Prosecutors told a Summit County jury Monday they have forensic evidence to answer a question that has been lingering for more than a decade: Who killed Hannah Hill?
Anna Faraglia, an assistant prosecutor for Cuyahoga County, said in a 25-minute opening statement that the government has blood and semen evidence from Hill’s pants, semen on her panties, what Faraglia described as DNA on her shirt and, finally, “DNA on both hands underneath her fingernails.”
She told jurors they will need to evaluate and consider the forensics, saying “that evidence, folks, comes back to one person, and that person sits right before you. His name is Denny Ross.”
Ross, who is on trial a second time for Hill’s slaying in 1999, is charged with two counts of murder, tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse and felonious assault.
His first trial ended abruptly in October 2000 when now-retired Judge Jane Bond declared a mistrial during jury deliberations. The issue that caused the mistrial — alleged misconduct by one juror — arose after the panel had voted unanimously to acquit Ross of murder, aggravated murder and rape in a death-penalty case.
After years of state and federal appeals, primarily over the constitutional prohibition of double jeopardy, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in December 2010 that Ross must stand trial again. The high court, however, removed the death penalty from his retrial.
Rape is not among the current charges.
A team of special prosecutors from Cuyahoga County is handing the case because Summit Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh declined to take the retrial years ago, citing the possible appearance of conflict from her legal representation of Hill’s family in an unrelated matter.
Faraglia, who was given an hour to speak but took less than half that long, did not elaborate on more precise details about the alleged forensic evidence. She ended her presentation with a declaration, pointing to Ross at the defense table and saying: “It’s his own words that bring us here to this courtroom, and it’s his DNA that was found on her body.”
Minutes earlier, Faraglia apparently tied much of that evidence to a discovery by Akron police Detective Sgt. John Callahan about 3 a.m. May 27, 1999, as 18 police officers were moving up the stairs to Ross’ second-floor Springfield Township apartment.
Faraglia said Callahan was “walking around the perimeter” of the apartment and suddenly found a trash bag in the brush beneath a rear window of the apartment.
She said officers going up the stairs had heard what she described as a “kerplunk” just seconds earlier.
Faraglia said the bag contained Hill’s shirt, bra, panties, shoes and purse.
Some 20 hours earlier, on May 26, Hill’s body had been found a little more than a mile from the apartment, in the trunk of her car, parked on Caine Road in the Ellet area of Akron — a week after her mother had reported her missing.
Hill was an 18-year-old Coventry High graduate who was about to start a job on the morning of her disappearance.
On May 27, the day after her body was found, Ross admitted to police that she had visited him at his apartment and that they had “kissed and stuff.”
He denied in that same interview having intercourse with Hill.
Ross was seated at the defense table for the retrial — clean-shaven and wearing a white dress shirt, a tie and dark dress pants — with his three lawyers at his side.
Cleveland attorney Roger Synenberg, who was retained by the Ross family, took the entire hour for his opening. He spent much of it explaining how Hill’s boyfriend, Brad O’Born, was the first person suspected of the crime.
O’Born was controlling, possessive and abusive to Hill, Synenberg said.
He said O’Born and Hill, who had been living together in an apartment, had a fight the night before she disappeared. On May 22, 1999, three days after Hill went missing, police investigator Sgt. Jerry Hughes interviewed O’Born at the Akron police station.
“Sgt. Hughes notes Brad has scratches all over him,” Synenberg said. He showed jurors a photo of a shirtless O’Born at the station, along with 11 small police snapshots of the scratches on various parts of his body.
Particularly visible in the snapshots were three distinct scratch marks on the left side of O’Born’s neck.
Synenberg also told jurors he will present phone records of Ross in the hours before and after the slaying. The records provide an alibi for the time, about 2 a.m. May 20, 1999, Synenberg said, when a Caine Road resident first saw what was later determined to be Hill’s car. It was parked in the street, under what was then a small tree, and the resident’s dog had begun barking.
“The phone records prove where Denny Ross was, and Denny Ross was home that night,” Synenberg told the jury. He also said police found three types of trash bags during their search of Ross’ apartment, but none matched the type of bag containing the evidence police said they found outside his window.
Common Pleas Judge Judy Hunter is handling the retrial. The jury has today off and will return to court at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Hunter has set aside six to seven weeks for the evidentiary phase of the retrial.
Ed Meyer can be reached at 330-996-3784 or emeyer@thebeaconjournal.com.