Ash Robinson was always protective of his only daughter, Joan.
The powerful Texas oilman adopted Joan when she was a few months old, and then supported her throughout an early equestrian career that began at the age of 3. Later, he rented out an apartment blocks away from her on her college campus in order to watch over her. When she wanted to get married, Ash had the final say, though Joan’s first two marriages ended in divorce.
But when Joan suddenly died in March 1969 amid a marital dispute with her third husband, John Hill, Ash believed the criminal justice system had let his daughter down by failing to adequately investigate whether Hill had poisoned her. So, Ash allegedly took matters into his own hands.
Here’s what happened.
A ‘Match Made in Heaven’
A celebrated equestrian who competed in front of thousands at a young age, according to The Brownsville Herald, Joan was no stranger to winning first-place medals in her riding competitions. She was even profiled by Sports Illustrated in 1959 when her famous horse, Belinda — purchased by her father — retired. After attending college, Joan was twice married before meeting Hill, one of Texas’s most prominent plastic surgeons. The couple married in 1957 but continued to live largely separate lives, according to a Crime Magazine profile about Joan’s — and later Hill’s — death.
“It looked like a match made in heaven,” Dick DeGuerin, a Texas attorney who later worked on the case, told local ABC 13 in 2023. “This beautiful high society horse woman, the only daughter of a wealthy oil man and John Hill, handsome, dashing plastic surgeon at the top of his profession.”
But by the late 1960s, the idyllic socialite couple became even more distant, and Hill began an affair with a woman he would later marry in 1969, months after Joan’s death.
Joan’s Death
In March 1969, Joan suddenly fell ill shortly after Hill initiated divorce proceedings against her. For several days, Hill appeared reluctant to take his sick wife to the hospital and instead opted to treat her himself, according to The New York Times.
Joan died just 15 hours after Hill finally brought her to the hospital once her condition worsened, according to the Abilene Reporter-News. Several pathologists would disagree on what led to her death – although Ash thought he knew whose fault it was, according to United Press International.
A Father’s Revenge
For years after Joan died, her father Ash refused to believe his daughter’s death was merely a tragic accident. According to ABC 13, Ash hired private investigators to dig into his suspicions that Hill had poisoned his wife and killed her.
“He had influence in the court,” longtime Houston reporter Tom Kennedy, who covered the Hill case, told ABC 13. “He had unbelievable influence with the grand jury.” Three grand juries investigated Hill as a result of Ash’s pressure, leading to his indictment in 1970, according to The Associated Press.
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But Hill was never charged, according to United Press International. Subsequently, prosecutors believed Ash decided to take justice into his own hands. Hill was shot outside his home by a masked gunman in 1972, three years after marrying Ann Kurth, the woman with whom he had an affair during his marriage to Joan.
By 1977, Ash was indicted for orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot related to his former son-in-law’s death, according to The Victoria Advocate. But Ash was found not guilty after jurors said there was not enough evidence for them to convict the 79-year-old grieving father, who continued to plead his innocence. ”I didn’t want him dead,” Ash said at the trial, according to the Times. ”The killing didn’t solve his problems or mine.”
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