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- You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Into The Dark podcast with Peyton Morland. I am your host, Peyton Morland, and I'm so, so happy you guys are here. Now, a little fun thing about this show is that it is connected to Oh No Media, which is the house of my other true crime shows, Murder With My Husband and Rising Crime. So if you actually join the Murder With My Husband
Patreon or you join here on Apple subscriptions, you get all of our content ad free. So all of the shows ad free as well as two bonus episodes of "Murder With My Husband." So if you love "Into The Dark," you want ad free episodes or bonus episodes of my other shows,
go check it out. You can actually do that here. And then also if you are watching on YouTube, please give this video a thumbs up, turn on notifications, leave a comment. And if you are listening again, just a review would help out so much. Thank you guys for always doing this for me. It literally means the world. Okay, let's jump into my 10 seconds. It's the thing we do to start these episodes off on a little bit of a lighter foot before jumping in to the darker side of this podcast.
All right, so my 10 seconds left.
literally just happened right before I sat down. So before this, I was filming a little short for our Instagram. It's just little videos I do about like mysterious things. This one was actually about weird places people have found bodies. So I sat down, I recorded that, I got back up, I gave the cards over to Garrett, and then I came back in to sit down and record this. So I set everything up and then I come to sit down on my couch and I
I realize that there is a literal big spider that I had been sitting on for the last 10 minutes while I was recording before this. I was sitting on a spider and it wasn't completely dead. It was alive underneath my butt cheek. And then I got up and I came back, but I squished it enough that it couldn't really move. You heard me right.
Yeah. So that's my 10 seconds for this week. Beware where you're sitting. Okay. Just a trigger warning. This episode includes discussions of murder. So please listen with care. Now,
I'm gonna start this one off strong. Who doesn't love a power couple? Whether we're talking about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle building a media empire or Beyonce and Jay-Z dominating the music scene or even David and Victoria Beckham still making headlines with their new Super Bowl ad.
It's one thing for an individual to be extremely successful and famous, but when both halves of a couple have star power, there's something really aspirational about that. And who better to collaborate with than your best friend and your partner for life? And I mean, look at me, I even make the Murder With My Husband podcast with Garrett. So clearly there's nothing wrong with being in love, influential and respected, or with sharing your professional successes with your spouse.
Assuming, that is, that your marriage is really as strong as it looks from the outside.
But if anyone seemed poised to get a happily ever after in the 1960s Houston, Texas area, it was Joan Hill. Or as she was known earlier in life, Joan Robinson. Joan was this beautiful heiress who was unusually talented at horseback riding. She competed with the best equestrians in the nation and won her fair share of competitions.
Her adoptive father was an oil tycoon named Ash Robinson. And by all reports, he absolutely doted on his daughter, Joan. So to summarize, Joan was wealthy, gorgeous, skilled, and came from a loving family. Basically, she had everything going for her. And if that wasn't enough, she was also known as this sweet, kind person. Everybody adored her. Joan seemed to live a charmed life with one big exception.
Her love life was, in a word, a disaster. She just kept falling for men who were bad for her. And by the time she was 20 years old, Joan had actually been married twice and both of those relationships had ended in divorce.
All the while, her father did what he could to look out for her. According to the book Blood and Money by Thomas Thompson, Ash would even hire private detectives to investigate Joan's boyfriends. He'd share his opinions about her dates, and if Ash, her dad, warned her that she should break up with the guy, she would.
But when Joan met the next love of her life, everything was different. She's now in her 20s and his name was John Hill. And they were introduced at a dinner party. Now, Joan was attracted to him immediately. So much so that she didn't want to hear what her dad, Ash, thought of John. She didn't want to risk the chance that her father would disapprove. So Joan and John actually began dating, but she tried to keep her relationship a secret.
She didn't do a very good job, though. Ash did keep close tabs on Joan, so he knew she was now seeing this new guy, John. And he was actually fine with it because John was a medical student with a focus in plastic surgery. Once he graduated, he could potentially go on to make millions at his practice. And in his free time, he played music beautifully. He was talented enough that in another life, he might have become a professional pianist.
And then add in the fact that John was extremely handsome. It's no surprise that Joan fell for him hard. All this to say that Ash wasn't like wildly impressed with John. It was just given Joan's checkered history. Her father was just glad she'd fallen in love with someone who seemed somewhat decent.
So when Joan let her father know that she and John were thinking about getting engaged, Ash actually gave his blessing. That was in spite of the fact that Joan's friends weren't exactly John's biggest fans. They weren't nearly as charmed as Joan was. And when he proposed, some of her acquaintances begged her not to marry him. They thought he was more in love with Joan's money, the fact that she came from money, she was an heiress,
than he was in love with Joan herself. He talked about his finances all the time and openly admitted he'd only become a plastic surgeon because it paid so well, not because he was passionate about the field. It seemed too coincidental that he just happened to fall for a wealthy heiress and a lot more likely that he was probably a gold digger. But Joan didn't listen to her friends. She was in love and her dad somewhat accepted.
In 1957, the 26-year-old bride walked down the aisle for the third time. And the wedding was a huge society affair, as you would imagine. It was a way of announcing that people could look down their noses at them, but John and Joan didn't care. Their love was too strong to cave to social pressure and judgment. It was like a fairy tale or a match made in heaven.
Three years later, on June 14th, 1960, the couple actually had their first and only son. His name was Robert, but he went by the nickname Boot. All the while, Joan helped finance John's passions. It was her family's money that paid for his first few semesters of law school, but
But then John wanted to build a dedicated music room for him in their house where he could practice the piano and recorder. And Joan obviously couldn't afford the construction on her own. So she goes to her father once again. And when her father balked at the cost, the couple just decided, OK, he's not going to help us. Let's take out a loan. And she didn't care between his surgical practice and his music.
Joan figured John's star was only going to rise. The two were both destined for incredible success one day. Put another way, Joan and John Hill were the power couple of the Houston area in the 60s. Or at least they looked that way from the outside. The truth was, John was cheating on Joan.
He met a woman named Ann Kurth while visiting his son at summer camp. This was in 1968 and Ann was a 38 year old divorcee. John was one year younger and don't think like, oh, John ran off and met this new woman at this camp where he happened to be with his son. No, Joan was there. John and Joan were together.
To hear Anne tell it, even Joan's presence couldn't stop John from flirting with her. And she had to admit she was attracted to him too. So they exchanged phone numbers and John called Anne a week later asking if he could come over.
And she said yes. It was the beginning of their affair, but even if Anne hadn't been in the picture, John and Joan's marriage was in trouble for other reasons. They fought constantly. John resented all the time that Joan spent away from home competing in equestrian tournaments. Joan found out pretty quickly that John was cheating on her and understandably she was unhappy about it.
things got so bad their marital tension became kind of like an open secret what once looked like this strong power couple that comes from this wealthy family who got everything they want it was very soon figured out that that was not the case in the book blood and money thomas thompson quoted an anonymous friend of jones saying quote their relationship was as fragile as a piece of cooked spaghetti but that same friend noted i'm sorry that is like kind of funny
fragile as a, like fragile as a glass, fragile as a vase. No, fragile as a piece of cooked spaghetti sticking to the wall. Okay. Anyways, that same friend noted that Joan was still head over heels for John. Like despite all of this, him cheating and everything, she still loved him. But this friend also thought that John didn't seem all that into Joan.
They didn't understand why he stayed with her. Even John must have wondered about that because one day he told Joan he was leaving her for Anne. He moved out of their house and rented his own apartment and Joan was devastated. And honestly, she became a bit obsessive. John didn't tell her where he was staying, but Joan tracked down his apartment anyway. I mean, it is her husband. She called Anne and begged her to break up with John so Joan could have her husband back.
Obviously, none of this worked out for Joan, and in November of 1968, John filed for divorce. Joan, though, still wasn't willing to accept that he was gone, so she asked her father, Ash Robinson, to intervene.
Now on December 9th, Ash called John, so father-in-law calling son-in-law who wants a divorce. And I don't know exactly what they said. The two men later gave contradictory descriptions of their conversation, but whatever they discussed, John actually withdrew his divorce filing right afterward and he moved back home with Joan.
And he promised her that he'd broken up with Anne. And as near as I can tell, Joan was actually thrilled to have John back, even though the only reason he came back was because he talked to her dad who maybe promised him something. And also she was thrilled to have him back in spite of everything he had done. Either way, she was still wildly in love with him.
From then on, their relationship seemed relatively solid, at least, again, to outside observers. Joan gave herself a makeover in the hopes that John wouldn't stray if she focused on her appearance, which, side note, is such a sad reflection of our society that Joan would assume it was her job to fix her husband's cheating.
The pair hosted gatherings at their home and played the part of a happily married couple. But then on March 16th, 1969, 38-year-old Joan became seriously ill. For context, this was just over three months after she and John had reconciled.
It started when one day she failed to wake up in the morning. She stayed in bed until four in the afternoon. And this was especially strange because she had guests over and Joan slept right through most of their visit. She did her best to play hostess for the rest of the afternoon and evening, but by the next day, Sunday, she felt even worse. She spent the day sleeping and vomiting. On Monday, she couldn't even get up to say hi to her father when he dropped by for a visit.
And by Tuesday, she barely even woke when John sat in the bed beside her checking on her. She had terrible diarrhea and vomiting and she couldn't even get out of bed to make it to the bathroom. So she slept in her own bodily fluids. She just had really horrible symptoms. Now remember,
John was a doctor. His specialty was plastic surgery, but still, he knew how to tell the difference between an ordinary stomach bug and a serious medical emergency. But as Joan grew sicker, he didn't seem too concerned, and he didn't think her symptoms were that severe.
But finally, on the evening of Tuesday, March 18th, 1969, Joan's parents came over again, and this time, her mother seemed really worried. John promised he'd get Joan checked into a hospital, but he didn't call for an ambulance or rush her to an ER. Instead, he reassured Joan's mom that he'd drive her himself.
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Use code DARK. All right, let's get back to the episode. Sometimes after a particularly long day, I love to play games on my phone to get my mind off things. And one game I have been loving is June's Journey. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery mobile game that puts your detective skills to the test. You play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's brain.
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Now, John and Joan lived in River Oaks, which is just outside of Houston. It's a really wealthy neighborhood that's fairly close to the city. John had a couple options in terms of which hospitals check into. He could have taken Joan to Texas Medical Center. That was a well-equipped facility with a solid intensive care unit and emergency room. But for reasons that still aren't totally clear today...
John took Joan to Sharpstown General instead. It didn't have an ICU or an ER, and sadly, they weren't able to give Joan the care she needed. When John and Joan pulled up with Joan's parents in the back seat, the nurses seemed surprised to see her, like John hadn't warned them that they were on their way, that they were coming in.
She checked in and her nurses grew alarmed at her symptoms. She had a dangerously low blood pressure. They called an emergency doctor to help her get stable. And then as his wife is literally falling apart in the hospital,
John leaves. He says he has to go to work. It was shocking. Joan was hanging on by a thread and her husband was acting like he couldn't care less. The doctors and nurses knew they were not equipped to treat her here, but they feared that if they transferred her to another hospital, she actually wouldn't survive the journey. At 9.15 p.m., someone called John and told him he needed to get back to Sharpstown General immediately.
Joan didn't have much time left and he should come say his goodbyes. It took John more than two more hours to show up. And when he did, he announced that he needed to get some sleep. He laid down in a spare bed in a records room. Again, like he couldn't be bothered to spend time with his dying wife. But miraculously, her doctors worked around the clock and once again, they got Joan stable.
By 1.30 a.m., her prognosis looked a lot better. So her doctor went home for the night with instructions that Joan's nurse should check on her periodically. The nurse was the only person in Joan's room an hour or two later. And that's when Joan sat up, vomited up blood, and then laid back down and died. She was only 38 years old.
Someone must have woken John up at this point to tell him that he had lost his wife because soon after her death, he returned to her room making a big show out of how grief stricken he was. He cried and moaned and just kept repeating, no, no, no.
Dr. Hill seemed genuinely devastated by his wife's untimely death, which was a pretty dramatic shift from his earlier apathy, you know, deciding that it was more important he sleep than go tend to his dying wife.
Afterward, he allowed for Jones' body to be sent to the mortuary and embalmed. Now, this actually violated Texas state law. Any patient who died less than 24 hours after checking into the hospital needed to receive an autopsy before being embalmed. But the hospital carted Jones' remains away without any fuss. She didn't receive a post-mortem exam until later. By then, it was too late to perform certain kinds of tests.
Her doctors learned that she died of some kind of infection, but they were never able to figure out what it was specifically. Then just a couple of months after Joan's death, John married Ann Kurth, the same woman he'd cheated on Joan with.
Turns out he didn't actually end the affair when he and Joan reconciled. He'd continued to see Anne the entire time. He repeatedly lied to Joan, saying he had to drive to a hospital for an appointment or an emergency surgery. But instead, he was dropping by Anne's house. And during Joan's final weeks of life, remember when she was too sick to get out of bed? John was barely at home because he was spending so much time with Anne, taking advantage of his sick wife.
The ongoing affair and John and Anne's speedy wedding obviously made some people suspicious. All of this was enough to make many of Joan's loved ones wonder, what if Joan hadn't died of a freak illness? What if she was murdered? In particular, Joan's father, Ash Robinson, seemed convinced that maybe John, his son-in-law, had done something to his daughter.
He asked around and heard some alarming rumors about a strange dinner party John and Joan had hosted shortly before she got sick. When dinner had ended that night, John served the dessert, and it was a tray with all of these different pastries on it. But John made a point of selecting the item for each guest rather than letting people choose what they wanted to eat. And when he got to Joan, he gave her a chocolate eclair.
Joan said she wanted the cream puff instead, but no, John insisted. The eclair was specifically for her, like there was something special about it. The next night, they had friends over again, and the same scene played out, beat for beat. Joan was a little more forceful this time. She told John, no, like, I just want the cream puff.
And he could just have the eclair for himself, but John wouldn't hear it. Again, he demanded that his wife eat the eclair. And after this, outside of their dinner parties, John ended up bringing those same chocolate eclairs home for Joan all of the time. He seemed really invested in seeing Joan eat this particular pastry. And when Ash heard this, he decided the eclairs must have been poisoned.
Maybe John had killed her so he could get out of his loveless marriage without losing access to Joan's wealth?
Joan's will originally said she'd leave everything to her son, Boot. But because the boy was so young, John was supposed to manage her estate until Boot came of age. Meaning John could now spend Joan's money how he saw fit for years. Except while they were separated, Joan actually revised her will. Her father, Ash, was supposed to manage the inheritance until Boot was old enough to receive it.
and John wouldn't get a dime. Now, of course, John didn't know about the change until after Joan died. So the inheritance might have still been a motive, but there was no way to prove anything.
Ash even had Joan's body disinterred for multiple autopsies. These weren't very useful because she'd already been embalmed. By and large, the morticians weren't able to determine much of anything. One said she may have died of pancreatitis. Another suggested the real diagnosis was viral hepatitis.
But none of the findings were definitive. And more importantly, none of them clearly indicated that Joan had been poisoned, which was clearly the result Ash was looking for. So instead of giving up, he kept digging. Regardless of what the evidence said, he was going to tie her death back to John. Now, eventually, Ash managed to throw his weight and likely his money around enough to see John charged with murder by omission.
In simple terms, this meant John may not have killed Joan himself, but because he failed to take the appropriate steps to save Joan's life, he still played an active role in her death. This is a very sneaky but smart way to get around this.
The argument basically was that as a doctor, John should have realized that his wife Joan was seriously ill much earlier. He should have gotten her emergency treatment when the first symptoms developed. It shouldn't have taken his in-laws to come over and force him to take her to the hospital. And on top of that, he should have taken her to a better equipped hospital like Texas Medical Center.
These charges didn't imply that he'd murdered Joan on purpose necessarily, but they did suggest that he caused her death through his negligence. So by the time John's hearing began in February of 1971, his marriage to Anne Kurth had actually soured.
They'd been married just over a year and a half since right after Joan died. And now Anne took the stand for the prosecution testifying against John. She argued that John had killed Joan intentionally, not even through negligence.
According to Anne, John grew deadly bacteria in petri dishes at his apartment while he was separated from Joan. Then he put the bacteria on the eclairs he served Joan at those dinner parties. He knew when she ate them, the germs would make her sick and kill her. Anne suggested all the other pastries he brought home were poisoned too.
It was all because John wanted to get Jones money and then marry Anne. So he needed to get his wife out of the way. Anne added that John had threatened her too. One night they had a big fight in a restaurant and afterward he tried to wreck his car with her in it. She was in the passenger seat and he intentionally crashed his car so that her side of the vehicle would smash against a bridge.
Anne said the only reason she survived was because she wasn't wearing a seatbelt. She had managed to dive across the car to the relative safety of the driver's seat. Now, John broke his collarbone in the crash and Anne's most serious injuries were minor cuts. She added that right after the crash, John pulled a needle out of his jacket and threatened her with a syringe full of poison. Apparently, he carried it with him in case he ever needed to murder someone.
Now, before John could administer the deadly injection, another car pulled up and Ann convinced the passersby to give her a ride to safety in their car. And Ann ended her testimony by saying, quote, John told me he killed Joan with a needle, which, OK, this might sound a bit over the top to some listeners. Of course, some husbands are violent at times, fatally so against their wives.
But the account about Anne jumping through a car mid-crash and John trying to poison her afterward, it's a little bit dramatic. Plus, this whole poison-declare theory didn't totally hold up to scrutiny. See, Joan and John's son, Boot, testified in court that John, his dad, regularly bought eclairs for the family, and Joan wasn't the only person who was eating them. Boot and his mother split pastries all the time, and he never got sick.
As for that story about John forcing any Claire on Joan at their dinner parties, sure, I mean, Boot didn't eat that particular dessert on those nights, so those specific of Claire's could have been tainted. But if John was going to poison his wife, why would he do it at a social gathering full of witnesses? And Anne wasn't exactly an unbiased source. Like I said, she'd just divorced John. She had plenty of reason to want to hurt him.
And the judge ruled that her testimony couldn't be substantiated and the jury shouldn't have heard anything she said. So the hearing actually ended in a mistrial. John had the chance to clear his name again the following year. His new trial was supposed to begin in December of 1972.
In the meanwhile, John finalized his divorce from Anne and then got married for a third time. His latest wife was Connie Loisbee. In September of 1972, two months before John's new trial, they took a trip to Las Vegas together. They actually left John's son, Boot, at home with John's mother, so it was a bit of a romantic getaway for the newlyweds. That same month, on the 24th, they got home.
John pulled open the door only to find an armed gunman inside his house. This was Bobby Wayne Vandiver and he'd already been at John's place for a while.
When John and Connie were out, Bobby had broken in and tied up John's mother and son in the kitchen. Then he'd sat and waited like he was there specifically for John. And now that he was looking John in the eyes, Bobby declared that this was a robbery. He grabbed Connie, John's new wife. She fought back in the struggle. His gun went off and he shot John. Not just once, which is what you'd expect if it was an accident.
Bobby hit him multiple times and John collapsed to the ground. Bobby grabbed John's briefcase and wallet and then fled the scene of the crime. Now, Connie ran to a neighbor's house and demanded they call police, but it was too late. John Hill had died right in the entrance to his house. His mother and son, who were still tied up, watched helplessly.
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Let's get back into the episode. Now, it initially seemed like John died in a robbery gone wrong. After all, Bobby announced he was robbing John as soon as they saw one another. But like I mentioned before, that narrative didn't fully check out, particularly given the fact that Bobby sat at John's home and waited for him. And then he shot John multiple times. Neither of those actions suggested that Bobby was startled or fired his gun on accident.
A bit of police investigation revealed that Bobby sometimes worked as a killer for hire. And when the officials tracked Bobby down and arrested him, he explained that someone had actually put a hit on John Hill, an alleged madam named Lila Polis.
So Bobby was dating a sex worker and his girlfriend reportedly worked for Lila, who apparently wanted John Hill dead. Of course, that didn't really explain much to police. Nobody knew how Lila knew John or why she'd want someone to kill him. Except Bobby's girlfriend told police she'd seen Lila meeting with Ash Robinson, Joan Hill's father. You probably saw this coming.
Now that didn't automatically mean that Ash asked Lila to have John killed. It's just like, what are the chances that he's meeting with her? And then she's the one who hires someone to have this happen.
I mean, I guess he could have been meeting her for another reason. Ash admitted he did know Lila Paulus, but he insisted he never said anything to her about murdering John, his ex-son-in-law. He denied any involvement in the homicide. I mean, either way, prosecutors could clearly draw a line straight from Ash to Lila to Bobby to John's murder, but it was all circumstantial. And to make matters more complicated, after he confessed to killing John,
Bobby Wayne Vandiver said that Ash Robinson had ordered the hit. Kind of. First, he said an old man wanted Dr. Hill dead, but Bobby didn't know the old man's name. Then he suddenly remembered the man went by Ash. A little later, he recalled his last name too. It was Robinson. And when police are like, why the heck are you just now telling us this? Like, where did this come from? He admitted he overheard a police officer say the name Ash Robinson, and that's what had sparked his memory.
which could mean the detectives were coaching the answer out of Bobby or that he was saying what he thought they wanted to hear.
After he implicated Ash Robinson, Bobby Wayne Vandiver was released from police custody. And obviously right away he skipped town. In mid-May, Bobby was spotted in a Dallas suburb. A rookie cop tried to arrest him and bring him back to Houston, but Bobby pulled a gun on the officer and a gunfight broke out and Bobby was actually fatally hit in the chest and he died instantly. Bobby took everything he knew about John Hill's murder to his grave.
Afterward, gossip suggested the officer might have killed him on purpose. Maybe someone wanted to silence Bobby before he could implicate Ash any further, this powerful, wealthy man, this oil tycoon in the state of Texas.
Bobby's girlfriend and Lila Paulus were both convicted for conspiring to kill John Hill, though. But Ash Robinson, he was never charged, likely because there wasn't any hard evidence against him, just suggestions that he'd met with Lila.
and Bobby's testimony, which was useless now that he was dead, but Ash always maintained. Sure, he didn't like John. He wasn't exactly heartbroken over the murder, but if he was going to take out a hit on his former son-in-law, he wouldn't do it while Boot was in the house. He loved his grandson and hated that witnessing John's homicide may have been traumatizing for him. Plus, Ash took a polygraph in which he insisted he had nothing to do with John's murder and he passed.
John's mother eventually sued Ash in a wrongful death case, but the jurors ended up ruling in his favor. They just didn't think there was any compelling evidence that Ash actually took out a contract on John's life. So we still don't know who had John Hill killed, if anyone did.
Which all leaves us with a tangled web of unverified accusations. Maybe Ash Robinson really did have John Hill murdered. Or maybe the other conspirators pointed fingers at him because they wanted to stay on the prosecutor's good side. Perhaps John's homicide really was just what it looked like, an accident and a robbery gone wrong. And as for Joan Hill, a decade after her death in 1980, a doctor came forward with a new theory.
Her symptoms were extremely similar to those in toxic shock syndrome. In severe cases, it causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and severely low blood pressure, all of which Joan had.
Toxic shock syndrome can be deadly and it wasn't discovered until 1978. So if Joan was suffering from it in 1969, her doctors probably wouldn't have known what they were looking at. And how tragic would that be? If Joan's death really was an accident, there's a possibility her husband, who she loved dearly, may have been murdered in a revenge killing for a homicide that never happened.
It really takes the shine off of ideas about power couples and drives home the fact that you can never know what's really going on behind closed doors because this power couple, ultimately both parties ended up dead in what might be connected, but what might not.