Blood and Money

by Thomas Thompson

  It was, in every telling, one hell of a yarn.

  Ann had first spilled out her narrative before the DA’s men after her marriage to John disintegrated. McMaster and Ernst sat and listened, not only stunned, but feeling they were in the presence of a steamroller out to flatten everything in its path. Then, the very next day after her divorce from the plastic surgeon, the ex-Mrs. Hill went before the grand jury and made her startling revelations. This is what she claimed had happened. Or, as one of the DA’s men put it, The Gospel According to Kurth:

  On the summer evening of June 29, 1969, a month into their marriage, Ann and John dined at a steak restaurant, The Stables. Neither was in good sorts. She was melancholy, for it was the anniversary of her sister’s death in a plane crash, and she felt guilty for not being with her parents to comfort them. John seemed in a funk, unresponsive to her feelings. They dined in silence.

  John suddenly put down his fork. “I wish people would stop giving me the fisheye in here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t walk down the corridor in a hospital any more without the nurses whispering and gathering in little groups and pointing at me. That’s what people are doing in here.”

  Ann’s eyes swept the room hurriedly. “Oh, John,” she would later remember saying, “they’re not looking at you. They’re looking at your gorgeous new wife and how happy she is.”

  “No,” said John. “They’re giving me the fisheye. I’m sick and tired of it. I thought, when I took that truth serum test and went through all the questioning, that people would leave me alone. But they don’t.”

  Ann spoke quietly. “Well, I just wish you had taken it under other circumstances.” One week earlier, she claimed to have found her husband in their bathroom trying to give himself a shot in the hip just before leaving for Sharpstown Hospital and the administration of Sodium Pentothal. He told her at that moment it was a vitamin shot and asked her to administer the injection. Which she did, having had previous experience with syringes because one of her sons was diabetic. That night, returning home content after the truth test, he told his wife that he had been conscious enough during the examination to guard his answers to I. D. McMaster’s questions. This led Ann to believe that the “vitamin shot” was in truth some sort of antidote to the Sodium Pentothal.

  Now, sitting in one of the city’s most fashionable restaurants, John Hill began to “shriek” at his second wife. “Don’t you ever say that again! How dare you bring that up!” he told her angrily. Later that night, after a visit to a hospital where he left his wife in the parking lot for more than an hour, his mood suddenly softened again. He suggested a drive. A leisurely, after-midnight drive on the edge of the city, where the subdivisions cease and the farms and ranches begin. Ann paid little heed to their direction, for she was accustomed to the capricious behavior of the man she married. The white Cadillac sped through the night, and within the elaborate stereo tape deck played classical music. They drove for more than an hour, seemingly without aim, until it was past two, perhaps closer to three. A week before, John had been in a motorcycle accident—riding with his son Robert, to whom he was more attentive after the death of Joan—and had broken his collarbone. Now he was taking xylocaine shots to deaden the pain, and he was wearing a bandage, but no cast. It occurred to Ann that he must be uncomfortable, driving so long, and she volunteered to take the wheel. No! His refusal was firm. He was the chauffeur. She should sit quietly, listen to the music, and feel the night wind blowing against her face.

  But she was tired, and a bit tense. The scene in the restaurant had been awkward, and now, at three o’clock in the morning, they were joy riding around the city limits. She began to nag, wanting to go home. Their sons needed her attention, she was tired, she wanted to go to the bathroom, she felt headachey. Her requests fell against silence. Suddenly, she would later swear, John Hill’s face became “a mask.” His features became contorted, his voice distorted. As she told it, the transformation of a monster in a horror film came to mind. And then he slowed the car. He did not look at her as he spoke. She would later quote him thusly: “I really didn’t want it to be this way. It didn’t really have to be this way, but Joan would never have given me a divorce. Ash was going to see to that. So I took every kind of human excretion I could find. I saved feces, urine from patients, pus from a boil off somebody’s neck, and I mixed them all together and I grew cultures in those petri dishes.… And I first gave her the pastries and that didn’t do anything. Then I gave her some ipecac, and she threw up everything but her toenails.… And she was so sweet about it. She was begging me to do something for her.… So I gave her a shot. I gave her some broad-spectrum antibiotic, and I mixed in some of this culture in liquid suspension … and that did it.… She was so sweet about it. Just begged me to help her.… At the end it was just a matter of time. She had every disease known to man.…”

  Ann would later claim that “my insides began to crawl and my stomach churned.… I was sitting there thinking, ‘I don’t want to see this man again, I could never bear him touching me.’ And then he turned the car off on a gravelly road, and I could hear the crunch underneath the wheels, and the headlights shone on some little sign, and a little white picket fence, and it said ‘Chatsworth Farm.’ Somehow we had gotten to the entrance of Joan’s farm. I was almost screaming, and I said, ‘Where are we?’”

  John backed the car out of the driveway and prepared to reclaim the small road back to town. He gestured with his head, toward the Chatsworth sign. “That’s where someone lived who doesn’t live any more,” he said. His foot smashed into the gas pedal. The Cadillac leaped crazily ahead. Now the headlights bore down on a small concrete bridge, across a meandering bayou, one of the thousands that thread Houston’s salty marshes like the wrinkles on the face of an old farmer.

  “And now,” he said, “neither do you!” With that, claimed Ann Kurth, her husband deliberately rammed the right-hand side—her side—of the Cadillac squarely into the bridge abutment. As she screamed, the crunch of metal against concrete filled the night, and the passenger side of the automobile crumpled like an accordion. “I saw it coming,” she told the DA’s men, “and thank God I never fasten my seat belt. Because I managed to leap across the front seat onto John’s side. Had I been strapped into my seat, I would have been pulverized.”

  Next, said Ann, John Hill looked at her in disappointment that she was still very much alive. Her account continued: “He had a horrible look on his face, and he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a needle. I screamed again, ‘My God, John, what are you trying to do?’ He came at me like a demon, trying to plunge the needle into my chest. I fought him, and he dropped the syringe somewhere on the wreckage of the floor. And without a moment’s hesitation, he pulls out another syringe. I am screaming, ‘Stop it, John, for God’s sake don’t you know I love you!’” And just as he raised his arm, trembling, to inject her with the second syringe, the lights of a faraway car appeared on the road, behind the shattered Cadillac. John threw the syringe out the window, into a clump of high weeds. The car neared and John threw his hand over Ann’s mouth. “Don’t say a word, baby,” he warned.

  The second car pulled up, and a woman and her teen-age son got out to see if help was needed. “We’re okay,” said John. “My wife is a little hysterical. Could you give us a ride to the closest hospital?” The good Samaritans helpfully drove the doctor and his wife, suffering only from a cut knee and a few scratches, to a suburban hospital. “Sharpstown Hospital was actually the closest,” Ann said. “But I figure John couldn’t risk having two wives die there, so we went to Memorial Baptist Southwest. I must have been in shock until the next day.”

  It was not until nine long months later, in March 1970, that Ann Kurth turned up at the district attorney’s office to put her grand guignol story into the hopper. At first Ernie Ernst was understandably skeptical. He lashed her with questions.

  Did the police investigate the accident?

  Yes
, answered Ann. After treatment at the emergency room, John insisted they take a taxi back to the remote wreck site. When they arrived, police officers were poking around. John introduced himself and his wife and said he had gone to sleep at the wheel. He had returned to pick up medical papers and equipment. He took Ann aside and in a whisper ordered her to find the hypodermic needle while he talked to the officers. She located it and put it in her purse.

  Then why didn’t she say something to these officers about this terrible attempt on her life by a man who had just confessed another murder? wondered McMaster.

  Well, sir, she was frightened. She didn’t see any other way out but to stay married to him. Her children were at his house, his own son had accepted her and was calling her “Mama.” Her money was commingled with his at his bank. John warned her not to speak to anyone of the incident, she said. Not even her own father. And if she tried to run away, he would find her. “I swore a vow of silence,” Ann said. It was her only option.

  What happened to the syringe?

  Toward dawn, when they finally returned to the house on Kirby Drive, Ann claimed she surreptitiously dropped the needle in some high grass near the front door. The next day she went outside to find it, and a gardener had mowed the grass. The syringe was gone. She could not find it.

  How could a man with a broken collarbone—taking pain-killing shots himself—and one arm in a sling bandage manage to whip out two syringes so quickly and attempt to inject Ann in the aftermath of a violent collision?

  She did not know, said Ann. But her then husband had incredible strength. At that terrible moment, she insisted, “he could have done anything.” If the car with the woman and her son had not appeared, Ann said, “I might not be here to tell about it.”

  But how, how could she continue to live for six more months with a man who had done such a violent deed and made such dire threats?

  “I was completely undone from that day on,” Ann told a friend, repeating the answer she had given the district attorney. “My weight went from a nice happy healthy hundred and twenty to a hundred and ten, then a hundred and five, within days. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I just stayed awake and looked at him all night. I waited until morning, when he got up and went to the hospital, before I dared shut my eyes. It became a horrible game: who would fall asleep first? I suspected he was taking amphetamines because he would lie there and watch me in bed, waiting for me to doze off. He tried to make up to me, of course. We would go out to a restaurant and he would try to be sweet and suddenly I would have tears running down my cheeks. I had nowhere to go, nobody to turn to. If I went to the airport and left town, he would have found me. I was just too terrified to make a move.”

  Ernie Ernst made her tell the story to him so many times that he could have recited it along with her in a declamation contest. He tore at it. He tried to make cole slaw out of it, trying to destroy any part that a jury might disbelieve. Finally he decided that it might not get her into heaven, this story, but it sure oughta keep John Hill out. Only the part of the tale in which John Hill allegedly spoke of brewing up a witches’ potion of feces and pus would be held in abeyance. Ernst did not think the jury would believe that. He wasn’t altogether sure he did himself, as a matter of fact.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “Does the date June 30, 1969, have any special significance for you?” asked I. D. McMaster as Ann Kurth began her second day of testimony before a capacity crowd, ninety per cent of whom were women.

  “Yes, sir, it does,” she answered in a voice meek and respectful. Ernie Ernst watched her carefully. On the way to court he had warned her not to embellish her words with needless gesture and dramatic coloring. The bare bones of the story were strong enough. She had promised to answer simply and calmly.

  “On that date were you in an automobile?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Here it comes, thought Racehorse. The night before he had hammered at his client for hours. Was there anything else about the Cadillac accident the lawyer should know? Was there any hidden word or deed from that night which might leap out and bite them? John Hill insisted that he had told his lawyer everything. To the best of his recollection, he had said, they had been quarreling. Ann began yelling, grabbed the wheel of his Cadillac, and caused the car to smash into a bridge abutment. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her,” John said. “I wouldn’t do anything as crazy as crashing my own car and hoping that only her side was damaged.” But, the lawyer kept pressing, the police report says John Hill thought he had fallen asleep at the wheel. Was this an error? “It seemed an easier explanation at the time,” answered the surgeon. “Besides, it was a one-car accident, and no one was seriously hurt.” Her word against yours, old man, mused the lawyer. Who sounds more convincing? Who has less to lose?

  “And were you alone or with someone?” asked McMaster.

  “With someone … Dr. Hill,” answered Ann.

  “And what automobile were you occupying at that time, the both of you?”

  “His car … a Cadillac, I guess a ’68 or ’69 model.”

  McMaster, satisfied with the crisp, pointed answers, moved deeper into the tale. “Now, on that date, June 30, 1969, what time of that particular day—morning, afternoon, night, is of special significance to you?”

  “In the wee small hours of the morning of the thirtieth—two or three in the morning.”

  “Mrs. Kurth, was the automobile that you and Dr. Hill were driving in that evening or that early morning hour involved in a collision?”

  Before Ann could respond, Racehorse was on his feet. “Objection, your honor,” he said.

  The judge saw nothing damaging in the witness’ previous remarks or what she was about to answer. “You object to that?” asked Judge Hooey.

  “May we have a running objection to her?” snapped Haynes. A little grandstanding here, for Racehorse had already filed two objections against Ann Kurth’s appearance, as well as asking for a mistrial on the basis of her testimony. But the ploy was valuable because it would tend to make the jury suspicious of the witness’ worth and relevance to the case.

  “Your objection is overruled, counsel,” answered the judge.

  “To which we except, your honor,” fired back Haynes, once again planting a “hickey” in the trial record. There were so many by now that the transcript was as dotted as raisins in a honey cake.

  Ann described the accident. “Dr. Hill was driving and came to a stop sign and turned sharply to the right and veered into a bridge and crashed my side of the car into a bridge.”

  “All right. Now, just before the automobile came into contact with the bridge, that is, immediately before, what did John Hill say to you?”

  Haynes rose again. For the rest of the morning he bounced upright at just about everything Ann Kurth had to say. “Your honor, we object to the nature of the question as being suggesting and leading.”

  “That is overruled, counsel.” The judge’s voice held an edge of irritation.

  “Please note our exception,” said Haynes, planting another “hickey.”

  Ann continued enthusiastically. “He pulled up to the stop sign, and glanced to the left, and he had a horrible—”

  Of course Haynes objected to that. “I am going to object to that part of it as not being responsive to the question, the question being, ‘What did he say immediately before the accident?’”

  Judge Hooey leaned over and lectured the witness. “Just tell what he said, not how he looked.”

  Ann looked directly at John Hill. “He said, ‘That’s where someone used to live that doesn’t live any more.’ He started the car up, accelerated very fast, turned to the right at forty or fifty miles an hour. He said, ‘That is where someone lived who doesn’t live any more, and now … neither are you!’ And he slammed into the bridge.”

  McMaster paused to let the revelation do its intended damage. Ann had told the story well. The crunch of metal and shattered glass was felt. “Now,” he continued, “immediately following, d
id he, in your estimation, once again threaten your life?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Racehorse popped up with a weary expression. It seemed to say that the jury must share his exasperation with the woman’s testimony. “May it please the court, there has been no testimony to that effect. We object to it.”

  “Sustained.” The judge looked concerned.

  Racehorse wanted more. “And if the court will give a proper instruction to the jury …”

  Judge Hooey nodded. “The jury will not consider it. Go ahead.”

  “All right,” pressed McMaster. “Immediately after the collision, what did he do?”

  Ann moved her right hand inside an imaginary suit coat breast pocket and pulled out an invisible object. Her voice grew ripe with mystery. “He pulled a syringe from his pocket.”

  Sensing his witness was melodramatic, McMaster cautioned her. “Don’t demonstrate. Just tell us what he did.”

  “He pulled a syringe from his pocket, and he tried to turn where I was and get it into me … his hand was shaking … he was very nervous, and I was very nervous and shaking from the horrible impact.”

  “Now, at that time, how was the car lodged? Where was it in relation to the bridge?”

  “The side of the car that I was on was slammed into the concrete bridge.”

  “Could you have gotten out of your side of the car?”

  “Oh no, sir. My side of the car was demolished.”

  “Now, at the time that he turned to you with the syringe, would you describe to the jury your position in relation to his position?”