BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A year after Robert Hill died from injuries he suffered in a street fight in South Cumminsville, police are still looking for his killer.
The suspect, Kenneth Graham, a 33-year-old College Hill man, has eluded police. Police suspect Mr. Graham struck the blow that killed the 19-year-old South Fairmount man.
Mr. Hill was attacked as he walked in the 3700 block of Borden Street in South Cumminsville last July 1. He died a year ago today. Mr. Graham faces an involuntary manslaughter charge.
The one good thing for Cincinnati police is that they know whom they're looking for in connection with the death.
In some of the 52 other unsolved homicides in the city since 1990, detectives have no suspect at all.
Hoping for answers
Melissa Jackson knows the pain of unanswered questions.
Her brother, Christopher Morrow, may have been shot to death for his duffel bag. It carried only a T-shirt, a pair of pants, boxer shorts and a toothbrush.
Mr. Morrow, 24, the 1988 West Virginia high school basketball player of the year, lived in Huntington, W.Va., and came to Cincinnati one February 1996 weekend to visit a friend in Westwood.
He was unloading his bags with a friend in the Montana Valley apartment complex parking lot when at least three masked men ran toward them from beside the building.
"It is hard not knowing who killed him or why," said Ms. Jackson, who was 17 when it happened. "Somebody killed him for no reason."
Dozens of families are left with the same feeling. Detectives in Cincinnati's Crime Stoppers unit, which follows up on anonymous tips, accept calls 24 hours a day at the 352-3040 hot line.
Cincinnati has had an average of 45 homicides a year since 1990. The majority -- more than 88 percent -- have been solved.
That gives others hope that cases important to them will be solved, too.
In Evanston, the former Dana Food Shop is only a memory. It was taken over by an interior design company after grocer Harry Everett was shot to death in an apparent robbery Sept. 5, 1995.
Jim Williams, owner of the car repair shop next door, walked in to find his longtime friend's body. The mystery of his death carries lingering pain for those who knew him.
"We would like to see it solved," Mr. Williams said. "Of course we have hope. But at this point it's looking very unlikely."
Poring over files
The Cincinnati Police Division's homicide unit has file cabinets full of unsolved cases. Each time a new investigator is appointed to the unit, he or she pores over old files to see if there's anything others have missed.
"If we get a call, we're going to exhaust every lead," said Cincinnati Police Sgt. McKinley Brown, a homicide unit supervisor. In some cases, the tips just don't come.
The latest unsolved killing happened just last week. Scott Reynolds, 32, a father of two, was shot once in the back of the head about 2:45 a.m. Friday on Bracken Woods Lane, near his Westwood home.
Police found his body on the driver's side of a car that police say was driven by a woman. She was not harmed, and police think the shooter was a man. They have only a vague description of a suspect. The only other one of the 12 city homicides that remains unsolved so far this year is that of Corey Blye.
Mr. Blye, 22, known as "Little C," was returning from a party just after midnight Jan. 3 when he was shot in the head behind an English Woods neighborhood store about a block from his Bleeker Lane apartment. It appeared to be an ambush with at least two people involved, Sgt. Brown said.
Last year, several investigations were hampered because nobody talked.
Derrick Cannon, 26, of Evanston, was shot to death Jan. 25, 1997, in front of a huge crowd at the Imperial Club on Woodburn Avenue in East Walnut Hills.
"I think everybody and their brother probably was there," Sgt. Brown said. "People are just afraid to talk."
Police also have few clues about the March 9, 1997, death of Stephen Larkin, who was found by a bus driver near a Gilbert Avenue bus stop in Walnut Hills.
Mr. Larkin, 30, of Sycamore Township, died from a gunshot wound to his head. Police have barely had any calls on it.
One of the most baffling cases for police was last year's death of Shirley Vaughn. The 36-year-old mother of two disappeared the morning of Jan. 13, 1997 -- a freezing Monday with a low temperature of minus 2.
She usually took a Metro bus from Westwood to work downtown on West Fourth Street at Fairdale Orthodontic Co., a handbag manufacturer where she was a seamstress. She never made it.
A highway maintenance worker found her decomposed body 2 1/2 months later on a muddy bank of the Mill Creek near the CSX Queensgate rail yard.
The calls from detectives have stopped coming to the home of Brenda Francis, Ms. Vaughn's sister in Price Hill.
"We've always got to hope," she said. "It's one of those things you never know if it's going to be solved."
"It gets easier over time," she said. "I don't have nightmares anymore. Having her missing and not knowing what happened was the hardest part.
