$10M North Carolina Lottery Winner Sentenced to Life for Murder

Posted on: June 6, 2022, 04:09h. 

Previous updated on: June 6, 2022, 05:10h.

A North Carolina lottery winner has been sentenced to lifestyle in prison without the need of the risk of parole for the initial-diploma murder of his girlfriend.

In August 2017, Michael Todd Hill, 54, a nuclear ability plant employee from Leland, Brunswick County, received $10 million on an Ultimate Hundreds of thousands scratch off ticket at a Maco Depot gas station.

He explained the instant as “life-changing” as he posed for photographers with an outsized check, his wife by his aspect.

In July 2020, in an additional lifestyle-altering second, he shot his girlfriend, 23-year-aged Keonna Graham of Navassa, in the back again of the head although she slept in a place at the SureStay Resort in Shallotte, Brunswick County.

Jealousy Motive

Prosecutors claimed Hill was jealous since Graham, 31 years his junior, experienced been texting other gentlemen. The pair had been in a romantic relationship for around 18 months, according to court paperwork.

Graham’s human body was discovered by a maid at about 12:30pm on July 20. This was all over the similar time her mother filed a lacking individuals report just after she unsuccessful to demonstrate up for get the job done as a corrections officer at Pender Correctional Institution.

Prosecutors mentioned hotel surveillance footage confirmed that Hill was the only individual who had been in the lodge home with the victim.

He was arrested the subsequent working day and subsequently confessed to the killing. On May well 27 this yr, a jury located him responsible of very first-diploma murder.

‘Nice Guy’

In 2020, regional NBC affiliate WECT spoke to Tiffany Wilson, a pal of the victim’s relatives.

“I think it’s horrible,” she mentioned. “I mean, he just received the lottery. I heard he just acquired married, and you go and kill a younger woman? A wonderful girl? I never have an understanding of.”

All that cash and you are seducing a younger woman to go into a lodge?” claimed Wilson. “I never know what the scenario is, but you had no small business becoming in a resort with her.”  

WECT also spoke with staff members at the garage wherever Hill bought his lottery ticket. They reported he returned just after his get to gift the girl who bought him the ticket $2,000 to thank her.

They described him as a common purchaser, a “nice guy.” They under no circumstances would have believed he could do one thing like this.