Alexander Hill Jr. was captured almost exactly a year after he was accused of killing four members of his ex-girlfriend’s family in Petersburg, Virginia.
Since April 2014, he had been on the run and was the only suspect in the case.
In April 2015, authorities found him in a men’s homeless shelter in Buffalo, New York., under the assumed name of Trent Dales.
Six weeks before his arrest, Hill spoke on-camera to a TV reporter at the shelter. It was yet another erratic move from a man who authorities say took revenge to a whole new level.
‘We thought he was the ideal man’
Vivian Chavis met Alexander Hill Jr. on the way to the store in her hometown of Petersburg, Virginia.
His idiosyncrasies – like demanding that he be called “Real Deal” instead of his given name – didn’t bother her as he was “a gentleman,” and kind and gentle to her aging mother and big family.
“We thought he was the ideal man for my sister,” Valerie Jones, Vivian’s sister, told CNN’s “The Hunt with John Walsh.”
When Chavis discovered Hill had a child he’d never spoken of, it startled her. When she learned he was still legally married to someone else, it was distressing.
“He just changed. The real ‘Real’ came out,” Jones said.
Hill also lied about being from Trinidad and tried to mimic the country’s accent; he was born and raised in Virginia.
“He certainly had those predator skills,” host John Walsh said. “He had a lot to hide; he had a rap sheet a mile long. But he knew this family’s tight, they’re loving, somewhat naive, very, very trusting, and I can get inside this family. It’s like hunters picking out their prey.”
A history of violence
As the web of lies unraveled, Chavis said, Hill became physically abusive.
She said when she decided to leave Hill, he attacked her from behind and nearly put out her eye. While she was in the emergency room receiving treatment, Hill filed assault charges against her.
“As soon as they give me the discharge paper, the police was there to put handcuffs on me,” Chavis said. “I was like, ‘Oh wow, he had me arrested?’”
The case was dismissed and the charges dropped after Hill refused to confirm his own name for the court, declaring that he was “pleading the fifth.”
Chavis and her family soon found out another secret: Hill was a serial abuser with a long criminal history, including pulling a firearm on his mother.
After Chavis moved back in with her mother, Hill’s behavior became more menacing. He was seen regularly driving by the house, and Chavis said he would call and make death threats over the phone.
The night before Easter in 2014, an intruder broke into Chavis’ mother’s home and stabbed Chavis’ mother, Pauline Wilkins, and her sister, Vicki Ansar, to death. Pauline had 23 stab wounds; Vicki had 13.
“The part that really gets me about him. He called my mother ‘mom.’ And all my mother ever did was treat him like a son of hers. And he did this to her,” said Vanessa Washington, another of Vivian’s sisters.
The killer also set fire to the home. Chavis’ 20-year-old niece, Tanique Chavis, and Tanique’s 2-year-old son Delvari died inside of smoke inhalation.
In the words of Petersburg Chief of Police John Dixon, that night four generations of a family were “plucked out of existence.”
Police later determined that Hill left Petersburg that night. He took a cab to a Waffle House in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, then hitched a ride to an Amtrak station, where he was caught on a security video.
By then it was Easter, and no buses or trains were running. Hill walked out of frame in the video and out of the station, and “pretty much vanished off the face of the Earth,” according to U.S. Marshal Kevin Connolly – until he showed up on that local TV report in Buffalo.
Hill is now awaiting trial on four counts of first-degree murder, possession of child pornography, encouraging a minor to view or participate in child pornography, violation of a protective order, domestic assault and two counts of making false reports to police.
Since his arrest, he has refused to comply with the judicial process, refusing to attend court hearings and going on a hunger strike in jail. He has not yet entered a plea on the charges.
