LOL, white it is.
No big deal really. But the show felt that they had to honor Larry Hagman, and his portrayal of JR Ewing, and felt that just having JR die off camera of "natural causes", or an accident would be awful. So they are "honoring" the character and man by having him murdered, and thus a "who killed JR?" which will be paying homage to him and keeping him sort of on the show for a while longer.