Joan Robinson Hill

This case was also covered in an episode ("I'm Fine, Look Away") on the podcast "My Favorite Murder" on May 9, 2019.

The death of Robinson Hill was also the subject of a true crime television documentary-drama as part of the series Behind Mansion Walls from the Investigation Discovery television network "Behind Mansion Walls: The Thoroughbred Heiress" S1 E13; first aired in June 2011.

Lilla Paulus was convicted and given a 35-year sentence. She died of breast cancer at the Gatesville prison on May 16, 1986.

The events surrounding the death of Joan Robinson Hill have been the subject of several books, as well as a 1981 television film. Journalist and author Thomas Thompson's 1976 book Blood and Money provides a detailed account of the case. He became interested in the story while shadowing doctors in Houston as research for a previous book, Hearts, about the world of cardiac surgery. Ann Kurth filed a $3-million lawsuit against Thompson over his description of her as a "provocatively dressed, heavily made-up woman", but her action was dismissed by a jury in Austin in March 1981, which decided that although derogatory, his description of her was accurate. The legal case was one of three Thompson faced over his book.

In 1981, the Robinson Hill case was the subject of Murder in Texas, a television film featuring Farrah Fawcett as Robinson Hill. It concurs with Kurth's theory that Hill may have faked his death, suggesting that he arranged for someone else to be killed in his place. The journalist Jerry Buck noted in an article preceding the film's debut on NBC that the face of the shooting victim had been battered and that there were anomalies in the autopsy report, notably that Hill had a different eye color from that recorded for the dead person. Buck also wrote that Hill was in financial difficulties with the Internal Revenue Service in 1972 and facing a murder case against him. Sightings of Hill had also been reported in Mexico and New York City.

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

Under questioning, McKittrick corroborated Vandiver's story. McKittrick was tried and convicted in 1974 of being Vandiver's getaway driver and given a ten-year jail sentence. She was paroled after serving five years.

Bobby Wayne Vandiver was arrested for Hill's murder in April 1973, but refused to cooperate with police until he was positively identified as the perpetrator by Hill's mother. When he confessed to the murder, he told police that he had done it for financial gain, and that the shooting was a contract killing that he had been asked to carry out for $5,000. During his confession, Vandiver implicated Marcia McKittrick and Lilla Paulus as having been accessories to Hill's murder.

On April 25, 1973, a grand jury voted to indict Vandiver and McKittrick for first degree murder, and indict Paulus as an accomplice to murder. Vandiver's trial was set for September 1973. The trial was eventually rescheduled for April 1974, but Vandiver failed to appear. He had moved to Longview, Texas, adopting an alias. Longview police officer John Raymer grew suspicious of the newcomer to his town. After discovering the man's first name was actually Bobby, Raymer confronted Vandiver at a cafe one evening in May; Vandiver pulled a gun, and Raymer shot him dead.

On September 24, 1972, a few weeks before the second trial was to start, Hill was shot dead by a masked gunman during a robbery at his mansion as Hill and his third wife, Connie, returned home from a medical conference in Las Vegas.

Kurth published her own account of the case entitled Prescription Murder in which she repeated her claim that Hill had tried to kill her, and alleged that he may have poisoned his first wife with bacteria-laced pastries. She also suggested that Hill had not been killed in 1972, and had instead moved to Mexico after faking his death. Retired Harris County District Attorney Carol Vance also discussed the case in his memoirs, Boomtown DA.

Hill's murder trial began on February 15, 1971. Kurth testified against Hill, claiming that he had tried to kill her on June 30, 1969, by crashing their car into a bridge, and by injecting her with a hypodermic syringe. She also told the court that he had confessed to killing Robinson Hill, explaining in detail how he had allegedly done it by lacing pastries with infectious bacteria and later injecting Robinson Hill with the same bacteria. Kurth's testimony contradicted the charge of murder by omission in the indictment. As a result, Hill's attorney, Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, was granted a request for a mistrial. Hill's second trial was eventually scheduled for November 1972.

The series of autopsies indicated that Robinson Hill had suffered a "massive infection" from an undetermined source, but because the body had been embalmed before an initial examination was conducted, an exact cause of death could not be identified. Dr. Bucklin listed Robinson Hill's cause of death as meningitis and sepsis. Following the autopsy, Joseph Jachimczyk issued a fresh report in which he observed "It is now my opinion that Joan Robinson Hill came to her death as a result of a fulminating infectious process, the specific nature of which is no longer determinable." Dr. Helpern's report, issued in April 1970, noted that John Hill's treatment of his wife at home and the delay in seeking specialized medical attention at a hospital were factors in the death of Robinson Hill.

In February 1970, the case was heard by a third grand jury. This panel heard testimony from Ann Kurth, who told them that Hill had confessed to killing his wife and had also tried to kill Kurth on three occasions. Helpern presented his findings to the grand jury in April 1970. McMaster and his fellow Assistant District Attorney, Ernie Ernst, believed that Hill had murdered his wife but that there was not enough evidence to indict him. Ernst suggested that they could try him for failing to provide an adequate level of care, which had resulted in her death. The jury voted 10–2 to indict Hill for murder by omission, deciding that he had "willfully, intentionally and culpably" contributed to his wife's death because he had not given her sufficient medical help. The state of Texas had not previously indicted anyone on a charge of murder by omission.

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 severity of Joan's illness was known only to those in the Hill household until the morning of March 18, 1969, when her mother entered her daughter's sickroom. She found Joan lying in her own body wastes and vomit as John Hill stood at the foot of his wife's bed. When Robinson found that her daughter had a fever, Hill told his mother-in-law he thought Joan should be taken to a hospital. Hill did not summon an ambulance for his wife, who was now semiconscious, but insisted on driving her to the hospital himself. The hospital he chose was not one of Houston's noted medical centers, but a new hospital in Houston's suburbs, Sharpstown General Hospital, which was a forty-five-minute drive from the Hill home. The hospital had no emergency room or intensive care unit at the time of Joan's admission. She was brought into the hospital by a nurse who had come to the car with a wheelchair and was taken to a private room on arrival.

After Robinson Hill's death, Hill married Ann Kurth in June 1969, but divorced Kurth less than a year later, shortly before he was indicted for the murder of Robinson Hill. Following Hill's marriage to Kurth, Ash Robinson accused his former son-in-law of poisoning his daughter, and petitioned the District Attorney to launch a murder investigation. A grand jury began hearing evidence in the summer of 1969, and retired without indicting Hill. District Attorney Carol Vance then put the case before a second grand jury, which ordered an exhumation of the body.

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."

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. 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.

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.

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.

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. In 1965, the Hills also bought a house at 1561 Kirby Drive, a Southern colonial-style house located in the wealthy neighborhood of River Oaks, a few blocks from the Robinsons' home.

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

Joan competed professionally throughout the 1950s and 1960s, winning as many as 500 trophies on her American Saddlebred horses CH Beloved Belinda (WCC, WC, RWCC, RWC. ASR 46246M) and CH Precious Possession (WC, RWCC, RWC. ASR 57000M). 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, starting the fashion of wearing a light colored habit.

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 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 American Saddlebred horses, and she continued to achieve success, attaining first or second place in almost every contest she entered between 1938 and 1945.

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 Ashton "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.

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.

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.