Testimony suggested Thursday that two suspects in the slaying of an 84-year-old Penngrove woman during a 2015 home-invasion robbery had been in a dispute with someone renting storage space at her family’s ranch.
Alexander Stock of Marin County said in a preliminary hearing for one of the suspects, Victor Silva, 29, of Novato, that Silva’s wife had been his caretaker.
Stock said he was renting two storage buildings on Olga Dinelli’s Rose Avenue property when he and Silva’s wife, Stephanie Hill, 37, began fighting over a car and other possessions.
He testified that Hill, who was later killed in a shootout with police, was violent and addicted to methamphetamine. She had threatened him in the days leading up to Dinelli’s killing.
After hearing about the slaying through news reports, he said he assumed she was involved and called detectives to warn them about her.
“I told them the woman was dangerous,” Stock said in the hearing before Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Dana Simonds. “She was armed and dangerous.”
Stock said he gave detectives several cellphone numbers believed to belong to Hill and her acquaintances. He also asked for a reward.
Withing days of the Dinelli slaying — she was found tied to a chair Feb. 26 with a single gunshot wound to the head — detectives tracked Hill and Silva to Southern California. The couple fled in a car across the desert with police pursuing them for more than 100 miles. They crashed just across the Arizona line and Hill was shot and killed when deputies said she pulled a gun.
Silva was arrested. Arizona prosecutors tried and convicted him in December 2015 for Hill’s death. He was brought back to Sonoma County where he faces another murder charge in Dinelli’s slaying.
Her family members, other witnesses and detectives were expected to testify at the hearing.
You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 707-568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ppayne.
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