‘King of the Hill’ actor Jonathan Joss’ husband says star’s killing was homophobic hate crime — but cops deny that claim
The husband of “King of the Hill” star Jonathan Joss alleged that the voice actor was murdered by a homophobic neighbor after enduring “years” of violent threats on their street — but residents and police are telling a different story.
“He was murdered by someone who could not stand the sight of two men loving each other,” Joss’ husband, Tristan Kern de Gonzales, wrote in a Facebook post Monday, a day after the killing.
The San Antonio Police Department, however, soon denied those claims.
“Currently the investigation has found no evidence to indicate that Mr. Joss’s murder was related to his sexual orientation,” the department wrote on X.
Gonzales claimed on social media that he and Joss had stopped by the site of their Texas home — which burned down in February — to pick up their mail on Sunday, when they found the bones of their dead pet dog displayed on the property.
“This caused both of us severe emotional distress. We began yelling and crying in response to the pain of what we saw,” Gonzales wrote. “While we were doing this a man approached us. He started yelling violent homophobic slurs at us. He then raised a gun from his lap and fired.”
Joss — a 59-year-old best known for voicing John Redcorn on the bawdy cartoon comedy — was struck by the gunfire and killed.
A suspect and neighbor who lives doors down from the couple, Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja, was arrested shortly after the shooting.
Gonzales claimed the killing was just the culmination of a long saga of frightening homophobia the couple endured on their street, alleging neighbors had spent “years” threatening to burn their home down, but that cops never intervened.
Residents, however, painted a different picture, telling that Joss was an “erratic” neighbor, whose alarming antics caused them to regularly ignore him for their own safety.
“He would just walk up and down the street … he would just, like, scream,” said neighbor Isabel Caballero. “We knew how he was, so we wouldn’t disturb him. Even if he looked at us, talked mess to us, we just ignored him.”
Others said Joss “wasn’t a good neighbor” and would yell how “he was God” until neighbors called the police.
San Antonio cops were called to Joss’ home at least 40 times since January 2024, according to the outlet, with complaints ranging from mental health situations, neighbor disturbances and welfare checks.
Those calls culminated with the February fire, which neighbors told TMZ Joss set himself by trying to heat his home with a barbecue pit after its services were cut off because the house had been deemed uninhabitable.
“We all knew it was going to end up like this because of his antics,” a neighbor who asked to remain anonymous told My San Antonio.
“It’s sad cause this could have been prevented if he had gotten the help he needed.”
