Slain girl was 2nd couple adopted

Friends, records yield sketch of Wake family

When Victoria Bazhenova left a Siberian orphanage for the United States, the 1-year-old with a mop of wavy brown hair became Nina Hilt.

She acquired an older sister, Nataliya, a 4-year-old adopted from Ukraine. Her new mom was a dental assistant. Dad worked as a software developer.

They settled in a Wake Forest subdivision where young families spend evenings pushing toddlers in strollers and playing basketball in driveways.

It was here, inside the family's red-brick home, that Peggy Sue Hilt, 33, apparently became enraged with Nina, who was now 2. Hilt told police she shook her daughter, dropped her to the floor, kicked her and punched her stomach and back, according to court records.

The next day, the Hilts took their Dodge Caravan to Manassas, Va., for the Fourth of July weekend. After the four-hour ride, Nina collapsed and died, police said. Investigators charged Peggy Hilt with Nina's murder on July 6.

The girl's death prompted outrage and questions from the Triangle to Russia. On Tuesday, Russian officials called for tougher rules to govern foreign adoptions.

And people who knew the Hilts during their 10 months in Wake Forest wondered whether they missed signs of abuse.

"I wish I had just grabbed [Nina] and taken her and driven her away," said Carol Muth, who knew the Hilts through a Raleigh preschool.

During a tour of the Hilts' home in late January, Muth remembers being startled by the contrasts between the two girls' rooms. Four months after the family moved in, toys and decorations filled Nataliya's room.

In Nina's room, the walls were bare, and it was filled with boxes left over from the move.

Starting a family

Peggy Hilt had no criminal record. Her attorney, William Stephens, said Hilt's family was saddened and declined to comment.

"All of them are loving and supporting Peggy," Stephens said.

Christopher Hilt and members of his family also declined to comment. Former co-workers did not respond to requests for interviews.

But real estate records, Christopher Hilt's resume and a family Web site from 2000 and 2001 provide some insight.

Peggy and Christopher Hilt were married in 1994, while both were in college. They moved to Virginia in 1995, after Christopher Hilt graduated from the State University of New York at Potsdam with master's and bachelor's degrees in mathematics. Mrs. Hilt spent five years at the college but did not earn a degree, school officials said.

Mr. Hilt worked as a computer consultant, and a few years later, he and two partners founded Altum Inc., according to his resume. From 1998 to 2003, that company went from making $350,000 a year in revenue to $3 million.

The Hilts embarked on their first adoption in 2000.

"The next couple of months, we are going to be very preoccupied with learning some Russian, child-proofing our home, getting ready for our instant family, and preparing to be parents," Mrs. Hilt wrote in a Christmas letter.

By 2000, the couple had completed immigration paperwork and had been visited by social workers, according to the Web site.

On March 23, 2001, the Hilts left Virginia for Ukraine. In Kiev, at an adoption center, they settled on a blonde girl named Olga who was in a nearby orphanage.

"She seemed like the one," Mr. Hilt wrote on the Web site.

In April 2001, they returned home with their daughter, renamed Nataliya Oksana Hilt.

Second adoption

Other than immigration papers, there is little to document the Hilts' trip to Russia three years later. They used a Texas-based adoption agency, Adoptions International Inc. With Nataliya in 2001, the Hilts had not used an agency.