"48 Hours Mystery:" Shootout at the Hills'
Produced by Clare Friedland and Jenna Jackson
Charlene Hill had lots of plans for the rest of her life.
"A dream… this was Danny and ours dream… we were looking at building our house right here and have the kids come up… look forward to our grandbabies being up here," Charlene Hill says, looking out at the undeveloped land on their ranch.
None of those dreams panned out, because everything changed on Nov. 14, 2006, when she shot her husband, Danny, to death.
"I relive that night so many times….do I wish I could change it. Oh, its just rough… its rough knowing this was our dream and he's gone," she tells "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Richard Schlesinger.
From the beginning, Charlene's relationship with Danny was always complicated.
"When we started we didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of," she Schlesinger. "We had a '68 Chevy pickup and life started…"
They married in 1981. Charlene already had a little boy, Jeremy, from a previous marriage and says she thought "we'd have a beautiful life together."
They settled down in a Houston suburb and soon had two more children - a son Joby and a daughter Jamie.
"I was his little girl," Jamie says. "My Dad and I were very close. He's been there through everything throughout my whole life, pretty much."
"The best memories I have of my youth are on the river with my family," Jeremy recalls. "It was perfect … it was so nice to where people would stop on the river to look at our place… dad swinging in the chair… my brother and sister skiing. It was awesome."
Barbara Graham is Danny Hill's mother.
"Danny was such a good person," she tells "48 Hours." "He was taking his children hunting and fishing, and it was every weekend… How many dads do you know do that?"
Charlene and Danny were also working hard, building their landscaping and storage businesses together.
"Danny, at times, was the most wonderful man to be around - most loving and giving," says Charlene.
But that was just sometimes. Other times, Danny could suddenly turn violent. It had been that way since they met.
Asked if Danny slapped her, Charlene tells Schlesinger, "No, he punched me… He punched me in the face."
Charlene says Danny, who was a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier, over the years not only punched her, he kicked her and threatened to kill her. Charlene's calls to 911 and trips to the emergency room are well documented. She always refused to press charges.
"I was afraid of what would happen if I did," she says.
"He was a very big, strong, intimidating man who feared no one," says Jennifer Hinch, a friend of Charlene's. Hinch first caught a glimpse of Danny's violent side, when she noticed some strange holes in Danny and Charlene's bedroom door.
"They were clean little round holes," Hinch says of the bullet holes. "And Danny said, 'Yeah, that's where I shot and missed.' 'Like shot a gun?' He said, 'Yeah.' Thought it was funny. He laughed."
"So he was shooting at Char through the door of the bedroom 'cause she had locked him out," Hinch explains.
Charlene knows it sounds strange, but like many abuse victims, she often blamed herself.
"I felt a lot of it was my fault, you know? It was what I said. It was what I didn't say. It was how I looked. How I didn't look."
Charlene says one time she did make plans to leave and Danny found out. That's when she learned that trying to escape could be dangerous.
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"After knocking me around, he tied me to a chair and poured gasoline on me and stood there with the lighter and told me if I ever tried to leave, he'd kill me," she says.
Charlene says her husband didn't untie her until the next morning.
"How could you possibly stay with a man who threatened to set you on fire and threatened your life?" Schlesinger asks.
"Where do I go?" she replies. "I have limited resources, I have no family… At the time, I was afraid to leave."
Charlene did finally leave a few years later, after 10 years of marriage. She packed up the three kids and drove to California. But after several months, Charlene returned to Danny voluntarily.
"I missed him desperately while we were separated," she says.
"I mean she loved Danny Hill. She had his children," Hinch says. "I mean those vows said for better and worse and she meant it and she kept 'em."
Susan and Colice Watts were good friends of the Hills for years.
"I think they were each other's drug, that they couldn't live without the other and didn't want to live without the other," Susan Watts says. "We never laughed as hard as we laughed when we were with them. They were a happy, loving couple when we were with them."
That might have been because Danny and Charlene finally went into counseling. And for several years, it looked like it was working.
The family businesses were flourishing. And by now, the Hills owned properties worth millions.
"We were able to look forward to a life that was gonna get better and better," Charlene says.
But those better times ended abruptly in August 2003, when Danny and Charlene were badly hurt in a motorcycle accident. Charlene's leg was shattered; Danny suffered critical brain injuries and he was never the same.
"It changed him dramatically," says Jeremy.
Asked is did Danny still have a temper, Jaime and Jeremy both say, "No."
But Charlene claims Danny's temper was actually more frightening than ever, and that because of his brain injury, he didn't know when to stop.
"It's like someone goes into a rage," she says. Charlene says she was never more afraid of her husband than she was on the evening of Nov. 14, 2006.
"What would he have done if he got you?" Schlesinger asks Charlene.
"He'd a killed me." November 14, 2006, the day Danny Hill died, began normally enough.
"I saw him in the morning - right before he left to go to work… and that's the last time I'd see my dad," Jaime Hill says. "He was happy, he was in a good mood… said 'Bye, baby girl. Love you. See you later… gave my mom a kiss… took off to work."
But according to Charlene Hill, Danny's mood quickly soured in the privacy of the office the two shared.
"That day in the office, I pushed one of his buttons… It just irritated him when I told him, 'You're not thinking.'"
"That set him off a bit?" Schlesinger asks. "Did he hit you?"
"Yeah. He knocked me outta my chair," she says.
It was the beginning of the end. Later that day, at a storage facility Charlene and Danny had just sold to his brother, there was another outburst. Danny still kept some of his stuff in one of the storage lockers, and when one of the managers asked him to clear it out, Danny got so mad that Charlene says his brother called to warn her.
"Said Danny was in a rage; that he'd gone off - he had threatened to kill his managers. Wanted me to calm Danny down," she says.
Charlene thought it would help Danny's mood if she tidied up the house and cooked his favorite meal: chicken and dumplings.
"And you thought that would make him happy?" Schlesinger asks.
"Oh, yeah," she says. "It would help him relax. When he got home, ya know, if the house was clean… the laundry was done… chicken 'n dumplings," she explains. "It's just so much easier to relax in the evening."
But when Danny came home he went to the bedroom and he was in no mood for dinner.
"When I came back into the bedroom… his rage centered on me. He was angry that I was tryin' to calm him down," she says. "His eyes were gone… he was gone. I'd seen the look in his eyes before, yes, but I had never seen it like I did that night."
So she says she took her gun out of the nightstand and laid it on the bed as a warning.
"Why not just back out of the room and get away?" Schlesinger asks.
"Because of my physical condition, the injury to my leg… I knew I couldn't outrun him."
She says that when Danny started coming at her, she picked up the gun.
Charlene fired three shots. "I just wanted to stop him," she explains, crying.
When the paramedics arrived, 49-year-old Danny Hill managed to tell them with his dying breath that his own wife had shot him.
Charlene was arrested that night and charged with murder.
"When she was indicted I was really kind of surprised… I thought it was self defense," says Bev Carter, publisher of the Fort Bend Star.
As soon as she heard about it, Carter thought this was one Texas tale that had to be told.
"Here was this woman who had been abused for years… and here was this big, huge husband that was, you know, loud and obnoxious," Carter tells Schlesinger. "He had beaten her up so many times… that, you know, somebody had to stop him. I'm telling you Richard, he needed killing!"
But not everyone saw it Bev Carter's way. There were doubters, including Charlene's own children.
"I know my mother," Jaime says, "and I know what she is about."
"The stretching of the truth and the elaboration of the truth is - it's happened a lot," adds Jeremy.
Jaime and Jeremy Hill know their father was abusive, but they claim their mother was often the instigator.
"My mom would take after him with knives and stuff like that," says Jaime.
"You've seen her go after him with a knife more than once?" Schlesinger asks.
"Yes sir," Jaime says. "He would go into the room … after they had a fight or what not. She would just take off to the room [and say,] 'Only one of us is gonna come out.'"
"Did you know how to push his buttons? I mean would you know how to fight back sometimes?" Schlesinger asks Charlene.
"Oh yeah, you know, we'd been together a long time. We knew each other's dance moves," she says.
But there's more incriminating evidence against Charlene: a gun she bought just weeks before she shot Danny.
"It's easy for somebody to assume that that's when you started planning. If not thinking about it," notes Schlesinger.
"No. Danny had told Jeremy and Joby, 'Make sure Mom gets a gun,'" Charlene explains. "And Jeremy was the one who took me down to purchase the gun."
Charlene claims Danny wanted her to have the gun for her protection at their new ranch.
"He wanted me to have the weapons because he was travelin," she explains. "You're out there in the middle of nowhere."
Jeremy says his mother told him she also needed it for another reason: "She didn't feel safe around my dad," he says.
"Did you believe that your mother needed that gun to protect her from your father?" Schlesinger asks Jeremy.
"I don't believe that, no," he replies.
And Charlene's kids say right after she made bail, their mother made a startling admission to them about exactly what happened in the bedroom just before she pulled the trigger.
"She had said that he wasn't coming at her, he didn't put his hands on her," Jeremy explains.
"At that moment what happened to you?" Schlesinger asks.
"I felt sick to my stomach," Jeremy says. "After that was said, my brother and I knew for sure - that this was murder."It was hard to imagine things getting any worse for Charlene Hill. She was facing life in prison for murdering her husband. Even her children had turned against her.
"It hurts that they hate me so much," Charlene says. "I wished I would've let Danny kill me."
But then, just months before her trial, her family suffered another staggering loss. Her son, Joby, committed suicide on the eve of his 27th birthday.
"The hate that me and my brother carried so long finally took over my brother," says Jeremy.
Jeremy and sister Jamie already believe their mother murdered their father. Now they blame her for their brother's death as well.
"Did he talk to you about that in his last days?" Schlesinger asks Jeremy.
"Well, what else are we gonna talk about except for, you know - I mean, everything that's going on," he replies. "We tried to help each other to deal with it. And you know we were both filled with hate and anger and everything else that you could feel."
Joby left behind a handwritten suicide note. He wrote, "I lost who I used to be… due to capital murder case, lawyers… It is a sick system."
"He was a beautiful young man," Charlene says of Joby. "He was my baby."
Joby was supposed to be a witness for the prosecution. According to Jeremy, "He absolutely dreaded it."
"I wish I could've known to reach out. I wish I - I would've done anything," says Charlene.
Now, a lonely Charlene Hill must fight for her life in court. She's hired prominent defense attorney George Parnham.
"What does the jury have to believe in order to let her walk out of the courthouse a free woman?" Schlesinger asks Parnham.
"She shot him to stop him from assaulting her, to stop him from killing her, all right? And that's it. That's the ultimate issue," he says.
Former prosecutor Kelly Siegler doesn't buy Parnham's account. She's observing this case for her own reasons, which will be explained later.
"This was not self-defense," she says. "She pulled out the gun. She put it in the room with him… She manipulated the whole situation and then tried to orchestrate this whole defense of 'I was in fear for my life.' It was a big crock."
As Charlene's murder trial begins, the prosecution sets out to prove that she not only wanted Danny dead, she even tried to get someone else to do her dirty work.
Clint Walker - a man with a long rap sheet - once dated Charlene's daughter, Jamie.
Prosecutor: Did Charlene Hill ever offer you money to kill Danny Hill?
Clint Walker: Yes.
Prosecutor: And how much did she offer you?
Clint Walker: $5,000.
"She looked at Clint and she said, 'How can we take care of this?' And she said, 'Five grand?'" Jaime recalls. "She said, 'If I gave you five grand would you take care of this?'"
"Was there any question in your mind about 'what take care of your dad' meant?" Schlesinger asks.
"Coming from her, no," Jaime replies. "No question. For $5,000, would somebody murder my father."
That conversation allegedly took place in 2003, shortly after that near-fatal motorcycle crash.
"Rather than get a divorce and end an unhappy marriage, Charlene Hills' motivation was to be rid of a husband that had become a burden to her and to take all the money," says Siegler.
Siegler believes money - and lots of it - was the real motive then and three years later when Charlene finally pulled the trigger herself.
"Just a month before it happened she also moved a million dollars into an account in her name but not his?" Siegler says. "I mean, just use your common sense. How can that happen?"
Charlene denies she ever asked Clint Walker to kill her husband or that she was scheming to control the couple's assets.
"Did you transfer the million dollars from the business account to an account with just your name on it?" Schlesinger asks.
"No, I did not." Charlene explains, "I transferred the million dollars from our corporate account into a money-market account."
"So if he wanted any of that money, he could of gotten it?"
"100 percent," she says.
Charlene's lawyers need to prove it was fear, not the family fortune that made her shoot Danny. And they have witnesses who will describe, in sometimes horrifying detail, the years of abuse Charlene endured.
"When I got to the door and looked back… he had picked her up thrown her across the room towards the window," Susan Watts tells the court.
Watts says the incident she witnessed in the Hills' office was so frightening that neither she nor her husband ever spoke to Charlene or Danny again.
"I didn't know if I should call the police and I was in the office when she came running in… and she had a big footprint on the front of her white top," Watts tells Schlesinger. "A footprint. And she came in and said, 'Hide me, just hide me, I'll be OK.'"
It was April 1, 1998. Hospital records show Jeremy accompanied his mother to the ER; she had a fractured rib.
"I went through six months of nightmares after witnessing all that, and I was disappointed to hear that Charlene had gone back to him a few days after the incident," says Watts.
In spite of that incident and others, Jeremy Hill is still prepared to take the stand against his own mother.
Prosecutor: Would you say your parents had a volatile relationship?
Jeremy Hill: Yes. …He was provoked. He was pushed to the point of where he felt he had to respond that way.
And Jeremy tells the court the violence stopped after the motorcycle accident. "He became a big pussycat, if you will."
The prosecutor questions Jeremy about the conversation that turned Charlene's own children against her:
Prosecutor: What did she say?
Jeremy Hill: She said that he was not coming at her. That he did not have a gun. That he had not hit her. That he was standing on the other side of the room.
Watching her first born testify against her is more than Charlene can bear as she breaks down in court.
But now the defense is ready to confront Jeremy about why he has turned against his mother. Attorney George Parnham believes the motive is money. Jeremy Hill says he has struggled with his decision to testify against his mother, Charlene, at her murder trial.
"I told her I couldn't look at her," Jeremy tells Richard Schlesinger.
"But this is the woman who raised you."
"Yeah, that's what's so hard about this whole situation," he says.
The situation is about to get even harder.
His mother's lawyer, George Parnham, gets Jeremy to grudgingly admit that his father even beat him.
George Parnham: There was a time when you were in the fifth grade when your father came into your bedroom and beat you so severely, for no reason, that he knocked you out. Correct?
Jeremy Hill: He punched me once and knocked me out, yes sir.
But there's more - a startling glimpse into the violence that, at times, gripped the Hill family.
George Parnham: Do you remember a time when you and Joby, your brother, determined that you were going to kill your dad?
Jeremy Hill: Yes sir.
George Parnham: You were gonna get a gun and you were going to shoot him?
Jeremy Hill: Yes sir.
Jeremy admits that years earlier, he had hatched a plan to kill his father because of the violence.
George Parnham: …and it's because he was abusing your mother, right?
Jeremy Hill: They had had an incident, yes sir.
Video: Jeremy testifies about violence he witnessed
So why has Jeremy turned against his mother?
"Do you have any ulterior motive for turning against your mother in this case?" Schlesinger asks.
"No. Oh - my dad was murdered," he says. "My kids will never know their pawpaw, except through pictures. It's a family destroyed."
But Charlene's attorney says Jeremy's real motive has nothing to do with family.
"I forecast long ago… the worm will turn," Parnham says. "Money is a very powerful issue."
In fact, the family is in a nasty fight over Danny's estate, worth at least $2 million. Jeremy, Jamie and Danny's mother, Barbara Graham, have already filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Charlene.
"Charlene Hill decided to kill Danny Hill. And she did that intentionally and knowingly," says Kelly Siegler.
Former prosecutors Siegler and Dean Blumrosen are watching this trial so closely because they now represent the kids and Danny's mother in that lawsuit.
"They believe in all their heart that Charlene Hill committed this act because she wanted the money," says Blumrosen.
But Charlene's attorney says she's not the one after the money. On the stand, George Parnham gets Jeremy to admit that when his mother transferred $1 million to him for safekeeping, he withdrew it and split it with his siblings to pay off debts.
George Parnham: Your mother did not have an inkling, an iota that you had gone through $1 million that day?
Jeremy Hill: Correct.
Journalist Bev Carter isn't shy when she sizes up the defense's latest argument.
"This was a greedy, out of control, dysfunctional group of kids," says Carter, the publisher of the Fort Bend Star. "Her kids just threw her to the curb… they suddenly realized that with her put away, they were in control of the money."
Charlene decided to take a chance few murder defendants ever do. She's taking the stand in her own defense.
George Parnham: Were you ever struck?
Charlene Hill: Yes sir.
George Parnham: Were you ever hospitalized?
She painfully recounts years of violence.
Charlene Hill: Yes sir … Danny was grabbin' me by the throat and had me on the ground. And this time he threw my head through a window.
Her lawyer asks her about the night she shot her husband.
George Parnham: Did he threaten to kill you?
Charlene Hill: [Nods yes] He got very angry with me because I kept trying to calm him down.
George Parnham: What did you do?
Charlene Hill: I pulled the Glock out of my dresser and I laid it on the bed. And I kinda stood back and I told Danny, "Don't come near me," and "We're not gonna go there."
George Parnham: Did Danny say anything when he saw the gun on the bed?
Charlene Hill: He laughed at me. And then he said, "If we're gonna do a shootout, I'm getting my gun and I'm gonna shoot you. You better shoot me [sobs]."
Charlene tells the court Danny kept coming towards her. Her admission is as simple as it is chilling: "I shot my husband," Charlene tells the court.
Now, a fragile Charlene Hill faces prosecutor Jill Stotts, who quickly zeroes in on the moments before Charlene shot her husband.
Jill Stotts: Is that something that normally would calm Danny down is showing him that you have a gun? It really wasn't to calm him down. It was to show that you had the upper hand, correct?
Charlene Hill: No, it was to tell him to back off.
Jill Stotts: Well telling him to back off is not the same as calming him down.
For two days the prosecutor won't let up.
Jill Stotts: At that point when you saw the change in his eyes did you think that maybe you should leave the room?
Charlene Hill: At that time I knew I was trapped.
Jill Stotts: At that point could you have picked up that weapon - even if you're pointing it at him - and walked out the door?
Charlene Hill: No ma'am.
Jill Stotts: Why is that?
Charlene Hill: Because I believed I was in danger.
Jill Stotts: Danger of what? You have the gun?
Charlene Hill: My husband was a lethal weapon without a gun.
Video: More of Charlene Hill's cross examination
It is the heart of the case against Charlene Hill: Did she have to shoot Danny or could she simply have left the room?
Charlene says she couldn't outrun Danny. "Oh God no," she tells Schlesinger. "I would've maybe gotten one step past the bedroom door and he'd a had me. He's 6'5 " - he'd a had me in two steps.
"And what would he have done if he got you?"
"He'd a killed me."
After a grueling cross-examination, Charlene is showing the strain.
"All I knew, he was coming at me. He was going to kill me. And unless you'd been in that, that situation, you have no idea," Charlene testifies. "It's like a grizzly bear getting ready to attack you."
As the trial draws to a close, Defense Attorney Dee McWilliams is satisfied that Charlene stuck to her story and never wavered.
"I don't think she could have come across as more credible," McWilliams tells Schlesinger. "This is such a basic self-defense case."
Of course that's the jury's call. And while nobody knows it yet, another emotional drama is about to begin… inside the jury room. As the case against Charlene Hill goes to the jury, her defense attorneys are not the only ones who expect a quick acquittal.
"And I thought it was going to take them a very short amount of time to do that, because it was so obvious that she was scared for her life," says journalist Bev Carter.
Silvia Les-sie is one of the jurors.
"When the prosecutor asked her a question, why did she not retreat? She said, 'You don't know my husband! He was going to kill me.' I kind of felt that, she was gonna die that night," says Les-sie.
Other jurors - Quenton, Karen and Levon - who did not want their last names used, were also convinced that Charlene Hill endured years of brutality.
"You think she was afraid for her life? Schlesinger asks the group.
"Mentally, yes," Quenton says. "She thought that he was gonna come at her."
"I did believe her testimony. I found it extremely painful to listen to," says Karen.
But these jurors surprised everyone. Early on, during a break, Bailiff Mary Charles noticed one of them was in distress.
"And I could tell that she was holding her stomach and she looked nervous," Charles recalls. "And she was pacing back and forth. She says, 'They're not gonna make me change my mind; they're not gonna make me change my mind.'"
Charles says she's never experienced something like that with a juror before.
That juror was Silvia Les-sie, and the deliberations were quickly deteriorating. She describes the jury room as "very hostile."
Les-sie says she even turned her chair around in the jury room, "so I wouldn't see them lookin' at me."
Inside the jury room, the vote was 11 to 1, guilty; Les-sie was the lone holdout.
Eleven jurors believed Charlene Hill could have run out of the room. And they looked at the law, which said she could only shoot to kill if it was "immediately necessary."
"If he's across the room, he's turned away from her. Is that immediate danger?" Karen asks.
These jurors felt the blood stains told the story, proving that Danny was still at the other side of the room when he was shot by his wife.
"You had the gun. You were by the door. Walk out," Levon says. "It's that simple."
Les-sie says she tried to persuade the others that Charlene could not outrun her husband because of her leg injury.
"What are you all talkin' about? How can she retreat? Can't you see? Charlene was doing' this here," Les-sie says, limping like Charlene may have.
The lone juror would not back down. Things got so heated, it began to look like there would be no verdict.
"What did they say to you?" Schlesinger asks Les-sie of the other jurors.
"'I am sick and tired of you. I'm sick and tired of you up in here with all these different scenarios,'" she replies. "I said, 'but I believe with all my heart that she is not guilty.'"
"Her mind was made up when she went in there," Karen says. "She wasn't willing to listen."
"'Well tell me this, Sylvia. Is it OK with you that this becomes a mistrial?" Les-sie says she was asked.
"She would just say, 'I feel this way and I'm not changing it. And I don't care about the evidence," recalls Quenton.
"I said, 'Wait a minute, if it becomes a mistrial, it's because you all says she's guilty," Les-sie explains.
"..and I felt that that was an injustice," says Karen.
Nobody budged, and after two days of deliberations, Judge James Shoemake had no choice and declared a mistrial.
"We were shocked, absolutely shocked," Bev Carter says. "Everybody there, the bailiffs - everybody honestly thought that she would be found not guilty."
Now, 53-year-old Charlene Hill will face another trial, another jury and another possibility of life in prison.
"It's like living in a nightmare that's never gonna be over," she tells Schlesinger.
As she waits for the coming trial, Charlene's making plans for the ranch. She wants to build a memorial to her son, Joby, and even her late husband.
"It's kind of gonna be like a memorial meadow," she says. "This is the meadow that I'm putting out crosses for Danny and Joby … I need a place to be able to come and sit down and just talk to them."
Now, more than anything else, Charlene wants to be reunited with Jeremy and Jamie. They have refused to see their mother for more than three years.
"I love my children very much... they're my heart," says a crying Charlene.
Asked is he still loves his mother, Jeremy says, "There's a love. You know, there comes a point where you gotta let the hate go and learn forgiveness. But forgiveness is hard 'cause you can't forget."
"Nobody wins in this kind of case in the end," Bev Carter says. "Danny's dead; Charlene still loves him… she's not speaking to her children, they're not speaking to her. It's a sad situation."
"It's taken me a long time to realize that it's OK that I'm alive," Charlene tells Schlesinger, wiping tears as she stands in the meadow. "And I believe God's not done with me yet."
The Hill family civil suit has been settled.
Charlene Hill keeps all properties, once valued at $2 million. Danny's mother gets most of his $500,000 life insurance. The kids do not have to pay back the $750,000 already spent.