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MIDDLETOWN – In May of 2005, a woman was reported to have left her home on Western Mine Road in Middletown following an argument with her husband, walking off into a rainy afternoon.
That woman, Starr Hill, was never seen again.
Since her disappearance on May 18, 2005, little trace has ever been found of Hill, a 46-year-old mother of two daughters as well as a grandmother.
Dealing with her mother's disappearance has been a tortuous process for Hill's oldest daughter, April Robinson Lazzari, now 30.
The pain of not knowing what happened to her mother is “always with you, it's always there, but it seems to mend itself sometimes,” Lazzari said.
Although the case is currently at a dead end, Sheriff Rod Mitchell said this week, “We have the interest and desire to bring either Starr back home or to bring the person responsible for her disappearance to justice.”
Starr Hill's husband, Curtis Hill, told this reporter in 2005 that his wife left their home after an argument, walking off during a rainstorm.
He said that she was wearing blue jeans, a green sweater and a black leather jacket, but didn't have her purse or any other personal items with her.
Curtis Hill – who in 2005 was a firefighter in Contra Costa County – later stated that he came home from a shift to find his wife's purse, makeup bag and some duffel bags missing, with an angry note from her left for him. A friend of the couple also had reportedly seen Starr Hill walking along Highway 29 toward Twin Pine Casino, as Lake County News has reported.
Lazzari said she never saw that note, and didn't believe her mother would have left without contacting someone.
Starr Hill had been known to leave home for days at a time before, but Lazzari said she always called family to let them know she was OK.
Family members traveled around the region, posting fliers about the missing woman. Sheriff's investigators found no sign that her credit cards or cell phones had been used since her disappearance.
The sheriff's office searched the Western Mine Road property on May 24, 2005, but found no signs of Starr Hill.
Not long after her disappearance, Curtis Hill stopped cooperating with authorities, refusing to be interviewed, according to Mitchell.
In August 2005, Rod Mitchell held a press conference to draw attention to the case, but the effort didn't yield the hoped-for break in the case.
One clue appeared in October of 2005 when a vineyard worker found Hill's cell phone along Highway 29 near Lower Lake. However, investigators said it yielded no forensic evidence. The phone, they concluded, had last been used before Starr Hill's disappearance.
In May of 2007, the sheriff's office arranged for another search of the Western Mine Road property with a noted cadaver dog handler, but again no clues were found.
Starr Hill's disappearance is, essentially, a cold case, Mitchell said this week.
“It's not being actively investigated because everything in this case revolves around the need to interview Curtis,” Mitchell said.
The case continues to be discussed within the sheriff's investigations unit, where Mitchell said there remains a desire to bring it to a conclusion.
Curtis Hill, who had left for Hawaii for a time and is reportedly back living in Middletown, continues to refuse to speak to investigators or the press; he did not respond to a Lake County News request for comment.
Lazzari said she hasn't spoken to him since 2007, when he came into her place of work in Clearlake and tried to get her fired because he was angry about her statements about the case.
At first, many people who heard about the case believed that Starr Hill left on her own. Lazzari said she never thought that was the situation.
“Five years later, I still don't believe that to be true,” she said.
But, as for what became of Starr Hill, her daughter has no explanations.
“What happened, I honestly don't know,” Lazzari said.
She added, “I know she didn't go on her own.”
A family waits
Since her mother disappeared, Lazzari has moved out of state, had another child and gotten married, all without her mother by her side.
She insists that her mother wouldn't have missed important family events such as birthdays or weddings. “Those are all events that, under no circumstances, would she ever have missed on her own,” Lazzari said.
In her mother's stead, Lazzari said she has had strong women who have acted as mother figures to support her. “I've been very grateful for them,” she said.
The case was hard for the entire family, including Leona Schneider, Starr Hill's elderly mother.
Schneider died in June of 2009 without ever knowing what became of her daughter.
The longterm effect of having no answers or closure has been devastating for Starr Hill's family, her daughter said.
“It has definitely changed our lives in ways that I can't explain,” Lazzari said.
“The hard part is not knowing – is she going to show up at my door one day and be standing there? That thought's always there,” she said.
Outside of law enforcement, Lazzari said she hasn't been able to get much help with the search for her mother. She said there are only a few support groups for missing adults.
One group, the Modesto-based Carole Sund-Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation, had offered a $5,000 reward in 2006 for information about Hill. However, that reward was only offered for six months before being withdrawn to be used on another case.
A call to the foundation on Tuesday was met with a message noting that that the advocate and reward program has been suspended.
The fifth anniversary of the disappearance has reopened old wounds. “Looking five years back, the pain is just as much as on the first day,” said Lazzari, who added that her family has become reconciled to not knowing what happened to Starr Hill.
“I think you come to a point where you say, 'we're never going to have the answers,' but you always hope for them,” she said.
Lazzari said she talks about her mother everyday, and missing her never stops.
“The tears don't run down my face everyday, but the pain's always in my heart and my soul,” she said.
She said she wants people to know that her mother – who would have been 51 this past January – was a young woman who still had a lot to look forward to in her life, with a loving family and plans for the future.
“She was active and enjoying her life to the fullest,” said Lazzari.
Starr Hill had quit smoking so she could get a scuba diving certification as part of the business she and her husband were opening in Hawaii.
“She was really just out there living the dream, and it was cut so short,” said Lazzari.
Mitchell said his investigators – who still receive occasional pieces of information about the case – want to find answers for Starr Hill's family, noting the “immeasurable” toll on families in such circumstances.
“The people who actively worked the case still have a strong interest in resolving the case,” Mitchell said.
He said he also feels admiration and affection for Lazzari for the grace and composure she's showed in facing her mother's disappearance.”
“She's a remarkable young woman,” he said, adding, “You develop a unique bond with people who go through those experiences of losing loved ones.”
The multitude of the missing
The California Department of Justice (DOJ) reports that the state's number of active missing person cases averages around 25,000 each year.
In 2005, the year Hill went missing, she was among approximately 40,715 adults reported missing in one way or another across the state, the DOJ reported. That year, a total of 74 missing persons reports were made across Lake County.
Statewide missing persons statistics for 2009 show that just over 35,000 people were reported missing last year in California.
Hill is one of seven people listed as missing from Lake County in the DOJ database of missing people. She also is the most recently reported missing person of the group.
Other Lake County residents listed in the database are Richard Floyd Atkins, last seen in Clearlake, who disappeared in 1980 days before his 22 birthday; Stella Vera Gies, last seen in September of 1981 in Lakeport, two months before her 52nd birthday; Robert Blair Sturgill, last seen in Lucerne in June of 1990, age 30; David Preston Hinds, last seen in January of 1995, age 41; Steven William Branston, last seen in August of 1996 in Lakeport, age 20; and Victoria Lee Specials, last seen in Clearlake in December of 2001, age 44.
Lazzari asked community members to search their memories for anything unusual that they saw or heard in May of 2005 that might prove valuable in her mother's case; she encouraged anyone with such information to take it to the sheriff's office.
The hope, she said,is that eventually her family will have answers and some semblance of peace.
Starr Maurie Hill was described as 5 feet 4 inches tall, 143 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes. She was reportedly last seen on May 18, 2005, near Middletown.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Lake County Sheriff's Office, 707-262-4200.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow Lake County News on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LakeCoNews and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-County-News/143156775604?ref=mf .
