Waco - The records paint a clear picture. Keith Hill, 25, had shown patterns of domestic violence long before he killed his wife and mother-in-law in Dallas.According to a January 2008 Hewitt crime report, he shoved
his wife over a dresser, blacked her eyes and bruised her
face. He was charged with felony aggravated assault.
It was nothing new. His first arrest for assault came in
2003, when he was only 20.
Janice Hill hid from her husband, Keith. She moved to Grand
Prairie and when he found her, he slapped her and tried to
take her wedding rings away from her.
She put them in her mouth and when he shook her violently,
she gagged and choked on the objects.
Granted a protective order when she filed for divorce, she
moved again, this time to East Dallas. Mr. Keith was ordered
to stay a minimum of 500 feet away from her doors.
It didn't do much good.
He began to stalk her by cell phone.
She told police someone had been calling, over and over. She
was scared. She thought she knew who was harassing her by
phone, and her suspicions centered on her husband.
He had also been ordered to refrain from calling her phone
number.
When Mr. Hill broke into the house and killed both her and
her mother, it was the end of a bad scene that had been
brewing for several years.
To this day, no one has explained why the McLennan County
District Attorney's staff reduced the charge of felony
aggravated assault originally lodged against Mr. Hill to a
misdemeanor. The one sure thing is he was spared some
serious jail time as a result of that decision.
It's also for sure that eventually Janice Hill, 24, and her
mother, Jeanne Carroll, 52, met their fate of a violent
death at his hands because of that decision.
Serially violent domestic abusers just don't learn from
their mistakes. They always say this time things will be
different, but it never quite works out that way. If left
unchecked, they kill.
Mr. Hill turned the gun upon himself and ended his life
after he snuffed out the lives of his wife and mother-in-
law.
Mrs. Hill's grandmother was left to find the mess when she
visited the house later.
It didn't have to be that way.GPS monitoring of ankle bracelets that report in real time
any use of alcohol can show the precise location of an
offender.
Those accused of domestic violence causing bodily harm can
be ordered to wear the monitor and pay for the service at a
cost of $15 per day, according to a new state law. If an
offender so monitored violates any electronic barriers set
up around the home or place of business of a domestic
partner under protective order, every patrolman knows it
immediately when the firm that monitors the bracelets
notifies dispatchers and they patch the information into
their computers.
Their computer terminals then show the location of the
offender and begin to track his movements.
There is no time wasted between a dispatcher and a woman who
is all shook up and trying desperately to save her life. No
one has to ask her where her assailant is. It's on the
computer screen in front of their eyes.
It is believed that the Swedish company that provides the
tracking devices will have newer models available later this
year that also monitor the use of drugs such as marijuana
and cocaine - maybe amphetamines in the future.
This happens because people still tend to see battered women as hysterical and exaggerating their circumstances. It's rare that that sort of opinion is true. Unless and until judges, the police and prosecutors begin to really take this sort of thing seriously, stories like this will be a common occurrence. Because battered women rarely vote, so who really cares about them? No one, until the news reporters use all of their names in a news story recording their grisly deaths.
ReplyDeleteI care about them, Severine. The operative word here is women. Women. We all had mothers.
ReplyDeleteThe Legendary