‘They killed our whole family’: A year later, MoDOT worker’s slaying still unsolved
Randy Hill wakes up each morning and looks at a cremation urn made to look like a large, red-and-white fishing bobber. It sits on his dresser and holds the remains of his 26-year-old son.
On it are the words: “Gone Fishin.’ “
Hill’s torment begins every day with that urn, which serves as a memorial for his son, who had two young children of his own, loved to fish and had just begun a new job when he was killed. It also is a painful reminder that the killer or killers remain at large.
“It’s just another nightmare, all over again,” he said.
Since Dylan Hill was fatally shot a year ago Wednesday in southeast Kansas City, his loved ones have spent at least $1,000 to mail postcards, print shirts and put up a billboard in their search for answers. They’ve sifted through Facebook comments, compiled files on their computers of anything suspicious and taken police things they think may be of investigate help.
Randy Hill’s grief has been compounded by what he describes as a lack of communication from the homicide detective assigned to his son’s case. He calls about once a month, pleading for any information and asking if any progress has been made. He’s simply looking for a yes or no, wanting to know if there is any “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Each time he calls, he said, the detective tells him the same thing: “I don’t discuss my open cases with anyone.”
A shooting and heartache
Dylan Hill left his Lee’s Summit home about 10:15 p.m. the day he died, relatives said.
Officers responded to a call about the shooting more than 30 minutes later near East 80th Terrace and James A. Reed Road, according to the Kansas City Police Department.
Neighbors reported hearing the sound of two different guns during the shooting, said Hill’s stepmother, Tacy Hill. His truck was still running when officers found him inside, shot as many as five times, his father said. Bullets struck his children’s car seats.
Randy Hill believes his son was lured to the dead end road by someone he had been communicating with.
His wife, Taylor Cook, has said Hill told her he was going to see a friend. Hill’s father thinks his son’s belief that everyone was his friend contributed to his death. Loved ones think Hill may have met someone involved in his killing in drug court.
Days after the homicide, Randy Hill found a sticker he knew was inside his son’s blue pickup truck — where officers found his bullet-ridden body — among broken glass on the ground at the crime scene. He placed the sticker in a plastic bag and took it to the police department, thinking it could be tested for blood or fingerprints.
But when Hill gave the bag to the detective, he said, she slid it back across the table and told him: “Do I do your job for you? Let me do my job.”
She could have humored him and simply taken it, Hill said.
Asked about the interaction, Officer Doaa El-Ashkar, a spokesperson for the police department, said detectives are diligent about recovering any evidence of value from crime scenes, so if it was pertinent to the case, it would have been recovered. If it was not, she said, it would be routine practice to let the family have it.
Randy Hill hadn’t paid much attention to killings in Kansas City until he got the call about his son’s homicide at 2:30 a.m. Before a recent interview at his Oak Grove home, Randy Hill placed two pieces of black tape, making an “X,” over the KC letters on his camouflage Kansas City Royals hat. It’s not a statement about the city’s baseball team, he said, but rather one about its crime.
“I can’t support a city with so many murders,” he said, adding: “So many unsolved murders.”
Now, when Hill visits the scene of his son’s homicide — where his family has left a cross and fliers — he’s suspicious of neighbors who ask him if there have been any updates in the case. Relatives worry because the person or persons responsible are on the streets.
“It’s just the worst thing in the world,” he said.
Dylan Hill was a graduate of Wentworth Military Academy, a private two-year military college and high school in Lexington, Missouri, that closed in 2017. He recently started working at the Missouri Department of Transportation. He loved working with his hands and thought he could fix anything, including a rusty truck that sits next his father’s house.
Hill’s children have wondered where he is.
They don’t understand what happened. His 3-year-old son, Gunner, who is a big kid like his dad was, has asked why his father is invisible. When his 4-year-old daughter, Addy, recently placed an ornament on a tree at a funeral home, she asked: “Are they going to bring my dad out now?” She has Hill’s eyes, which gaze off like his use to, relatives said.
Randy Hill described his son’s killing as brutal and heartless. None of his family members will be the same, he said.
“They didn’t just kill Dylan, they killed our whole family,” he said. “I’m not going to stop until someone pays for this.”
Anyone with information about Hill’s killing was asked to call the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers TIPS at 816-474-8477. Tips can also be sent anonymously online at kccrimestoppers.com.
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 12:19 PM.
