Worst Ex Ever (2024) s01e03 Episode Script

[tense music playing]
[glitchy audio]
[man 1] Most murders are committed
by people that you know.
But having an entire family involved
is definitely a rare sight.
[dispatcher speaking]
[woman speaking]
[man 2]
[man 1] We had no idea what we had.
Who's my suspect? Who's my victim?
[music intensifies]
[glitchy audio]
[gentle music playing]
[man] I am very lucky to be alive today.
If they had gotten away with it,
you know,
my daughter would never know who I was.
But I did step up to this challenge,
and I did persevere.
[music fades]
[pensive music playing]
[man] In the early 2000s,
I was starting a new career
with Alameda County Social Services
as an eligibility technician
for the Medi-Cal Medicaid program.
It was the first time
where I actually did a job
that involved helping people
on a large scale.
I'm not a super sociable person myself,
but I did have some friends
that I would visit on occasion.
[man 2] Typically, we'd hang out
and play the Xbox or PlayStation at home.
We've been friends now
for almost 30 years.
I guess he thought
I was like a kindred spirit.
Basically, we were both
kind of like, uh, nerds.
Eric is very bright.
Man's got a mind like an encyclopedia.
Good person, good friend,
all around a good guy.
If you have a problem with a man like him,
then it's probably on you.
[Eric] In 2002,
I was assigned to a training,
and I happened to be seated next to Mei.
[gentle strings music playing]
We just started talking and got along.
Mei was a fun coworker.
She was friendly. She was outgoing.
She made friends with
a lot of people in the office.
And in October of 2002,
Mei invited me to go on a hike
with her and some other coworkers.
When Mei picked me up,
her daughter Rosa was driving,
and that's when Mei introduced me
to Rosa for the first time.
Rosa was an engineer at a tech company.
She had a very strong, logical mind,
very analytical.
I was just fascinated by it
when she would tell me about
her history working in Silicon Valley,
and she seemed to enjoy the stupid jokes
I would say and make. [laughs]
Here I am spending a nice day
with a beautiful lady, super smart,
and the butterflies started to get big.
So I got up my courage,
and I asked Rosa out.
The next few months, we had a lot of fun.
We went on trips and a lot of nice dates.
I could see that he was excited.
He had like a a giddiness.
So I was glad for him.
[music ends]
[man] Eric and I are very close.
We talk every week and sometimes more.
He seemed happy.
[tense music playing]
And I was happy for him.
It seemed like
it was getting serious rather quickly.
He was this kind of
inexperienced guy socially.
Rosa was his first real girlfriend.
I met her fairly soon, I guess, into it,
and I would ask her questions.
She would whisper in his ear.
And Eric would answer.
She would go over to him cupping her face,
and she would talk into his ear.
I couldn't figure out what that was about.
[Eric] I'm not like
a super outgoing person,
but I guess I was more outgoing
than she was.
At least, that's what I thought
at the time.
Initially, I thought she was shy,
but I know now that is kind of a way
of controlling the room.
And I remember on our phone calls,
Rosa was always listening in.
And he had a code word just to let me know
that she was listening in.
It was just odd, odd behavior.
[unsettling music playing]
[Ryan] I had this uncomfortable feeling
about her.
I could sense there was
a certain tension beneath the surface.
I didn't wanna say anything at the time
because I didn't feel
it was honorable to do so,
so I held my tongue.
It's the quiet ones
you have to watch out for.
[music intensifies]
[dramatic sting]
[Eric] By the time we got to
Valentine's Day of 2004,
being that it was
the season love is in the air,
I asked her to marry me.
When she said yes,
I was elated. I was excited.
I called my sister, called my parents,
and then I called my grandmother.
They were all excited.
My grandmother was really thrilled
at the idea
of possibly becoming a great-grandmother.
My grandmother's name was Selma,
and she always went by Sally.
I was very close with Sally
ever since I was a little kid.
She was a doting grandmother.
She was a very generous person.
She was also very friendly.
Sally was definitely much more
of a social butterfly than I ever was.
[poignant music playing]
She really wanted to talk to Rosa
about wedding plans,
and she just was so full of energy,
and at this point my grandmother was,
you know, in her late eighties,
and I didn't usually see her
that energetic.
It was kind of a sight to see.
After, uh, Rosa and I got engaged,
Mei seemed very happy and thrilled
and already had lots of ideas
on things we could do.
Rosa and Mei were really tight,
and Mei often would step in.
She was a very forceful personality
that Rosa would usually follow.
And so would I
because I basically
would follow Rosa anywhere.
I felt like everything's coming together.
My job is working.
I have a great relationship.
[tense music playing]
The woman I loved
and my family that I dearly loved
were all coming together.
It was a great moment in my life.
But unfortunately,
it didn't last very long because
shortly after this, things started
to take a turn for the worst.
[ominous music playing]
[gentle guitar music playing]
Rosa and I got married in April of 2005.
I was just so happy watching her
come on down the aisle and take my hand
as we took our vows.
This was definitely the way
I wanted my life to be forever after.
[Gregory] My mom was was beaming.
Oh, yes. She was very happy for them.
You know, I think in the beginning
everyone wants to think the best.
And certainly my mom did.
[tense music playing]
When we got to Hawaii on our honeymoon,
my hope was that Rosa could relax
because during the preparations
for the wedding, she was stressed out.
I mean, planning was hard,
and we just ended up
having a lot of arguments.
It's like she was always kind of agitated.
And about a week into our honeymoon,
we ended up having a really big fight.
In the course of this fight,
she threw a punch at me.
She missed me,
but that was
the first real, like, warning sign.
After we were married
and setting up our life together,
I'd already gone deep into debt
with the wedding and the honeymoon.
I was working, but Rosa was not.
So we started having money problems.
We had a lot of arguments about that.
[Gregory] She was very manipulative
about money,
and she was pushing him
to bring that money in.
It it almost seemed to me
that Eric was, uh, the cash cow.
[Eric] She daily seemed angry.
It never stopped.
It it just seemed like
there was always another fight.
Then after a while,
I started to get scared.
What's gonna set her off now?
It got scary going home sometimes.
She would never lead with
physical violence or anything like that.
But I knew from
that one incident in Hawaii
that she wasn't afraid to go there.
Rosa began to separate Eric
from his family.
[Eric] Over time, Rosa made these demands
on how I shouldn't be talking
to my friends or my family.
To make her happy,
I pulled away from my friends and family.
I wasn't talking to my grandmother.
I wasn't talking to my folks.
Eric basically dropped out of my life.
She was jealous of Eric's relationship
with anybody and everybody outside of her.
So she was doing
the divide and conquer with Eric.
A few months after Rosa I got married,
Rosa got pregnant.
I was really excited to become a father.
We talked about having,
like, a traditional Catholic family,
husband, pregnant wife, six kids.
This was one of the things
I was looking forward to.
[gentle music playing]
My daughter was born on June 21st, 2006.
At first, being a dad was scary.
You know, I never had a baby, you know,
and never had something so fragile
and dependent on me.
So I was always real nervous,
you know, holding on to her and stuff,
but I had fun.
I enjoyed the time
I got to spend with her.
[music fades]
[pensive music playing]
At the time our daughter was born,
I was working two jobs.
I was working during the day
at my job with Alameda County
Social Services from, like, 8:30 to 5:00.
But from 11:30 p.m. to 8:00 a.m.,
I would be working at the pharmacy,
and then I'd also work there
on the weekends.
So I was getting very, very little sleep.
I took my vows seriously,
and I took my role
as a family man seriously,
and I wanted to make it work.
So I bent over backwards.
But our fights started to escalate.
[music intensifies]
She started threatening divorce,
which shocked me 'cause she always
professed to be a devout Catholic,
and they're not supposed to divorce but
That hurt me.
[Gregory] She was playing him.
"Do it my way or I'm leaving."
It was a manipulation.
It was tough because I
I really did want this to work out.
This is a woman I dearly loved,
and this is somebody that
I wanted to have a a permanent life with.
So I really wanted to make her happy.
For a while, I felt kind of like a failure
that I wasn't able to do that.
Yeah. So not too long after
my daughter was born, Rosa took off.
[tense percussive music playing]
She started spending time
at her parents' house.
So when I would get home,
they wouldn't be there.
And, you know, what started off as
like a once-in-a-while thing
started turning into
an almost-everyday thing.
It was getting lonely,
and it was hard not being able
to spend much time with my daughter.
I was starting to suffer
mental health issues.
I was suffering heavy depression.
I had to, you know,
go on medication for that and
It it was a lot.
[music fades]
In March of 2007,
Rosa and I had separated.
[laughing] Well, I never decided
to separate. She just kicked me out.
At this point, Rosa had
complete control of all of our assets.
She had the house.
She had Well, she had the kid.
She had, you know, the bank accounts.
I had I had nowhere to go.
[thunder rumbling]
[Gregory] He just showed up
at my mom's door out of the blue.
It was a real surprise to see him again.
[Eric] Luckily for me, my grandmother was
kind enough to take me in
even though she didn't have any reason to
because I basically isolated myself
from all my family.
My grandmother was
a very kind and loving woman
and willing to forgive me,
and she took me back in.
I think he began
coming back out of his shell,
but I think
he felt a great deal of relief.
I did.
[Eric] My grandmother's boyfriend's name
was Lester.
Lester definitely doted over her.
I think my grandmother really loved him
and really appreciated that he was
very, like, attentive to her.
'Cause by the time she met him
it'd been a few years
after my grandfather had died.
Sometimes they would stay at his place.
Sometimes he would stay over at her house.
Usually about four days
they'd spend together,
and when they weren't together,
she always scheduled time
so that they could talk on the phone.
[phone rings]
You could almost set your clock
by the time they would call each other
because that's how regimented she was.
So that actually became
a very important part of her life,
and it also became
a very important part of this case.
[tense music playing]
At this point,
Rosa wasn't letting me see
our daughter at all.
I asked her if I could come up and 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.
[dramatic sting]
Of course, it got ugly.
Rosa sent an email to my job
stating that I was off my medication
and that I was going
to shoot the place up.
[phone ringing]
My office suspended me
while they investigated this claim.
I never owned a gun and I never,
um, violated the medicine protocol
that my doctor had put me on.
I didn't want to lose my job.
I have lawyers' fees and all these
other bills that I got to deal with.
This investigation went
over a period of a couple of months.
They ordered me to go see a psychiatrist.
He eventually cleared me
so I could go back to work.
And the custody suit
was able to move forward.
The judge ruled to give me 50% custody.
- [gavel bangs]
- 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 little baby,
and now she's a walking toddler.
I missed the first steps,
you know, those kind of milestones,
and that hurt my feelings.
A few months after
I was granted 50% custody,
Rosa made a new allegation against me.
[dramatic sting]
She called the cops and said
that I was sexually abusing our daughter.
[dramatic music playing]
She tried to use this as an excuse
to make sure I lost any custody
that I had in court.
This is very frightening.
There's not much, uh, sympathy
for for child abusers.
That accusation was extremely damaging.
I was constantly in a state of fear.
Any minute I could lose my job,
never see my daughter again,
possibly even lose my freedom
if they believed her.
Rosa went to great lengths
to try and paint him
as this monster that he just is not.
These allegations were just pure bullshit.
[Eric] I was dumbstruck.
I was, like, really shocked
that she went that far.
At the time,
I believed Rosa's motivation was
that she wanted to have custody.
She wanted to be the parent.
I think Mei wanted to have grandkids,
and I think she probably pushed Rosa
into the relationship with me.
I I think, you know, 'cause Mei knew me
from work, and I think Mei liked me.
But Rosa just wanted me gone.
It appeared that
she'd do whatever she could do
to get whatever she wanted.
And she did.
[glitchy audio]
[intriguing music playing]
My name is Casey Bates.
In 2011, I was a deputy district attorney
in Alameda County.
Through the course of the investigation
by the court,
it was determined that Eric didn't have
any inappropriate sexual contact
with his child.
The allegation was completely fabricated.
And that, ironically for Rosa, resulted in
the court stripping her custody rights
and providing them to Eric.
So the table had completely turned.
Over time, Rosa became less cooperative.
She started to refuse to do
what she was ordered to do.
People just weren't believing her anymore.
And that caused her
to become more combative.
The most conflict she had was
with the the family court mediator.
Almost every time there was
a report he had to turn in,
he had a statement
of some sort of conflict with her.
The court started to give me more custody.
What started off as a 50-50 custody
turned into 60-40, 70-30,
and eventually 85% physical custody for me
and 100% legal custody for me.
She was proving the case
by her own behaviors.
And so she she really did pretty much
turn it all around against herself.
During this time,
Mei really did make herself indispensable
because Rosa and I
were not talking at all.
Mei became the go-between.
By this point, Mei was working
in a different office than I was.
I didn't have
a lot of interactions with Mei.
But the ones that we did
were still cordial, friendly.
You know, Mei was never one to,
like, raise her voice
or showingly hold a grudge.
As I learned later,
she does hold a grudge,
but she doesn't express it.
During this time, my grandmother
always tried to be there for my daughter.
My daughter liked to play
certain little games
while we were sitting in bed
with my grandmother,
and she would do, like, little things
like roll back and forth between us,
and, you know, my grandmother would be
yelling like, "Roly poly, roly poly,"
and then my daughter would just laugh.
It was a it was a fun period of time.
I I really
I really cherish those memories.
[glitchy audio]
[line ringing]
[Les speaking]
[Casey] On this day, January 7 of 2009,
Sally's boyfriend Les called
to have their cocktail hour together.
And she didn't answer the phone.
He became worried.
A few minutes later, he called again.
[Les speaking on voicemail]
He called again.
[Les speaking on voicemail]
[Casey] Each time he called,
he sounded more distressed.
[Les speaking on voicemail]
[Casey] You can hear in his voice
his concern
became more and more heightened.
[Les speaking on voicemail]
[Casey] You can tell that
he was truly worried about Sally,
and it was at that point
that he called Jeff and Ute Rowe,
who are Les's son
and, uh, daughter-in-law,
to try to come over
and do a wellness check on her.
[man] Back in January of 2009,
I was the detective sergeant
at Dublin Police Services.
Jeff and Ute came down 'cause they had
a good relationship now with Sally.
They knocked on the door.
Nobody came to the door.
As they did that,
they saw Eric Hill pull up to the house.
[tense music playing]
[Eric] As I was pulling up
to to the house,
Lester's son Jeff and his wife Ute
started to walk towards me.
Uh, Jeff introduced himself,
and I kind of had a bad feeling.
At this point, my grandmother
was starting to get into poor health.
I was worried that
something might've happened to her,
you know, a stroke or a heart attack
or something like that.
[Nate] So Eric, his daughter, Jeff,
and Ute entered through the garage door
into the house.
Jeff knew to stay downstairs.
Eric went upstairs with his daughter.
[Eric] When I went upstairs,
I didn't see her in her bed.
I didn't see her in her room
or the adjoining bathroom.
I did not see my grandmother anywhere.
I heard a noise behind me.
[ominous music playing]
And then I saw Mei.
[dramatic music playing]
I was shocked.
I was like, "What are you doing here?"
And she said that
my grandmother had called her.
I kind of knew it was not right,
but I was starting to panic in the moment.
Mei said that my grandmother was
downstairs in the garage,
which didn't make sense to me.
Not at that hour.
I set my daughter down,
and I asked Mei to watch her.
As I ran out,
Rosa jumped out from the baby's room
wearing a black trench coat.
And then she shot me with the Taser gun.
I felt a sharp pain
on the back of my head.
Mei hit me with a baton.
I went down.
[music intensifies, fades]
[Nate] Jeff and Ute started to hear
an argument occur,
and then they heard a sound
which they thought was a gunshot.
[dramatic sting]
They retreated from the house
for their own safety,
ran next door
to have the neighbor call 911.
[dispatcher speaking]
[neighbor speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[Ute speaking]
[neighbor speaking]
[dramatic music playing]
[ominous music playing]
[Eric] Rosa was kicking me,
and Mei was hitting me with the baton,
and I was seeing all this blood
dripping down onto the carpet.
I kind of got it together enough
to start to fight back.
Pushing back and hitting back.
There was two of them,
so, like, I could kick one away,
but then the other was hitting me,
and then I could push the other one away,
then the first one was back
and attacking me again.
At one point,
Mei dropped the baton.
And I was able to grab it.
And I just started swinging wildly,
and I know I was hitting people.
But eventually, they were able
to get it out of my hand.
[music intensifies]
Mei took the baton and put it
over my throat and was pushing down.
And I was trying to get my hands up
to push back.
And that's when Rosa came out
with the gun and put the gun in my chest
and, uh, ordered me to stop.
[tense music playing]
So I stopped fighting.
[tense strings music playing]
And, uh, at that point, um [exhales]
Mei asked if I would give up
custody of my daughter.
And, uh [sighs]
Rosa cocked the gun.
Uh
I was so scared.
I I was staring at the gun.
Mei asked again if I'd give up custody.
She said she was my friend
and she's here to help,
but Rosa's gonna hurt me.
[sighs]
So I gave I said I would give up custody.
My daughter,
she was locked in a dark bathroom.
[breathing heavily]
And I could hear her screaming,
"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy."
[music fades]
[poignant music playing]
[sobbing] I couldn't do anything for her.
And I just didn't want to die.
[whispers] I was so scared.
[siren wailing]
When I heard the sirens,
Rosa still had the gun,
and I felt like
she could shoot me at any moment.
[dramatic music playing]
[indistinct chatter on police radio]
[man] Responding to a gunshot call,
there's a lot of things
that go through your head.
As you get closer and closer,
of course your adrenaline goes up
'cause you don't know
what you're getting into.
We entered through the garage.
And as we go in, we can hear screaming
and a struggle upstairs.
There was a male voice that screamed,
"Please don't kill me.
I don't want to die."
[dramatic sting]
My partner and I reach
the top of the stairs.
There was blood spatter.
There were Tasers, bullets, a baton,
just strewn about the entire hallway.
And we can see was a male
and female standing in the hallway.
The male had his back to us.
The female was facing us.
You can clearly see
blood coming down her face.
Trying to decipher
who's my suspect, who's my victim
was pretty difficult.
Given the fact
we didn't know who our suspect was,
the instructions were
to have everybody show us their hands.
Don't move.
Unfortunately, uh, the male did not listen
to those instructions.
He jumped from the hallway into a bedroom.
They were yelling at me not to move,
but I also knew
that Rosa was pointing a gun.
So I kept moving where I knew at least
Rosa couldn't hit me from where she was.
I just was like,
"Get away, get away, get away."
[Jared] And that point,
my partner tased him to subdue him.
That way, we could control the scene.
That Taser he had was really powerful.
And, uh, I seized up. I couldn't move.
Eric was screaming out that
his two-year-old daughter
was in a bathroom upstairs.
And looking down the hall,
there's a mirror,
and I saw a reflection of another person
who was hiding in a bedroom
across the hallway.
At this point we identify that
there are two women in this residence,
one later identified as Mei
and Rosa who was in the bedroom.
[sirens wailing]
[Eric] Since they didn't know
what was going on at the time,
they basically just handcuffed all of us,
and they put me in a police car.
And they put Mei in an ambulance.
Rosa was just standing on the front lawn
handcuffed for a long time.
And at that point that's when they found
my daughter locked in the bathroom,
and they called CPS,
and while I was locked in the police car,
I was able to see the CPS worker
holding my daughter's hand
and walking away from the house.
We had two females up there
that were smaller in stature.
And we had Eric Hill
who was much larger in stature.
So trying to determine
who assaulted who was confusing.
[Jared] Rosa's demeanor was weirdly calm.
Not someone that was
just involved in a major altercation.
Mei's demeanor also calm, very calculated.
Odd, for sure.
At the time of incident.
I had been a detective with Dublin Police
Services for approximately three years.
[tense music playing]
My partner and I,
when we first got to the scene,
Eric was in the back of the patrol car.
His eyes were wild.
He was sweating.
He was in disarray.
And he was trying to get attention
from anybody that was passing by
to say, "Where is my grandmother?"
[Jared] Eric was yelling and screaming,
"She's somewhere."
"They've done something to her."
And you can hear the fear in his voice.
[Nate] So our concern that we can't find
Sally is very high at this point.
She doesn't drive.
She doesn't leave the house
without some type of assistance.
She has to be there somewhere.
[Yesenia] Right behind you.
We'll start in the hall
and then go through the bedrooms.
During the search, when I went upstairs,
I saw there was nobody else in the house,
nobody in the bedrooms.
And so where is Sally?
[music intensifies]
[Jared] Mei and Rosa were both searched,
and they found a revolver
in one of Rosa's pockets,
which led us more to believe that maybe
these are our suspects as opposed to Eric.
[Nate] Eric lived at that residence,
so he had a reason to be there.
Rosa and Mei had no reason to be there.
They did not live there whatsoever.
Based on what we have
and the circumstances that are there,
Mei and Rosa are placed under arrest
on suspicion of a felony.
There was much more to this incident
than a domestic violence incident.
It was much more sinister
than we anticipated.
Once we find that Rosa has a firearm
in her pocket, we need to interview her.
[unsettling music playing]
So I, along with my partner,
we drove her to the police station.
She's telling us that there was
this ongoing custody dispute,
and that's basically the reason
why she was there at the house.
I didn't see anybody,
so I walked into the room,
and I called for them.
And still nobody answered.
So I just kept walking in.
[Nate] Did you see his grandmother?
No.
[Nate] Where was she?
I have no idea.
She said they waited for Eric to arrive.
When Eric arrived,
she said he went berserk.
He threw me to the floor,
so I banged my head on the floor.
At one point, we saw a gun in his hand.
And I was afraid
that he was going to shoot me.
I guess somehow he dropped it,
and I picked it up,
and I must've put it in my pocket.
[Yesenia] We knew she was playing a game.
She is playing a part
of being this very passive,
very quiet, innocent,
I'm-the-victim, um, portrayal.
[Nate] What was suspicious to me was
why did she enter into a house
that didn't belong to her?
Sally's not there.
Why is she going into the house?
She never once told us, "I'm going
in the house to check on Sally."
That wasn't why she was going inside.
[Yesenia] We knew she was being deceptive.
She was dancing around our questions,
answering them in different ways,
and it was kind of
to what degree she was being deceptive.
In the middle of our interview with Rosa,
my partner received a phone call
from one of the other detectives on scene,
and they conveyed to my partner
that Selma had been found.
[Nate] We looked in the backyard.
And on the side yard,
we found a shed that was locked.
And we further investigated
into that shed,
and we saw a garbage can
through a crack in the door.
And in that garbage can,
we could see some some bedsheets,
which seemed kind of strange to us
to have bedsheets
in a garbage can in an exterior shed.
We were able to get some bolt cutters
and open that shed.
And before doing anything,
we saw that
from those bedsheets we could see
what looked to be a human foot.
And our hearts dropped
at that point for sure.
It turned out to be
positively identified later as Sally Hill.
[melancholy music playing]
It was clear that she did not
just die of natural causes.
Somebody killed her and placed her
headfirst in a garbage can.
[Gregory] I know people are capable
of horrible things,
but I would never have thought
they would do it against my mom.
I mean, what do you say about that?
What an awful thing to do to anybody,
but a 91-year-old woman
who wouldn't hurt anybody?
[Yesenia] After learning about finding
the grandmother in the shed,
now we have somebody who was at the home,
said no one was home at the time,
had gone into the house.
We knew we were talking
to the right person.
She said at no point in time
did she ever encounter the grandmother.
She said she walked through the house,
first and second floor, and never saw her.
So my partner asked her,
"Well, what about outside?"
"Did you see the shed out there?"
And when he asked her that question,
she had a physical reaction
to the reference to the shed.
Her lip quivered
right before she answered.
She answered no, she was unaware.
We took a break 'cause we both,
you know, conferred with one another,
"Did you see that?" And
We both saw her physical reaction to that.
[pensive music playing]
[Nate] Two days later, the autopsy results
came back for Sally Hill,
and it was found that
her cause of death was strangulation.
Uh, she was also found to have several
lacerations and abrasions about her body.
They also found
some defensive wounds on her hands.
So it looks like she did put up a fight.
[music fades]
[Yesenia] Even though we found
everybody involved on scene,
the investigation didn't stop there,
and we had to make sure
we were able to tie the weapons
that were brought to the scene
to Rosa and Mei
and make sure that
we were able to dispel her argument
that these were Eric's weapons
used by Eric upon her and her mother Mei.
[tense music playing]
[Nate] At the scene of this crime,
there were two Tasers.
There were two stun guns.
There were two handguns.
Two of pretty much everything,
which leads me to believe that
there were gonna be two people
that were gonna go in
and had a plan to carry out this crime.
[Jared] One suspicious piece of evidence
that we found was
a backpack on the side of the house.
[Yesenia] Some of the items
that were found in the black backpack,
brown and green braided rope, crossbows,
a hunting knife.
You also had a throwing star,
glass cutter, an 18-inch pry bar.
So this was like
a burglary set/kidnap pack.
And Rosa's car was found
about a half a block away.
We located many items
that were of concern,
uh, one being a samurai sword
as well as leg irons.
[dramatic sting]
Typically, when we're looking into
a homicide,
we look for any type of evidence that
may help us at that person's residence.
[Yesenia] I found
there was a Brentwood location,
and Rosa and Mei were getting mail there.
So we did a search warrant
on the Brentwood home,
and that was a jackpot.
[Nate] We walk in the door, and we see
numerous, numerous pieces of evidence
that connect to our crime scene.
We also found a tag
for a 32-caliber firearm,
which was what was found
in Rosa's possession.
We found handwritings that were
really suspicious and strange to us.
One of the writings was revenge for Rosa.
It just listed a bunch of people,
and on that list was Gregory Hill,
Eric Hill, as well as Sally Hill.
[Casey] The notes were written
in two different hands.
So we know that Rosa wrote some notes,
and we know that Mei wrote other notes.
So both of them were involved in planning.
One month before the killing,
Rosa wrote a note that said, "Save BB,"
referring to the baby, and to get weapons
and that she needed to do target practice.
So the planning that went into this
was at least a month before
the actual killing itself
and I believe was months in the making.
[Yesenia] But we also found notes
that Rosa was stalking Eric.
And she was taking notes
as to what time he got home,
what time he was seen
picking up their child at childcare.
She was definitely planning
a time that would be best
to take down Eric
and take custody of their child.
[Nate] We also found
several different computers.
One of the main things that stood out
from the forensic search on the computers
was a Google search
that said, "how to murder."
[Yesenia] She was looking up
poisoning, explosives,
researching the best way to kill
without being traceable.
Every piece of evidence
just built a stronger case against her
whereas she can't play the self-defense.
This was a clear case of full intent.
[Nate] One of the items that we did submit
for DNA testing was a Taser
that was in the upstairs room
of the Peppertree residence.
The DNA that was on the prongs
of that Taser come back to Selma Hill.
Additional DNA on the handle
and on the button come back to Rosa Hill.
Based on that,
we believe that Rosa Hill
used a Taser on Sally Hill
and eventually killed her
on January 7th, 2009.
[music fades]
[unsettling music playing]
[Yesenia] It is ironic that
in her efforts to remain traceless
that we found every piece of evidence
that we needed to seal her fate.
This was the most planned,
premeditated, calculated killing
that I've ever come in contact with
in my 26-some odd years of being a DA.
Having lost her child to Eric,
Rosa and her mother came up with a plan
that they dubbed Operation Custody.
[glitchy audio]
Operation Custody was a plan
to try to get the legal rights back
to Rosa Hill's child.
And to accomplish that,
the plan was to murder Eric's grandmother
and blame the murder on Eric
and to get Eric to write
a confession that 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 there'd be no legal custody
for anyone except for Rosa Hill.
It would have been proven
that she was right all along,
that Eric was a molester,
that she didn't pull a fraud on the court,
that she was rightfully reunited
with her child.
The life of a 91-year-old woman
who was an innocent in all this
didn't matter.
She was caught up in a larger plan
to get custody of her child.
[music fades]
[dramatic music playing]
[Eric] My grandmother Sally was
at the end of a long, happy life.
But she did not deserve
that ending that she got.
She was a good woman
who deserved to pass on peacefully.
Rosa did not give her that courtesy.
And that's really what is
the most unforgivable here.
All these years later,
I'm still angry.
Extremely angry.
They say you should forgive,
but some things,
I think it would be
a disservice to humanity to forgive.
[chuckles]
It would certainly be a disservice to Mom.
[Eric] Lester definitely loved Sally,
and when she died, he was crushed.
It really affected him a lot.
After Mom died,
he wanted a little thing of the ashes,
and I'd go over to see him,
and he'd just be looking at that urn
and talking to Sally and
Oh, it was so sad.
It was so sad.
I'm just always grateful
that they found each other
and had that last 11 years
of their lives together.
[music fades]
[producer] How are you doing today?
I'm doing fine.
I'm wonderful.
I've been a good father.
I've had a good family.
[joyful music playing]
The irony of all of this
is that I have led the life
that Rosa and I talked about having,
and she missed out on all of it.
It hasn't been easy as a single dad.
But my daughter has grown into
a wonderful woman.
She's got a good, solid head
on her shoulders.
She's a a talented artist.
I'm proud that
I had a lot to do with that.
[chuckles]
[dark percussive music playing]
[music ends]