Ready for another round of Texas writer smackdowns? How about the genre of true crime? In one corner we have Thomas Thompson’s Blood and Money tale of greed, lust, revenge – and, of course, money, vs. Skip Hollandsworth’s She Kills, in which the supposedly fair sex gets down and dirty for all of the above reasons and some you have to read to believe.
Thompson
was born in Fort Worth, like previously spotlighted smackdown writer Patricia
Highsmith. Like Highsmith, he moved left Texas but unlike her, could never
quite shake off the state’s dust. He covered the JKF assassination in Dallas
and went on to write about the rivalry of Houston surgeons at the dawn of the
heart transplant era and later with the also Houston-based murders of socialite
Joan Robinson Hill and her husband in Blood and Money.
(I
have a special fondness for Blood and Money, having lived in Houston
during part of the time covered in Thompson’s book.)
***
Blood and Money
If ever a woman had it all, it was Joan Robinson. She was rich, beautiful and charismatic, sought after by myriad eligible men and the adored only child of her father, wealthy oilman Ash Robinson. Maybe too much adored.
Joan went through men like a Texas tornado, notching up a couple of divorces before she fell hard for John Hill, a struggling young doctor. At first, Hill seemed equally smitten, but the marriage soon turned ugly. Aside from a quickly fading physical attraction, the pair had nothing in common.
Joan was a
world-class equestrian atop her beloved gaited mare. John hoped to parlay his
wife’s (i.e. her father’s) money into a home recital hall that would be the
envy of any music lover. Show horses were as foreign to him as classical music
was to her.
And although
daddy Robinson and Hill loathed each other, Joan was too horrified by the
prospect of losing at marriage a third time to consider divorce.
Dr. Hill
sought other female companionship, but he and his wife floundered along until
Joan was stricken by a mysterious illness.
And the
old saw of doctors’ wives dying young
came all too true. But was Joan’s death simply an illness ignored too long by
her husband. Or was it murder? If so, by the doctor or his woman companion?
The next
death was John Hill’s, this time unmistakably murder. He was shot at close
range in his own home by a complete stranger, who was later killed while
resisting arrest.
Who was
ultimately behind the string of deaths? Suspicion pointed to Joan’s father. But
with enough money, anything can happen. . .And although multiple parties,
including Ash Robinson filed suit over the book, none ultimately prevailed.
(Thompson
would later die also somewhat mysteriously – from a liver disease his family
believed he contracted during a South Asian research trip for still another
book.)
***
She Kills:
The Murderous Socialite, the Cross-Dressing Bank Robber, and Other True Crime
Tales
Despite
the subtitles of She Kills, a couple of its stories are of women who
are simply quirky, quite possibly wronged, but nonviolent. Still, there’s a
strange fascination on the subject of women who kill, sometimes by their own
hands, sometimes through intermediaries.
Women such
as the terribly nice nurse whose patients loved her. (Pray she’s not on the
night shift during your hospital stay.)
Or the
deadly dentist, the homicidal high schooler, the shady socialite, and others.
In each
case, Hollandsworth provides a “where are they now” follow-up. Does it confirm
their guilt or give us reasons to believe them innocent?
The prize of the stories is “Oh, Sister, Where
Art Thou?”, the tale of eight women imprisoned in the early 1940’s at the Goree
State Farm in Texas, then the state’s only prison for women.
Calling
themselves the Goree All Girl String Band, “. . . they were once a national
sensation,” Hollandsworth writes, drawing millions of radio listeners to the
musical variety show titled Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls that
featured them.
These
women, most of whom had no musical experience, were indeed killers – no matter
how justifiable their actions may seem in hindsight.
Some
received early release because of their popularity. None ever returned to show
business or, apparently, discussed this aspect of their lives after leaving
prison. A movie about their experiences is believed to be in development.
True crime devotees will want to make their own decision about each book’s worthiness. Hollandsworth’s is the more readily available, but with a little searching I found copies of both in my local HalfPrice Books. And, of course, there’s always the internet.
