Blood and Money

by Thomas Thompson

  “Perhaps a person not accustomed to disease processes would have reacted more quickly to the early symptoms of Joan Hill’s illness, and certainly the emergency rooms of hospitals are filled with many such persons who make unnecessary trips thereto. In a sense, John Hill’s medical training may have caused him to view somewhat lightly the initial stages of his wife’s illness, but this is no basis for a criminal charge either based on intent or common law negligence.”

  Dr. Radelat was speaking for many concerned members of the medical profession when he wrote his last sentence: “If criminal charges in this type of situation be appropriate, then anyone whose mate expires unexpectedly after a few days of symptoms, whether from pneumonia, heart attack, or septic shock, should also be indicted.”

  All of this from a pathologist hired by Ash Robinson! And to add insult to injury, Radelat even sent the old man a $1,500 bill for his services. For a time, Ash flourished the invoice, as if it could somehow dilute the impact of the letter. He need not have bothered. The Radelat letter, provocative as it was, and helpful as it should have been to John Hill, was not warmly received by the grand jury. In fact, several months later, one juror could not even remember reading it. “Perhaps it was offered to us, perhaps it was not,” the juror said. “We had mountains of documents to read. Certainly it didn’t seem to have any bearing on our decision. Did it?”

  Suddenly Racehorse Haynes was worried. All along he had felt that the matter would end in a whimper, that Ash would lose interest, or run out of money, or that wiser heads would prevail at the courthouse. Now he picked up the news that even Ernie Ernst had been won over by the Helpern report. The “devil’s advocate” had been just that for almost three months of grand jury hearings, remaining unconvinced that murder was done. But when Racehorse heard that Ernst was saying around the courthouse, “I wouldn’t let a dog die the way that doctor did his wife,” then he knew his client was in peril.

  The attorney summoned the plastic surgeon and suggested that he go personally before the grand jury and answer questions. “It’s damned risky,” cautioned Racehorse. “You go in there without counsel, and they can ask you anything they want. They can even try to trap you and probably will.”

  Then what good would it do? John wanted to know.

  Maybe none whatsoever, answered Racehorse candidly. But it might prove to some of the jurors that there is nothing to hide. And if only four out of the twelve believe so, then there’s no indictment. The way the lawyer now heard it, the score stood at eleven to one, but he did not tell his client that.

  John readily agreed, for he was now convinced that Ash Robinson had considerably more in mind than simple revenge. The old man wanted him convicted of murder so that he would gain custody of his grandson and, through that accomplishment, obtain control of Joan’s sizable estate. Her estate was still snarled in a subsidiary dispute, a matter that never became well known in Houston because of the hot lights that shone on the investigation of her death.

  After she was buried, the plastic surgeon routinely filed a copy of her last will and testament for probate. John did not know the extent of his late wife’s holdings, other than her ownership of Chatsworth Farm, and a few oil and gas leases that Ash had cut her in on.

  “If my beloved husband, John R. Hill, survives me,” the will read, “then I will, bequeath and devise to him my interest in all community property jointly owned by him and me at the time of my death.” She further instructed that all of her personal property, the farm, the mineral holdings, be given to her son, through a trust administered by John. The will was written in 1962 and on file with an attorney. A quick tally made after her death indicated that the estate was around $400,000.

  But before the terms of the will could be carried out a wrench was suddenly thrown—and from a familiar direction. Ash Robinson came forth with the announcement that he possessed a new will written by his daughter, and it superseded the other one. In the new will, Joan cut her husband completely off without a penny and left everything to her son, under the financial custodianship of Ash. “Joan wrote this will when she and John were separated, in the autumn of 1968,” said Ash. “I knew she put it up somewhere, and it took me a little time to find it. I finally came across it in a folder with her college mementos.”

  The new will was certainly, to use a word, curious. Clumsily typed, replete with spelling mistakes and language more likely to be used by someone imitating legal terminology, it had the same Victorian flavor of the letter of repentance that John Hill signed in December 1968, before rapprochement with his wife:

  “I will, devise and bequeath everything that I own, or have a claim to, or on, or might later own, or have a claim on, to my father, ASH ROBINSON. Should he die before my mother, RHEA E. ROBINSON, I will, devise and bequeath all of the above interests mentioned above to her. I know that between them they will provide for my son, Robert Ashton Hill. I do not wish his father, Dr. John R. Hill, insofar as my wishes in the matter are concerned, to have anything to do with my interests insofar as they concern my child. He has deserted me and has shown no interest in my son and has not even called him in three months. Hence I do not believe that he has his interest at heart. I nominate my father, Ash Robinson, and appoint him executor of this will and direct that no bond or security be required by my executor.”

  The will was dated on the typewriter as December 2, 1968. Then someone apparently thought better, for this month is struck out and “NOVEMBER” printed in below, by hand. The witnesses were two longtime friends of Ash, one a horse trainer and former Robinson employee. The signature “Joan R. Hill” bore notable differences from her signature on the 1962 will, which was signed in the presence of her attorneys. In particular, the capital letter “J” in “Joan” was strikingly different. “It’s such a blatant forgery,” said John Hill, “that it’s ridiculous.” Ash was furious at the suggestion. He insisted that the will contained his daughter’s feelings, language, and signature. At one hearing over the authenticity, Ash did admit that, yes, he had typed out the will for his daughter, on his own portable typewriter. But he presented himself in the role of scribe and nothing else.

  John Hill hired three handwriting experts, all of whom cast doubt upon the legitimacy of the signature. He then took the matter to the district attorney’s office and asked for an investigation. But as the district attorney was already investigating him for possible murder, his plea was not looked upon with great enthusiasm. Besides, Ash had not unsurprisingly found an “examiner of questioned documents” who stated that the new will was genuine. Cecil Haden stepped forward as temporary peacemaker. Put this quarrel aside until the principal one—the death of Joan—was decided. The district attorney’s office concurred.

  And now John understood that unless he appeared personally before the grand jury, unless he convinced this panel that he was innocent of involvement in his wife’s death, then not only would he be indicted for murder, he would then have to pursue the questioned will with the unclean hands of an accused killer, and he would probably lose custody of his son as well. Ash Robinson would win it all. The old man made that hope clear by driving past the doctor’s home, thrusting his gnarled and liver-spotted fist out the window of his black Lincoln, and shaking it triumphantly, like a staff of victory.

  Dressed in a dark suit, a crisp white shirt, and a neat and narrow dark tie, John Hill came before the grand jury with confidence and that unpleasant attitude that doctors all too often have: Ask your questions quickly because my time is valuable. He was cool, a little condescending. He made comments that were at odds with certain ones previously given the grand jury by earlier witnesses. Nothing of major import was dissimilar, only minor vagaries. But these were enough to trouble the grand jurors.

  McMaster and Ernst explained to the doctor at the outset that he was not obligated to testify before this grand jury, that anything he said could later be used or developed in a possible criminal case against him, and he could refuse to answer any question, or get up and lea
ve, now, ten minutes from now, or any time he wanted to. John understood all this. Proceed.

  With great deference and courtesy, the prosecutors led the doctor through the days preceding Joan’s death. The surgeon confirmed that on the last Saturday afternoon of his wife’s life he had taken his son out for a haircut and on the way home stopped by his bachelor apartment.

  “This was the one you had supposedly given up, wasn’t it?” asked Ernst.

  “Yes,” answered the doctor.

  “And when Joan found out that you had done this—and that you had really kept the apartment in secret—you all had a fight, didn’t you?” asked Ernst. John Hill nodded.

  Thus established as both a philanderer and a liar in the first moments of his testimony, the doctor slipped further down from there. Words fell too easily from his lips. He had no emotion. Not even remorse. He did not stammer or grope for answers, as most any person would under the pressure of the day. “He was too cold a fish,” Ernst would later remember.

  Casually, Ernst continued his questioning. “What did you all have for supper that Saturday night?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” answered John. “I wouldn’t have any idea.”

  Ernst seemed startled. “You never thought back, ‘Maybe she died of food poisoning?’ That never occurred to you? I should think it might—you being a doctor and all.”

  John disagreed vigorously. “It never occurred to me. Of course, I was rather shocked and upset at the ultimate severity of her illness and her death, yet it never occurred to me even to consider hiring a lawyer to represent me until virtually up to the point of the exhumation autopsy. Because I felt I had nothing to hide. I just didn’t make too much of a mental note … of the circumstances immediately preceding and surrounding her death. And so there are a lot of gaps in my information.”

  Ernst moved along. “Was it your custom to often bring pastries home for Joan to share with you?”

  “Yes. I kind of liked them myself and I would—on occasions at least—bring things like that home. A little more frequently when company was present.”

  “During this week, do you recall bringing tidbits home for the ladies?”

  “Yes. Probably on two or three occasions … probably some blueberry tarts, a chocolate éclair or two, a sort of cream-filled type of chocolate dessert with crumpled pieces of chocolate on it.”

  Ernst smiled. He was at most times a very pleasant, easy man. “Were you kind of trying to make her happy, and yourself too?”

  John Hill nodded. “We had been through a lot, and it was my hope that one way or another we could effect a reconciliation.” But on this particular night, John recollected, there were hot words. “Joan had quite a bit to drink,” and there was “a rather heated discussion” over the maintenance of the horse farm.

  “Did she ever make the observation,” asked Ernst, “something like ‘Well, you can find $100,000 for a music room to play music in, and you can’t pay $75 a month to feed my horse’?”

  John agreed. “She might very well have said that.”

  “Was there some competition between you two as to the allocation of assets for hobby purposes?”

  “In a way. But it had never been a sore point. There was really more competition and resentment over the fact that the things we did sort of took us in opposite directions and caused us to have different friends and different preferences for entertainment and things of that nature. And for a period of time, until I got it off the ground, I think there was a lot of resentment over the fact that I was building a rather elaborate addition to my home, primarily for …”

  Ernst interrupted quickly. “You call it ‘my home.’ Wasn’t it also your wife and your son’s home?”

  “Yes, of course. I don’t mean to make a distinction there,” said the doctor. But Ernst had made a point of greed.

  The doctor testified that he specifically requested the two Dallas women house guests to stay with Joan on Monday morning instead of returning to Dallas. Both Diane Settegast and Eunice Woolen had previously told the grand jury a different account of the morning, that they had offered to stay and nurse their friend Joan, but that the doctor had indicated it was not necessary.

  Another item of contention: John testified that he spent the Monday night in bed with Joan, in her extreme illness, rising often to change the sheets. Effie Green had previously told the grand jury that neither the sheets nor the gown had been changed since Mrs. Hill took to her sickbed on Saturday. Moreover, Effie further testified that, to the best of her remembrance, John Hill came home either not at all, or barely predawn, for his dinner remained uneaten in the stove, and she did not hear his car.

  Ernst’s next line of questioning—and the answers—disturbed the jurors:

  Ernst: “If I were your patient and I came to you and I was unrelated to you, and if I was stooling in the bed and puking all over the room, to put it kind of bluntly, what would you do? Leave me there or send me to the hospital?”

  Hill: “Well, that would depend on the nursing care that … if I felt you had responsible relatives to care for you and if you could get something down by mouth, I probably would leave you there. I’d probably give you an anti-emetic of some sort to tide you over, and if you had any fever, I would possibly give you an appropriate antibiotic if I felt like that there might be a bacterial problem.” This was, the jurors already knew, what he said he had done for his now dead wife.

  “Well,” continued the prosecutor, “just wondering now, in hindsight, perhaps you would, or could you say, perhaps you maybe might have taken her to the hospital right then? In hindsight, of course, Doctor?”

  “Well, of course, that’s very difficult to say.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Ernst, nodding.

  “If I had to rely directly on hindsight, things having developed the way they did, I probably should have taken her to the hospital the very first time she vomited. But this would have been a very abnormal response. Ask any doctor. I don’t know of any doctor that treats his family in that manner. And doctors, knowing that most people will get well with just routine bed rest and nursing care, tend to—tend to be not quite as much of an alarmist with their own family.… Of course, there is a certain amount of psychology which we as physicians want … Let me put it this way. If you see a patient, he expects you to function as a doctor, and even if you know full well that if absolutely nothing is done, no medicine given, if you know that time will take care of whatever is wrong, still, you’ll give them something for their symptoms. That’s what it takes to be a good doctor.”

  Ernst smiled. “Just a little bull in that, too, perhaps, Doctor?”

  The doctor wanted the grand jurors to know that he first mentioned taking his wife to the hospital on Monday morning, when he grew alarmed that she was not taking and holding enough fluids. The problem at that time was dehydration, he said.

  “Then why didn’t you take her to the hospital then?” asked one of the jurors.

  “She was very adamant about not going to the hospital,” said the doctor, contradicting testimony from Effie Green and the two Dallas women and Ash Robinson. “She disliked hospitals intensely, and made the statement, ‘Well, they’ll be sticking needles in me if I go to the hospital, so why don’t you treat me at home?’ I said, ‘Okay, I’ll treat you at home, but it’s going to be on the basis that you do what I say and get in more fluids, and if you either don’t, or can’t, then I’m going to send you to the hospital.’”

  Two of the most damaging remarks came in John Hill’s response to questions concerning (1) the moving of his wife to Sharpstown Hospital, and (2) why he chose that hospital in the first place. The doctor told the grand jury that he helped his wife down the grand staircase of their home, her arms locked about his neck, “sort of dragging her behind me.” Effie Green, her husband, and Mrs. Robinson all testified that the doctor ordered Joan to walk for herself.

  “What was the primary thought guiding your selection of hospitals?” asked I. D. McMaster.

/>   “I had an operation scheduled at Sharpstown Hospital for, I believe, eleven-thirty that morning. And I wanted to be close to wherever she would be. Also, she had quite a liking for Dr. Walter Bertinot, an internist, and had expressed the thought that if she were ever sick, she liked his manner and thought that he would be a good doctor to take care of her.”

  “And you respected his ability, also?”

  “Yes. I had a great deal of respect for his ability, and I felt that he would give her good care and would be a person that she would relate to very well, psychologically.…”

  The jurors compared this remark with what Dr. Bertinot had told them when he testified, namely that he had been “quite surprised” on that long-ago morning when John Hill asked him to treat Joan. He barely knew the woman. He had met her only at large parties and had never become friendly with her in any way.

  More than anything else, the surgeon’s attitude gnawed at the grand jurors. One of the women present noted that John’s eyes did not even mist—much less spill tears—as he spoke of his wife’s tragic death. Any lawyer knows that how a witness says something is often more compelling than what he says. John Hill for two hours was more like a doctor presenting an interesting case to an amphitheater full of students than a man reaching into an agonizing cupboard of his life.

  One of the jurors asked, “Is there any regret on your part about the procedure you used?”

  “No,” shot back the surgeon. “I don’t regret the procedure I used, and I don’t mean to imply the feeling of neglect. I merely mean to state that I feel the outcome would have been the same—but I would have felt a little bit better about it, and certainly there would be less criticism—the outcome would have been the same if I had taken her to the hospital the first moment she got sick.”