Do you know who murdered Brian Duane Hill in 1994? On the evening of May 19, 1994, in Portland, Oregon, Brian Duane Hill, a 26-year-old African-American male, was at his residence at 6435 N Gay Avenue. At approximately 10:13 p.m., the sound of gunfire shattered the night. Officers responded to reports of a shooting and found Hill with a gunshot wound. He was rushed to a local hospital for treatment, but tragically, he succumbed to his injuries on June 14, 1994.
Witnesses at the scene reported seeing a subject fleeing the area shortly after the shots were fired, heading westbound on Portland Boulevard before running south on Omaha.
The initial investigation provided a description of a suspect: an African-American male in his twenties, about 6'0' tall with a slender build, wearing dark pants and a dark, hooded sweatshirt. This individual was seen getting into a silver or gray four-door Ford Tempo, believed to be a model year between 1985 and 1988. The vehicle, which was occupied by three other African-American males in their twenties, was observed backing down the northbound lanes of N. Omaha without its lights on before turning around and heading south with its lights on. Despite these witness accounts, the case grew cold, and for nearly two decades, the murder of Brian Hill remained unsolved, leaving his family with unanswered questions and a sense of injustice.
A breakthrough in the cold case finally came thanks to advancements in DNA technology. A wig, used as a disguise and left at the crime scene, became a crucial piece of evidence. In 2010, detectives reopened the case, and this time, forensic analysis of the wig yielded a positive DNA match to Marvin Lambert, a known member of the Kerby Blocc Crips gang in the 1990s. In May 2013, a grand jury indicted the then 37-year-old Lambert on murder charges. At the time of the indictment, he was already in federal custody on other charges.
The subsequent investigation revealed that the motive for the shooting was a robbery. Prosecutors stated that Hill, a working family man with two children, sold small amounts of marijuana to help support his family and was not a gang member. Lambert and another notorious Crips gang member, Harry Villa, had planned to rob Hill of the marijuana. It was determined that while Lambert was an accomplice, Harry Villa had fired the fatal shot. Villa, however, was killed in prison in 1999. In May 2014, Marvin Lambert accepted a plea deal for manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. During the sentencing, he apologized to Hill's family, expressing that he was a changed man from the young person he was two decades prior. The resolution of the case, though long-awaited, finally brought a measure of closure to the family of Brian Hill.
