's a violent exchange.

Speaker 17 One of the most electrifying prosecution witnesses was this woman, who said she first met Denny at a bar in 2004, five years after Hannah's death.

Speaker 61 Denny was out on bond at the time.

Speaker 29 She said she invited him back to her place, where she says says he violently attacked her.

Speaker 89 How were his hands fixated on your neck?

Speaker 15 From behind.

Speaker 86 He was choking me from behind and just squeezing

Speaker 10 till I couldn't breathe.

Speaker 86 I couldn't breathe at all. I know I passed out a few times.

Speaker 89 And what are you doing at this point?

Speaker 57 Pretending I'm dead, hoping he can't see me breathe.

Speaker 49 Choked during sex, battered, and left for dead. The prosecution's implication was clear.

Speaker 52 Is this what happened to Hannah Hill years before?

Speaker 20 People develop patterns of behavior. I mean, it's what we do.
We form habits, and killers are no different.

Speaker 42 The prosecutors knew that Denny's lawyers would offer the jury an alternative killer in this trial.

Speaker 44 And who would that be?

Speaker 42 Why, Brad O'Born, the scratched-up boyfriend. To preempt the defense team, the prosecutors put Brad in the stand.

Speaker 18 It was a risky strategy.

Speaker 14 You know, I was a heroin addict for quite some time.

Speaker 87 The story Brad told of his relationship with this nice girl, Hannah, was for sure a warts and all presentation.

Speaker 14 I was not a good boyfriend.

Speaker 89 Can you explain to us what not a good boyfriend means?

Speaker 88 I was abusive.

Speaker 12 I

Speaker 88 abused her.

Speaker 10 Did you verbally abuse her?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 13 Did you physically abuse her?

Speaker 8 You need to answer our father, please.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 51 Brad testified that just days before Hannah disappeared, they'd had a big fight about him cheating on her and said that's when she'd scratched him.

Speaker 13 Does that picture fairly and accurately represent the scratches that are on your arms?

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 26 Most painful, he said, was the fact that he had introduced Hannah to Denny in the first place.

Speaker 89 So but for you, Hannah Hill would never have met Denny Ross.

Speaker 13 Is that what you're saying, Mr. Olborn?

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Did you blame yourself for Hannah's murder?

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 13 Do you still blame yourself for Hannah's murder?

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 11 Did you kill Hannah Hill?

Speaker 5 Absolutely not.

Speaker 39 The prosecutors had had their chance to show Brad as someone clearly not the killer.

Speaker 60 But now defense attorneys would have their crack at him.

Speaker 25 An all-or-nothing cross-examination.

Speaker 79 Coming up.

Speaker 6 Did Brad have a motive for killing Hannah?

Speaker 7 Maybe something he had read in her secret diary.

Speaker 10 She wrote that she had gone to Denny's. Did you read that when you read her book?

Speaker 47 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 51 Through 13 years of hearings, appeals, and trials, Denny Ross always had one loyal person in his corner, his father, Alan.

Speaker 68 Did your kid kill Hannah Hill?

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 18 In a moment of rough sex that went bad?

Speaker 18 Oh my god, she's dead. Put the body in the car, ditch the car, walk home.

Speaker 20 And then make yourself a suspect by telling the police she was there.

Speaker 54 No.

Speaker 20 No. My son didn't do this.

Speaker 62 Alan sees Hannah showing up at Denny's apartment that night looking for a shoulder to cry on.

Speaker 60 The teenager upset that her boyfriend Brad, the guy she'd recently scratched up, had cheated on her.

Speaker 38 The father says the night unfolded just as Denny had told the cops.

Speaker 60 They fooled around a little, kissed and stuffed, and Hannah left a few hours later.

Speaker 58 Had someone been waiting below for her to leave the notorious party house?

Speaker 18 So Denny Ross was framed by the true killer, is what you're saying.

Speaker 20 Well, that's pretty obvious.

Speaker 36 That was the theory defense attorneys Roger Sinnenberg, Larry Whitney, and Dominic Coletta took to court.

Speaker 32 Preparing for Denny's trial number two was a daunting task.

Speaker 9 Turned out to be a 13-year investigation, so there was an awful lot of data.

Speaker 62 They insist Denny is innocent, the fallout victim of all that heat that came down on the Akron PD when it failed to find Hannah's car.

Speaker 70 Once they found the bag of her clothing outside the window, the case turned from an investigation into the death of Hannah Hill into an investigation of Denny Ross.

Speaker 36 Denny's lawyers told the jurors about all the things police had failed to do, like check Hannah's pager records or do a luminol test of Denny's place.

Speaker 60 They questioned how Denny could have possibly killed Hannah in his apartment and left no trace of the murder.

Speaker 9 No blood,

Speaker 9 no excrement,

Speaker 10 nothing that belonged to Hannah Hill, and yet that's where they say she was murdered.

Speaker 78 As for the so-called new blood evidence, Denny's attorneys told jurors those spots were so tiny they didn't prove anything, and also challenged the notion that bleeding necessarily proved a violent encounter.

Speaker 57 We all get paper cuts, don't we?

Speaker 69 Correct.

Speaker 57 We get mosquito bites, don't we?

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 49 The defense team challenged the credibility of prosecution witnesses in Denny's circle back when.

Speaker 29 For instance, the former stripper, who 12 years along had changed her story, now testifying she heard Denny hurting Hannah the night she died.

Speaker 51 The defense team got her to admit she had smoked a lot of pot that night and had a pattern of lying, even lying in a formal pretrial interview with Denny's lawyer.

Speaker 47 So, you decided that it was better to lie to me, correct?

Speaker 32 Yeah, it was in your best interest to lie to me, yes, correct?

Speaker 26 And when it came to this woman, who had electrified the court by saying Denny had attacked and choked her, defense attorneys had lost the pre-trial battle to keep her off the stand.

Speaker 24 They insisted that no matter what she had to say, she couldn't tell the jurors anything about what had happened to Hannah.

Speaker 10 Do you know where Hannah Hill was between May 19th, 1999 at 9 p.m. to May 20th, 1999 at 2 a.m.?

Speaker 86 Absolutely not.

Speaker 5 Thank you. I have no further questions here.

Speaker 59 Defense attorneys said the focus on those other witnesses was the prosecutor's attempt to shift attention away from the true killer.

Speaker 52 The person who we still to this day believe killed Hannah is her boyfriend.

Speaker 77 Brad O'Bourne's alibi as to where he was that night was that he was home watching television with his roommates, and they never interviewed the roommates.

Speaker 26 And now Denny's attorneys would have a shot at the one man who could create reasonable doubt in their case, Brad O'Born. They began by attacking his depiction of himself as a bad boyfriend.

Speaker 57 You were a bad boyfriend, but you're also abusive.

Speaker 14 Correct. You hit this young girl.
No, I didn't. You slapped her.
No, I didn't. You kicked her.
No, yes, I did.

Speaker 36 Denny's lawyer tried to trip Brad up on dates and times.

Speaker 56 You told us

Speaker 88 earlier today, just want to get this straight, that you were not trying to get it straight. You're trying to confuse me.

Speaker 36 But did Brad have a motive for killing Hannah?

Speaker 76 For an answer to that question, Denny's attorneys would turn to Hannah's diaries.

Speaker 29 Reporter Admire.

Speaker 72 Page after page of entries in her own handwriting. You could argue that she was fed up with Brad O'Bourne and was reaching out on the very night she disappeared.

Speaker 18 That's going to be something for a jury to think about.

Speaker 72 It would be if I was sitting on the panel.

Speaker 24 The diary entry, speaking from her grave, Hannah's own words telling jurors who she was thinking of, Denny.

Speaker 44 What's more, the defense attorney got Brad to admit he had read the diary, cataloging Hannah's visits to Denny.

Speaker 10 And do you recognize under the 19th words that Brad read this book? It hurt really bad.

Speaker 12 I've never loved someone so much.

Speaker 88 I recognize the fact that she recognized that I read the book.

Speaker 10 She wrote that she had gone to Denny's.

Speaker 10 Did you read that when you read the book?

Speaker 10 I don't remember.

Speaker 32 Was it jealousy then?

Speaker 76 Was that the motive?

Speaker 10 And you were concerned that Denny might have went up on you.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 10 And you were concerned that any male was a potential risk to your relationship with Hannah, correct?

Speaker 14 Correct.

Speaker 32 Denny's lawyer closed by saying the state's case couldn't possibly add up to a conviction.

Speaker 65 Inconclusive DNA, a long string of sketchy witnesses, and most of all, an angry, abusive, jealous boyfriend.

Speaker 10 In your deliberations, ask yourself against who is the evidence stronger.

Speaker 10 And if there's any kind of evidence against Brad O'Bourne, we've got reasonable doubt then.

Speaker 37 Had the defense made a persuasive case for Hannah's family and friends, there was now more waiting and just one hope, justice for Hannah.

Speaker 3 The truth always comes out, you know, no matter what it is.

Speaker 7 Coming up, the verdict in the second trial trial of Denny Ross.

Speaker 94 We have two families out there. We had to take our time and made that right decision.

Speaker 59 Jurors deliberating, asked by the state to pass judgment on another human being.

Speaker 94 We have two families out there. We had to take our time and made that right decision.

Speaker 44 What would they make of the weeks of testimony why a murder defendant who didn't even look like one the first day i thought he was a lawyer he had this boyish look

Speaker 94 as if to say why am i here i didn't do this

Speaker 36 seven jurors in the case spoke to dateline and told us initially they were an evenly divided panel of 12.

Speaker 18 as they talked it became apparent they regarded some of the prosecution witnesses as literally unbelievable and then you as a juror have to make a decision, do I believe the story this person's telling me?

Speaker 3 That's really hard, especially when they tell you how many drugs they put in their system.

Speaker 26 When it came to this woman, the one who testified about Denny attacking and choking her, jurors said they believed her story about being assaulted.

Speaker 52 But nonetheless, her testimony was not a deciding factor in their final decision.

Speaker 42 You still would have gotten to where you got.

Speaker 26 And once again, 13 years later, the investigation in the early days after Hannah's disappearance still bedeviled the case.

Speaker 59 The jurors said the police work left them with so many unanswered questions.

Speaker 63 Pager, they didn't look at her pager, and she was a major pager user, you know. I wasn't convinced that he dropped the bag.

Speaker 3 Well, I think we all couldn't figure out why they didn't luminol the first time they went out there.

Speaker 35 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday passed, and for those outside the jury room, the wait was excruciating.

Speaker 18 Been taking a long time. Yeah.

Speaker 46 October 6th, 2010.

Speaker 44 The jurors say they weighed Brad O'Born's testimony carefully.

Speaker 18 But did you believe his story?

Speaker 94 Looking at his body language, making contact with the jury, I believed him.

Speaker 3 None of us felt that it was him and none of his DNA was there.

Speaker 25 And so on Friday, just after lunch, came word of a decision.

Speaker 71 Lawyers, friends, family all assembled at the court.

Speaker 62 Hannah's brothers stayed away, shaky.

Speaker 40 I was at a friend's house, waiting by the phone.

Speaker 8 I was terrified.

Speaker 57 All right, would it?

Speaker 68 In just moments, there was no more need for guesswork.

Speaker 95 Count one,

Speaker 95 is it your determination

Speaker 95 that the defendant committed murder in this count in that he did purposely cause the death of Hannah Hill?

Speaker 95 Is that your decision? Yes,

Speaker 26 Denny Ross guilty on all five counts.

Speaker 59 In the back of the courtroom, Hannah's friend Tara was visibly shaken.

Speaker 3 I was erect. It was just very intense.
I remember remember thinking,

Speaker 3 thank you, God, and a sense of relief all in one fell swoop.

Speaker 45 Those long years of work from prosecutors and detectives had paid off.

Speaker 90 The only thing the state of Ohio is going to say is that we are grateful to these jurors that they have finally provided an accounting for Hannah Hill's death.

Speaker 36 Jurors told us that in the end, it all came down to the blood evidence on Hannah's clothes.

Speaker 3 The DNA

Speaker 63 outweighed a lot of unknowns for us.

Speaker 9 It said Danny Ross was there.

Speaker 59 As a result of the Hannah Hill case, Lieutenant Hughes said the Akron Police Department has made many changes throughout the years, especially in the communications department, to make sure mistakes like the failure to locate Hannah's car never happen again.

Speaker 18 13 years on, can Akron residents be assured that the screw-up has been rectified?

Speaker 66 I believe so, and there's been a lot of changes.

Speaker 58 Danny Ross was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison for Hannah's death.

Speaker 43 He won't serve that time for years to come. What the jurors didn't know is that he is already serving a 25-year sentence for the rape and attempted murder of another woman between the two trials.

Speaker 43 He will be 67 years old before he is eligible for parole.

Speaker 9 We're disappointed.

Speaker 19 We had hoped for a different result.

Speaker 22 Denny's lawyers filed a request for a new trial, which was denied.

Speaker 71 Do I think there'll be a round three?

Speaker 31 You can bank on it.

Speaker 67 Okay, bank on it.

Speaker 76 Reporter Ed Meyer says he is suspicious to this day about how the bag of evidence appeared beneath Denny Ross's window.

Speaker 72 Skeptics can still wonder. Absolutely, they can still wonder.

Speaker 43 As for Brad O'Born, despite the fact that Denny's defense has always been that Brad killed Hannah, O'Born was never regarded as a serious suspect by the authorities or Hannah's friends and family.

Speaker 49 Brad says he loved Hannah and that living under a cloud of suspicion has taken its toll.

Speaker 89 Do you feel like this verdict clears your name?

Speaker 79 I believe it has. I know I didn't do it.
You know, I know in the back of my mind I didn't do anything.

Speaker 46 The only thing I'm guilty of is being a bad boyfriend. And I can't change that.
I wish I could. If I had three wishes, all three of them would be to change that.
I can't.

Speaker 51 On a rainy Sunday after the verdict, Hannah's friends and family gathered for a balloon release in her memory.

Speaker 32 They passed around Sharpies and wrote little messages for the the lost girl, her brother.

Speaker 39 I was just glad that it's over with, finally.

Speaker 39 Now we can start mourning.

Speaker 25 Father,

Speaker 9 Deb will always love you.

Speaker 55 The best friend.

Speaker 39 I love you and miss you so much.

Speaker 39 Fly high, my bright star. Love Terra.

Speaker 60 And then, after a brief prayer, they stood by the pond and the brisk wind carried away their goodbyes.

Speaker 25 Farewell to Hannah Hill.

Speaker 36 Never forgotten by her family and friends.

Speaker 60 Or as it turned out, by the criminal justice system.

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