Killing was Purposeful /// Part 1 /// 841

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Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening.

I'm your host, Nick, and with me, as always, is a man who at the end of today's show will be performing a TikTok dance.

Here is the captain.

And it's going to blow your freaking mind.

It's good to be seen and good to see you.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for Tom Friend

This week we are delighted to be featuring Lawn Mower Yard Lager by the fine folks at Churchill Brewing Company.

This is an American light beer by style, but it's made up in Canada, so it has a little extra oomph to it.

It's crisp and not watered down like some light beers.

ABV 4.3% garage grade, 3.5% bottle caps out of 5.

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All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer.

Let's talk some true crime.

It defies belief, yet it seems to happen time and time again.

In a state of despair, a vulnerable victim just happens to come across someone.

Someone who pretends to come to her aid, to help her out, to be a friend.

But that Good Samaritan is far from that.

He is a monster.

What are the chances that as 14-year-old Lori Ann Hill was walking home alone, crying, on a cool night in a small town, someone unknown to her abducted her, savaged her, and then left her body to be found by hunters?

The chances are slim,

but it does happen.

Instead, police suspected that the killer was someone Lori knew.

A statistically sound theory.

And eventually, someone she knew well was arrested, charged, and tried for her murder.

But that is not where Lori's tragic story ends.

And it may be just the beginning.

This is the case of Lori Ann Hill, and this is True Crime Garage.

Lori Ann Hill was born on November 9th, 1970 in Miami, Florida.

Her parents are Roger and Dottie Hill.

The family moved from Florida to a home on Berkey Southern Road, located in Swanton, Ohio.

Now, Swanton is a small town in northwest Ohio.

Back then, when they moved here, it was about 3,500 people and small in size as well.

It's only three and a half square miles.

This is where our story starts.

This is 1985.

Lori is the youngest of four kids, and by this time, Lori has an older sister, Joy, who is living in Dallas, and an older brother, Sergeant Chris Hill, in the Marines at Camp Lugene.

She has one sister, Rachel, who is still living at home.

But again, Rachel is older than Lori, who is the youngest.

Lori is a sophomore at Swanton High School and was described as friendly and popular.

Her school principal described Lori as an average student with lots of friends, adding that Lori was a wonderful person and had a very sunny personality and strong family bonds.

Lori was a horse person.

We love horse people.

Lori was often seen outside of her home working with her horse.

She was in many ways a typical teen with big 80s hair and a mouth full of braces.

She also had some drama going on in her love life, which was quite active considering she was only 14 years old, with some facets of her dating life being kept from her parents.

However, 14-year-old Lorian Hill will go missing sometime during a night out with friends.

Lori's parents reported her missing to Fulton County authorities around 2 a.m.

on the morning of October 26, 1985.

Her sister Rachel got home while her parents were on the phone with the sheriff's office.

She said her heart sank when she heard that Lori had not come home and was missing because, as a rule, her younger sister did not come home past her curfew.

She never broke curfew.

The whole family was very scared.

Her mom started calling everyone she could think of, and Rachel and her father, they jump in the car and they start driving around looking for Lori.

Rachel knew Lori had gone to a party earlier that evening, but a visit to that house, the home of the party, showed that the place was quiet and no one had seen Lori in several hours.

Rachel called all of the local radio stations and alerted them to Lori being missing, saying, Lori, if you are hearing this, please come home.

Now, we need to point out here, Captain, that Lori had just started dating a guy named Craig Rupp,

who at age 18,

of course, he's a lot older than Lori.

The timeline for the evening of October 25th, the evening in question, is as follows.

At 6:30 p.m., Craig picked up Lori at her home.

They go to McDonald's for dinner.

They went to an area pond for some, air quotes, private time.

But according to Craig, they never had sex and that night was no exception.

Then they went to a Halloween party.

on South Munson Road around 8 p.m.

So this would be the house where later her older sister and father would drop by, check to see if Lori was still there.

The party's over by that time, and Lori, of course, not there.

Now, when she was at the party here, Captain, Lori was drinking, and the reports are that she was drinking to the point where she appeared to be drunk to other attendees of this part.

And it's noted by Craig and several other people that were there that she and Craig got into an argument.

It was a very obvious argument.

This was apparently about the fact that she was wearing Craig's class ring as well as a ring from a previous boyfriend.

So, that's that's typically a big no-no.

If you're going to wear the ring of a boyfriend, uh, it should just be the one.

According to party goers, Lori left the party upset at 9:30 and was given a ride downtown by a friend.

So, this is downtown Swanton.

The friend is Steve Wakowski.

Craig says he never saw Lori again.

So she leaves Craig at the party, ditches him after this argument, hops in a car with this Steve guy, and Steve drives her.

And according to Steve, on the night that Lori disappeared, he says, look, I was at the same party.

I left without Lori, but later saw Lori walking.

She hadn't made it very far.

And so he stops to talk to her.

He wanted to find out what was going on, make sure she was okay.

He offers to give her a ride home.

She accepts, but she's very angry and upset at this time about this argument with Craig.

Right.

So she gets in the vehicle, accepts the ride home.

However, Steve says, quote, she was very distraught, crying.

She had been crying very, very hard.

Her face was red.

She just wasn't herself.

The whole thing was over a ring.

She was very upset about the fight.

You couldn't reason with her, End quote.

Steve said Lori had that argument with Craig about the ring thing.

Steve said Lori got out of his car at some point.

He says they just drove a block and a half or so when she saw some headlights behind them and seemed to think that it was the headlights of her boyfriend, which I want to circle that word boyfriend because that could mean multiple things here.

But according to the guy that gives her the ride, steve he says quote she just went crazy after that wanted out of the car she was going to get out of the car whether i stopped or not so yeah but we've all been there i mean when you're young and you're drinking uh you're inexperienced so sometimes you drink too much too quickly and get angry about stuff that maybe wouldn't bother you or or a disagreement gets blown way out of proportion right so he stops, he lets her out.

Steve says that the last he saw of Lori, she was walking toward a place called Mr.

G's Pizza.

This definitely holds up his statement here because this Mr.

G's Pizza, as I understand it, was a popular hangout at the time for teens.

He goes on to say that I proceeded to go home.

I didn't think anything of it at the time.

We can confirm his statement because Lori is later seen by several people at this Mr.

G's pizza without Steve.

All right.

So at Mr.

G's, Lori was seen making a phone call.

But the question mark here, Captain, is to this very day, the identity of the person she spoke with

has

never been established, never definitively been established.

And it's a question mark to me as well if police even know this, because there's a chance that maybe they have an idea of who she spoke with, I would have to believe that this is a payphone call

and that maybe they are just not saying who who she spoke with.

Yeah, because you could assume that maybe she's calling the guy she got on a fight with, or she's calling the guy, the other guy that she was wearing a ring from, or maybe she was calling a parent or somebody to come pick her up, or maybe she's calling a friend to either come pick her up or

to discuss, hey, this went down at this party and I need to discuss it with somebody.

So many possibilities.

Many possibilities.

That's right.

Outside of Mr.

G's, Lori's friend Rhonda Whitman says that she spoke with Lori

briefly.

So this would have been just before 10 p.m.

And she asked Lori if she wanted a ride.

I like something you said there in the possibilities of who this phone call was for.

I believe after reviewing all of the information here, that the most probable scenarios of this phone call was either A, she's calling somebody for a ride, or B, she's calling to meet up with somebody that may also involve a ride somewhere.

And I say that because what we're going to see here by the following statements, that as the night progresses, after she's at Mr.

G's, remember she hops out of the car, Steve's car, car, goes to Mr.

G's.

Now we're going to see her continually turning down rides, which is suggestive to me that she's meeting someone.

She doesn't want to go home.

And that she's either meeting someone or she's waiting on a ride from someone else.

So this Rhonda Whitman friend asked Lori if she wants a ride.

Her response,

someone was going to be picking her up.

She doesn't say who.

Rhonda did say Lori at this time was acting normal, even though she knew that Lori had been crying previous to this time.

Now, the next witness to see Lori was a neighbor of hers.

I like these witnesses because many times we're reviewing cases and it's people that don't know the person in question.

These are all people that have previous histories with Lori.

They went to school with her, they were friends with her.

This person is a neighbor.

So her neighbor, Deborah Ronin,

says that she saw Lori walking toward her home.

This is after 10 p.m., so it falls right into the timeline perfectly.

Deborah stops asking Lori if she wanted a ride, but Lori says no.

And then we get this information as well.

This is,

again, neighbors of the Hill family, of Lori's family.

And it's a married couple, the Bettingers.

They're driving home from that night's football game.

They say this would be around 10:30 p.m.

They say that they came across three teenagers who were walking northbound on State Route 295.

This would be rather close to Lori Ann Hill's home.

And the Bettingers say that they remember this specifically because the teens were walking into the middle of the road.

So they had to slow down

and kind of idle past them.

And shortly after Lori Hill's disappearance, Mr.

Bedtinger called the Swanton Police Department reporting this incident.

He stated that the individual in the center was a tall girl with blonde hair.

He said to her right was a boy who was taller than the girl who had dark shoulder-length hair.

To the left of the girl was a shorter, heavy-set person who Bettinger said could have been a boy or a girl.

He didn't know.

And he says that as they came came upon the teens, the boy to the right of the girl stepped further into the road and turned around to face their car.

The girl in the middle turned partially around,

and then the teens stepped to the side.

The bettingers went past them.

He told the police chief that

when the report came over the evening news that Lori Ann Hill was missing, he and his wife realized that the girl that they had seen walking in the road was in fact Lori Ann Hill.

He said that he could back this up and he was pretty positive about this identification because Lori Ann Hill had been to their house a few times.

She was friends or acquaintances with their son.

Well, let's back up for just a minute.

With any of these eyewitness reports, especially the ones that see her at the pizza shop, do we have any clue of what her state is?

Because like we said, Steve, the guy that gives gives her a ride is like well she's clearly intoxicated and then clearly upset but do these people see her as being upset or see her her her as being intoxicated because like i said it's just

and i'm not blaming her here we've all been there i could tell you some crazy stories of my inexperienced drinking days

But you'd think maybe within this time frame that she'd, you know, she's not continuing to drink.

So you would think she would start sobering up and obviously start making more sense to these eyewitnesses i think you're spot on there because i i don't think that none of the other people that interact with her after

the party mention anything about her being drunk or intoxicated they do reference several of them other than the bettingers because they just had this brief moment in time where they passed somebody that they believed was lorianne hill but the only people to report that she was drunk or intoxicated were people that were in attendance at the party with her.

To what state of

intoxication, it's difficult for anyone to say.

Your body's going to, if she only consumed a beer, beer and a half or whatever, wine coolers, who knows?

I don't have a great description of the goings on at the party outside of the argument, right?

Everybody knows that there was the argument.

People report afterwards, they knew that she had been upset.

She continued to be upset for a period of time, but nobody else reports this, her being intoxicated.

Now, the last sighting of her, let's say potential sighting, because I want to throw this one in the questionable basket for a couple of reasons.

This one's really difficult for me to sort out because I don't know how much credence the police gave to this last tip.

The Bettingers, out of all the people that night, they're the only ones to say that they saw Lori in a group of people with two other people.

If she was, in fact, with two other people, those persons have not been identified.

However, I will say this: when Mr.

Bedinger spoke with the police chief, he did give a description of what he thought that the girl was wearing or what he recalled her to be wearing when he spotted her.

And he says that the girl in the middle of the pack, who he thought was Lori, was wearing a blue jean jacket and blue jeans and a white shirt.

Now, this is consistent with what she was wearing that night.

So

that last tip, that last bit of information is difficult to sort out

because that information puts her, one, much, much closer to her home than any of the other sightings.

All the other sightings seem very credible.

It puts her with two people that have not been identified.

Right.

The Swanton Police and the Lucas County Sheriff's Office categorize the case as a missing runaway, but then

they did do immediately a large-scale search for Lori.

They didn't wait.

And rather quickly, they are interviewing her friend's family, her new boyfriend, Craig, who she had the argument with, and the kids at the party.

Now, I had mentioned earlier to circle that word boyfriend, right?

Because Steve's statement to police is, well, she was going to get out of the car no matter what.

And she seemed to get more upset when there were headlights behind us, and she said something to the effect that it might be her boyfriend's car.

So that could mean Craig, who she was at the party with, that she had just gotten in the argument with, but it also could mean a guy that she had recently broke up with.

Remember, she's wearing two class rings from two different guys at that party.

So when she says boyfriend, did she mean boyfriend or ex-boyfriend?

Let's also not dismiss the

option that it could just have been a car that didn't belong to either of them, that she's just in the moment, she's upset, she might be still intoxicated at this time and just being irrational and saying, you know what, I got to get out of the car.

I think she was going to get out of the car no matter what, just like Steve said, regardless of who was in the vehicle behind them.

And I'm not trying to throw shade at Steve, but if you're a little intoxicated and haven't been before,

is he saying anything to her that's creeping her out and she wants to get out of the vehicle?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

There's reports of her being drinking to the point of drunkenness.

There's no reports of

Steve, you know, that we do know.

What we do know is police spoke with the partygoers very quickly

in the heat of the moment here.

And as said, we have searchers going door to door.

We have people looking at the Swanton Memorial Park trying to witness, trying to locate witnesses or Lori.

They searched fields, vacant buildings.

A dive team was brought in rather quickly.

Even the Air National Guard assisted in some of the searches.

So they moved into action rather quickly, and

they were searching for her.

high and low.

Now, they also investigated a college party that was somewhat in the area that night.

A female employee of a place called El Matador.

This is a restaurant.

This employee attended the University of Toledo.

So

Swanton is west of Toledo.

I think it's about a 35, 45-minute drive.

So this is a Halloween party, and investigators considered that the party may have brought outsiders to town.

But the thing is, they couldn't find anybody to say that Lori ever ended up at that party that night, nor would there be a whole lot of reason to think that she did unless it was random.

But we should point out she's 14, but often in the company of high school students, but they're technically men.

I mean, they're 18-year-old boys.

On October 30th, there was news, and it's not the good kind.

This is around 3:30 p.m.

So this is Tuesday afternoon.

A deer hunter in Northwest Pike Township found a body off of Fulton County Road M, the letter M, halfway between state routes 12 and 13.

This is 10 miles northeast of Wassion and 10 miles west of Toledo.

This was 13 miles from Lori's home.

So again, if that last, if the Bettinger's sighting of the person they thought was Lori is correct, this is 13 miles from where she was last seen.

This got the Lucas County Sheriff's Office involved in the case, as well as Fulton County officials, because she was found in Lucas County from Fulton, but it's not clear where she had been killed.

Now, we have to say

it's unclear to me exactly where they found her body because some reports say she was found in a wooded area and some say she was found in a cornfield.

Yeah, I actually think what it is is,

you know, anytime you're driving on these rural routes, that you have, you know, soybean fields or cornfields or whatever, but they're kind of outlined by little patches of woods.

So I'm guessing it's kind of both, you know, she's found maybe

in a small patch of woods that was connected to a cornfield.

Looking at Google Maps, it appears that County Road M has a lot more cornfields than wooded areas.

And then, of course, the family receives the horrible news.

Roger Hill, her father, Lori's father, had to walk into his house and tell his wife Dottie and his daughter Rachel that Lori was dead.

Dottie started screaming,

and the family was never the same again.

TV's number one drama, High Potential, returns with star Caitlin Olson as the crime-solving single mom with an IQ of 160.

Every week, Morgan uses her unconventional style and brilliance to crack LAPD's most perplexing cases.

It's the perfect blend of humor and mystery.

She's breaking the mold without breaking a nail.

High Potential premieres Tuesday at 10-9 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.

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All right, we are back.

Cheers, mates.

To the windows, to the walls.

Cheers to you, Colonel.

Cheers to you, Captain.

Cheers to the people

in the back.

Yeah, I mean, this is a tough case.

Like you said, just a few days after, you know, she went missing.

Nobody's heard from her.

They find her naked body, and she's badly beaten and obviously deceased.

And they only find, what, her jean jacket and a sock?

Yeah, that's correct.

And then it makes you wonder, did whoever did this to her, did they keep items or did they drop these items off and these were somehow

whether it was because of the weather or animals or whatever, is there a reason why the other clothes are missing?

Well, initial reports about Lori's cause of death and, as I had referenced before the break, the crime scene were

misleading.

Now, we do know it was a homicide.

That was obvious from the beginning.

In fact, the Fulton County medical examiner reported as such, ruled it as such.

Initial reports by Fulton County officials were that Lori had been shot at least once in the head.

This was assumed by the deputies who found her after the hunter notified them of the body.

This is because she had a hole in the middle of her forehead.

But October 31st, the Fulton County coroner stated that this was inaccurate.

She wasn't shot at all.

Lori had died from, like the captain said, blunt force trauma to the head inflicted by multiple blows.

From the record, the cause of death was multiple blunt force and sharp injuries.

In particular, her skull was fractured and she had numerous bruises, abrasions, and lacerations over her body.

The coroner opined that the skull fractures were likely caused by an iron instrument, such as a prybar, crowbar, or pipe.

But that

so that information, while we know it today, the pry bar, crowbar, pipe speculation, that information wasn't made public at the time.

All the authorities would say was that they were following up on several clues.

And they did say that at that time they they did not have a suspect.

It was difficult really for anybody to say 100%

how long Lori had been lying out there before she was found.

We do have Dr.

Reed who goes on the record saying that

it's believed that Lori was killed late Friday night or early Saturday morning.

So,

in other words, this would have been within hours of her going missing.

Yeah, obviously, if you're in law enforcement, you're going to look into this fight with her quote-unquote boyfriend, but he remains at the party, so you'd think there was enough eyewitnesses there that would give him a pretty solid alibi.

Officials clarified later that Lori was found lying 67 feet from the road, and she had been left in plain sight with no attempt to obscure the body.

She was nude, but for one sock.

Her other sock and jean jacket lay nearby, but

none of her other items of clothing were found.

This next bit was not released at the time either.

But what we do know today is Seaman was identified on vaginal swabs taken at the autopsy.

The pathologist did not make a ruling as to whether the victim had been raped.

There was no evidence of trauma to the genital area.

There's also no reference or report of

had she possibly engaged in consensual sex, which, of course, at the age of 14, she can't really consent anyway

per the law.

The town was shaken up, needless to say, by the murder.

It was, I mean,

technically, she could consent with another minor, right?

I don't, I don't, not a lawyer.

But

I don't know how this works.

But what we do know is she was at a party.

We have nobody saying that she was sneaking off into the room with anybody.

She leaves the party.

This guy, Steve, there's no physical or intimate connection there.

She's seen at the pizza shop, so she's not obviously having sex with anybody at the pizza shop.

And then she's last seen walking down a road.

So,

you know,

I would assume

we could almost assume that this is not consensual, right?

Well, no, I, I,

I mean,

in what terms?

I, I mean, then the legal term, I went out of my way to say it that way because of a few different things.

If, if the individual,

I don't want to, I don't want to try to

dance through the raindrops of, you know, if she was 14 and with another 14-year-old,

what's the law there?

But right what i'm pointing out here is if if she were picked up by somebody uh if it was a person who a male who was 16 18 19 what have you that the look there's information in

and throughout this story that she was very likely sexually active at the age of 14.

And there's also the statement by her current boyfriend, Craig Rupp.

His statement to police is that they went to a pond area to, quote, spend some time together.

But he says that in their relationship, they had never had sex and that evening was no exception.

We gloss over some of the information here purposely because

I don't know that it furthers the investigation to go into how potentially violent this murder was.

To say that the town was shaken up would be an understatement.

The students at Lori's high school were incredibly disturbed by the news.

Remember, the principal said this was a girl that had a lot of friends.

And we can see by her activities that night, she had a lot of friends.

A lot of people liked her, people stopping to offer her a ride.

Many sought counseling.

Some of the students had to go to counseling or started going to church after this event.

Now, the community did pull together to raise some money for a Crime Stoppers reward.

It wasn't until November 15th,

but this is the first time we see a local paper advertising a $1,000 reward for information in the case.

That reward very quickly doubled.

Meanwhile, area law enforcement authorities wanted to solve this murder very quickly.

The Fulton County Sheriff's Office made sure that all items of physical evidence,

which was not, a list was not provided to the public, but what we do know is Fulton County Sheriff's Office is stating we sent the physical evidence immediately to the FBI labs for analysis.

Later, what we would learn here, Captain, in some reports is that blue paint chips were recovered from Lori's jean jacket.

Now, this was an all-hands-on-deck case.

We have Fulton County Sheriff's Office, Lucas County Sheriff's Office, and Swanton Police Police Department, all hands on deck to solve this very quickly.

The Swanton Police Chief, Tom Bates, who was also a reverend, he led the funeral service for Lori on November 2nd at Woodlawn Cemetery in Swanton, Ohio.

On November 7th, the public received word that the authorities

they were seeking the public's help for locating the potential murder weapon in the case, it was obvious and also pointed out that

they had no reason to believe that Lori was killed where she was found.

It was simply

a dumping ground.

She had been killed elsewhere, and

they were telling the public.

This would be a location that we would expect to find a lot of blood.

Wherever she was killed, we expect to find a lot of blood.

Well, yeah, yeah, because there's blunt force trauma to the head, and the head

is an area that likes to bleed out.

They also went out of their way to say that they don't think that there is a mass murder running loose in the county.

They don't think that there is some maniac out there that would, you know, no evidence to suggest that there's a maniac out there seeking to murder young people.

They did say that it was their belief that whoever was responsible for this very likely was someone who knew Lori.

It was a person, therefore, that was not considered to be a danger to others.

It was Lori that this individual wanted to kill, whether it be premeditated or in the moment.

Yeah, to me, this seems, I mean, you have the argument, you have the current boyfriend, you have the ex-boyfriend.

So I guess you'd have some people that have motive, but because her whereabouts changed, she was initially at a party i don't know if it if do we have in any information that she was supposed to stay at the party or was she supposed to go back home but either way her movements changed throughout the day so to me if i'm law enforcement i'm going i think this is more random see that's where my i'm with you because no the way the night was supposed to go is go to McDonald's.

Of course, she's not going to tell her parents that she's going to a pond for a brief stop-off with her boyfriend, but it's the plan was to go to McDonald's, go to this Halloween party where there's a bunch of friends, her age, a bunch of high school kids, and then go home.

Her boyfriend, Craig Rupp, would be dropping her off at home.

And we do have her sister saying, look, she never broke curfew.

Now, of course, she's 14, and sometimes those teenage years get weird, and the older you get, you might start breaking rules all of a sudden.

But it, it appears to me that her being out past curfew, her being out on her own is just as you said.

It's a matter of what was going on in the moment.

She was, she, she was distraught.

She decided to stomp off and leave the party.

And that was never the plan for that night.

And I'm with you.

Who's to say that she wasn't out walking a county road by herself and

exactly what the police and prosecutor said to not be worried about.

Maybe there was somebody out there seeking to snatch a woman or a young lady and

sexually assault them.

And if it leads to death, it leads to death.

So

look, I think that maybe

what they were seeing and who they were talking to, maybe that is suggestive to them that that wasn't the case.

that it was some the statistics would say that it that it would likely be somebody that knew her but i i wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the idea that this was somebody that saw an opportunity saw a person who was vulnerable and took advantage of that situation and and she again

if that were the case she didn't have to willingly get into a vehicle for for this to be the result unfortunately her case

meaning that she was forced in right

well yeah yeah unfortunately her case goes cold rather quickly.

We do know that Crime Stoppers continue to run ads and newspapers with reward information throughout 1986, the following year.

No answers or tips forthcoming.

In June of 86,

her parents, tired of the quiet surrounding the case, offered up their own reward of $10,000 leading.

for information to the that would lead to the identity of her killer.

Lori's father, Roger, goes on record saying that he wanted his daughter's killer to face the death penalty.

Quote, there is definitely a revenge factor, he said.

I want an eye for an eye.

In November of 1986, a Fulton County grand jury was convened to consider Lori's case.

Now, we got to clarify for some of the listeners out there why and what this scenario actually entails.

So sometimes investigators do this, Prosecutors do this to employ the subpoena power and sworn testimony of that investigative body, right?

To force people to testify, telling the truth.

The proceedings are typically secret.

All we know about this one is that teenagers and police officers testified during this grand jury.

The grand jury failed to hand down an indictment, although it is unknown whether one was sought.

They may have convened, they may have brought this to a grand jury without actually seeking an indictment.

Sometimes it's just to further the investigation when you have the subpoena power and testimony power.

We do know

that one angle that was explored by the grand jury was

three guys, three individuals.

This is James and William Little

and Richard Najakowski.

So a witness claimed to have seen James Little in the possession of a gold watch, which was believed to belong to Lori.

This witness testified to the grand jury, but admitted later that she lied because she was influenced by others to try to connect this watch to the James and William Little brothers.

Now, other witnesses also tried to tie the Littles to the crime, but were revealed to have ulterior motives to see the Littles in prison and imprisoned.

And the physical evidence did not support these stories either.

So, no indictment comes down, and certainly no indictment came down against either James or William Little.

We're going to peel back the curtain here a little bit and look at something that was known behind the scenes for a long period of time, but not known to the public for many years.

So many years later, the public would learn what happened.

Remember, we talked about the sheriff's office sending off the physical evidence to the FBI laboratories for testing.

And years later, we will learn that, quote, in 1985, the items of evidence collected from the victim's body included oral, rectal, and vaginal smears and swabs that were placed on slides and in separate vials.

On October 31st, 1985, the Fulton County Sheriff's Department submitted those items to the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C.

for analysis.

On February 14th of 1986,

The FBI laboratory submitted its report to the sheriff's office regarding the results.

Of the evidence was submitted, they did say blood was found on the oral smear and swab.

Semen was found only on the vaginal swab.

In addition, no spermozoa cells were found on any of the samples.

The testing that was conducted, however, required the consumption of the entire sample.

The testing found semen on the swab, but failed to detect sperm, and the vaginal swab sample was used up.

It wasn't clear if there were other samples, right?

It wasn't clear if the sheriff's office was holding on to additional evidence that wasn't sent off for testing that could be used later.

Right.

So,

look, that's bad news in the moment.

That's bad news in 1985.

And actually, well, when they received the results in February of 86, look how long it took to receive

the results back then.

I mean, it's four months.

But it's also bad news for the case at large, where it's

we're seeing time and time again cases being solved 10, 20, 30, 40 years later because this kind of evidence still, this physical evidence still exists.

Nothing seems to

have

really, nothing of consequence happened in the case until 1988.

So that year, that same evidence, right, the same swabs and slides that we've already discussed,

these items, you know, you talk about the further mint of technology.

These swabs and slides were submitted to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and identification for potential DNA testing.

Now, upon examination of these samples, what the forensic scientists came back with was that there was not sufficient quality quantity of material to undergo the DNA testing.

So they didn't actually get to the point of testing it because of the poor quality and lack of quantity of the samples submitted.

So then BCI,

Ohio BCI, then returns the

physical evidence, those swabs and slides back to the Fulton County Sheriff's Department.

Over the next two decades, Captain Lori's family pushed hard for the case to receive attention.

They made the rounds of talk shows and whatnot and even raised $50,000 toward reward money.

But it wouldn't be until 2008

until this case would take a turn.

So let's fast forward here.

Zoom forward.

We're now 2008.

We have more than two decades have gone by since the brutal murder of Lori Ann Hill in Northwest Ohio.

In 2008, there was a renewed push to finally solve the case.

Rachel Hill, Lori's sister, now well into adulthood herself, demanded an accounting of the status of the case.

And the answer was it was pretty much dead in the water.

But then the sheriff learned that the Toledo Police Department had funding for a cold case unit via a National Institute of Justice grant that the police department had received.

They had, in fact, successfully resolved some cold cases because of that grant and because investigators, cold case investigators

were active on these old investigations.

Now, Lori's case was the only unsolved murder on the books for the Fulton County Sheriff's Office during that sheriff's 25 years in office.

The sheriff requested the help of this cold case unit and the cold case investigators.

The Fulton County Sheriff's Office and the Fulton County Prosecutor's Office started quickly and quietly working together on the 20 plus year old case.

This would lead to about eight months of hardcore investigating on the old case, which definitely unearthed some information in the form of tips.

This is enough for the Fulton County grand jury to act on.

So in July, now we move to July of 2009.

So this is the following year after the cold case detectives take over the case.

There's news coming out that the grand jury had indicted a man for

two counts, one of aggravated murder and one of murder so the grand jury indicted 42-year-old walter e zempic

on those two counts of murder so who is this guy ex-boyfriend the captain's been talking a lot for an hour i've been listening quietly who is this guy you've not told us about walter zempic yet so walter zempic was Lori's boyfriend prior.

So this is the boyfriend before

she started dating Craig Rupp.

Right.

Lori's boyfriend for a period of time before her death.

And see,

here's what I wonder, though.

Because

Walter is not at the party.

No eyewitnesses put Walter at the pizza shop.

Correct.

So is it possible that this is the individual that Lori called at the pizza shop?

I think it's highly likely that either she called him or was attempting to get in touch with right.

So we need to point out, obviously, since she's, she had moved on to Craig Rupp,

that she was not dating

this guy, Walter, at the time that she was killed.

Most of the reports state that they dated for several months,

some saying that it was like 18 months.

Yeah, but a couple months when you're 14.

One is a decent percentage of your life, but that could be a big deal when you're 40.

A lot of the reports are that they started dating near the end of her eighth grade year and continued dating until the summer before her sophomore year, sounds like, or just when school was starting up her sophomore year.

So this would be lengthy for her age and even for Walter's age at the time.

But what we do know is she moves on to this Craig Rupp guy.

Her and Craig get in an argument at that party.

She's still wearing Walter Zempic's ring, class ring, when she's at that party.

She's got two class rings on.

That was the genesis of that argument, that disagreement.

It was noted

that at the time of the murder, Walter Zempic lived not very far from

where Lori's body was found.

Right.

And so there's a possibility, or at least law enforcement is thinking there's either a possibility that Walter picked her up, took her back to his

house, or did she make it all the way to his house?

And then some kind of confrontation happens, and then her, like you said, her body is discovered not far from where he lived.

Well, and as we said earlier, this was all hands on deck.

This was big news when she went missing, and there was a large search for her while she was still missing.

And in fact, Walter Zempek was interviewed, right?

He's on camera.

He spoke to WNWO

News cameras during a search for Lorianne Hill.

And

he says on camera, I am very worried.

This isn't something that she wouldn't do at all.

I just don't know what to say.

When the Fulton County Sheriff's Office and the Toledo Police Department started investigating this case anew, right, in 2008, we have Toledo Police Sergeant Steve Forrester.

He said his department received close to 100 tips after the public push for information.

He told the Fulton County Expositor:

Some of the calls have proven to be very helpful.

I am very happy with the information we have gotten so far.

He said they were looking to build a case, but they were still looking for the name of the person Lori called from Mr.

G's.

Quote, she definitely talked to someone in there and we'd like to know who, end quote.

They were working on building a case, just like he said.

Part of that, too, that was helpful, one of the things that was helpful was a tip that came in from Zempic's estranged wife.

They're in the middle, Walter Zempic and his wife were involved in this custody battle.

around the same time.

It's weird, man, how these things like

line up in almost a coincidence, right?

There's all of a sudden there's this cold case investigation that kicks off because the sister, you know, gets angry and reminds the sheriff's office that her sister's murder is still unsolved.

And the cold case unit recently kicked into gear about a year or two before.

And then all at the same time, this separation with a custody battle.

And then Zempic's

estranged wife calls in a tip with his name and says, you know, he dated her back then.

You might want to take a look at him.

He was from the area.

So the cold case unit, they go and they review.

Zempic was interviewed a couple of times back in 1985.

And they were aware, law enforcement was aware that there was a previous relationship between the two and that it may have been extensive.

So they wanted to talk to this guy quite a bit.

They talked to Craig a lot.

They talked to Steve a lot.

Now we're going to talk to this Walter Zempic.

When they go back and they review the interviews from 1985, the cold case unit finds that Zempic had given conflicting information

during the course of several interviews.

And part of this was difficult, right?

Because we said all hands on deck.

Sometimes you have what we say in the captain intro last week, too many cooks spoil the soup.

Well,

it's unclear to me if they were aware in 1985 that he had given conflicting information because

on some of these occasions, he's being interviewed by the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, and on other occasions, he's being interviewed by the Lucas County Sheriff's Office.

According to his alibi or whatever you want to call it, his activities or his whereabouts for the night in question were conflicting in those different statements.

So here's what we do know, though.

So according to the record, Lori dated Walter Zempic from the time she was in eighth grade for about 18 months.

And, like Craig Rupp, Zempic was significantly older than Lori.

He was,

like Craig, 18 at the time that Lori was killed.

We have Lucas County detectives LaCourse and Damasco,

last names, interviewing Zempic

on November 1st, 1985.

So this would be after her body was located.

It sounds like they're treating him as a possible suspect right away because of his history with Lori.

Zempic said that Lori had moved on from him to date this Craig Rupp, but the two were still friendly.

They spoke on the phone.

nearly every day, but he said in his statement that he had actually not seen her in approximately two weeks time leading up to the night that she went missing.

At the time, 1985, the investigators asked Walter Zempic for his alibi.

And

let's go through Zempic's alibis.

Yes, that wasn't a mistake by the old colonel.

That was plural on purpose because these alibis were all over the place, in my humble opinion.

One story he told was that he worked as a buser at El Matador, right?

This is the same restaurant we mentioned earlier where another employee had a party on the night that Lori was believed to have been killed.

But he didn't actually work that night.

He was scheduled to work, but he says there was a friend coming into town and there was an offer to go and hang out with some friends.

And he

made arrangements to get his shift covered and he didn't have to go in that night.

So in this version of his alibi, he says that he hung out with his friend Denny Miller, along with some other guys named Mark, Ken, and Denny's brother, who is unnamed in the statement, or at least as far as what made to the public.

He says he hung out with these guys until about 7 p.m.

and then he went home to,

so he lives at the Garden Road Apartments in Maumee, Ohio, where he lives with his mom and his stepdad.

And he says he was there for the rest of the night, didn't see or talk to Lori at all.

Walter Zempic was interviewed again several days later.

This is on November 5th.

So four days later, he sits down with Fulton County Sheriffs Warnke

and

Albright.

So please note, he's talking to a different agency and he's talking to two different detectives four days later.

This time he said that he and Lori had been talking about getting back together leading up to her death and that she planned on dumping Craig to get back with him.

Walter Zempic says in this statement, he met up with his buddies around 4 p.m., but this time he said that he went, that they went to the Southwick Mall.

There he ran into another buddy.

This is a co-worker of his named Bob.

He said he also met a girl at the mall for the first time.

This is the first time he had met her.

Her name was Sandy.

He says that after meeting Sandy, that they agreed to go back to Walter's mom's apartment.

He snuck her in through the bedroom window, and they, quote, spent time together until she left around 2 a.m.

He says after Sandy left, the phone rang and the caller was Rob.

So this is a neighbor who was also a Lucas County deputy telling him that Lori was missing.

So these two investigators from Fulton County Sheriff's Department, in this interview, they specifically asked Walter Zempic whether it was he

that Lori called from Mr.

G's pizza place that night.

He says, no.

And remember, he says he not only did he not see her that night in the statement, he also says he did not speak with her at all that night.

A lot more to get to in this crime story.

Join us back here in the garage, same back time, same back channel.

And until then, be good, be kind, and don't live.

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