Murder In Texas House For Sale

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whirlcool

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Jun 29, 2005
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Just North Of Houston, Texas
I don't know if any of you remember the notorious Joan Robinson Hill case from Houston. It was made into a movie called "Murder In Texas" starring Farrah Fawcett in the mid 80's. Tommy Thompson also wrote a book "Blood & Money" based on this story.

Dr. Hill was a plastic surgeon who reportedly killed his wife by poisoning her and then taking her to some rinkly dink hospital where she died. She was buried before an autopsy could be performed. Later, Dr. Hill himself was murdered in the foyer of this mansion supposedly a hit from his deceased wife's father.

The price for this house is ridiculously low. This house is on one of the fanciest streets in all of Houston. The lot is worth more than the asking price. Could it be bad karma associated with this house?

www.zillow.com

1561 Kirby Dr, Houston, TX 77019 | MLS #46597847 | Zillow

This 6531 square feet Single Family home has 4 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms. It is located at 1561 Kirby Dr, Houston, TX.
www.zillow.com www.zillow.com
 
Smudge it

If I had the bucks I'd buy that house, have someone come in with a smudging pot and be done with it.
Not that I really believe in such things but at least one has done SOMETHING to bring closure.
Afterward, throw a party and enjoy life in a beautiful house.
 
How to fix bad house-karma . . .

Bad karma like that can be easily corrected with a bulldozer. I'll always remember standing in front of O.J. Simpson's old house on Rockingham in Brentwood and watching the bulldozer take a ceremonial chunk out of the front porch with the new owner and his toddler son sitting next to the driver. By the end of the day the house was gone, as well as the media out front. The new house subsequently built on the lot was a vast improvement. This looks to be a better house  - O.J.'s had been remodeled badly several times - but still nothing special, just big and pretentious. I suspect the price is where it is as everyone expects the house to be scraped.
 
Other houses on this street go for between $4-6+ million dollars and are usually upwards of 10,000 ft in size. So this is one of the smallest houses on the street.

If you look at the photos in the listing the interior seems quite dated. The last person before the current ones did some extensive remodeling (circa 1999) but it still has that dated look. The price when the hills bought it was $80,000 in 1966.

Funny you should mention that this may be a tear down. There have been other tear downs on Kirby Dr in recent years. Except for this house the lots tend to be very large, the lot this one sits on is pretty small and the house sits on it at a very odd angle.

Bad Taste - Texas Style

Back in 2007 the current owners held a Halloween party. Some of the guests came dressed as Joan Robinson Hill and her husband Dr. R. Hill. Can you believe? Also some better photos of the homes interior.

[this post was last edited: 6/2/2012-23:12]

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Also all the principal players in this entire mess are long dead. The only one left is their son who is now 46 and is a prosecuting attorney in Maryland. He won't talk about it and hasn't been back to Texas for years and years.

I recently had an appointment just down the street from this house at another mansion. One of the largest in Houston to say the least. The home is so big it had three driveways and at each driveway was a guardhouse with off duty Houston police officer. The guy who owned it happened to be one of the highest paid executives in the entire country.
I would say that River Oaks is probably one of the safest places in Houston, but when you have this much money that you have police officers guarding your house and a house full of hired help is it really worth it? Are you ever really alone?
 
Yup . . .

I caught that dated look too, and I'm sure the closets and master bath aren't up to current high-end standards. Unless a house is architecturally distinguished, or somehow grandfathered with respect to setbacks, height, etc., then it often makes more sense to tear it down and start over if the owner insists on modern amenities and a modern floorplan. Very little of the value of a house is in the studwalls, and if you're going to install new plumbing, electrical, windows, HVAC, and move things around it becomes a nightmare. In addition once you're doing a major remodel of a significant portion of the house most codes will require that it be brought up to current standards for structural integrity and energy use. That becomes really complicated because modern homes are structurally way better than older homes and you'll very likely have to add shear panels to the walls and underpin the foundation, plus install hundreds of metal connectors like Simpson A-35s to tie rafters to top plates, bolt the sole plates to the foundation, etc. The actual materials in older homes is usually fine but they are rarely well connected.

 

If a home contributes significantly to the integrity of the neighborhood then it becomes more worthwhile to consider a remodel, but most postwar homes aren't that special.
 
Phooey

Redecorate and live in it.  2 million should by a fine house.  New houses may be efficient, but don't have character.
 
A properly designed new house has just as much character as an old house. What is doesn't have is a history, and if that is special it can be a reason to save the house. In this case the house doesn't have character so much as it has notoriety and that's not a good thing unless the occupants enjoy being gawked at. I was in the O.J. Simpson house several times before it was bulldozed and people would come by and try to see over the 6' front fence or under the gates, put cameras on broomsticks, etc. Once the house was replaced and address number changed to a previously unused number the problem was significantly reduced. The Hill house is IMO a worse situation as not only did a vicious and famous murder take place there but the previous owner obviously enjoyed the attention and tastelessly capitalized on it with the halloween parties. Ugh.
 
Another thing about this house. The dormers were not original to the house. They were added in 99' when the house was last remodeled. The attic was originally unfinished, but was finished then and the dormers added in 99'.
When you look at the house the dormers seem out of scale to the house. They are too big.
 
Nothin Ikea can't fix!

You're right about the dormers, they do look out of place and out of scale.  The rest of the house needs a makeover for sure, perhaps the dishwasher can stay.  Unless the single rinses caused some sort of bacterial mind infection that was the source of all the tragedy...  Better get a new one, just in case!
 
For those who don't know the story, supposedly Dr. Hill brought home eclairs for everyone at the house. And he designated who got each eclair. One person grabbed the wrong one and he had a hissy fit. Supposedly the eclairs for his wife were laced with botulism. Hence at the party pictures you see the current owners of the house with the husband dressed as a doctor holding a platter of eclairs.

Funny, but the house has been owned by prominent Houston attorneys since it left the family in the mid 80's. Dr. Hill's son grew up in the house with his third wife.
That must have been a nightmare for the kid, growing up with all those memories hanging out in each room.
 
Lived in Houston during the trial and when Dr. Hill was killed in the doorway.    Was on every station during the whole affair.  Good friends brought us up to date on the whole affair.  Still shudder at the thought of her dying that way and him too. 

 

I thought the house looked different so it is the dormers.  Thanks Allen for bringing that out.
 
Houston during the late 60's & early 70's has a history of high society who done it's that drew national attention. Besides the Hill case there was the case of Candace Mossler. She eventually got off. It was a case that had tongues in Houston wagging until the mid 70's.

I loved one of her quotes. When reporters confronted her with allegations of adultery, incest, and murder, she simply replied, "Well, nobody's perfect."

An unnamed reporter for a Houston newspaper stated that "Some of the nastiest and trashiest people on the face of this earth drive those high end luxury cars all over River Oaks. It's only their money and the gates around their mansions that keep word of what is going on inside from getting out."

wikimapia.org

3711 Willowick Road - Wikimapia

Former estate of Candace Mossler, see comment below. This house was built by J. Leon Osborn in 1950 and was formerly 3699 Willowick.
wikimapia.org
 

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