Mother and Daughter Charged in Shocking Murder of Elderly Woman: 91-Year-Old Found in Trash Can

In California, a family’s deadly conspiracy unfolded as a shocking affair.

Driven by a fierce desire to secure full custody of her daughter, Rosa Hill, along with her mother Mei Li, infiltrated the Dublin, California residence of Selma “Sally” Hill on the morning of January 7, 2009. Clad in black and equipped with a “kill kit,” their arrival was anything but innocent.

According to an episode aired on March 8 of Oxygen’s A Plan to Kill, their plot centered around targeting the 91-year-old Sally. The elderly woman had provided refuge to her grandson, Eric Hill, and his daughter during his tumultuous divorce from Rosa, making her an obstacle in their eyes.

In a brutal act, the duo murdered Sally, concealing her remains in a trash can within a backyard shed, and awaited Eric’s return from work.

However, their assault on Eric did not unfold as intended, ultimately unraveling their malicious scheme. The failure led to their arrest and conviction, with one investigator commenting, “The callousness behind this plan was something that I have never seen in my now 30-year career.”

Dublin Police Encounter Disturbing Scene at Home of Sally Hill

The investigation began Jan. 7, 2009, after authorities received a frantic 911 call around 5:50 p.m. by someone reporting that shots had been fired at Sally’s home.

Concerned that he had been unable to reach Sally, the 91-year-old’s boyfriend Lester had asked his son Jeff to go to the house to check on her. When Jeff arrived, he heard the sounds of a struggle inside and what he thought was a gunshot and fled to the neighbor’s house to call 911.

Officers arrived a few minutes later and made their way inside the house, where they encountered a strange scene in an upstairs hallway.

“We get to the top of the stairs,” former Dublin Police Patrol Officer Jared Hattaway remembered. “All I can see is a male facing away from us laying in the hallway with his back to us and a female standing in the hallway facing us. The female’s covered in blood. There’s an expandable baton on the ground that’s bent.” 

The officers also noticed blood spatter lining the walls, a stun gun and bullets scattered on the floor in what Hattaway described as “absolute chaos.” 

Hiding in a nearby bedroom, police found another woman dressed in all black. Eric and Rosa’s 2-year-old daughter was also recovered from an upstairs bathroom. 

Eric and one of the women, who was later identified as Mei, both had visible injuries to their faces and it was difficult for officers to determine who had been the aggressor in the attack.

While Eric pointed the finger at his estranged wife and mother-in-law, Rosa—who was found with a gun in the pocket of her pants—and Mei claimed that Eric had been the one to attack them after they’d gone to the home to talk. Meanwhile, no one could find Sally.

“In talking to Eric while he’s in the back of the patrol vehicle, he is frantic,” former Dublin Police Det. Sgt. Nathan Schmidt recalled. “He was concerned about his grandmother Sally.”

During a sweep of the grounds, officers were unable to find Sally, but they did make another chilling discovery. A black backpack—later described by one investigator as a “kill kit”—had been strategically placed under a wheelbarrow in the backyard. Inside, they found handcuffs, a throwing star, pocket saw, goggles, duct tape, rope and arrows for a cross bow.

Eric and Rosa Hill’s Marriage Crumbles After the Birth of Their Daughter 

Eric, Rosa and Mei were all taken to the hospital to be assessed for their injuries, while investigators tried to piece the strange crime scene together. 

The relationship between Eric and Rosa had clearly taken a violent turn, but it once began with such promise. Eric had been working for the Alameda County Social Services in 2002 when he met Mei and she introduced him to her daughter Rosa, an information technician working in Silicon Valley.

“When Eric first mentioned meeting Rosa, he talked about how much fun they had, how smart Rosa was,” his mom Marianne Jones recalled. “They seemed to like some of the same things.”

But after the couple’s daughter Elizabeth was born in 2006, those who knew the couple said the relationship began to deteriorate. While Rosa stayed home taking care of the baby, Eric worked two jobs to try to support his young family.

“It never seemed to be enough,” his mom said. “Rosa was never happy.”

By 2007, Rosa had kicked Eric out of the house and he’d gone to live with his grandmother.

The trouble between the couple only grew when they went through the court system to try to determine custody of their daughter. According to Marianne, Rosa refused to follow the judge’s orders, like finding a job, and falsely claimed that Eric had been molesting his daughter—a claim that was ultimately dismissed by investigators. 

As a result, Eric gained more and more custody. By the time of the attack, Eric had 85 percent physical custody of Elizabeth and 100 percent legal custody.

Sally Hill’s Body is Discovered

While investigators were learning more about the couple, other officers were searching Sally’s property. They discovered a shed on the side of the property that had been padlocked.

According to Schmidt, “We went and got a bolt cutter and as we cut the padlock and opened it, our worst nightmares occurred.” 

Inside, they found a garbage can with a human foot sticking out of it. 

“We all know that’s Sally in the garbage can and our hearts drop,” Schmidt continued. “She was found with a plastic bag over her head, wrapped in sheets, wrapped in rope. There had been no respect for her whatsoever.”

About a block away from the crime scene, officers also found Rosa’s father Ping Li, trying to duck down in his vehicle. He admitted to dropping his wife and daughter off about a block from Sally’s home, but denied knowing anything about the murder.

The next day they also found another vehicle nearby registered to Mei and recovered a hacksaw, samurai sword, crossbow, handcuffs and .22 caliber bullets from inside.

“Finding all these just crazy pieces of evidence and vehicles and backpacks at the scene, this was not a spur of the moment crime,” Schmidt said. “This was really planned out.”

Investigators Find Notes Planning “Revenge for Rosa”

By then, investigators had realized that Rosa and Mei had been the aggressors in the attack, killing Sally and then lying in wait inside the home for Eric to come home from work.

After finding Jeff outside the house that day, Eric told A Plan to Kill he went inside, found Rosa and Mei inside and was attacked with a stun gun and beaten and choked with a baton.

“Mei was choking me with the baton,” he remembered, “and at this moment, Rosa came out of the room with the gun and pointed it at my chest and told me to stop fighting.” 

Just as he was about to give up, he heard the sirens outside.

“They would have killed me, definitely,” he said, “if the cops hadn’t shown up.”

During a search of the home where Rosa lived with her parents, investigators uncovered the boxes for the stun guns, writings that labeled both Eric and his grandmother “troublemakers” and another note hoping for “revenge for Rosa” in a plot they named “Operation Custody.”

“Rose had developed a hatred of my grandmother,” Eric explained, “because, as I was starting to win in the courts, she assumed that my grandmother was paying for the attorney, which was not true.”

Detectives learned that two firearms had been purchased months earlier by Rosa and Mei at a gun show in Nevada. They were also able to link them to the purchase of other weapons and troubling Google searches researching deadly poisons.

Elizabeth is now being raised by her father. To catch more mysteries this season, watch A Plan to Kill Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen.