The Monster Next Door

Monsters are real. They live among us, trolling for their next victims. Sometimes in the dark, usually when we least expect it, always with an evil that most of us can’t begin to comprehend. They’re the cold blooded killers and serial killers who walk around, blending in with the rest of us.

What happens when that monster lives right next door?

Imagine growing up next to a warm family, who lets you swim in their pool and borrow their van for camping trips. You’re five years old, and you start calling the kind and friendly mom, “Aunt Bonnie,” when she comes over to babysit.

The dad, who you call “Uncle Norm,” is a “gentler type of guy,” you describe as “sweet and stable.” He’s generous, often bringing leftover produce from his delivery routes at work to your family.

You grow close, until one day, when their son Joe graduates high school, the family moves across the country to California, for what they say is a job opportunity.

Decades later, you’re a family man with warm memories of your childhood on Shadyside Drive in Boardman and of your old neighbors, when a shocking revelation comes to light. It pulls you back to that time and has you questioning everything you thought you knew.

Your hometown police finally solve two cold cases, the abductions, sexual assaults, and murders, of two young boys.

And they identify a serial killer, announcing that the same man killed both boys, just a couple miles away from your childhood home.

You learn the man you called “Uncle Norm” is a monster. A monster whose victims were just a few years older than you.

That’s the position Mark Carden found himself in in 2023, when Boardman Police held press conferences announcing they had solved two 50-year-old cold cases and identified a serial killer, Joseph Norman Hill.

And as we know from Part 1 of our series, there’s a third unsolved murder of a teenage boy, Thomas Baird, from the same time period, that police are still struggling to solve. And again, it occurred only a couple of miles away from Shadyside Drive.

For Mark, along with investigators, and communities across the country from Boardman to California, the news begs the question…what else did Uncle Norm do?

To begin to explore an answer, we need to first take a closer look at the recently solved murders of Brad Bellino and David Evans, along with examining what we know about Joseph Norman Hill.

As you will see, the investigative files in these cases uncover twists and turns, along with many more questions than answers. And they reveal another story, a dark chapter in Boardman’s history, that ran parallel to these cases and may have an even broader and more devastating impact.

Brad Bellino

Just 16 months after the still-unsolved murder of 15-year-old Thomas Baird, and just two miles away from where he was found, another boy went missing, while walking home alone.

On Good Friday, March 31, 1972, 12-year-old Brad Bellino left his best friend Donald Templeman’s house, to make the 3.5-mile walk home in Boardman. But like Thomas, he would never arrive.

For four days over the long Easter weekend, family, friends, and police searched for Brad. He was known to hitchhike, and police described him as a wanderer. There were sightings of him reported, although none turned into any real leads.

And then a call came into the Boardman Police from Isaly’s Dairy Store, at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, April 4. Paul Smith, an employee of Varie Sanitation Company, was collecting trash behind the Boardman Plaza, when he noticed what he thought at first was a mannequin.

The dumpster was partially filled, but underneath cardboard boxes and waste from Isaly’s, he could see a body. It didn’t take him long to realize, it was no mannequin, but rather the missing boy he’d seen on the news.

Brad’s sneakers were sticking up at an angle. His striped pants were undone and pulled down below the hips. His head was positioned downward, and a belt was tightly fastened around his neck. He had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

For years, no arrests were made. The community was reeling from the tragic loss, just two years after Thomas Baird had been killed. Parents began to fear letting their children play outside freely, wondering who would be next.

Rumors swirled, and people started pointing fingers at family members, a popular local priest, and neighbors. Many suspected a security guard, who worked at a gem shop right down the street from the Bellino family’s home. The same security guard who worked at the Boardman Rollercade in 1970, when Thomas Baird had been attacked.

Police received hundreds of tips, and they poured countless resources into their investigation. But each lead ultimately turned into a dead end, getting them no closer to identifying a suspect.

Then on Friday, January 17, 1975, the community’s worst nightmare was realized. A third boy disappeared, while walking home alone.

David Evans

Around 6 p.m., 13-year-old David Evans was walking back to his neighborhood, as his father Peter was driving out to attend an evening class at Youngstown State University. Peter stopped to talk to his son at the corner of Withers Drive and Stillson Place, just around the block from their home at 208 Ridgewood Drive.

David told his father he had been at nearby Boardman Lake, checking whether the ice was thick enough for skating.

They parted ways, with David saying he was heading home. But like Thomas and Brad before him, he would never arrive.

When it started to get late, and David still hadn’t returned home, his parents started to worry. It was not like David to not check in. And he was diabetic, with his next insulin dose due in hours. Peter and David’s mom Gracia called his friends to see if anyone had seen him, and they called Boardman High School, to check if he had been to the basketball game there that night, like some of his siblings.

With no luck, Peter and Gracia went to look for him. Near the corner where Peter had last seen his son, on the devil’s strip, the grassy area between the sidewalk and the street, they found David’s red winter hat. A circular area of flattened snow nearby suggested a possible struggle.

They called the Boardman Police.

Police immediately jumped into action, organizing searches. The National Guard even joined in, using helicopters to scan the area.

After six days with no sign of David, on Thursday evening, January 23, a local realtor, Hugh McCall, and his wife were closing their office at the corner of Market Street and Boardman-Poland Road. When they walked through the parking lot to their car, they noticed something on a snowbank.

As they approached, they could see it was a knee, sticking up out of the snow and bushes. They had found David’s frozen body, just half a mile from where Brad Bellino had been found in the dumpster.

Despite a massive investigation spanning decades, David’s murder, like Brad’s, would remain unsolved for nearly 50 years.

To their credit, Boardman Police continued investigating, despite changes in detectives and leadership over the decades. There were letters, false confessions, and suspects all over the country. But no arrests.

Frequent news updates eventually slowed and turned into annual anniversary coverage, as decades passed. But Brad and David were never forgotten. And generations of families would wonder if a killer was among them.

And then just before the 51st anniversary of Brad Bellino’s death, his friends and family would get the answer they waited far too long to hear.

Solved

On January 23, 2023, Boardman Police and the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office announced a breakthrough in Brad Bellino’s murder investigation. Through DNA testing and investigative genetic genealogy, they had identified his killer: Joseph Norman Hill.

Hill had died in a nursing home in Yucaipa, California in July 2019, a year after police had begun pursuing the new technology that would eventually prove his guilt, so he would never face justice for his crime.

He was a local truck driver, 32 years old at the time of Brad’s murder. He lived at 151 Shadyside Drive in Boardman, just two miles from the Templeman home.

He was never a suspect, and his name was nowhere in police files. There is no known connection between him and Brad or the Templeman’s.

Police then retested evidence preserved from David Evans’ case. This time, they recovered DNA from his clothing, supporting what investigators had long suspected but never confirmed, that David had also been sexually assaulted.

On June 8, 2023, Boardman Police held another press conference, this time joined by Ohio Attorney General David Yost. They announced that they had solved David Evans’ murder and identified Joseph Norman Hill as his killer. He had lived just 1.6 miles from the Evans family, although no connection between them was established.

A serial killer had been living in the heart of Boardman, where three boys were murdered, within five years and a radius of five miles.

Hill lived just two miles from the General Extrusions parking lot where Thomas Baird was found. At the press conference, police indicated they would investigate whether Hill could be connected to Thomas’s murder as well.

Since then, no further updates to the public have been provided.

Joseph Norman Hill

Other than what was stated at the press conferences, there is little information publicly available about Hill.

Known as Norm, he was born on April 2, 1939, to John Hill and Mildred Ridel. Records conflict on his birthplace, listing both Mahoning and Portage counties in Ohio. He attended Ursuline High School in Youngstown.

An August 1, 1958 marriage license application lists Hill, then 19, as a bottle washer living at 336 Grant Street in Youngstown. His fiancée was Bonita "Bonnie" Powell, 21, who was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, in 1936, to George Powell and Irene Kuhns.

Norm and Bonnie had a son, Joseph Norman Hill, Junior, who was notably the same age as Brad Bellino.

While Brad attended public schools in Boardman, and had been in 6th grade at Glenwood Middle School at the time he was killed, Joe Jr. attended private Catholic schools. He graduated from Cardinal Mooney High School in Youngstown.

Hill, Sr. drove a gold Monte Carlo, and while there are hundreds of vehicles mentioned in police files, a gold Monte Carlo is not among them.

Mark Carden was able to provide investigators with a photograph of the Hill’s van that he remembered from his childhood camping trips. While the photo was black and white, Mark thought the van could have been dark in color, or possibly two-toned blue and white.

Interestingly, Donald Templeman recalled a brown van following the boys earlier on the day Brad disappeared. Don said they initially joked about it, but after seeing the van three or four times, they became frightened and returned to his house. Whether the van Don remembered was connected to Hill has not been established.

In 1978, the Hills moved to California, reportedly for a job opportunity. Records place them at 14 addresses throughout the state, including Anaheim and Yucaipa.

The only known arrest on Hill's record was for lewd conduct in Los Angeles in 1986.

Bonnie died in Orange County, California, in 1993. Hill and his son had reportedly been estranged since her death.

Hill died on July 3, 2019, at the age of 80, at a nursing home in Yucaipa, California. He was cremated.

Joe Jr. voluntarily provided a DNA sample that helped investigators identify his father as the killer.

Unanswered Questions

With Brad Bellino’s and David Evans’ murders now solved, investigative files spanning nearly five decades have become publicly accessible. 

And those files raise new questions. Among the most important: Was Brad Bellino Hill’s first victim? And was David Evans his last? 

Following the press conference identifying Hill, Boardman Police said investigators in San Bernardino County, California, one of the country’s largest and most populous counties, were reviewing their own cold cases for possible connections to Hill. 

As far as records show, Hill lived in Youngstown and Boardman until age 39. The average age male serial killers commit their first murder is 27.5. 

In his book, “Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit,” John Douglas, who created the FBI’s Criminal Profiling Program (now called the Behavior Analysis Unit), says that serial killers on average begin their killing sprees in their late 20’s or early 30’s. While there are many exceptions, they also typically display early signs of trouble in adolescence, which escalate in violence over time. 

So not only could there be other victims out there, perhaps there are  survivors too, who could help law enforcement learn more about Hill and his crimes.

Another disturbing chapter

Beyond the unanswered questions about Hill, the thousands of pages of investigative files now available reveal something more. Another disturbing chapter in Boardman’s history emerges, one that unfolded during the same years these boys were murdered and may be connected to their cases.

Much of this story has never been publicly reported.

And it deserves a closer look.

When tragic crimes against children occur, rumors of pedophile rings commonly arise, as the general public tries to make sense out of the most horrific crimes and the monsters who commit them. And they’re almost always just that, rumors and conspiracy theories.

But the police files in these cases provide evidence that an organized pedophile ring did indeed exist in Boardman, with several perpetrators still living, still hiding in plain sight, who haven’t faced justice for their crimes.

And, there are other unsolved cases, both in Boardman, and in the nearby region, that need to be closely examined. We’ll consider what cases could possibly be related to Hill or to any of these men.

This is a story that begins literally right next door. But its net of destruction spreads far wider than anyone could have ever imagined.

And the public can help. Investigators need more information on Joseph Norman Hill and on other potential victims.