After a long wait spanning decades, justice has been served in a chilling case from the 90s. A Washington County man, now 53-year-old Scott Hickman, has been sentenced to 20 years to life for the murders of Kimberly Fulton and her child, an incident that shook the local community to its core. The sentencing today follows an August conviction on felony charges, bringing closure to a case that had long gone cold.
Hickman was found guilty of aggravated murder and murder for his role in the deaths of 28-year-old Fulton and her 17-month-old son, Daniel, according to an announcement from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. The bodies of the victims were discovered in a burnt-out mobile home back in 1995, an image that has haunted Palmer Township for far too long. The Ohio Attorney General's Office detailed that through dogged work by detectives and agents, they concluded the victims had perished prior to the fire.
"These victims – a young mother and her baby – had their entire lives ahead of them," Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost was quoted in a statement, emphasizing the gravity of the loss. "Today's sentence does not restore everything they could have been, but it does finally hold a murderer accountable for his actions." With these words, Yost captured the mixture of relief and enduring sorrow that accompanies the conclusion of such a harrowing case.
The path to conviction was laid by the Washington County Sheriff's Office and the Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who reopened the case in 2019. The case was presented by Yost's Special Prosecutions Section attorneys, who successfully argued in front of a jury that Hickman was to blame for the homicides. Agents put back together a puzzle whose pieces were scattered by years' worth of silence, and their relentless pursuit has now culminated, over a quarter of a century later, in a measure of justice for the Fulton family. It's a testament to the law's enduring reach, even when the trail seems coldest.
