Murder of Raymond Fife

On September 10, 1985, in Warren, Ohio, a 12-year-old boy, Raymond Fife, was last seen leaving his home on a bicycle at approximately 5:15 p.m. Fife was expected to visit his friend Billy Simmons, but by 5:50 p.m., he had not arrived at Simmons's house. Concerned, Fife's family began searching for him. More than four hours later, Fife's father located him in a wooded field behind a supermarket on Palmyra Road. Fife was found naked and had sustained multiple injuries consistent with a severe physical assault, including burn wounds to his face and extensive bruising to his groin area. His underwear was tied around his neck and appeared to have been burned. Fife was transported to a hospital, where he died two days later as a result of his injuries. On September 12, 1985, the day of Fife's death, an 18-year-old man named Danny Lee Hill went to the Warren Police Station to inquire about a $5,000 reward being offered for information related to the case. Hill told Police Sergeant Thomas Stewart that he had seen several individuals riding a bicycle belonging to Fife. Sergeant Stewart found the statement suspicious, believing that Hill appeared to possess knowledge about specific details of the crime, including the bicycle and the victim's underwear, beyond what had been publicly disclosed. On September 16, 1985, Hill returned to the police station accompanied by his uncle, Warren Police Detective Morris Hill. During questioning, Hill admitted that he had been present when Fife was assaulted by another individual, whom he identified as 17-year-old Timothy Combs. Combs was subsequently arrested and charged with the rape and murder of Raymond Fife. Hill was also arrested and charged as an accomplice. ==Trials of Danny Lee Hill and Timothy Combs==

Criminal charges and prosecution's stand After their arrests, Hill and Combs were charged with kidnapping, rape, aggravated arson, felonious sexual penetration, aggravated robbery, and aggravated murder. For the most serious charge of aggravated murder, the punishment under Ohio state law was either the death penalty or life imprisonment. It was reported that both Hill and Combs had criminal records for petty offenses under the juvenile system of Ohio. Based on the evidence presented by the prosecution, it was argued at trial that Hill and Combs abducted Fife while he was riding his bicycle and subsequently sexually abused and violently assaulted him, resulting in fatal injuries. Hill and Combs were tried in different courts for their roles in Fife's killing. In Hill's confession, he pinpointed Combs as the principal offender, stating that Combs had first knocked Fife off his bicycle, held him in a headlock, and thrown him onto the bike. Hill also stated that Combs was responsible for various acts of violence, including hitting Fife, choking him, and burning him with lighter fluid. While Hill did not admit to direct participation in the assault, he acknowledged staying with the victim while Combs left to retrieve items used in the attack. On March 5, 1986, the court sentenced Hill to death for the most serious charge of aggravated murder. On top of the death sentence, the court imposed custodial sentences of ten to twenty-five years' imprisonment for both aggravated arson and kidnapping, as well as life imprisonment for both rape and felonious sexual penetration. The judges cited the brutality and cold-blooded nature of the murder as factors that made it appropriate to subject Hill to capital punishment. Trial and conviction of Timothy Combs Combs stood trial after Hill, but Combs was tried before a 12-member jury at the Portage County Court of Common Pleas. On May 5, 1986, the jury found Combs guilty on all five counts: kidnapping, rape, aggravated arson, felonious sexual penetration, and aggravated murder. On May 13, 1986, the court confirmed the jury's verdict. Under the law, Combs was ineligible for the death penalty because he was three months shy of his 18th birthday at the time he committed the murder of Fife; therefore, the only possible sentence for the murder charge was life imprisonment. Judge Joseph Kainrad sentenced Combs to three consecutive life sentences for aggravated murder, rape, and felonious sexual penetration. In addition, sentences of 10 to 25 years were added for the remaining offenses of aggravated arson and kidnapping, respectively. ==Combs's imprisonment and death==

After his trial and sentencing, Combs was transferred to the Grafton Correctional Institution, where he was incarcerated from 1986 to 2018 while serving his life sentences. On December 2, 1988, Combs's appeal was rejected by the Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals. On August 12, 2005, the same court rejected another appeal from Combs, whose attempt to seek post-conviction DNA testing to overturn his conviction was not accepted, after they found that there would have been sufficient evidence to convict Combs of murdering Raymond Fife in the absence of forensic evidence linking Combs to the murder. On November 9, 2018, Combs died at the age of 50 at the Select Specialty Hospital. The cause of his death was not immediately known to the public. ==Appeal processes of Hill==

After he was sentenced to death, Danny Lee Hill was incarcerated on death row at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution in March 1986. On August 12, 1992, the Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed Hill's appeal against his conviction and sentence. On November 28, 1995, the Supreme Court of Ohio rejected Hill's second appeal to overturn his death sentence and murder conviction. 2000s On February 23, 2000, the Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals rejected Hill's appeal to vacate his conviction. On February 15, 2006, Hill was found to be not mentally or intellectually disabled and his appeal was therefore rejected by Visiting Judge Thomas P. Curran. On July 11, 2008, the Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals rejected the appeal of Hill. 2010s On April 17, 2014, Hill appealed to the federal appellate courts to grant him a new trial. On June 26, 2014, Federal Judge John R. Adams ruled that Hill was mentally fit to be executed and upheld the death sentence. On June 8, 2016, Visiting Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove allowed Hill to petition for a new trial; Hill had questioned the reliability of bite mark evidence used against him in his original trial and therefore asked for a new trial to assess the validity of his conviction, which the prosecution opposed. The petition for a new trial was denied on October 4, 2016. On February 5, 2018, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Hill should not be executed. The prosecution appealed against this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and on January 7, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in Hill's case and sent the case back to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals for re-hearing. A separate appeal for a new trial in 2018 was rejected on December 4, 2018. On June 13, 2019, the Ohio Supreme Court again declined to hear another appeal from Hill. 2020s On May 21, 2020, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Hill's appeal and overturned Hill's death sentence. The decision, however, was vacated in favor of a rehearing on July 16, 2020. On July 1, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Hill's appeal. This was the final regular avenue of appeal in Hill's case and with this outcome, Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins applied to the Ohio Supreme Court to schedule an execution date for Hill that same month, and eventually secured a tentative execution date of July 22, 2026. On November 8, 2023, Hill appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to conduct a new hearing to assess whether his execution should be overturned on account of intellectual disability or mental incompetency. On December 27, 2023, Ohio Assistant Attorney General Stephen Maher filed two separate appeals to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking to have Hill executed and to disprove his claims of mental incompetency to face execution. On May 14, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to approve Hill's petition for a new hearing to review the bite mark evidence used to convict him of Fife's murder. On November 26, 2024, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal filed by Ohio Solicitor General Thomas Elliot Gaiser to review a decision from the 11th District Court of Appeals. On October 29, 2025, the Ohio Supreme Court heard another appeal from Hill regarding his intellectual disability claims. On April 23, 2026, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected Hill's appeal and ruled that the lower court had erred in allowing Hill to rely on the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure to appeal his death sentence on the grounds of intellectual disability. ==Tentative execution date of Hill==

In July 2022, Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins petitioned to the Ohio Supreme Court, seeking an execution date for Hill, whose regular appeals were exhausted before the courts. On September 21, 2022, Hill's death warrant was approved by the Ohio Supreme Court, and his death sentence was scheduled to be carried out on July 22, 2026. In April 2026, Attorney General Dave Yost addressed the murder of Fife in the 2025 Capital Crimes report by his office. Yost described the murder and its brutality to be haunting and expressed his disappointment in the lack of efforts to lift the moratorium and resume executions in Ohio. Both Watkins and Fife's 86-year-old mother expressed their gratitude towards Yost for his efforts to maintain capital punishment for Hill and many other inmates on Ohio's death row. ==Aftermath==

In the aftermath of her son's death, Fife's mother, Miriam Fife, became an advocate for crime victims' rights and later worked for the state prosecution's office. She remained in that role for 25 years before retiring at the age of 74 in 2015. Fife's father, Isaac Fife, died at the age of 79 on September 11, 2006. ==See also==