Woman finally learns what happened to rapist who fled decades ago

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Erma Shaw never stopped searching for the man who raped her as a child: her stepfather, Tommie Lee Hill, who escaped authorities and a 20-year prison sentence in the late 1970s.

Shaw knew that if he wasn’t caught, he would continue to attack other children.

She stayed in touch with Grand Rapids police over the years, but Hill never showed up. She was suspicious everywhere she went – even when she left the state or the country – but she also wanted to confront her attacker.

She wrote a book in 2018 called “Truth Tella, $7,000 REWARD” in the hopes it would help solve the mystery.

Last month she finally learned what had happened to her attacker.

The case remained unsolved for a long time when police released information in 2017 to help solve the case. A lone Silent Observer informant reported seeing Hill in a broken-down vehicle on I-80 heading toward Pennsylvania decades ago.

A year ago, Shaw provided a detailed genealogy report to Grand Rapids police Officer Joseph Garrett, who is assigned to the U.S. Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force.

The report said that a woman named Demetria Henderson married a man named “Abdualla Muhammad” in Pittsburgh in 1981.

Shaw named nine people who might know the man’s location.

Garrett and Officer Lucas Nagtzaam met with two deputy U.S. marshals in Pittsburgh in mid-April. They spoke with six of the nine people Shaw identified.

They heard that Hills, who was known by an alias, had been shot by a man years ago after attacking his sister.

Investigators then spoke to a 78-year-old detective from the Pittsburgh Police Department about the old murder case.

The Pittsburgh detective led them to the basement archives, where old files – not digitized – were kept. Garrett wasn’t sure what, if anything, the police would find.

The case file revealed that a man named “Muhhamad Abdullah” (the name is spelled differently than the man who married Henderson) was the victim of a murder on December 4, 1983.

Fingerprints taken after his death showed “NO RECORD” of previous arrests.

Garrett showed Shaw photos of the deceased. She confirmed that it was Hill.

Grand Rapids Police Chief Eric Winstrom said Shaw was one of the “heroes” he met while working as a police officer. Shaw testified against her stepfather as a 12-year-old, at a time when sex crimes against children were not always reported, he said.

He said she was the victim of a “heinous crime” but did not shy away from demanding justice.

Hill was able to largely avoid punishment.

On January 31, 1979, Hill was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse in Kent County District Court. He fled the courthouse after using the restroom and got into a waiting vehicle.

In the summer of that year, he was arrested in Waveland, Mississippi, on charges of assault with intent to murder. The U.S. Marshals Service took Hill into custody and transported him to a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

He was brought to Kent County in December 1979 and sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison for the rape of Shaw. He was then returned to the Indiana Federal Penitentiary.

“Grand Rapids authorities will never see him again,” Garrett said.

On July 1, 1980, Hills was released from the Federal Bureau of Prisons to the Vigo County Jail in Terre Haute. Due to a mix-up, he was released two days later.

He married Henderson and started a new life under a new name. He had used several aliases, police said.

While Shaw said she wanted to confront Hill, she added that if he were still alive, he would have raped dozens of children if he had not been caught.

According to police, Hill is responsible for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in 1966, who remained silent for 12 years about the crime. He is also accused of sexually abusing his stepdaughters in the yard of the Terre Haute prison in 1976 and 1977 when his wife brought them for visits.

The police chief said that solving sexual assault cases is one of the most difficult but also most rewarding tasks for the police.

Shaw said she hasn’t lived in fear all these years, but she no longer has to look around.

She was emotional when she met police last month to find out what happened, thanking police and calling for financial support to investigate unsolved cases that haunt victims long after the public has turned away.

She said she knows of 30 to 40 victims in the Grand Rapids area. She will not give up until her last breath, she said.

“I am no longer a victim. I am triumphant.”