LA LA - Helen Wingard Hill, 36, New Orleans, 4 Jan 2007

Marie

Daughter, if you don't remember us...who will?
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Husband, wife just two of 6 shot in 24 hours

In the sixth New Orleans murder in less than 24 hours, a woman was killed and her husband shot in their home Thursday about 5:30 a.m., said police, who found the bleeding man kneeling at the door of the couple's Faubourg Marigny home, clutching their 2-year-old son.

Including another murder on New Year's Day, the latest violence brings the new year's total to at least seven slayings in four days, though one of the apparent killings -- a woman's body found Wednesday rolled up in a throw rug on a Lower 9th Ward street -- remains officially an unclassified death. In the past week, 12 people have been murdered in the city.

Helen Hill

Paul Gailiunas
 
I grew up about 4 blocks away from the doctor and his family - his older brother was a good friend of mine, his dad was my mother's doctor. It sure sounds like he turned out to be an amazing man, and his wife sounds like such a talented, dynamic woman. Such a shame....
 
Marie said:
Husband, wife just two of 6 shot in 24 hours

In the sixth New Orleans murder in less than 24 hours, a woman was killed and her husband shot in their home Thursday about 5:30 a.m., said police, who found the bleeding man kneeling at the door of the couple's Faubourg Marigny home, clutching their 2-year-old son.

Including another murder on New Year's Day, the latest violence brings the new year's total to at least seven slayings in four days, though one of the apparent killings -- a woman's body found Wednesday rolled up in a throw rug on a Lower 9th Ward street -- remains officially an unclassified death. In the past week, 12 people have been murdered in the city.

Helen Hill

Paul Gailiunas

We are all shocked up here in Halifax. Both of them lived here for years. Our artistic and medical communities are in mourning for Helen and Paul.

We don't have that many murders in a year let alone a week or a day!

Here's a link to the tribute paid to her this Sunday in Halifax...you'll be surprised or maybe not.

Link to article
 
Cami, thank you for sharing that. I had watched some coverage about her on the news as well.

What a wonderful community. She sounds like she was a wonderful person. I do hope that banding together gets some kind of great response.

I'll not lie, I'm glad I live on the Northshore. Even though no where is safe, at least I have an illusion for my childrens sake if nothing else right now.
 
Such a senseless tragedy. It doesn't sound like his wounds were life threatening for which I'm very thankful....their child will still have one parent. Has anyone heard whether this was a robbery or just a random shooting?
 
I work with a friend of this couple. Very, very scary! He went to medical school where I work.

We are all in shock.

Hi Cami! Long time no "see".
 
Lakergirl123 said:
I work with a friend of this couple. Very, very scary! He went to medical school where I work.

We are all in shock.

Hi Cami! Long time no "see".

Hi Lakergirl, yeah it's been a long time. I am still over on the Darlie thread anytime you want me....LOL
 
Nice feature article from January 2009:

http://www.myneworleans.com/New-Orleans-Magazine/January-2009/Helen-Hill-An-Unfinished-Story/

They got up before dawn, put on costumes he can no longer remember and set out on foot for the parades, several miles from their apartment in the leafy Carrollton neighborhood. Helen Hill and Paul Gailiunas, both Harvard graduates, had just moved to New Orleans after six long winters in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he had completed his medical degree and residency. “Some people romanticize the green, overgrown shabbiness” of New Orleans, Gailiunas said later. “Helen loved the city so much, she couldn’t allow herself to see beyond that”...

From his time at the clinic, he knew how dangerous the city was even before Katrina. Now the city had skeletal public services and debris-lined streets throwing off toxic hazards. But Hill insisted on going back. “We can do this,” she vowed... Over the summer of 2006, she wore down his defenses. “She was truly fearless,” Gailiunas told me. “But she hadn’t had the same experience I’d had, treating drug addicts at the St. Claude hospital. I had seen another side of New Orleans”...

Like Gailiunas and the rest of Hill’s family, Jake struggles with his reaction to her murder. “Helen lived up to her principles,” he says. “Paul, Kevin, my mother and I have to put our principles on the line. I’d be the first to argue against the death penalty – Helen didn’t support it. I just hope the [SOB] is caught and put in prison forever.”

From November 2011:

http://thechronicleherald.ca/artslife/36785-mending-broken-hearts

Her smile flickers between the film’s ragged edges — remnants of the ruined city where she died... The former Halifax resident, an experimental animator, poet and teacher, didn’t live to see it. But almost six years after a stranger gunned her down in the Louisiana city she adored, her husband, Paul Gailiunas — shot, too, with their baby in his arms — has rescued her labour of love. And his own.

Gailiunas, a Halifax-born doctor, finished what she couldn’t: The Florestine Collection, a whimsical, sad, celebratory love story that weaves together the lives of a once-vibrant African-American seamstress, a flamboyant, flawed city and a joyful, acclaimed filmmaker who, Paul says, "could see the beauty in things other people had discarded"...

Paul and Helen’s brother returned to the city that she had always felt wasn’t beyond repair, even when it was at its most devastated, most crime-ridden, during her last days. They met with police, hoping to reignite a cold case with still no suspects but a key piece of evidence.

The 36-year-old fought her attacker before her screams woke her husband and two-year-old child. Authorities have his DNA, left under her fingernails. And Paul hopes it will one day lead to an arrest.
 
Where's the sketch of the suspect and a descrption?
 
Where's the sketch of the suspect and a descrption?

I'll see if I can round up the sketch. Did someone say there was a sketch? I don't recall a sketch. In jessica Hawk's murder, yes. But not in the Hill homicide, though it's possible I've forgotten. I dunno.

From 2011:

"We have begun to look at the case from a new angle," said Sgt. Daniel McMullen, head of the Cold Case Unit. For starters, DNA evidence that wasn't processed until months after the incident has conclusively excluded Paul. He is not -- and should never have been called -- a suspect. NOPD higher-ups now acknowledge the department's investigation was "short-sighted."

McMullen said detectives now believe the killing was related to the burglary minutes earlier on that block. It is very possible the burglar was trying to flee and encountered Hill.

Investigators are still seeking a man, about 5 feet 6 inches tall, with a close-cropped Afro haircut.

The reward still stands at $15,000 for information leading to the killer.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/10/filmmaker_helen_hills_husband.html
 
The Murder of Helen Wingard Hill
Jun 10, 2021 ·rbbm.
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Helen Hill, with husband Paul (Photo Credit: Steven Forster/The Times-Picayune)
''On January 4, 2007, in New Orleans, six lives were taken. One of those lives was that of Helen Wingard Hill, an artist, writer, filmmaker, and activist. Helen was a native of Columbia, South Carolina, where she had graduated high school in 1988. She earned an A.B. at Harvard University in 1992, majoring in English and minoring in Visual and Environmental Studies.''


''On the morning of her death, a man attempted to rob a bed and breakfast a few houses away on Helen’s street. Police were on the scene questioning the owners of the B&B when they heard gunshots coming from nearby. They arrived to find that Helen had been fatally shot. Her husband, Paul, was shot three times but survived. Their toddler son was unharmed. The killer managed to escape the scene without being apprehended.

Despite extensive national media coverage across North American and a $15,000 Crimestoppers reward being offered, no arrest has been made in this case. The case has led to civic outrage with one march on City Hall having taken place on January 11, 2007. Organizers Helen Gillet, Ken Foster, and Baty Landis formed the nonprofit organization “Silence is Violence” to campaign for peace in New Orleans.''

''Despite the deep respect Helen’s community and people around the world have for her and the lasting legacy of the work she left behind, her murder and her husband’s shooting remain unsolved fourteen years later. There is someone who is likely still walking the streets who casually took the life of a young mother and brilliant human being. Helen and her family still await justice.''
 

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