MIDDLETON TWP. Mother of missing woman still has hope for daughter

An investigator said tips in the disappearance continue to trickle in.
By NORMAN LEIGH
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
SALEM -- This will mark the first Christmas in more than two years that Zoanne Evans has put up a holiday tree.
She has hardly been able to bear the sight of one since her daughter, Tracy Hill of Middleton Township, disappeared in summer 2001.
"We'll see how it goes," Evans, of Holmesville in Holmes County, said recently of her effort to resume celebrating the holiday.
Adding to the difficulty is the fact that Hill's birthday, her 27th, is just four days after Christmas.
"It's super tough," Evans said of the anguishing convergence of the two occasions.
Evans remembers her daughter as being artistic and loving. She had a beautiful smile, collected unicorns and was attending college part time. Evans told of recently comparing pictures of herself and her daughter taken at the same age and marveling at the resemblance.
Such memories and realizations make it even more difficult to ponder her daughter's fate.
What family thinks
Although no one's been charged, Evans and other family members think Hill was murdered.
Bringing her slayer to justice may depend on finding Hill's body and having it examined for clues by forensics experts, Evans said.
It's frustrating because the person the family thinks killed Hill hasn't been charged, Evans said.
"There's a couple [of] people we're looking at," but no one has been identified as a suspect, said Detective Allan Young of the Columbiana County Sheriff's Department.
"We've put a lot of time into it," Young said of the case. "It's exhausting. But we'll keep going."
Young said he's hopeful the probe -- which consists of following up on occasional tips -- will be aided by a $10,000 reward announced recently by the family for information leading to a conviction in the disappearance.
At the time she vanished, Hill was estranged from her husband, Clifford Hill, and lived with his 12-year-old daughter, Tara, in a house trailer on Sprucevale Road.
Last sighting
Tracy Hill was last seen June 7, 2001, by co-workers at a North Lima factory.
Evans said she spoke with her daughter about three days before that, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"She was just trying to get her life together" after episodes of marital strife, Evans said.
That was more than two years ago. Now Evans speaks hopefully of one day being able to bury her daughter in Sherwood Memorial Gardens in Wooster, the quaint college town where Tracy Hill grew up.
Evans tried to convey the importance of having a grave to visit.
"I could put flowers there," she said.