Gil Hill

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Hill was the son of Mary Lee Hill, who raised him and his sister Toni, alone. In the 1940s, Hill moved with his mother and sister to Washington, D.C. Hill attended Cardozo High School, graduating in 1949. Hill had wished to attend Howard University, but was not able due to strained financial resources.

Instead, Hill joined the United States Air Force in 1950 and was stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base near Detroit. After leaving the Air Force in 1953, he returned to the Detroit area, where he worked a number of jobs for the next four years.

Hill joined the Wayne County Sheriff's Department in 1957, but quickly became disillusioned with the slow pace, so he joined the Detroit Police Department in 1959. In 1969 he was promoted to detective and was assigned to the homicide division the following year. Over the next decade, Hill rose to national attention for his ability to obtain confessions out of the most notorious killers. He was involved in the investigation surrounding the Atlanta Child Murders in 1979 that ultimately resulted in the trial and conviction of Wayne Williams.

Hill was promoted to the rank of Inspector in charge of the Homicide Division by 1982, and in 1989, retired from the Detroit Police Department at the rank of Commander.[1]

In 2016, former hit man Nate "Boone" Craft alleged that Hill had once offered to pay him $125,000 to kill Richard Wershe Jr., to keep Wershe from revealing alleged corruption in the Detroit police department.[2]

Following his retirement from police work he became a councilman for Detroit, becoming its president in 1997, and running unsuccessfully for mayor against Kwame Kilpatrick in 2001. He was initially considered to be the leading candidate, and had support from many people connected with incumbent mayor Dennis Archer.[3]. In 2019, a portrait of Hill was unveiled at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in downtown Detroit, a tradition carried out for all former City Council Presidents.[4]

Already a prominent figure in law enforcement, Hill appeared in the Beverly Hills Cop films, playing the role of Inspector Todd, the boss of Eddie Murphy's character, Axel Foley.[5][6] Offered other acting work after the film's release, Hill declined to pursue acting as a career, but did appear in the two subsequent sequels of the movie, saying that the only difference between his famous character's life and his own was that he did not curse as much in real life.

Hill married Dolores Hooks, who sang in a local church choir, in 1955. They remained married until her death in 2015. They had two sons and a daughter.

Hill died from pneumonia at the age of 84 on February 29, 2016, at DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.[7]