Joan Robinson Hill

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hill’s mother was deeply religious and Hill was raised in a strict Christian household.

Hill was also religious and attended the Church of Christ.

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.

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 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 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.

After two youthful marriages that ended in divorce, Joan married plastic surgeon John Hill in 1957.

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

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 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.

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.