Joan Robinson Hill Socialites Information

Joan Olive Robinson Hill (February 6, 1931 – March 19, 1969) was a socialite and equestrian from Houston, Texas. Her unexplained death at age 38 led to her husband, John Hill, becoming the first person to be indicted by the state of Texas on the charge of murder by omission. The case precipitated a series of events that included the 1972 murder of John Hill and, two years later, the fatal police shooting of the man accused of that murder. Adopted as an infant by wealthy oil tycoon Davis "Ash" Robinson and his wife, Rhea, Joan became an equestrian at a young age. She excelled and continued the sport into adulthood, ultimately winning several national titles.

After two youthful marriages that ended in divorce, Joan married plastic surgeon John Hill in 1957. After a tumultuous marriage, she died following a short illness on March 19, 1969. Autopsy examinations failed to determine a cause of death beyond an infection from an unknown source. Ash subsequently accused John of poisoning Joan, and petitioned the district attorney to prosecute John for murder. John's murder trial was held in February 1971 but ended in a mistrial. As a second trial was approaching, John was gunned down by an intruder at his home. A suspect, Bobby Wayne Vandiver, was arrested and indicted for the murder, but was killed in a shootout with police before his trial. Two other suspects, Marcia McKittrick and Lilla Paulus, were convicted as accomplices to John's murder and served time in prison.

The case was the subject of Thomas Thompson's 1976 book Blood and Money and the 1981 made-for-television film Murder in Texas.

Davis Ashton "Ash" Robinson studied dentistry at Tulane College, New Orleans, but disliked the subject and chose not to follow it as a career. Instead, he embarked on a series of business ventures, making and losing several fortunes before becoming an oilman. He met Rhea Ernestine Gardere in New Orleans, and they married on July 28, 1919. After settling in Houston, the couple discovered that Rhea was unable to bear children, and Ash suggested that they should adopt a child instead. In March 1931, Rhea visited the Edna Gladney Home in Fort Worth where she was introduced to the one-month-old Joan Olive, who had been given up for adoption by her unmarried mother. The Robinsons adopted the baby girl.

The journalist Thomas Thompson writes that, as a child, Joan "was as well attended as a czarina". A keen horsewoman, she began riding at age three. At five, she won her first ribbon in equitation at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, coming in third on Dotty, an aging horse that her father had bought for her. It was the first of many contests she entered on Dotty in horse shows across the Southern United States. By the age of seven, she was regularly competing at an amateur level on three- and five-gaited horses, and she continued to achieve success, attaining first or second place in almost every contest she entered between 1938 and 1945.

Joan attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where she was an average student with an active social life. Her father leased a suite of rooms at a hotel close to the campus, and installed his wife there, visiting on a regular basis himself. When Joan started acting in amateur college productions, she was approached by a talent scout working for Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer who offered her a screen test. Ash refused to permit her to take up the invitation, believing Hollywood to be full of predators who would take advantage of the girl. While in college, she married twice, both times before the age of 20. She married Spike Benton, who had a promising career as a Navy pilot, then New Orleans lawyer and childhood friend Cecil Burglass. Her father did not approve of her choices, and each marriage lasted little more than six months.

Joan competed professionally throughout the 1950s and 1960s, winning as many as 500 trophies on her horses Beloved Belinda and Precious Possession. She had a riding habit made in the same color as Beloved Belinda, described by Thompson as "a lustrous pearl gray", which she wore at shows.

On September 28, 1957, Joan married Dr. John Hill, described by the Houston Chronicle as "one of the city's leading plastic surgeons".

John Robert Hill (1931–1972) was the second of three children born to farmer Robert Raymond Hill, and his wife, Myra Hannah (Rice) Hill, of Edcouch, Texas. At their mother's insistence, all three Hill children received piano lessons, with John and Julian becoming gifted musicians. Hill studied a liberal arts course at Abilene Christian College, where he graduated summa cum laude; he then attended Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. After graduating, he took a residency in surgery at Houston's Hermann Hospital.

During the 1950s, Houston-based surgeons such as Michael E. DeBakey and Denton Cooley were pioneering new heart surgery techniques, attracting a high volume of medical residents who wished to study under their tutelage. Realizing that the city would soon be awash with cardiac surgeons, Hill looked at alternative surgical careers, eventually opting for plastic surgery. At the time, only ten certified plastic surgeons were practicing in Houston, and Hill believed he could make more money in the profession. He was a popular member of the residency program, but almost had his medical career cut short after perforating a patient's bowel during a routine operation, then stitching the man up without repairing the damage. The patient later died of peritonitis, and Hill received a severe reprimand after an autopsy uncovered his mistake. Upon completing his residency, Hill was offered a partnership by Nathan Roth, a New York City-trained surgeon who had established himself in Houston, and he joined the practice in 1963. Hill's partnership with Roth got off to a difficult start after he failed to warn his first patient that a drill bit had broken off during a jaw repair operation, leaving it embedded in the patient's face. When challenged by Roth, Hill was apologetic about his error, saying he had been "hesitant to mention this mistake on my very first case". Hill's brother, Julian, had committed suicide shortly before the incident, and Roth gave Hill the benefit of the doubt because of this. The partnership between Hill and Roth was dissolved in 1967 after Roth grew tired of the other surgeon's repeated requests that Roth cover for him so that he could give music recitals. Hill then established his own practice in the same building as his former business partner.

The Hills became a regular part of Houston's social scene, but largely led separate lives. For the first six years of their marriage, they lived at Ash Robinson's property, moving from there only after a fellow surgeon suggested the idea to John. Joan continued to focus on her equestrian career, while John devoted his spare time to performing and listening to music. When Joan officially retired Beloved Belinda, the event made national headlines. Sports Illustrated reported that a band played "Auld Lang Syne" while Joan led Belinda, covered in a blanket of red roses, around the show ring at the Pin Oak horse show for the last time in 1959. A groom who was present commented to his wife that "Abe Lincoln hisself didn't have a funeral as good as this one."

On June 14, 1960, the Hills had a son, whom they named Robert Ashton Hill, but who was quickly nicknamed Boot by his grandfather. Robinson then bought his daughter a farm after she told him of her ambition to breed horses and establish a riding school. The property, named Chatsworth Farm, was opened in 1963, and became the scene of an annual spring picnic for Houston's doctors and their families.[note 1] In 1965, the Hills also bought a house at 1561 Kirby Drive, a Southern colonial-style house located in the wealthy suburb of River Oaks, a few blocks from the Robinsons' home.

John Hill, whose interest in music began in childhood, was proficient on the piano as well as the trombone, tuba, flute, and recorder. As a young man, he aspired to become a piano player for a dance band, but his mother steered both sons toward medicine. Hill dedicated at least twenty hours a week to his interest in music–taking lessons, practicing, and participating in concerts. He was an active member of several groups, including the Houston Brass Quintet and the Heartbeats.[note 2] Following the success of his own practice, he announced to Joan that he wished to convert a former servant's room into a "music room" at their house. Hill asked Ash Robinson to loan him $10,000 for the project, but Robinson refused as he believed it to be frivolous, and Hill already had a loan from him to buy the house.

Hill then arranged for a bank loan, enabling him to pay off the money Robinson had loaned the couple to buy the Kirby Drive house, then commissioned a sound engineer to create the music room, telling him "I want the finest music room since Renaissance Italy." Its estimated $10,000 cost was quickly exceeded, and by October 1968, Hill had spent $75,000 on the venture. One of his ambitions was to own a handmade Bösendorfer piano, the world's most expensive. On hearing that a local firm had obtained the Austrian company's Houston franchise, he ordered an Imperial Grand for $15,000. The Bösendorfer was delivered in March 1969 and installed beside a Yamaha grand belonging to Joan. Having cost in excess of $100,000, in March 1969 John Hill's music room was almost complete.

It became a ballroom-sized room with a double-height ceiling full of Renaissance-type frescoes, with Baccarat crystal chandeliers. The carved marble fireplace was taken from an old Louisiana plantation home. Hill chose parquet flooring and a gold and white color scheme for the entire room. The pianos were placed at one end, with French provincial sofas cushioned by an oriental carpet at the other end. Gold and white silk wall panels concealed shelves for records, music-related books, and Hill's musical instruments. Hill had 108 speakers installed in the room, connected with four miles of wiring. He spent more than $20,000 on the room's sound system. Hill also added a hidden movie screen on which to project his collection of comedy films, which was also hidden behind one of the silk wall panels. The room became a bone of contention; Joan was angry about the amount of money her husband had poured into realizing his dream. During their 1968 separation, she had confided in Patti Gordon, a friend who owned a restaurant, that the music room had been central to their troubles. "He doesn't care about me or our son or anybody else. Only that god damned music room. I wish we had never started building it."

Meanwhile, Chatsworth Farm did not achieve the success that Joan had envisaged, and was not turning a profit. A trainer had worked there until 1967, but he left because he did not get on with Robinson, and by 1969 Robinson was considering selling the place. Joan wanted to keep it running, however, and persuaded Diane Settegast, a friend from Dallas, to take on the temporary role of trainer.

By 1968, the Hills had begun to have significant conflicts in their marriage. Hill had embarked on an extramarital affair with Ann Kurth, a thrice-divorced mother of three sons whom he met when they were both collecting their respective children from summer camp in August 1968. Kurth and Hill became romantically involved a short time after their meeting at the camp.[note 3] When Joan returned from a horse show outside Houston, she found a note from her husband saying that he had left because things were "not good between us". She phoned her husband's office many times in search of a better explanation from him; Hill did not return his wife's calls. Ash Robinson suggested the use of a private detective to learn what John Hill was up to; Joan was against this idea.

Two weeks after his leaving, Hill asked to meet with his wife for a talk. John Hill told his wife that he was having an affair, and that he was being blackmailed because of it. It was not long before Joan learned that the woman's name was Ann Kurth. Hill, who had been staying at Kurth's home, proceeded to rent a small apartment in Houston's Post Oak district.

The couple was still living apart in November 1968, when Hill had divorce papers served on his wife. Ash Robinson, who had hired detectives to investigate his son-in-law, learned of his Post Oak apartment from their report. Joan told her father that she still wanted to make her marriage work, despite her husband's infidelity, and contested the divorce.

In early December 1968, Ash Robinson phoned Hill at his Post Oak apartment, asking Hill to meet with him at the Robinson home. Robinson had drafted a letter of apology and a reconciliation offer to his daughter he wanted Hill to sign. Hill was in debt to Robinson for household and professional expenses, and his father-in-law implied that he would begin pressing for repayment if Hill did not return to his wife. Hill signed the letter written by Ash Robinson and prepared to go back to the Kirby Drive home. Hill withdrew his divorce petition when the couple reconciled shortly before Christmas of that year. Not long after his return, Kurth began pressing Hill, telling him that if he stayed with Joan, Kurth would no longer be a part of his life. He continued to see Kurth after returning to live with his wife.

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