WATCHING his two-year-old daughter and grandmother Sally play together, Eric Hill allowed himself to smile for the first time in a long while.
However he had no clue about the horror which was about to unfold, with his doting gran brutally killed just weeks later by a woman he had brought into their lives – a wife who he once loved.
The dad had been locked in a bitter custody battle with his estranged wife Rosa for months, during which his ex had become increasingly erratic, going to extreme lengths in a bid to win.
She’d got him suspended from work, lying and telling them he was dangerous – and she’d even falsely and sickeningly reported him for sexual abuse against his own daughter.
Yet nobody could’ve predicted just how far she, and her mother Mei Li who Rosa was in cohorts with, were prepared to go.
Until one fateful afternoon when Eric’s mum Sally, 91, was strangled to death, and her body dumped headfirst into a rubbish bin.
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The pair even tried to frame bereft grandson Eric – who was also injured that day at the hands of Rosa and Mei Li – for the murder.
Now, Eric has opened up about the horrifying experience in new Netflix true crime documentary Worst Ex Ever, recounting the harrowing story from the very beginning…
Love at first sight
Eric and Rosa’s ‘love story’ began in 2002, when technician Eric first met Rosa’s mum Mei at a training course.
Eric says: “We just started talking, and got along. She was friendly, she was outgoing.”
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In October 2002, Mei invited Eric to go on a hike, and that’s when he met her daughter, Rosa, who worked as an engineer at a tech company.
Eric says: “She had a very strong, logical mind, very analytical. I was just fascinated. She seemed to enjoy the stupid jokes I would say.
“I got up my courage and I asked Rosa out.”
Over the following months the pair got to know each other, going on trips and dates.
Eric’s dad Gregory says: “He seemed happy, and I was happy for him.
I was constantly in a state of fear. Any minute I could lose my job, never see my daughter again, possibly lose my freedom if they believed her.”
Eric
“It seemed like it was getting serious rather quickly… Rosa was his first real girlfriend.”
However, Rosa at times behaved bizarrely, which at times raised eyebrows among Eric’s family and friends.
Gregory says: “I would ask her questions and she would whisper in his ear and Eric would answer.
“Initially I thought she was shy but I know now that is a kind of way of controlling the room.
“And I remember on our phone calls, Rosa was always listening in, and he had a code word to let me know. It was just odd, odd behaviour.”
Eric says: “I’m not a super outgoing person, but I guess I was more outgoing than she was. At least that’s what I thought at the time.”
‘I felt everything’s coming together’
On Valentine’s day 2004, Eric plucked up the courage to ask Rosa to marry him, saying: “When she said yes I was elated, I was excited.”
Eric’s grandmother Selma, known as Sally, who he was very close to, was also thrilled.
Eric says: “She was a doting grandmother, a very generous person.
“She was also very friendly. She really wanted to talk to Rosa about wedding plans and was so full of energy.
“Mei seemed very happy and thrilled and already had lots of ideas. Rosa and Mei were really tight.
“I felt like everything’s coming together.”
‘She threw a punch at me’
In April 2005, the pair wed – but things rapidly took a turn for the worst.
Eric says: “About a week into our honeymoon we ended up having a really big fight.
“She threw a punch at me. She missed me but that was the first real warning sign.”
Additionally while Eric worked, Rosa didn’t, and having got into debt to pay for the wedding and honeymoon, the couple began to have money problems.
Eric says: “We had a lot of arguments about that.
“After a while I started to get scared.
“She would never lead with physical violence, but I knew from that one incident in Hawaii that she wasn’t afraid to go there.”
Rosa also began to alienate Eric from his circle of loved ones. He says: “To make her happy I pulled away from friends and family. I wasn’t talking to my grandmother, or my folks.”
‘I felt like a failure’
A few months after they got married, Rosa got pregnant, and their daughter was born June 2006.
At this point Eric worked two jobs to provide for his family but their fights started to escalate and Rosa began to threaten divorce.
Eric says: “It was tough because I really did want this to work out… I really wanted to make her happy.
“For a while I felt like a failure.”
In the rare moments Eric was home between work, Rosa regularly wasn’t, opting to spend more time at her parent’s.
Eric says: “It was getting lonely. It was hard not being able to spend much time with my daughter. I was starting to suffer with mental health issues, heavy depression.”
‘She kicked me out’
In March 2007, Rosa and Eric separated. Eric says: “She just kicked me out. At this point Rosa had complete control over all of our assets.
“She had the house. She had the kid. She had the bank accounts. I had nowhere to go.
“Luckily for me my grandmother was kind enough to take me in.”
Three months later, Rosa wasn’t letting Eric see his daughter – and he knew he had to take action.
He says: “I asked if I could visit on her first birthday. Rosa just flat out refused. That’s when I got angry.
“I decided at that point that I would sue for custody.
“Of course, it got ugly. Rosa sent an email to my job stating I was off my medication and that I was going to shoot the place up.
“My office suspended me. I’d never owned a gun or violated the medicine protocol my doctor put me on.”
Missed milestones
After the claim was investigated Eric was cleared, and granted 50 per cent custody in court.
Eric says: “I was really excited but when I finally saw my daughter it was a shock because when I saw her the last time she was a tiny baby.
“I missed the first steps, those kind of milestones – and that hurt.”
A few months later, Rosa called the police and alleged Eric was sexually abusing their daughter – which was later proved to be a lie.
Eric says: “I was constantly in a state of fear. Any minute I could lose my job, never see my daughter again, possibly lose my freedom if they believed her.
“I was really shocked she went that far.”
Deputy District attorney Casey Bates says: “The allegation was completely fabricated and that, ironically for Rosa, resulted in the courts stripping her custody rights.”
Worst Ex Ever – A closer look
The new true crime series Worst Ex Ever documents four instances of relationships gone extremely wrong, featuring interviews with survivors, victims’ families and investigators…
- Episode 1: One night Angie receives a distressing call from her friend Justine. When Angie shows up to Justine’s house, she comes across a terrible discovery that leads to a statewide police hunt for Justine’s boyfriend of two months, a dangerous man named Benjamin Foster.
- Episode 2: Seemona, a financial adviser and small-business owner, lives a busy life in Queens, New York. Despite working long days, she manages to meet a police officer named Jerry Ramrattan, and the two hit it off. But after two years together, Seemona gets a shocking call alleging Jerry isn’t who he says he is. When she confronts him, he turns violent, then launches a years-long campaign of torment.
- Episode 3: Despite her seemingly shy nature, Rosa Hill quickly bonds with Eric during a group hike in Alameda, California, and the two eventually get married. As their relationship deteriorates amid Rosa’s control issues, Rosa and her mother, Mei Li, enact a bizarre scheme to gain sole custody of Eric and Rosa’s child, putting his family in grave danger.
- Episode 4: When Amanda met Kevin Lewis she found his efforts to woo her both bold and charming. Years into their relationship, after Kevin’s emotional abuse becomes violent, Amanda asks for a divorce. But when Kevin’s continued behaviour causes him to lose custody of their three children, his rage turns deadly.
‘I could hear her screaming daddy’
The situation finally crescendoed on January 7, 2009.
Sally’s boyfriend Lester called at 4pm, and she didn’t answer the phone – which was highly unusual, so he sent his son Jeff and his wife to check on her.
Arriving home and seeing them outside, Eric says: “I kind of had a bad feeling.
“I was worried something might have happened to her – a stroke or heart attack.”
Eric and his two-year-old daughter went upstairs to look for Sally, and that’s when he heard a noise behind him and saw Mei.
He says: “I was shocked. She said my grandmother had called her.
“As I ran out, Rosa jumped out from the baby’s room wearing a black trench coat, and then she shot me with a taser gun.
“I felt a sharp pain on the back of my head. Mei hit me with a baton. I went down.
“Rosa was kicking me and Mei was hitting me with the baton and I was seeing all this blood dripping down on the carpet.
“I started to fight back.
“Rosa came out with the gun and put the gun in my chest and ordered me to stop so I stopped fighting.
“My daughter, she was locked in a dark bathroom and I could hear her screaming ‘daddy, daddy, daddy!'”
‘Please don’t kill me’
Meanwhile Jeff and his wife ran next door and called police.
Former officer Jared Hattaway was one of the first on the scene.
He says: “There was a male voice that screamed ‘please don’t kill me, I don’t want to die’.
“We reach the top of the stairs. There was blood spatter. There were tasers, bullets, a baton, strewn about the entire hallway.”
Former detective Yesenia Sanchez adds: “When we first got the scene Eric was in the back of the patrol car. His eyes were wild, he was sweating. He was in disarray.
“It was much more sinister than we initially anticipated.”
‘We knew she was being deceptive’
In questioning, Rosa claimed Eric went berserk and threatened them.
But she was the one found with a gun in her possession, and she was the one in a house that didn’t belong to her.
Yesenia Sanchez says: “We knew she was being deceptive. She was dancing around our questions, answering them in different ways.”
It was then police made a grisly discovery. In a locked shed in the back garden they located Sally’s body wrapped in bed sheets stuffed in a dustbin.
HOW YOU CAN GET HELP:
Women’s Aid has this advice for victims and their families:
- Always keep your phone nearby.
- Get in touch with charities for help, including the Women’s Aid live chat helpline and services such as SupportLine.
- If you are in danger, call 999.
- Familiarise yourself with the Silent Solution, reporting abuse without speaking down the phone, instead dialing “55”.
- Always keep some money on you, including change for a pay phone or bus fare.
- If you suspect your partner is about to attack you, try to go to a lower-risk area of the house – for example, where there is a way out and access to a telephone.
- Avoid the kitchen and garage, where there are likely to be knives or other weapons. Avoid rooms where you might become trapped, such as the bathroom, or where you might be shut into a cupboard or other small space.
If you are a victim of domestic abuse, SupportLine is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm on 01708 765200. The charity’s email support service is open weekdays and weekends during the crisis – messageinfo@supportline.org.uk.
Women’s Aid provides a live chat service – available weekdays from 8am-6pm and weekends 10am-6pm.
You can also call the freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
‘How to murder’ Google search
Two days later an autopsy revealed Sally’s cause of death as strangulation. She had wounds on her hands which revealed she’d tried to fight, and lacerations on her body.
Police discovered Rosa’s car near to the scene, which had a samurai sword and leg irons in it, and in their home they found notes and a ‘revenge’ hit list planning out the crime.
It was revealed on one of their computer’s they’d also googled ‘how to murder’, and Rosa was also stalking Eric and taking notes on his whereabouts.
Yesenia Sanchez says: “Every piece of evidence built a stronger case against her.”
‘Operation custody’
Details of the mother and daughter’s wicked plan began to emerge and having lost her child to Eric, Rosa and her mother were plotting ‘Operation Custody’.
Deputy District attorney Casey Bates says: “The plan was to murder Eric’s grandmother and blame the murder on Eric, and to get Eric to write a confession to say he killed her because she had confronted him with the sexual abuse of his child.
“And that he became enraged and killed her and put her in the garbage can in the back of the home.
“Their plan continued that in that moment of despair, Eric Hill would kill himself… and she was rightfully reunited with her child.”
‘Very lucky to be alive today’
On June 28, 2011, Rosa Hill was found guilty of the murder of Selma ‘Sally’ Hill and attempted murder of Eric, and sentenced to 25 years to life
Mei was convicted of premeditated, attempted murder and is now also serving life.
While devastated over the death of his grandmother, Eric is grateful their evil plan didn’t go how they had hoped, adding: “I am very lucky to be alive today.
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“If they had gotten away with it, my daughter would never know who I was.”
Stream all four episodes of the Worst Ex Ever on Netflix now.
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