Small Town Murder - #332 - A Kiss Before Death - Odessa, Texas

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

This week, in Odessa, Texas, a very different kind of young lady struggles to keep her sanity, in west Texas, while exploring all that the local boys have to offer. She intentionally tries to shock the people she considers "the squares", by her dress, and actions. Seemingly out of nowhere, she decides that she wants to die, and asks everyone that she knows to help her, by killing her. When she comes up missing, there's quite a few people who have an idea of what happened, but the truth is incredibly shocking, and disturbing!!Along the way, we find out that people sometimes speak in a confusing way in west Texas, that dry humping your cousin isn't a proper Christmas activity, and that you can't prepare for something you didn't mean to do!!Hosted by James Pietragallo and Jimmie WhismanNew episodes every Thursday!Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports!Follow us on...twitter.com/@murdersmallfacebook.com/smalltownpodinstagram.com/smalltownmurderAlso, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Wondery, Wondery+, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. What if you married the love of your life and then stood by them as they developed 21 new identities? What would you do? This Is Actually Happening is a weekly podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. Listen to the newest season of This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. This week in Odessa, Texas, a young lady with a flair for the dramatic goes missing, but the story quickly turns into a tale of secrets, darkness, violence,

and eventually the possible haunting of a high school. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. i'm here with my co-host i'm jimmy wissman thank you folks so much for joining us on another crazy edition of small town murder this week another wild story i don't know what it is but we have just been digging out the crazy and it's been coming through out there allison our research person's been doing a kick ass job and finding stories as well. Yeah, she's good at finding stories too, so this is awesome.

Let's get into this very quickly. Top of the show, shutupandgivememurder.com is where you get everything, anything you want. All your merchandise, things like that. Come join us there. You get all the information about the show. Also, wherever you listen, give five stars. It helps a lot, whatever app you're listening

on. Helps drive us up the charts. We don't know why that is, but for some reason, the reviews are a big part of it. So thank you for doing that. You definitely, definitely want to get on Patreon. Oh, my goodness. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports is where you get all of the bonus stuff.

My goodness. All the bonus material episodes right now. Anybody, $5 or above. That's not going to go up, by the way. People have asked us, hey, things are getting more expensive. Are you going to get is the whole back catalog a bonus episode it's like 150 of them and of course every other week you are going to get two new episodes one crime and sports and one small town murder and this week which you're going to get for crime and sports we're going to do something very cool kind of like reading a newspaper in 1900 a little bit like a we're going to do some sportsy stuff just a couple of sportsy things then we're going to get into these ads from back then because the funniest thing are a long ad that claims this crazy

medical stuff that has been debunked for a hundred years now. But it's a miracle. It's awesome. So there's a whole bunch of these crazy ads, technology things that are you know, this is a new thing. It never materialized. Stuff like that. Going to be so fun. Then for Small Town Murder,

of course we're doing this have to do it a couple times a year when they end their season we are going to talk about this season of love after lockup holy hell is all i have to say what a season it's you don't even have to have seen the show to enjoy us talking about it put it that way because it's just so crazy but get all of that and more. Patreon.com slash crime and sports. The next one after this will be the prisoner dating game. So buckle up for that. Yeah, it's all sorts of good stuff. That said, time for the disclaimer.

This is a comedy show. We are comedians. This is definitely a comedy show. But all the story is real. That's the crazy part. Murder, everything. We don't make anything up for comic effect or any garbage like that. No,

this is all real. We wish it wasn't, but it happened. So we're going to talk about it and jokes are going to happen. But what they, what we do is we keep the jokes to things that should be able to take it. You know, if a police force messes up,

lets a murderer go free for 10 years, we'll make fun of them. We'll make fun of a murderer. We'll do that. We'll make fun of a small town. Who cares? We're all from someplace terrible. Just embrace it.

It's fun stuff. But what we do or what we don't do, what we go out of our way not to do, is we do not make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why is that, James? Because we're assholes. But? But we're not scumbags. That sounds good there.

If that sounds good to you, excellent. Do you think true crime and comedy should never, ever, ever go together? I don't know. Maybe you're in the wrong place. That's all there. If that sounds good to you, excellent. Do you think true crime and comedy should never, ever, ever go together? I don't know. Maybe you're in the wrong place. That's all I have to say to that. Maybe not, though. Give it a shot.

No bitching afterwards. That's all I have to say. That said, I think it's time. Wherever you are, shout it out your car window. I don't give a shit from your elliptical. Stand on your countertop and scare the hell out of your pets.

It's time to shout Shut up and give me murder. Let's go. Let's do this, Jimmy. Yes, sir. Let's go on a trip and we're going to be

going down to Texas here pretty soon, actually, for our show in Austin there. Fuck, man. It's really screaming up on us. Yeah, we're coming. But this is Odessa, Texas.

And what you're going to think is you're going to go, Odessa, Texas has like 100,000 people in it. That's not a small town. It's not, but it is and sort of still. But when this murder happened, it certainly had that vibe to it. It was kind of an outpost, much different than it is now. Where the fuck is it? West Texas, southwest Texas, kind of right before that southwestern panhandle there that cuts under New Mexico.

Okay, yeah, so we've for sure driven through it. No, we drove kind of south of it. Oh, it's inland. Yeah, it would be inland. It is up there, man. It's the middle of Texas. Just put it that way. It's the middle of nowhere. It's the that way. It's the middle of nowhere.

It's the Amarillo of southern Texas or central Texas, I guess you could call it. It's about eight hours to Houston. So that's a drive. Five and a half hours to Austin. So that's even a drive there. And about four and a half hours to Aledo, Texas, which was our last Texas episode. It was an Express episode. And it was Adam Sandler killed my family, if you remember that one. That our last Texas episode. It was an Express episode, and it was Adam Sandler Killed My Family, if you remember that one.

That was a crazy episode, so go back and check that out. This is in Ector County, E-C-T-O-R, which just makes me think of Ghostbusters, like Ecto. Yeah, Ectoplasm. Yeah, Ecto Cooler. I just think of that green high C, and I want some. How crazy is that?

We were drinking Ecto Cooler and the, isn't the goo that explodes? This is the goo from a ghost. And we're like, Oh, liquefy it, put it in a can and let your children drink it happily. Cannon,

put it in my fridge. I can't wait. The kids are like, mommy, please more ghost goo, please. It's green. So, uh, the area code four, Mommy, please, more ghost goo, please. It's green. So the area code 432, motto here.

This is a weird motto. I don't know what they're insinuating, but, quote, the right place in Texas. Oh. As opposed to all those wrong places in Texas. Yeah. That certainly insinuates there's a wrong place. There's a wrong place. Maybe all of them besides this one.

I feel like that's an aggressive motto. Not we're great. It's all of you are pieces of shit is what i feel like that is yeah it's you not us it's aggressive yeah uh history of this town very quickly because there's not a whole lot out here honestly it was founded in 1881 as a water stop and cattle shipping point on the railroad so that's what it was. It was just a stop to, you know, water up the animals. Stop so you don't die. Water up the animals and a stop where you can load your cattle onto the railroad. That's all it was here.

A stop so that when you get where you're going, it's not, everything's not dead. Yeah, that's all. So things won't die as you ride them you know because your destination is deathly far so your horse won't crumble to the ground because there's nothing for another few hundred miles after this this is the middle of nowhere this state i'm telling you they had a uh post office in 1885 they didn't incorporate it until 1927 because that's when oil was discovered so they were like oh let's let's go ahead and organize this. We'll take it. Yeah. So they had the Penn oil field in 1929. The Cowden field in 1930. New residents came. This is a boom and bust town. People come when when there's like something crazy going on and then they leave and then they come again. It's boomed and busted like six times already, this town. But it always –

Doesn't that tell you something about your shit, right? Right. It always maintains some level. By 1925, there was 750 people. By 1929, there was 5,000 people. Oh. So, yeah, all these booms have happened, and the 60s and 80s were the big bus famous people from Odessa. Roy Orbison is from here.

You're goddamn right. He's damn straight. Roy Orbison is from here. So there you go. And Roy Orbison will come up in the story, by the way. Of course. One of the people, his uncle has a car wash and the kid works there. And Roy Orbison comes in like once a week and brings his car to get his shit washed.

So, yeah, Roy Orbison. Reviews of this town. Here we go. Five stars is the first one. I love these reviews. These are my favorite. Five stars. Odessa is a smaller town in Texas, which has recently been expanding very rapidly.

It is a safe place and down to earth. All right. It's place and down to earth all right uh it's it's safe and down to earth i guess the people are not hoity-toity up to mars yeah well how hoity-toity can you be when there's a dust cloud constantly blowing through you're gonna wear your the whole town is whole town's real humble is that because you guys boom and bust so much as soon as shit goes away you guys everybody fucking leaves nobody out there in their cashmere overcoats in a 112 degree dust storm that's not happening okay down to earth although there's not much to do there's always new things to try if there's not much to do how is there new things to try there's always new things but nothing to do that is the most

that's the biggest mind fuck of anything i've ever read in my life that is not cool there's nothing to do here unless there's a new tiktok trend that's it figure that out like if a bunch of 15 year olds were in a room and stoned and they read that they'd go whoa man holy shit, bro. Wow. Nothing to do but always, wow, how the fuck does that work, man? Well, oh, man, let's think about it for a while. I'm going to get that tattooed across my shoulder blades tomorrow. Someone should.

Someone should get a tattoo of that. It also has some very nice maintained parks to enjoy the outdoors, to enjoy the desert. So there you go. Here's five stars. Odessa is a place where M-O-J-O football lives. I don't know what the fuck that is. Mojo football.

Mojo football. Yeah, that's mojo. That is. I love everything about this place, and it makes students feel safe and in touch with their society. Long live mojo football, all capital letters. This is very... Must be a high school. This is a strange one.

Four stars. Okay. So everything's pretty good. People smile, then awkwardly look away. Okay. It's you, bud. What do you want them to do? Stare into your bore into your soul.

That's called not wanting to start a fight with someone. You don't stare at people. That's weird. Or not wanting people to people think you're a creep that tells me something's in your teeth friend something or they just look at you go no thank you they're just they're rejecting your presence yeah your face is horrible three stars what i like about odessa is that it is semi-normal. All right? Right away. Nobody sells this place at all. No, semi-normal isn't exactly. Have you ever seen a marketing campaign for a product where they're like, it's semi-normal, with like a fucking guitar riff afterwards?

I've never seen that before. I would like to see more kindness and friendship than always having to watch your back. Dude, it's certainly you. what is happening in this place what's going on is it just a few weird people then again the people that feel the need to leave a review of a town are probably strange people so maybe that's what it is people smile and awkwardly look away and everybody is attacking me from behind always daggers in my back, man. Two stars. Odessa is a busy little town.

Sadly, due to crimes and drugs, it can be a dangerous place. Right now, nothing much is open due to the pandemic. This was 2021. So, yeah, not a quaint little town. More like Murder USA. That's what I'm talking about. Hell, yeah. Fuck, yeah.

Murder USA, baby. That's what i'm talking about hell yeah fuck yeah murder usa baby that's what i mean that's a big difference from the other place that said it's how safe it is and down to earth these people murder usa detroit texas holy shit two stars this is my favorite review ever people die here people die every day here that can be said for literally every place on Earth. Every place. People die every day everywhere. That's awesome.

And the car accidents are horrible. Well, yes, car accidents are terrible. No one likes car accidents. So here we go. Now, finally, one star. Run for your life, essentially, is this review here. If you ever wanted to see what it's like to drive in a Mad Max movie, here's your chance!

Exclamation point. In other words, I think it's just crazy and chaos. It's a cross between monster truck madness and hot shot truck domination and anything goes.

That sounds like a movie tagline. I think so. I think that's why the car accidents are so horrible because it's this. Giant trucks. Oh, my God. Pieces of people's dogs and cats can be found in the morning.

Oh, my God. They're exploding around here. Jesus Christ. That's how bad people drive. It causes cats to explode. So population of this town here is right now it's 125,000. this town here is right now it's 125 000 but back when we were talking about it's somewhere between night it's somewhere between 30 and 80 000 we're not sure at the time which is weird because in in 10 years it went up 50 000 people so is that right yeah it just exploded the 50s was a big

boom and then the 60s was a bust roy that's what happens man um no the 60s was a bust. Thanks a lot, Roy. That's what happens, man. No, the 60s were a bust, so Roy killed it, maybe. Oh, yeah, he did. Good for him. Yeah. He crushed the growth on purpose. Few more females, or few more males than females here, actually, because there's a lot of oil jobs, so that's going to attract people there. Median age is about 30, which is less than normal, which is 37.

Otherwise, things are pretty pretty standard 51 married that sort of thing nothing crazy their race of this town uh 35.8 white 4.9 black 1.6 asian 55.8 hispanic here is that right but that that means nothing for when we were. When we were here, it's pretty much all white at the time. You can flip the Hispanic and white tenure in 2010. So people moved and came and it just shifted in the last 15 years or so. So religion in this town, 54% are religious, which is honestly less than I thought, to be honest with you. 19.7% Baptist. Coming in at a close second, 16.3% Catholic.

So it's close, though. It's very, very close. They're fighting for West Texas supremacy over here. In Ector County in the last election, 25.5% of the people voted for Democratic and 73.3% Republican. And the rest 1.2% of the people voted for Democratic and 73.3% Republican and the rest 1.2% Independent. The economy here, high unemployment rate right now. Really? They're going through a bit of a dip.

9.9% unemployment, which is way higher than the national average, like double. The median household income here, though, is $56,119, which is right about the national average. So a lot of times these oil jobs, they pay well. Those are dangerous. And they're outdoors and dirty. And they're nothing you'd want to do. So you've got to pay someone $40 an hour to do it. That explains 30-year-old men being the dominant population here.

Exactly. That totally tracks. So cost of living here, $100 is regular average. Here it is $ here. Exactly. That totally tracks. So cost of living here, 100 is regular average. Here it is 84.2. So a little bit low. Housing is a 60 out of 100. Hey!

Median home cost $175,200. So not too bad at all, actually. Yeah, that's not bad. And if we've convinced you, damn it, that there's no other place on God's green or dusty brown, in this case, Earth, we have for you the Odessa, Texas, Real Estate Report. Two-bedroom rentals here, your average, goes for about $1,264, which is right around the national average. Yeah, so that's odd for a place where houses are so cheap. That's probably because people come in and out, temporary jobs, rentals are more desirable.

I found here we got a three-bedroom, one-bath. This house, it can't be this big, but the listing says 7,405 square feet. That must be the whole complex. It's probably the lot. I'm not sure, but it looks like shit in the pictures. They couldn't even have cleaned it up for the real estate pictures. Like there's all the windows have blankets on them, not curtains.

What? Yeah, when people are just using blankets, I'm not talking about that one window where the dog ripped the blinds down. It's in the back and you haven't had a chance to change it. We all have one of those. It's every window. I'm talking about your front fucking windows are different blankets too. Not even uniform blankets.

Different blankets. Your life is not together. I'm sorry. Are they like the blankets that you bought on the street corner, like a howling wolf? one's like a door of the explorer and then one's like just a red one and then one's like it's just bix and match it's a shit hole um it looks terrible 45 000 even though for it so i guess that's why there you go here's one here four bedroom four bath tea bowl for each and every three thousand seven hundred twenty nine square feet it's the weirdest looking house ever it looks like cameron from ferris

bueller's day off it looks like his house but way douchier like if you updated that if someone wanted to build a modern version of that house that's what what it looks like. A lot of frosted glass and weird touches. It's very, very weird. It's not good at all. Don't like it. $545,000 for this weird house. Okay. It's even weird, like the shape of it's weird. It's long. It's like a raised ranch, but it's got a big point.

It's very strange. Yeah, it's the king ranch. It's weird. Those ranch houses love to have a real long house with one big peak. One big point, yeah. So you've got two long slopes. Yeah, that's... I don't know why they did that.

What it is. Here's a five-bedroom, seven-bath. A couple of more T-balls for your B-holes there. 11,300 square feet. It's huge. It's a big, dull house. There's nothing like... You wouldn't go, oh, wow, that one room they made is cooler. It's got. It's a big, dull house. There's nothing like you wouldn't go, oh, wow, that one room they made is cooler.

It's got a basketball court over there. If you have 11,000 square feet, have some fun. Fuck around a little bit. You know what I mean? Put something weird in there. Nothing. It's just a very plain, boring house. $2,565,000 for that. Very

affordable. If you're in the market for a $2.5 million house, yeah, I guess you could consider it affordable. But otherwise, it's pricey. If you can afford a $2 million house, getting almost 12,000 square feet for $2 million, that's incredible. Except that it's in the middle of nowhere. That's the other problem here. It is in Odessa, Texas. Yeah, that's an issue. Things to do here. Now, number one, the University of Texas at

Permian Basin, I think it's called, has a replica of Stonehenge. They made Stonehenge there. Some college, some state college in the middle of out here somewhere. Why? I don't know why. It's not like Stonehenge does not exist anymore, so we're going to run. There is a Stonehenge. It's for those who can't afford to get there? I suppose.

There are pictures, but still, I guess it's there. You can look at it, and there's Stonehenge. But we don't know why that's there. We're still trying to figure that out. Well, we know who put the ones in Texas, though. Those are not a mystery. There's a bunch of college kids did that, but the other ones we're not sure about. There's also the

Permian Basin Fair. Okay. All right. I'm going to read right from their website here. The Midway, the rides, the musicians and entertainers, the daredevils. You'll find them all at the 2022 Permian Basin Fair and Exposition. Are you excited yet, Jimmy?

Yeah, I'm losing it. Is your chair soaked or what? What do we got here? You sitting in a puddle? What are we doing? In shit. I just shit my pants. I bet you that's what I mean.

I bet your whole body gave out. Every function you have just let loose at one point. I came in shit twice. It was wild. Didn't you hear me sneezing? Featuring rides, games, and good, clean fun. Oh.

Good, clean fun, everybody. When have you gone to the fair and had that filthy fun? That's what I mean. These goddamn filthy fairs I go to with their porn expositions. That's every time I go in there. It's like, oh, they're having

the Bukkake exposition today. Of course I chose to with their porn expositions. That's every time I go in there, it's like, oh, they're having the Bukkake Exposition today. Of course I chose to bring my kids to the day where it's Bukkake Expo 2022. Thanks a lot, fair. We just came to 2021 on accident, and now we do it again. Now I'm doing this. Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks. Now I'm taking my kids home. Yeah, get a corndog and we're leaving, kids. So then there's the great musical performers playing country, rock, and everything in between. They're so great, we won't even name them.

That's what it says to me, basically. So great, none of them are a draw. There's nothing in between country and rock. Nothing. It's what is in there. Live music, kids celebration, the Paul Bunyan Lumberjack Show. Hey! That's part of it.

That's porn, right? It has to be, I'm sure. The Texan Petting Zoo, which means you pet it and then kill it, probably. You pet it, then shoot it in the head and put it directly onto a grill. I believe it's a Texan Petting Zoo, right? Isn't that how that works? Who wants barbecue sauce? That's it. It's a Texan petting zoo, right? Isn't that how that works? Who wants barbecue sauce? That's it.

It's over. Pet the cow that has the sign that is its name of the way you want it prepared. That's right. I'll pet medium rare. Oh, hello, medium rare. He's adorable. Also, Pirates of the Sky. I assume it's some sort of air show.

Battle of the Basin Cheerleading. So it sounds like a battle of the cheerleader things. Little Miss Permian Basin Fair. A talent show. Garden Tractor Poles. A dog extravaganza. Yes! That sounds awesome.

I don't know what it is. I'll go to that. but a lot of dogs i feel like you could pet some dogs there um the kid that loses the uh little miss uh basin they put her show she's in that she's the automatic front runner and the dog extravaganza that's texas though that's not that's just that's texas that's what it works. Permian Basin Oil Draws. Oh. Who wants to yank some oil out the earth? Come on now. Plenty of it. Comanche Moon Fast Draw.

Oh. Comanche Moon Fast Draw. So I think that's like drawing guns, like a cowboy style. Of course it is. Praise and Worship Night. You got to have that after your fast draw competition. Then the C dog trials. And then finally, the main event, the team roping, of course.

So that's quite the fair right there. I'll tell you what. It's all rodeo, a little bit of music, and shitloads more animals. And then we'll judge how pretty your daughter is. That's it. And then they're all going to leer at your little girl. All right, then. Crime rate in this town, property crime is high.

It's about one-third above the national average. Oh, boy. It's a little bit high. And then crime rate also for violent crime, Jesus, the Mount Rushmore of crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, of course, assault, that's more than double the national average. Oh, shit. Yeah, there's some shit going on there. Now, you can take all of that and scrub it all away because we're going back in time a little bit here. Okay.

So none of that shit matters. It's a totally different time, a totally different place. I'm trying to think of like – because the time we're going to go back to is 1960, which is a long time for us. We usually don't go back that far. So 1960 we're going to go back to, which is interesting to me, and especially for Texas. So this is very much like Greece but in Texas. So you're going to have your – imagine that scene, okay,

a lot of Letterman jackets and things like that and flat tops. You can picture it. Throw a cowboy hat on Zuko. Yeah, exactly. Throw a cowboy hat and a belt buckle on danny zuko and you got something here imagine kenicky with a pickup truck instead of that white piece of shit that he had instead of grease lightning just picture him with like a you know a ford like a 58 ford or something instead well the one kid had because i'm thinking like dazed and

confused that was this area but that was supposed to be like 15 years later when the 70s had crept in. But there was still a lot of that Texas football and all that kind of thing. And that's kind of part of our story here. Two books that we checked out this week, or one's an article actually and one's a book. The article is called A Kiss Before Dying. They had some very good information there by Pamela Coliff. It was in Texas Monthly that published it. And then there is a book called Washed in Blood by Shelton Williams.

Jesus, Shelton. So Shelly Williams, that's his name that he goes by. Shelly Williams. That's what his family calls him. Basically, he is one of our participants in this week's story it's her cousin so he wrote a book about the whole thing too and gives some good insight

oh so his cousin was involved in it yeah we'll talk about how now this whole thing this would cause basically teen rituals in the area to be altered and for weird reasons and other reasons, and it would spur very particular ghost and haunting stories for the next forever. Basically, it's incredible.

This story is fucking wild. Buckle up. All right, here we go. 1960. Let's get into it. Let's talk about a murder. Sorry. There we go.

I had to say that. Let's do this a murder. Sorry. There we go. I had to say that. Let's do this. Okay. 1960. We have to talk about Elizabeth Jean Williams. She goes by Betty. Shelly's cousin. Shelly's cousin, Betty.

Exactly. I guess her family calls her Betty Jean. So a lot of people call her Betty Jean, which in Texas you have to have two names. Betty's plenty of a first name. You know what I mean? It's two syllables. It's a fine, solid, you know, you're not Jimmy Ellis. You know what I mean?

Right. Because Jimmy is two syllables. It's plenty. It's plenty. Yeah. It's all you need. So either way. Betty was enough for, was it Jughead dated her?

She was in the Archie comics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Betty. Betty Rubble. She was plenty for Mrs. Yeah, for Mr. Rubble. There's been plenty of Bettys. We don't need to specify.

Yeah. From Mad Men. We've had lots of from this time. Betty is a very popular name this time, too. Sure is. And we had the other Texas case, which is one of our favorite episodes of all time with Betty Lou Beetz, who killed four of her husbands, which was a crazy story we did back in the 60s, early.

You said 19. Well, we did in like 1984. Yeah, no, not that long. Not for us. We've been doing this forever. Forever, yeah. We've been around. So we're both 78 years old, the two of us. It's wild.

So 1960, Betty Williams. She's 17 years old, old Betty Jean. And she kind of lives in a small house. Her family doesn't have a lot of money. She's kind of from the, I guess you would call it the trashier side of town type of thing. She would be considered not one of the cool rich kids. I like her already. This girl in high school, if I knew of this girl, I would have totally went out with this girl. considered not one of like the cool rich kids you know she's a little bit you're gonna look this is

the this girl in high school if i knew of this girl i would have totally went out with this girl in high school chase the shit out of her yeah she's cool as shit when we talk about it told me no so many times she uh lives in kind of a small shitty house the street she lives on isn't paved um it's on the west edge of town uh some of this takes place in a place called No Trees, Texas. One word, no trees. No shit. One word, no trees. And there are no trees.

And there are currently 73 people there. So we could have technically done the show about no trees, but it would have really been a short town segment. Here it is. There's nobody there. Look out for the dust. Okay, moving on. Here's a murder. No houses, no trees.

No trees, no house. Could be called no people. It's just there's nothing. So this is on the west edge of town near the oil fields she lives. So this is obviously not the most desirable place. I assume if you're wealthy, you're going to live as far from the oil fields as possible probably. Yeah. Just a thought.

I want to watch a Derek working while I try to make dinner. Cling every fucking two seconds for the rest of your life. And also there's like gas flares burning all the time. It's a terrifying sight to look out upon here. So that's going on. Now her father's a carpenter and he has difficulty getting getting and keeping steady work so that's a that's obviously an issue as well um her mother mary took a job at a jc penny to try to just to you know piece together a living so

they're they're lower middle class definitely here so like this girl i would have fit in great with this girl you know we'd so relate we'd relate totally and even more as we get into it she her family very baptist strict baptists her family yeah that's what we said baptist or catholic here if you're you're white you're baptist if you're mexican you're a catholic and that's how it works in this town you betchacha. So her father would preach to Betty all the time about sin, and you're going to get damnation and hellfire and brimstone. I mean, it's real revelations type shit. I don't know if that's what they preach, but it's really fiery. I think he became a carpenter because that's what JC was.

I think so. He's like, listen, if it's good enough for the man, it's good enough for me. That's all I'm saying. Good enough for the man is good enough for this man. For this man right here. If it's good enough for him, it's certainly good enough for this guy. So he, one, basically, he would pray that she would be a more obedient daughter. Because she's not obedient.

She's kind of, she's into her own thing, mentally, as we'll talk about. I understand that anybody who's paid attention to the media would have to come to the conclusion that I killed my wife. Hi, my name is Zach Stewart-Pontier. I'm one of the filmmakers behind The Jinx, and I'm excited to bring you the official Jinx podcast.

We'll be revisiting all six episodes of part one and watching along with part two as it airs on Max starting April 21st. Bye bye. The official Jinx podcast. Listen on Max or wherever you get your podcasts. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor. I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity,

that is pretty great. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. She is kind of dark blonde, like dirty blonde hair, shoulder length, blue eyes, that sort of thing.

wise, that sort of thing. Attractive, but she's not anything that is like, you know, cars don't screech to a halt and the boys don't hang out of car windows to, you know, catcall her and all that kind of shit. But she's pretty girl, pretty enough, you know, fine doing her thing. So she did not like conformity. And if you don't like conformity, West Texas in 1960 is a terrible place for you. Yeah. You're rebellious. Awful. It's a bad place for you now. Never mind in 1960 is a terrible place for you. Yeah. You're rebellious.

Awful. It's a bad place for you now. Never mind in 1960. 1960, unless you're in Greenwich Village, there wasn't a whole lot of places to not be a conformist. You know what I'm saying? Or at a Hell's Angels party in San Francisco or something. There wasn't a lot of nonconformity going on. So she didn't like conformity, though, and really didn't like the kind of the preppy girls in school.

You know what I mean? Picture Breakfast Club Ally Sheedy. She doesn't like the preppy girls, the girls who are really put together, richer, have their matching sweater sets and all that kind of shit. Constance Fries. Yeah, exactly. Constance Fries. She doesn't like those. She thinks of herself as kind of smarter than those

and that sort of thing. She's got opinions on everything. She's worldly. She reads stuff. She knows way more about the outside world and kind of like culture-y type stuff than most kids in West Texas in 1960. That's what she's into.

In her mind, she doesn't live in – she's already moved away. You know, like she's gone in her mind. She's getting out of this place. Yeah. She did not like it. She's always, by the way, prodigious note writer, constantly writing notes. She keeps a diary. She writes like just like essays and things for herself.

She writes notes to classmates constantly. Like if she's in study hall, she'll have distributed a dozen notes by the end of study hall to all of her friends in class. Like that's, loves to write notes, which back then girls wrote notes. Even when we were in school.

Oh my God, 80s and 90s, that's all it was. If you had a girlfriend in high school, by the end of the day, you had like 14 notes in your backpack because every time you'd see them in between periods they give you another fucking three notes you'd be like how do i open this one right they were incredible crazy origami oh god fucking diamonds and hearts on the front how did you do this how do i open it i gotta tear it and tape it back together to read it that's the thing i'm tearing it open and then it's a mess and i'm

like how do i refold this? I can't refold this. How did she learn to do this? This is crazy. So that's kind of what she's all about. She read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, which is a big deal back then, and for the beat generation and the whole kind of the hipster thing from that time period was Jack Kerouac was the fucking king of that. Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg. Those were the two kings of that of that hipster beat era. You know, the beatnik thing.

You know, they could they were celebrities in that world. So and really, I mean, Jack Kerouac's book went beyond that. But at the time, that was for that was for fucking people in Greenwich Village to sit around and read. That wasn't for kids in West Texas. But that's why books are cool because somebody in West Texas can relate to something that's not happening where they are. You know what I mean? Or wherever you are. It doesn't have to be West Texas.

Me reading something sitting in Poughkeepsie, New York when I'm a kid or wherever. It doesn't matter. So she also bought and listened to, religiously, records of Lenny Bruce as well. She loves Lenny bruce is that right she's a big jack karouac alan ginsburg lenny bruce fan i'm like this girl is a fucking beatnik like that's what she is she's just a straight beatnik it's funny as shit yeah yeah does she smoke cigarettes i would assume she's probably she's got to gotta smoke cigarettes there um she uh so yeah she was all into that.

So she was considering herself above kind of the intellectually above like the, you know, where's the party after the football game crowd? Not that she was, but in her mind, she felt like she was. And that could be a defense mechanism that a lot of kids who feel rejected will turn to that sort of thing. And you never know. Or she just felt it in her heart. Who knows? You know know we don't know or or or she has some disappointment and where her family's at like we're capable of much better than this or there's there's all kinds of thoughts that go through a kid's head there's a lot of stuff yeah um she would like to she liked to draw attention to

herself and kind of kind of kind of tweak the squares a little bit was her kind of a thing that she liked to do. She would show up at Tommy's Drive-In. Tommy's Drive-In is where all the teenagers went in town. The hamburger joint. Yeah, and Dazed and Confused, it's where they would all meet and then go drive around. It's that place. So they'd all meet there, and kids would go. She'd show up.

She'd be dressed in total black, which kids didn't do back then. Yeah, in the 60s? 1960, we're talking about. This is 1959, 60. At the end of Grease, it's a big deal because Sandy is wearing that all black outfit and it's like 1959. We're like, oh, she's like badass now. The fuck is that leather? That's what she shows up as, though.

She shows up there wearing white lips, but wearing a white lipstick or like so she's all black with white lipstick is how she would do. Yeah, to look different. Or she'd show up in jeans and a T-shirt and she'd wear like a tight T-shirt and no bra, which was like all the other girls had like the sweaters and literally poodle skirts and like these, all this shit. And she's shown up in a tight t-shirt with her nips popping. Fuck. Yeah.

What's up? What you, you hear that new Lenny Bruce fucking joke and you're like, this fucking girl is awesome. Sorry about when he getting arrested. Ah, these nipples. That's bad ass.

She would freely express opinions as well too. Um, she thought it was, but she didn like segregation, and she'd tell the other kids. And a lot of the other kids were like, ah, fuck you. What are you talking about? So she'd get in arguments over that. She, like – it's so weird. People thought she was an oddball, basically. She wrote one of her friends during her senior year that most people do not understand me.

There are people willing to be my friends, but mostly they're either too ignorant to understand why I'm like I am and consequently offer my mind no challenge or they haven't the wits to match mine. That's a 17-year-old girl. I got a feeling I couldn't do it today. The look on Jimmy's face as I'm four feet from him and the look on his face as I'm reading this, he was going, oh, I don't think she would have liked me anymore. I'm already intimidated. I can't talk to that girl. If she said that out loud, I'd have to walk away and try to make the math addition of how that how that sentence computes and what what sense it jimmy would go back to hold on a sec so there's nothing to do but there's always

new things to try i'm still stuck on that jesus christ can you can you give me a thesaurus i don't know she just what is she talking about yeah that's uh j – Jimmy would be like, I have to pee now. And he'd just leave and never come back. So she said that also – this is a note to one of her friends. Quote, I'm realizing once again, as I have realized so many times before, that in some ways, not completely obvious to me, I am different from other people. Most people don't understand me. There are people who are willing to be my friends. That's the beginning of that one. So, you go um she's 17 17 years old when she's writing all this and a high school going into her senior year of high school so my god summer of 1960 this is

between her junior and senior year of high school she starts hanging out with a boy here um who is also 17 he is between his sophomore and junior year though of high school so birthdays fall in different places his name is and this is the most west texas we got betty williams which is very west and now we have mac herring is his name mac herring sounds like a made-up kid from mac Herring plays fullback on the football team. You know what I mean? Mac Herring. And he was.

He was on the football team as well, too. He's your typical flat-top Letterman jacket, 1960, West Texas, go along and get along. Probably named after the trucks. Possibly named after the trucks. Absolutely here. He's not a big star on the football team by any means. He's a running back, and he's kind of just average abilities. He's very well liked, though, which will help you on a football team.

So he's not a starter. He's like a backup and all that sort of thing. He was on junior varsity, and then in his junior year he went to varsity and so football is like religion in west texas it it's just huge there high school football is the biggest thing in the world you know what i mean it's huge i mean this is 1960 this is when the dallas cowboys weren't even a team yet they were just yeah they were starting as the dallas texans at that point and then would later on. But they weren't even a fucking team yet. That's how long ago this was.

You know what I'm saying? So it's a while ago. So, or no, that was the one that went to Kansas City eventually. Never mind. The Cowboys popped up in there. There was two, there was the Cowboys, 1960 I think was their first year or 61. The Texans moved to be the Chiefs? The Texans eventually became the Chiefs, yeah, because that was Lamar Hunt's team.

the Chiefs? The Texans eventually became the Chiefs, yeah, because that was Lamar Hunt's team. Yeah, because they ended up at, they folded, he folded that and then started the AFL. So, there you go. Okay, that has nothing to do with this. That was a football sidetrack, but Mac Herring though, only basically plays football

because that's what you do. He doesn't really care about it that much. He's more into like hunting and fishing and just kind of, that sort of stuff. Good looking guy. Tall guy. Everybody likes him. Everybody thinks he's a man's man and just a good kind of fella. You know what I mean?

Real solid. His dad is a World War II veteran who owns an electrical contracting business. So he's got they have decent money. His mom's a housewife you know homemaker and very middle class and all that sort of thing. He has no trouble meeting girls, no trouble, you know, getting dates. Everything's fine with Mac. He's doing great. Loves to hunt though.

That's his favorite thing he likes to do. Like a lot of the people in Texas, you know, hunting, especially back then, it was a lot of sparse land. Hunting was very popular of a pastime. He would like to go out and get a shoot like they go hunting for dove or quail mostly. That's what they were looking for. And he'd go there or he'd go with his 22 and shoot jackrabbits, too. He'd like that. So that's what he does.

Doesn't hunt anything big or anything like that. like that. So that's what he does. He doesn't hunt anything big or anything like that. One of his friends, Larry Francil, who grew up right by him, he said, if Mac wounded an animal when we went hunting, he would pursue it and dispatch it. A lot of kids were cruel. They would shoot something and watch it hobble off. But Mac was different. He didn't like to see things suffer. If he was going out there to hunt, he was going to kill. Is that? Yeah. not a lot to do but everything to try is what that is i the i am perplexed by this texas speak that's been happening so far and i love it but i'm really

perplexed by it yeah hey imagine that's a compliment of you and that's a huge compliment imagine the fucking psychopath that goes out there to shoot an animal and goes, look at it hop. Watch it suffer. That's crazy. And he said that was the standard procedure. Holy shit. Which is creepy shit. They're full of those psychos.

And then you've also got this guy who just loves murdering. He's going to go out and put it right out of its mouth. He likes to see the light go out of its eyes. See, that's the difference. The other ones, they like to watch it suffer. He wants to see that light just leave its eyes. He wants to be the last thing, last image in this little animal's eyes. That's what he wants.

And if you're going out to hunt, look, no judgment. He holds him by the chin and looks him in the eyes. Sorry. I understand there are people that do it for fun, whatever. But if you're doing it to eat, I get it. But like this, I don't want anybody to ever say what you just said about me. Either of those things. That's fucking funny, man.

That sounds terrible. That sounds terrible. Yeah, I guess it does. But I think people eat quail a lot, though, too. Yeah, they do. Quail is a very popular dish. But there's nothing on it, James. No, you've got to have a—

You've really got to shoot a shitload of those to make a meal. You've got to get a bunch of quail. You've got to get a garbage bag full of them, or else it's not going to work. You need a whole big sack of quail, or else you're really in for a slim evening. You can't really make buffalo wings out of quail. No, no. That's more of a fucking appetizer. They're tiny little fuckers.

So I think they might be bigger in certain places. I don't know. No, they're not. No, they're not bigger. Those things are tiny. I've seen them in Arizona. They're in the desert. They're not that big.

There's no pheasant-sized quail. No, probably not. Is that a condor or a quail? I never said that. So one of Mac Herring's teachers here, this is Mrs. Bessie W. Stanley. Bessie. Bessie. She's a 40-year teacher.

She's been around. She's been teaching since 1920. Think about that. My God. Holy shit. She was Herring's private tutor for more than a year. So the parents even had money to hire her on the side. Yeah.

She said, quote, I've never known a more brilliant mind as Max. Than Mac. She said that in school he took an IQ test in February of 1960 and scored a 128 on it. That's good. 140 is genius. 128 is pretty damn smart. So she said, let's put it this way. He was in the top 1% and 99% make a lower score.

She said that another school's test designed to give an overall picture of a student's development was also given to him in 1960, and he placed in the top 92 percentile in that test. So he's one of the better kids, basically. One of the smarter kids. He's a handsome guy. They said he also had about an 85 average in all of his grades as well at school. Doing great. Doing fine, basically. Doing fine. He was described by another teacher as an above-average boy all around. You should have seen his penis. It was wonderful.

Very much above average. Above average boy. So his football coach, Lacey Turner, he was the coach at the time, he said that he would pick Herring out of a squad of 33 boys as one of the leaders of the team. pick herring out of a squad of 33 boys as one of the leaders of the team. He said, quote, he was one of the best, well-adjusted individuals that we had on the squad. So there you go. Yeah, captain material.

That's exactly right here. So a lot of people here, he dates a lot of people and he has a lot of girlfriends. And back then, dating is kind of casual unless you were going steady. Otherwise, you'd go out with different people on a Friday and a Saturday night and then until you went steady, you'd just have a lot of dates. That's how it worked back then.

So weird. So strange, yeah. And eventually, Betty and Mac end up hooking up together. Which they don't. Do they sound like a couple that goes together, really? He's the exact guy that she would probably say she doesn't like. He might be

the, being that he's smart, he might be the only guy that she can have a conversation with. That's a thing, too, and he also he's not as much into all the football and parties and all that. But he understands it. Yeah, but he understands it and he goes along with it. But he's more of the, he'd rather kind of hang out alone with a couple of friends type of guy

and maybe go hunting and he's that kind of guy. He's like the main character in Dazed and Confused that didn't know if he was going to sign the sheet and play football next year. What's his name? London, Jay London. Is that who it was? I don't remember. Either way.

Doesn't matter. I can barely remember your name. Yeah, that's true. You spell it, though, somehow. That's impressive. I've seen you do it before. So Mac is one of the popular kids. He's Emilio Estevez in The Breakfast Club.

And then Ally Sheedy is Betty, basically. So that's how you got to look at it. And I know I've given a lot of similes and metaphors here with these movies, but I'm trying to put it into perspective. Sorry about that. If I'm thinking whatever era I can match it to, you know, like I'll match it to that. So they end up getting into a friendship. And Betty thought that he was kind of, you know, a different kind of guy. He was more sensitive than the other boys. She thought there was something romantic about him and that he was like that's hiding under the surface. And, yeah, she had like a whole, oh, he's a boy that's different than everyone else too and we can get together here. So they start dating in the summer of 1960.

And she was starting to fall in love with mac here she told her friends that he really listened to her he's the first guy that actually really listens to me like here maybe it's he's the only one that understands what the fuck you're saying maybe that's what it is so but mac wasn't parading her around like here's my best girl. This was kind of, he kind of kept it under the radar. He wouldn't like, he'd like hang out at people's houses with her, but they didn't go to big parties. He never gave her his letterman jacket, which was a big deal back then. He never even brought her home to meet his parents, which is no letterman jacket, no

parents means you're not his girlfriend. You know what I mean? That means whatever's going on, he's not wanting to publicly commit to you for whatever reason. That is. That's how that works back then. You're not steady. That means steady is you get the jacket, you meet the parents. You know, you guys are a couple.

Maybe he just likes the nipples? I don't know what it is. Well, he likes her, but we'll talk about it. Let's hear some from her cousin here. Now, her cousin here now her cousin shelly shelton williams that wrote this book i'm going to just read right from the book because there's a it's fucking wild some of the shit in this book man okay quote at christmas and thanksgiving betty and i always bolted down our food bolted down i've never heard bolted would

mean to keep it on the table right Right. Scarf would be the. Yeah, keep your family from eating it. Yeah, exactly. And I always bolted down our food and then went out to a car to sit and talk. We discussed our father's religion, movies, how much she hated football, and eventually sex. She tolerated the conversation. She started having sexual experiences long before i did she was so bright and natural discussing sex it almost seemed to be okay to do so

because yeah this is not like open sex talk back then in 1960 texas and in a baptist community this is not hey everybody let's talk about our vaginas that didn't't go on here. So he said, oh, my God, we would sit close on these occasions and sometimes I would get hard. She would move her leg. Oh, my God. She would move her leg or if my penis on my penis, if it got uncomfortable for her, but she seemed fine with it. She would throw a leg over it. So I it so she didn't have to look at it? I guess. She showed me how to kiss and then had a French kiss.

Max said this? No, this is her cousin. What? This is Shelly's book. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, they would have family dinner, then go out in the car and sit there. We're going to go outside and talk you know the kids are gonna hang out and they'd go in the car and his dick would get hard when she would talk about

sexual things and then she would rub her leg on his dick and then they would fucking make out oh my god that's what he just said she showed me had a kiss and then had a French kiss that didn't that's so out there it didn't register for you like that can't be her cousin right I thought you were saying no no no Mac told him this no no no no no no no no oh my god

this is absolutely from his book she is too much of a party for me we didn't make out like boyfriend and girlfriend but sometimes the practice went on a bit longer than it should wow this went on for years and even after she started screwing guys that's get your thesaurus out chief come on that's the word you chose she would be very disappointed in you for this it never went further than a few kisses we were kissing cousins and sometimes she would tell girl she would tell girlfriends that i was her kissin' cuz. Oh. My. God. Okay. This is another description. This is Shelton. This is her cousin. Not somebody telling her cousin anything.

This is his fucking brain pouring this out on paper. Okay. Quote. The first time I ever realized that Betty had become a woman, we were inside Tommy's. That's the drive-in there. Tommy's dining room but not together i was in the far corner of the room watching two oh hs that's odessa high school guys play chess a game i have never mastered and betty had her back turned to everyone in the place

she had both hands on the jukebox her knees were slightly bent and she was moving to the beat of Little Bitty Pretty One. Little Bitty Pretty One. That's a good song. Her head and her butt kept time to the music while her feet remained virtually stationary. So she's shaking her ass for the whole diner. And he is staring at his cousin. Yeah, he's like, she's a woman, man. My cousin's a woman. He goes on.

Do you think that's enough probably? Oh, no. Her blue jeans were tight her white t-shirt did not conceal the fact that she wore no bra and she was wearing no shoes well that's weird you think that she would have shoes on being that it's in a restaurant um yeah but if you walk in with no bra you don't have to really wear anything else probably he could no one's gonna notice your your shoe what's on the floor if they're looking at your nipples no problem no shirt no shoes no service no bra no problem that's the sign it should be up in every place in the 50s and 60s eventually every

boy in the room began staring at her several girls with either ponytails or Doris Day bubble cuts walked in, glanced disgustedly at her, and quickly diverted their eyes. Betty was breaking any number of rules that hot summer afternoon, the most egregious of which was that basically girls don't hang out at Tommy's by themselves. You come there

with a date. Well, that and also arousing your cousin in public. Well, i think that's more on him though that's not on her you might be right that's more on him if his dick's getting hard maybe stop looking at your cousin's ass that's what i'm saying that's his problem but back then she wasn't the other girls didn't show up with no bra by themselves and shake their ass at the jukebox forever that didn't nobody else did that. So to little bitty, pretty one,

little bit, pretty one. That's right. So, um, here we go. Um, this is from,

uh, his book again, Shelton. He talks about how this is a quote. He quotes her here. Quote. She says, quote,

life is beautiful shell. Someday we're going to get out of this town. I am definitely going to be an actress. Can't you see me on the Jack Parr show? And then she said, oh, did you see Jonathan Winters there last night? He had these little green men from Mars routine. He's crazy too, you know. He's so funny.

She's fucking awesome. Jack Parr is, that's the Tonight Show. That's what, if you're young, you might not know what the Tonight Show is anymore. Because at this point, it's just clips of Jimmy Fallon acting like a moron and lip syncing and shit. But at one point in time, Jimmy Fallon trying to convince us all he's not a drunk. Yeah. Yeah. I swear to God. But at one point in time, The Tonight Show was a cultural touchstone. It was the the show. And back then, this is the beginning of The Tonight Show. I think it started in fifty 55 or 56 with Steve Allen.

Then Jack Parr took over. And then Johnny Carson was mid-60s. He took over. So there you go. And then to Jay Leno, unfortunately, and then on. So that's what she says. So she's talking about that. He says, she knew I had seen it and she knew I loved winters.

Almost everyone in town those days was a TV junkie. Most kids and their parents preferred gun smoke. What's my line or the $64,000 question. But a few stayed up to watch par at at least a few admitted to doing so. Jack Parr was too emotional for most West Texas men. And in truth, he was simply too effeminate for anyone from West Texas to admit liking. Betty and I were Jack Parr washed in blood. So or Jesus or Jack Parr fans washed in blood.

He said, oh, that's the title of the book. That's a weird thing. Never mind. Sorry. He then says we often discussed guests and she would frequently mimic them. She did a wicked Zsa Zsa Gabor, a hilarious Ma Frickit, and a rather touching Jack Parr himself. Our second favorite show was on Saturday nights, The Gary Moore Show. It featured our favorite comedian, Carol Burnett, well before Carol

Burnett was a household name. I mean, this is 15 years before that, whom Betty could do perfectly. While most kids talked about girlfriends, proms, football, and hunting, Betty and I talked about actors, their talents, and what lay ahead for her. Dude, I would have thrived in this time. I was born at the wrong time. I would have been the best 60s guy ever. I would have been, oh, my God, I would have been so miserable. I would have been miserable.

They would have run me out of town eventually. The AC wouldn't have worked well enough for you. No, not only I would have gotten miserable they would have they'd have run me out of town eventually the ac wouldn't have worked well enough for you no not only i would have got used to that i'm just talking i wouldn't have gotten along well here at all yeah you know i'm just a contrary son of a bitch sometimes a pop culture oh yeah pop culture yeah there's a lot of related great cool shit here um he then said to this is a quote from him to her, you know, it's not a bad thing we're from Odessa shell. Carol Burnett's from San Antonio and Debbie Reynolds is from some small town

somewhere. Not everyone is from New York City like Elaine May or Ann Mira. And Betty and I assumed we were the only people in all of West Texas, much less Odessa who knew of Elaine May, Mike Nichols, which were comedy team Nichols and May, or the shocking Lenny Bruce.

I don't like Lenny Bruce, I told her. He's sacrilegious and he uses horrible language is what Shell told her. She said, by the way, there's nothing to do here yet. There's always new stuff to try. She said, don't pay attention to what he says, Shell. Listen to why he says it this girl knows she gets stand up and stand up barely exists yet that's fucking cool that's cool shit i i still would have been what what are you this that's cool man i love that i love it um so she also said

quote roy arbersison is a genius. He said, we were sitting in my green 53 olds at Tommy's and they were talking and they were, you know, drinking Cokes. And he said, oh, come on. He's a geek who sings funny. Did you hear his latest crying? I hate it when guys sing high like that. She said, it's called falsetto shell. And that's the song I'm talking about it's sheer poetry and he said poetry roy orbison's a poet i guess that would make ubi dubi and pretty little pet

claudette his early sonnets huh and those are old songs it has from the 50s he said she said poetry is communicating emotion through words shelly. Roy is still finding himself through his music, but he's a poet, you'll see. Man. Then he goes on to say, he's ugly, Betty Jean. And then she said, what does that have to do with anything? And then she sat back and thought and said, no, wait, maybe that's why he knows Payne so well, because he doesn't look like a thick-headed, burr-cut, knuckle-dragging football player. He probably has experienced the pain of rejection and ridicule growing up around here. Knuckle-dragers. So, yeah.

So either way, then he says, the cousin's like, well, isn't that who you like? You're going out with that Mac Herring guy. It's exactly who you described. She said, leave Mac out of this. You don't know him. No one really knows him. He's sensitive. Stop being so jealous.

He's a sensitive. Yeah, he's just jealous, this kid. He's a sensitive. He's just hiding all this sensitivity. He's a sensitive boy. And then the cousin said, Betty Jean, I'm not criticizing Mac. You're right. I don't know him at all but you go on and on about poets

and actors and say you hate football but here you are dating a football player what up with that basically so she ended up getting a little bit upset then she she said are all players on your team exactly alike because he played football too you're different than that cute Jack Littlefield

with the big vocabulary is different too well so is mac and uh she said he's sensitive he's lonely even when he's with people but most of all he's a listener yeah she said i mean he listens to me he listens to me and he asks about me other than you shell he's the only guy in this whole god forsaken town who listens to anyone except himself. So there you are. She said that occasionally he this I'll just read from his book. Shell says, quote, Occasionally we would talk on the phone. I would be studying in my bedroom slash den.

My mom moved from the master bedroom to my old room. Don't know why that is. And Betty, that's weird. And Betty would call just to say hi. One night the phone rang and she didn't say hi. She said, quote, guess who I fucked tonight. Hell yeah. He said it was the first time I ever heard a girl say fuck.

Imagine that. In that context. That's being 17. I'm Italian. I heard fuck is just the echo of my life my mother screams that they all scream it so it's no big deal but i couldn't imagine being like a girl just said fuck that's so like foreign to me welcome to the small town of chinook where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper in this new thriller available exclusively on wondery plus religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community.

Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer,

unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. With an all-star cast led by Emmy nominee Sanaa Lathan and Star Wars' Kelly Marie Tran, Chinook is available exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. Part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor.

I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. This mother****er lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of cursing. This motherfucker lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes,

you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus and the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. He said that the boy was Will Rosebud, who was a high-profile, the way he

describes him, a high-profile athlete, class officer, and all-around great guy. He said even though Shell went to a different high school, but he said he still knew this guy well because he was that popular. He also knew the guy's girlfriend, was a cheerleader uh-oh his steady girlfriend he said i admit i was shocked but betty made the whole thing sound so funny how horny he was how he had to pretend not to know her at tommy's how she had to slow him down jesus it was like i was back

to teaching you shell he was just dry hump in the air over here. Then he said, I chastise her. Don't say Jesus. She's talking about fucking a guy, so it doesn't really matter if she says Jesus. She's talking about facilitating a man cheating on his girlfriend. Well, I mean, either way. So he then says this, quote, don't say Jesus. What happened next? So don't say Jesus, but please tell me all the one either way. So she then says this, quote, Don't say Jesus. What happened next?

So don't say Jesus, but please tell me all the dirty sexual details. That's what I mean. Everybody is a hypocrite here, including everyone in the story. She then goes on to say, quote, We did it in about two minutes. Two minutes isn't long enough, Shell. Remember that when it comes time for you. Oh, my God. She then said, don't worry, Shell.

I never tell anyone I'm your cousin. Never. And then he says, Betty, who don't you tell? I'll call them up right now. I'm not ashamed of you. And she said, well, maybe you should be. This is all joking around. This is her way of joking around.

So here's a letter that she wrote to will all right this is when will didn't want to see her anymore apparently after this it's a long one so quickly here to will will why why in the name of all god's earth uh can't we arrive at some compromise though you never speak to me seldom look at me but often snub me yet all the same you're pulling tugging at my very soul until my whole being is strained and tense with the effort of controlling myself my goodness i ask myself over and over why why must it be this way yes yes yes i realize now that what i did with you was wrong but i must condemn but you must condemn me for it question mark you have condemned me you know uh again uh maybe with your maybe not

with your lips but with your every action cries hatred and damnation for all eternity my god and yet with that uh with all that you're more tolerant than mac he hates me for what i did to him because this was while she was going out with mac and he was out of town. Hates me for what I did to him. Where is it to do? I hate before I did to him for what I made him do to himself. And yet he can't express his hatred in rage. He makes sly digs, causing me to writhe in embarrassment and fear. Daily, he punishes me, making remarks no one understands but me.

But that I feel the entire world knows what he's doing to me and is applauding him and cheering him on. Do you hate me? Can you find it in your heart to hate someone as small and tormented as me? You have hurt me far more often than I have hurt you. Your eyes, when they happen to meet mine, are filled with a strange expression or mixed expressions that I cannot identify. I long to talk to you, but I know there is very little we could say. Though you laugh and talk and joke with others, the thought of me causes you to hush instantly. Why? Why? What in God's name causes you to halt your merriment? Is this the memory of our time together so distasteful for you?

Do you remember it with disgust? Can't you see what you're doing to me? I go through hell every day, a hell that we created together, you and me. Now only I am forced to live in it. Can you not find it in your heart to forgive me and be friendly? Yes, I am jealous. I get so jealous of you that I could scream and gnash my teeth and beat the trees in my rage. Good Lord.

If I thought I could perhaps in some way bring you back to me, I would spare no effort to make you mine. It's almost over here. I would be better off if you were dead. I would be better off were you dead. Then I could perhaps forget you. But now I'm daily constrained to see you and not speak to you, to love you and know that I am hated. I hate myself for loving you, and yet I hang on to my love for you as though it could pull me out of this pit of darkness I am forced to inhabit. My entire being cries, will, will, will.

Even the birds mock me with their cries of will, will, will. And your friends, they know, don't they? Yes, yes, I am sure they do. They give me their hard knowing glances that I must pretend not to see. Pretense! Exclamation point. You must pretend not to know me. I must pretend not to care for you. Mac must pretend it was his idea to break up. Steve must pretend to ignore me. And dear, sweet Dan and Jerry must pretend that they know nothing of the whole affair. God, my God, everything is one huge distorted lie will is happening can't you see what you are doing to me you're ruining me you've torn me to bits half of me cries out to you and the other half recoils in fear i cannot even pray

anymore i know that god is so far away i cannot reach him all i can do is cry piteously god my god please god please and yet he never hears me what kind of dick is will packing imagine being meathead will and getting this letter you're like i don't know what the hell this girl i don't know what she's talking about at all you all somebody won't translate this for me is there yeah you know any of the mexicans around here maybe it's spanish i don't know what the fuck she's saying So she basically this is what ends up happening. She ends up hooking up with him. And then he ends up basically making up with Mac over it. They make up and they're friends.

He'll say later on that they shook hands and forgot about the whole thing. But this basically, you know, this ruins Betty and Mac as well. So many relationships. Yeah. So she says she wrote to a friend. I've never been so humiliated and torn to pieces as I am now. I feel so lonely and deserted. I don't care what happens now or ever.

This is pure hell. So that's that. And now we're going to read a quick breakup note and then we'll get into the whole senior year of high school and what happens here. So this is the note she writes to Mac after mac quote broke up with her whatever okay quote mac well i guess you accomplished what you set out to do you hurt me more than you'll ever know when you handed me that note this morning you virtually changed the course of my life i don't know what i expected the note to say but not that I'll not waste my time saying that I didn't deserve it because I guess I did. I guess he wrote her a pissed off letter that you,

I found out you banged my friend and I'm not happy about it. So it was one of those. Um, I've never been so hurt in my life. And I guess your note was the jolt I needed to get me back on the straight and narrow. I've done a lot of things. I know that were bad and cheap, but I swear before God that I didn't mean to them to be like that. I've done a lot of things I know that were bad and cheap, but I swear before God that I didn't mean them to be like that. I was just showing off. I know it's much too late with you, Mac, but I swear that another boy won't get the chance to say

what you said to me. You've made me realize that instead of being smart and sophisticated like I thought, I was only being cheap and ugly and whorish. Jesus. Forgive me for writing this last note, and thank you for reading it. I'll not trouble you again. And, Mac, I haven't forgotten the good times we've had.

I really enjoy knowing you. I've really enjoyed knowing you, and I'm awfully sorry that it had to end this way. Best of luck with your steady girlfriend. I hope she's the best. Betty. And then, P.S., when you think of me, try to think of the good times we had and not this. So that's where things stand as we enter senior year of high school in 1960. So September 23rd, 1960, she writes this in study hall to somebody.

We don't know who. One of her friends. Well, I finally made the rank of senior and I can hardly believe it. I really don't feel much different. We get our senior rings Wednesday. I'll be glad. It sure does feel funny to be on the top of everything looking down. Seems strange to think that this is really all of high school next year. Three question marks. We had our pictures made last week. If they turn out halfway decent, I'll send you one. Send me another picture if you have it. Well, the bell is about to ring, so I'll write more later.

Love, Betty. Don't know who that's to. Somebody. So, yeah, she talks again here. There's another writing about her dreams of her senior year. Okay. She has dreams? I finally become 17 years old and finally become a senior.

It's the end right there. You would write that. I finally entered my 90th year. My final phase. My final phase. Finally, you know, feel I've accomplished what I need to. I have so many hopes and dreams. Some of my dreams have simply floated away and out of my life.

Others have been burst. Their iridescent loveliness shattered into a million pieces. What the fuck? I've had troubles, maybe a little more than the next person. Teens are all inclined to be dramatic, and I was worse than most. The death of a brother hit me hard. I think one of her brothers died, but I couldn't find more on that. Insults and slanderous gossip ruined my reputation. Inss that were unjustified and cut so deeply there's still a scar things i thought were surely mine suddenly torn from me friends parents hopes even my belief in god for a while i became what many kids termed uh to be a beat meaning beatnik um i wore my long hair straight white lipstick gobs of eye makeup and spent hours

reading jack karouac. I spoke sadly of the world. It was all an act, yes, but few people saw through it, least of all me. I was unhappy, depressed. Finally, one day, a friend looked me straight in the eyes and told me what I was, not what I thought I was, a beat, a sophisticate, but what I really was, a girl for which he has no respect, a girl who was ruining her life. Yeah. I began to see then what I really was, a girl for which he has no respect, a girl who was ruining her life. Yeah.

I began to see then what I was doing. It was then that I found God again waiting right here where I left him. You would think everything would be all right again, wouldn't you? But it wasn't. I began to blame God if things didn't work out right. Ask him for things that I had no right to ask for. Into my life came one of great want. I feel,

I felt that if I couldn't have this, I couldn't go on living. It possessed my whole life. I couldn't sleep at night. So in school, there are girls that they call the cashmere girls. That's the top of the list. Yeah.

Those are the top of the list. Girls, the top of the food chain, you know, popularity. They're the most popular they even have they're the ones that they all have letterman jackets on from the football player boyfriend they're either cheerleaders or they're in they actually have high school sororities back then too what yeah they have what sense does that make no idea they're

getting them all ready to be sorority people later. Good lord. Yeah, there you go. So this is the group that's the top echelon. And then Betty's not one of those. You know what I mean? No. Her classmates remember her as kind of a non-entity, basically.

They don't really – she's not really – unless you knew her outside of school, there's not really anything that you would think about or anything like that. You know, one of her friends, this is Shelton again, the cousin, he says, Betty wanted to be liked. He said she wanted what we all want to be totally unique while being completely accepted. Sounds familiar if you're a comedian. So I think differently than all of you. Now, like me. Now, love me and think like I think. And think how I think.

Both of those things. So tell me my brilliant humor changed your mind about anything. I don't even care if it's a ham sandwich, something. So Betty wants out of Odessa, though, big time. She dreams she wants to go be an actress she's got movie posters and playbills all over her wall she reads uh she reads confidential which is a magazine like variety she reads like the holly she subscribes to like the hollywood you know like uh business rags and shit like that like industry rags and shit. She also was in the school plays as well.

She's in the drama club, which seems perfect for her, honestly. Seems perfect. She was in three different ones during her junior year. The speech team performed the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet at the University Interscholastic League competition. And, of course, Betty plays Juliet, which will make a lot of sense later on. She wanted to do that. She liked that kind of drama. There's four kids altogether, and there's no way she's going to be able to afford to go to college,

and she knows that. So her plan is she has a part-time job at Woolworths, and her plan is to save up as much as she can eventually to get the fuck out of here and get to New York and get on Broadway. That's what she wants to do. That's the goal. That's the goal. At first, she's going to live at home and attend Odessa College up the street and pay for it with Woolworths and do that sort of shit. But she's also going to go after that,

go to New York City when she has the money. Yep. She, a lot of times, would slip out the back door when her parents went to sleep, and she would walk down to Tommy's Drive-In, which was about four blocks away, the restaurant, and there was always people there, people hanging out, and she'd do that, basically. And she was, like we described her in there she'd show

up and it was like what's on what's up motherfuckers the record would scratch you know people would turn around so at the end they said at the end of an evening it was not strange for her to end up you know going off with some football player and parking in a car somewhere at the end of the night she'd go walk off and find somebody. Basically, the guys would go drop their girlfriends off because they had a curfew. Then they'd come back and they'd pick her up because she was out past her curfew. Because she's fun.

Yeah, that's how it worked. And back then, I mean, nobody minded if they did that. If boys were banging all sorts of girls, but the girls were supposed to be fucking virgins until they were married, basically. Which makes zero sense. Are we supposed to fuck each other? Who am I?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, so that and, well, here's a quote here. One of the people said, this is a friend of hers, if a girl had a steady boyfriend, then she could have sex as long as she didn't advertise it. But if she did it with someone who wasn't her boyfriend, then she was a pariah. That's how it works.

Exactly. But this kid, one of her classmates said, quote, Eisenhower had been president during most of our years of growing up. The kids were kept on a very short leash. You got the feeling that with Betty, she was always straining against that leash, even when it choked her, maybe

especially when it choked her. Ooh. Yeah, there's some sexual undertones to that. She was upset in her senior year that Odessa High School's new drama teacher didn't think she was much of an actress and gave her the role of stage manager for the play for the spring production. She was pissed about that. It is Winter Set is the production. It's loosely based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. manager for the play for the spring production she was pissed about that um it is winter set is the production it's loosely based on the sacco and vanzetti case which is a long story um she uh also said that she found out that mac is going to play one of the leading roles though he got a part

it's odd for the football players to do theater by by the way. That's not normal. So that's why she likes him, because he's different. So he is going to play a killer in this, basically. And she's upset there. She starts to feel terrible. She starts to feel like, you know, she lost Mac and she can't get him back.

She told one of her friends, I have to get him back. So that's her goal for the year here. Her dad ends up going through her dresser drawers at one point, searching her room for signs of signs of bad kidness, basically. Yeah. Whatever is unapproved by dad for text West Texas child behavior. He found her diary. In her diary, she wrote detailed passages about her experiences with boys. Oh, boy.

So, dad not thrilled at all. Parents freaking the fuck out, obviously. I mean, it's your fault for knowing that. If you have a teenage girl and you find a diary and you go, oh, God, I can't open that. If you read that, any knowledge you glean from that is your own fault. Yeah, unless you're pretty sure they're suicidal, don't do anything like that. But then she got very depressed about this because her dad got mad at her. She got very depressed about this because her dad got mad at her, and she pleaded with her father to say that she changed now and she's not like that anymore, but he didn't believe her.

One of her friends said, Betty said that the situation at home was bad. I wanted to help, but I didn't know what to do. I was only 16 years old. That was one of her friends. Didn't know what to do. Her senior English class, by the way, she wrote this. Soon we will be older and grown up, really grown up, and we'll be made to realize and believe in different things. People before we are completely grown, or perhaps before we are completely grown, will be made to believe in war, hate, and death just as our parents before us have learned.

I believe in happiness, the kind of happiness that after you have triumphed over pain and sorrow. I believe in the laughter that comes with such happiness, laughter reflecting the tears of yesterday and the hopes of tomorrow. My God.

Jesus Christ, she's writing fucking, is that a John Kennedy speech? That's like, ew. Holy shit. What office you running for, Betty? Fuck, man.

So by winter of 1960, she's very depressed, starts telling her friends that she'd be better off if she was just dead now. Oh, my Betty. She's bummed off. Bummed off. Bummed out. She told her. Bummed off, man.

She told her friends that, her one friend, Howard Sellers, that heaven must be a nice place at one point. Then she said that she half-heartedly tried to kill herself and they said well what do you mean what'd you do and she said she took four aspirin which not to laugh at anybody's cry for help or suicide attempt before aspirin aren't going to do it that's not you're not going to die from that that's like saying i ate two sandwiches like that's it's a lot it's too much probably but i doubled the recommended dose. Yeah, like that's not really – it's not going to kill you obviously. No.

She also told her friends that she climbed up to the school auditorium rafters intending to throw herself onto the stage below but didn't have the courage to do it. Yeah. Couldn't do it. So she said that whenever anybody would listen listen she'd be talking about this but all of her friends just thought it was betty betty's dramatic they all say she goes from big highs and lows and she just always has some they just think it's kind of her character right now she's always kind of they think of her as always kind of playing a character this is her character is what was me girl now she also doesn't understand because she's a child that that brain is part of the creative

side and you need to embrace that exactly but it's not it's being kind of suppressed oh it's so scary and awkward at the time yeah so her friends would just kind of roll their eyes and they would say basically there goes betty again that's betty you know even when she started being a little bit weird um they thought it was just her being dramatic. She told like five different people working on the play that she wanted to kill herself but didn't have the nerve. She asked one, quote, would you kill me? Would you do it for me? And he said, no, I don't think so.

And he was fucking laughing, basically, just laughing it off, going, no, that's crazy. So one night after rehearsal, Mac gave her and the Howard guy, the guy she talked to, a ride home from rehearsal. And she asked him at that point, would you mind killing me? Mac, would you kill me? You know, you're mad. She said, I'll hold the gun to my head. You just pull the trigger. That's all. gun to my head. You just pull the trigger. That's all.

I'll hold it. You just pull the trigger. So just, you know, I can't do that part. So Mac laughed at her and was like, get the fuck out of here. What are you talking about? I'm not going to kill you. No, that's crazy. And then she laughed, too.

So it was like, yeah, my life sucks. It was one of those. What an awkward conversation. It's very weird. But with Betty, she was always bringing up stuff that people didn't really know where she was coming from, so they just kind of shrugged it off. She even went so far as to

she wrote this note that cleared him of culpability. She's like, look, I'll write this note. It won't be your fault. So the next afternoon, though, and he was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a joke. The next afternoon during rehearsal, Betty pulled Mac into the prop room and she was all sad and she told him she wanted to die. That's it.

She said, yeah, I want to I want to die. And, you know, there you go. She said that he said, quote, she just came up to me and asked why I would kill her. That's what he's quoted as saying right afterwards. I asked her why she gave asked her why she gave me several reasons. And I said, no, I don't think I will. And just passed it off as a joke. That was with me.

Yeah. So then she walked up to another friend at play at rehearsal and said, quote, it's been nice knowing you. And he said, I asked her what she said, what she meant. And she said, I finally talked Mac into killing me. And I just said, okay, I'll send roses.

And then we both laughed. So yeah, that's, that's really fucking weird. Um, I would say, um, so she,

uh, the next guy here, he also said that, um, he was in study hall with her during all this. And he walked up and said, Jim, would you kill me? She walked up to him and said, Jim, would you kill me? To her friend. He said, I thought she was joking, but then three days later she asked again.

And so he says, quote, she had a more serious tone and said, why not? When I refused, I said, I charge for my services, trying to make a joke out of it. She said she didn't have any money, but she could possibly get 50 or 60 dollars. No, that's not what I meant. He said, quote, I said, my price is 500 to 1000. She said, won't you reconsider? I said, no. I said, this must be some kind of joke.

And then we laughed and that was that. Can we haggle? Can we have, yeah, she's trying to, she's like 50, 60 bucks. Come on. Uh, Johnny Etheridge is another guy here. Melissa's son. Um, he's, he is another student. Um, he said that she walked up to him and said, Johnny, will you kill me?

And he said, I thought she was joking. I told her, you must be kidding. But she said, no, she's serious and asked me to kill her again. So they said, people asked, well, did you take it seriously? And she said she was a dramatic person and talked about dying all the time, like jumping off the water tower and things like that. Nobody took it seriously. Why can't she just do it? I don't know.

That's wild. March 20th was her being taken home from rehearsal by Mac and saying, come on, kill me, and then saying, I'll write you a note and all that kind of thing. March 22nd, 1961, here, now we're in 61, 7.45 a.m. Oh, boy. Okay? 61 here. Now we're in 61.

7.45 a.m. Oh, boy. Okay. 7.45 a.m. Her mother, Betty's mother, Mrs. Williams, calls the police to report Betty missing. So she's not home at 7.45 a.m.? Not home at 7.45 a.m. She apparently hasn't been seen, been missing since 10 p.m. last night. Okay.

She's 17 years old, 5'5", 98 pounds. Then the mother said, I don't know how she's dressed. I thought she was in the house and she must have snuck out. So I don't know. So they looked around. The cops around here said that their foul play was feared. They said they found torn bed clothing in her room. So they were worried that somebody came in and took her basically because they found, you know, torn shit.

So they do. The mother's frantic. Obviously, they don't know what's going on at school that day. One by one, Betty's principal is bringing all of her friends in to ask, have you seen Betty? That's that's how they're taking a dead ass serious right out of the gate. They are. They are. Except that the principal and not the cops are asking where's Betty, which is interesting.

They just bring it rope him into the fucking criminal justice system somehow. So they were asked to tell what they knew. One kid, Ike Nail is his name. Mack Herring, Ike Nail. And it's just how it sounds. Nail, N-A-I-L. Ike. He's a junior. He was the guy. He took him. He had taken Betty home from rehearsal the night before. So probably the last person to have seen her at that point. You know, I dropped her off at home. That was it. I dropped her off.

I don't know shit. So then the cops come in. They talk to several different people that had seen her late after rehearsal and all this sort of thing. The cops said, but their stories didn't sound just right. So we asked some more questions. We backtracked the stories. We found that she had a Coke date with her boyfriend, which is a very different thing in 1961 in West Texas than now. That's a malt shoppy date. Yeah, that's exactly what that is.

And we talked with him at length. She sneaked out for the date. And when he brought her home, he remembered seeing a car parked in the alley at the rear of the home. That's what he says. That's what the boyfriend says. Hey, listen, I dropped her off. There was a car in the fucking alley. I don't know anything.

He said he dropped her off at 10 o'clock, and she said, come back in a half hour and meet me in the alley behind her house. So there you go. So she ended up about a half hour later. Betty snuck back out the back door and got into his uh into his car again and he's like what's up he thought he was getting some is what he thought he was like yeah

so they're parking in the alley then they see headlights coming toward them in the alley and betty recognizes the car as max car right away and says oh my god i didn't think he'd actually come i guess she had called him and asked him to come so he shows up in the alley now um she's then joked to him that uh to ike she goes well finally convinced him to kill me so that's what i'm doing he's gonna go kill me now and gets out of the car um and she says um and they were like joking around and he says no seriously what's going on and he said she said quote i've got to call this bluff even if he does kill me. That's what she said. So she gets into Mac's Jeep.

And Mac and Betty drive away from out west. They drive out toward No Trees, which is just short of Kermit, which is another place out there, like the Frog. So they're driving this. It's about, you know, as they're in there, they're looking for Mac now. They've gotten to the point in the story where Mac has picked her up. He's the linchpin. Now they're like, okay, well, now we've got to talk to Mac. We leave this boyfriend.

We go to the next boyfriend. So they go to find Mac. They get him and bring him down to the police station to talk to Mac. We leave this boyfriend. We go to the next boyfriend. So they go to find Mac. They get him and bring him down to the police station to talk to him. And at first he says, I don't know. I didn't see her last night. I don't know what you're talking about. And they're like, well, we know that you fucking saw her last night because a guy watched you watch her get into your goddamn car. So start over.

Try again. Let's do this. He said dropped he said okay fine i did see betty yeah but i didn't want to get in trouble for it so that's why i lied uh but i dropped betty off outside of her parents house at midnight and that's the last time i saw her we went and hung out and they said well why is that he said they said well where'd you leave her back door or front door and he said the front door and they went really did you wait and make sure she went inside safely and he said no no i just took off i just didn't even you know i just dropped her off and went so they're like okay

and she was dressed in her pajamas she had small like little short short pajamas and like a little outdoor outfit with like a kind of a like a roguish type thing over it. A duster, they called it. But I think it was like an indoor thing. So indoor duster. She's in her pajamas and they're like, so you dropped her off in her pajamas at midnight and didn't make sure she got inside. And he's like, I guess not. I just drove away.

And they're like, well, why the fuck would they said? Basically, why would you not drive her around the back? She's not going to sneak into the front of her house. If she snuck out the back, she's going to sneak back in the back. Correct. Why would she go back in the front? And he's like, I don't know. Maybe she went around the back after I dropped her off.

That's how this went back and forth. So about 45 minutes go by and they say, listen, Mac, your dad's outside. He wants to talk to you. You want to talk to your dad? So he says, sure, I'll talk to my dad. So Mac leaves the room, goes and talks to talk to you you want to talk to your dad so he says sure I'll talk to my dad so Mac leaves the room goes and talks to his dad here goes and talks to uh Papa fucking uh Papa Herring over here so as they're talking to he's talking to his dad um he says look I I have a letter I have this whole thing and his dad's like what are you talking

about he said that his dad said like, what are you talking about? He said that his dad said that he was acting normal. And he talked with Mac at the police station and all this sort of thing. And he said, Mac, Betty didn't come home last night and her folks are worried. We have to have the truth, he told his son. You have to tell them the truth if you know anything here. And his father stuck with the story. But then he said, tell us what really happened.

Where did you take her? and he asked his son again and he said this is the quote quote daddy wait a minute i did it is what he said daddy wait a minute i did it and his son said the father said you did what and he said i killed her and his dad said no mac you couldn't have and he goes yes i did and his dad said why and he said quote i didn't want to And he goes, yes, I did. And his dad said, why? And he said, quote, I didn't want to. She begged and pleaded. She wanted it that way. She wanted to go to heaven and she thought it was the best and only way that she could be happy. And the father said, I just saw a squirrel.

I just saw a fucking jackrabbit and a quail. That's insane. The father said, I kept asking him why, why, why, and the kid said, here's something for what it's worth, basically. Here's this. And then he also says, there is no motive. I think I'm crazy. That's all I can say.

That's what he told his dad. What? So, the note says, it's dated March 20th, 1961. Handwritten. It says, I want everyone to know what I'm about to do in no way implicates anyone else. I say this to make sure that no blame falls on anyone other than myself. I have depressing problems that concern, for the most part, myself. I'm waging a war within myself.

A war to find the true me, and I fear I'm losing the battle. So rather than admit defeat, I'm going to beat the quick retreat into no man's land of death. As I have only the will and not the fortitude necessary, a friend of mine, seeing how great my torment is, has graciously consented to look after the details. Look after the details. His name is Mac Herring, and I pray that he will not have to suffer for what he has done, what he's doing for my sake. I take upon myself all blame, for there it lies on me alone. Betty Williams. She signed it. I'm stunned.

Yeah. If she had, like, fucking stage 12 ALS, you know what I mean? I'd be like, she's in pain every day, all day. It's all I see. And that would be why. Suicide at the hands of being murdered. A kind of a sad girl who lives in Texas and if she moved would probably feel much better about herself is a completely different thing. So either way, he said, then he goes in. Now he's ready to talk to the cops because he told his dad.

He said he was first approached by Betty on Monday during a rehearsal for Winterset. He said that, you know, she begged him to kill her, but he said it wasn't until Tuesday that he agreed to go through with it. So it took a whole day of convincing to talk him into murder. He said, I talked with her at play practice and I made a replay practice. It's not how that works. And I made arrangements to meet her at midnight. Practice was over at eight 30 and I went home and got my shotgun shotgun shotgun. He said he drove to Betty's house and parked in the alley.

He said she was out with her boyfriend. Then they drove down the alley and she got out of the car and came to my car wearing her pajamas and a duster she said she had thought about it for a good while and um she's told me that she tried to take sleeping pills once to end it but she just got sick yeah so yeah four that was aspirin this might have been a different time yeah he then says wow on the way out there we talked about her friends she was cheerful and chatted about how happy she was going to be to be dead um we sat in the car and talked a while maybe 15 or 20 minutes once they got out there she wasn't sad she was happy we talked

about all sorts of things she kept saying what it was going to be like to be in heaven. She told me she was sorry to leave her boyfriend like this. And she said we parked on the road at the top of the tank. After we finished talking, we walked down to the shore. OK, now there's a water thing here. There's like a pond. It's now. Well, we'll get into that in a second.

He says she left her duster in the car, but she was only wearing shorty pajamas and she was cold and went back to the car and got it. She took her shoes off down at the water. I just stood there with the gun. I said, wait, oh, this is a mistake, though, because she asked for that. Okay, there's two different things here. In the original quoting of him, they misquote it, but it's the other thing. He said, I just stood there with the gun. I said, give me a kiss to remember you by. She gave me a kiss and then said, thank you, Mac.

I will always remember you for that. She asked him to kiss her. They misquoted this she said mac give me kiss me before i die okay that's fuck man that's what happened then um he had the gun up to her head she then said now and we'll get into more detail i raised the barrel up and she took a hold of it with the back of her hand and held it up there pointing to his left temple then then i pulled the trigger she was dead like that and he snapped his fingers yeah because that's what happens mac yeah um especially the the post-mortem on on her is she died from a shotgun blast which tore into the side of her head and partially decapitated her

right it tore the top of the whole half of her head off it's fucking horrific absolutely horrific reports will indicate later on though that she was not sexually assaulted in any way shape or form so when asked why did you kill her there's a short pause and max said well she couldn't take living anymore and like she'd been living. There is no motive. I did it because I felt like it's what I had to do. She thought it was best. He said it was last night.

And they said, oh my god. And he said, I had made my mind up before I went to pick her up. That I'd do it. I had hoped to talk her out of it, but I knew I could go through with it if I had to, is what he said. Huh? How?

You know what you do, how you definitely wouldn't have gone through with it, is you don't bring a shotgun with you. Right. And you just go and you go, yeah, sure, we'll drive out there. And then you go, we're not doing that. I didn't bring any guns. We're just going to talk. And this is crazy. What are we talking about here?

So I think that's what she was hoping he would do. Maybe. This is the thing where we can talk about for eternity listen you don't understand if you're not here to tell them they're not gonna believe me no i can't do this yeah that's the thing i'm going to jail i'm not doing that for you not only that i don't want to shoot my friend in the head probably that's pretty gross i don't want to be part of that that's fucking disgusting no understand there even if i can do deal with that there are repercussions oh big ones this is illegal yeah and here this is what it is too is because it sounds it sounds plausible but then it gets a little more here listen to this he said that um they said well what'd you do with her then?

He said, I threw her in the water. And they said, how did she sink? And he said, well, I tied two lead weights around her waist and just took my clothes off and pulled her into the middle of the pond. She sank right away. She had 50 pounds of lead tied to her. So he brought weights to- He brought a whole murder kit. Wait till you hear what he prepped for.

It's a whole murder kit. It's what a psychopath would bring with him to kill a woman in the woods. Why would he do this? That's what I'm saying. They said that, did Betty know what he planned to do with- Did she know that you were going to dump her in the water? And he said she was aware of the plan to put her in the water. Okay.

He said that, yeah, he just walked out. He said after leaving the body in the center of the pond, he said he walked to his car and turned on the heater to get warm because it was chilly. Yeah, it's all wet. He said that his boots had become muddy and that he left them outside his parked car so the car wouldn't get dirty. And then he drove off. And later on, the boots will be where he said they were too by the way he said that in a little bit more detail he said that he helped betty from the jeep and um jesus christ he said that he put her his jacket on her at first because she was cold

and um either way that's that's how that ended up happening. He had to then go back to the Jeep after all this to get a string of wire and weights that he'd gotten that he had taken with him. He had to go back. He had too much shit to carry in one trip. He had to get a shotgun, the weights, the shit to tie her with and all that. When he came back, he asked her how she was, and he said, okay. He said, should I spread this blanket out? He had a blanket back there. She said, no, that's not necessary.

So he smoothed out some ground next to the pond to get rid of the little rocks and pebbles and shit. And told her to kneel down. And that's when she said, Mac, you said i want to kiss you said we could kiss she said and he said yes all right fine and he gave her a kiss and apparently she made it a passionate kiss yeah and um he just broke it off and said okay kneel down and she did she knelt down picked up the 12 gauge and that's when said, tell me when you're ready. She said now. And there you go.

Wow. So this is fucking insane. So the when the cops later on will go, like we said, his boots are still there. He said then he went to drove home like nothing happened and went to school the next day. And, you know, asked about what the fuck. He just went to school and acted like everything was fine and they said miss betty's missing and he went oh wow that's weird crazy crazy right so he said quote then they asked well how'd you how'd you feel he said i never felt worse in my life but i know she's better off there was a time last night when i wish i did the

same to myself and he said so you know it's horrible he said i'm sorry for what i've done to mr and mrs williams betty's sister and my mother i'm not sorry for myself but for the other people i've hurt they said that uh what would you do if you could turn the clock back 24 hours and he said if i knew what my feeling would be now i would not have gone through with it so how did he prep he said that he doubted you know he doubted she was serious and all that but he brought all this shit with him which which makes the cop say that he doubted mac's story about the events he said we're still checking his story out it doesn't hold water to me he said so we have to get our

gather our information a little better he said um we planned to question Herring on the lie detector last night, but we returned and their attorney advised against it. So once all this is over, he ends up lawyering up and then they don't get a lie detector out of him. So he said that this is all from his own confession. Before driving Betty a half hour out of town to the woods to shoot her and dump her in a pond. How often have we heard of that on the show? Quite often, right? Yeah. That's what serial killers do.

He's had so much time to think about this. He went home, got lead weights, rope, shotgun shells, even a miner's helmet so he could wear it while taking her out into the water. Holy hell. Yeah. That is disturbing. That's deep. Um, that means he thought about,

gee, how do you murder and dispose of somebody? So how am I going to see in the water? Like the part of this should be, I got her all the way out there and I couldn't really see, but no, I brought a miner's helmet so that I could. That's what I mean.

He's, he's got it all covered. It's fucking sick. He's, they said the, the cops said he showed very little emotion for betty and he said because the other stuff that he said like oh if i could go back i don't know how i feel he said that to the to the press not to the cops then to the cops he said to the deputy sheriff quote i feel toward her like a cat dying in a muddy street in the rain so he wanted to put her out of her misery is basically what he was trying to say so they take they say well mac you got to show us where this is at because they don't even believe him at first they're like this is bullshit i think

i think he killed her dumped her somewhere else and this whole story about the pond is horseshit so they take a ride out to what by the way is will forever be known from that time on as Dead Girls Pond, by the way. Oh, dear Christ. Yeah. Dead Girls Pond. Nice, obviously. They pick up the criminal investigation unit guy. He joins in. Four officers and Mac Herring head out away from Odessa on the Kermit Highway.

And the cops still think it's bullshit, but they're going to go through with it. Mac's telling them, turn here, go there. It's this way over there. Finally, they turned off. It's about three miles outside of no trees. So imagine what that's like, even less trees. In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and seemed unwell. She insisted on driving him to the local hospital to get treatment. While he waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit, but would never be seen alive again. Leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast

that covers notable true crime cases like this one and many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case, covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence and interviewing those close to the case to try to discover what happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation Y ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

And they said, it started going to this thing and he pointed and said, Mac pointed and said cow path there. So they went down this cow path. Finally, he told them to stop. And Herring led them up a steep incline, which led them, which you couldn't see. There's a stock pond that you couldn't see from over the incline.

So up in the top, now you can see the body of water below. The officers still thought he was full of shit. So they were questioning about where the shooting took place. He walked him over there and they found tissue and skin and blood and um now they're like uh-oh um he said that betty's out there in the middle of the of the pond out there so they said well we don't know where to look will you go in there and get her for us now that is not procedure okay i'm gonna say right now i get the procedures are different but to have the murder suspect retrieve the body for you and have access to it or without is the craziest fucking thing i've ever heard in my life i don't have my wetsuit and i kind of like these pants could you go get her could you go get her because i've seen when they take uh i've seen

like kelly cochran when they took her to look for bodies. She's like, well, I'd go right over there. And they're like, no, no, no, no. You point it out and then we'll go in and, you know, with a crime scene, properly figure it out. They said, can you go grab her for us? So he said, sure. Took off all his clothes, got down to his fucking underwear, hopped into the water and swam out there. And he's like, found her.

Got her. I got it. Drives out, swims out to the middle. It's about three and a half feet of water. He grabbed her and started basically walking toward the shore slowly with her dragging behind. Oh my God. By the foot.

He just dragged her by the foot, Jimmy. Like a caveman. Like a caveman. Just dragged her, like a dead animal that you just, like he dragged her by the foot, Jimmy. Like a caveman. Like a caveman. Just dragged her like a dead animal that you just. Yeah. Like he dragged her by the fucking foot. Wow. He half pulled the body onto the shore and then they told her, they told him, just leave it there.

You've done enough now. We've seen enough. He left it. He then dried himself off, got dressed again. Mac does. And there's pictures of this. I'll post on social media. The press is there as well.

So at this point, they let, while they're doing measurements and stuff like that, the cops, the cops let the press do like a whole photo shoot there. They let the, Mac talks to him. He's hanging out. He's walking around. They're just, he's just hanging out. It's a big, like a barbecue. Someone should have brought a have brought a grill like it's crazy so they're doing all this he showed no emotion while they're doing that um he just stood there just did all that kind of shit um he said you know she wanted a kiss to remember you by is what she said what he told them that's

what he asked what she asked for he said that after he raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger, you know, he told several times he told this to the press. All different reporters are talking to him. The sheriff of Kermit arrives at the scene and more photographers and more news people follow. This was covered amazingly back then in the paper. There are there'll be like an article on the front page with a couple pictures. Then there'll be like page three more. And it's a whole page of pictures and fucking, it's crazy.

So much more. This was a big deal. So by the way, this was his father's hunting place. His father owned this. He didn't take him to take her to the middle of nowhere. He took her to his father's hunting grounds, which makes it creepier for some reason really attached it's really weird that's wild if they don't find her if nobody puts out like all this effort to find her you're gonna

go back there and go hunting and her body's gonna what the fuck is happening? That's what I mean. None of this adds up to a smart guy doing it. A smart guy. This sounds like a dumb guy helping with a suicide. A smart guy would do it better, I feel like. And we know he's a smart guy, so that's annoying. They also find Betty's, they find the footprints, his footprints and her small footprints next to him too. Which is pretty depressing to watch her footprints walk up to her fucking death there um so yeah he jesus christ he pulls the body out which is just fucking horrible um it's still got the pale pink pajamas on her body um there is uh two lead waist

weights tied around her waist and obviously half of her fucking head is missing. So, yeah, the highway patrolman on the scene said it didn't move him when he pulled her body out of the water or when he said that he'd put a shotgun to her head. It was as cold-blooded and premeditated as it could be. What pushed him to do it, none of us knew. Later on, when I put him in the squad car to take him to jail, I said, Mac, didn't you expect to get caught? And he said, not this quick. He showed, he showed no emotion, regret, or fear. It was like, he was talking about shooting a sick dog. That's just sad, man. So yeah, he does this whole photo session, 20 minutes of taking pictures. I mean, he's like showing them he's pointing

at the things he's like we talked about what was gonna it was gonna be like and friends and then we went over here he's acting like this is his moment to shine it's super strange man does he know that he's in a lot of trouble he's he's not stupid and he went he's in the presence of like eight cops at this point so he should but then, they haven't put the handcuffs on him yet. Yeah. He's walking around acting free like he's helping them out. I don't even know if he thinks he's getting arrested or not. I think he thinks they might go, well, she asked him to do it.

I really think that's what he thinks at this point. So you can be smart and not worldly at the same time. You know, I think that's kind of what having a high iq doesn't mean you know shit about the world so um either way they uh yeah he does this he said he tells them she was cheerful and chatted about how happy she was going to be when she was dead he's putting all this out in the press so the press is recording all this and putting it out so um yeah he kept saying she was happy it was she was going to end up in heaven, all this type of shit. He tells the reporters, I just stood there with the gun. So she gave me a kiss. Thank you, Mac.

I'll always remember you for that. Then she said now, and he tells the exact thing. And he said she was dead like that and snapped his fingers again. So that's how he tells the story because he said the same thing with the cops. That's a very Texas thing. Like that. Like that. Sorry, because he said the same thing with the cops.

That's a very Texas thing. Lack that. Lack that. So they said that the – another sheriff said that the gun, a pair of men's loafers, and the empty shell were found in Mack's home. He kept the shell. He kept the shell, yeah. And the bloody boots that were found on the shore of the stockpile right where he left them. So not a very good.

Don't leave your shoes at the murder scene. Murderers. That's probably a bad way to go about it. If footprints are good to catch you, how about the whole shoe? Probably get you that way. So, yeah, he said that the blood and other shit at the scene, other than all the, you know, viscera and everything like that was, like that, he described that that's the angle it all went at. At no time was he in handcuffs during this entire thing, by the way. What?

No time was he in handcuffs. So, yeah, the autopsy said that the blast totally destroyed her brain. And in all probability, the weapon was directly against the skin. Oh, God. There was no evidence of any kind of sexual weirdness with the body pre or post-mortem and that she was not pregnant, they found out, too. So that's good. So there we go. Now, the reaction of this is obviously people are perplexed more than anything. Normally, it's shock and horror that we get.

People freak out. People did that. These people are like, what now? Now, hold on a minute now. Wait a second. So she wanted him to shoot her.

Like they're all real confused. No one knows what to make of it. Um, he was told, uh, the cousin shell Shelly was told by his mother came to school to tell him about it, that your cousin's dead. He says, I could not remember going back to the locker room after my mom left.

I could not remember the drive home to our house. Next thing I was aware of, uh, was what I was doing at home was I was smashing the records that Betty and I often played when she came over. Take five. Hello, mudda. Hello. Hello, mudda. Hello, fadaada they're listening to that's hilarious ray charles sings country wow what i didn't know that album exists ray charles sings country i kind of want to hear that old school country dude that'd be kind of

cool um goji grants the wayward wind that was her song i wish you had done this. Fucking, yeah. He says, Betty's. I wish you kept all that. Yeah. That matters to you, man. He smashed him. Yeah, he smashed him. He was angry. He said, Betty's dead, I stammered.

That couldn't be. Not that the thought of death and Betty were inseparable. She'd mentioned it frequently. She wanted to die, she said. This is the cousin now, too. Dying was preferable to life, especially in West Texas, she said. She tried to kill herself once before, once with four aspirin. She was not called Drama Mama just for being the star of three high school stage productions in her junior year.

So everything was drama with Betty, he says. But every time she ever talked about death with me, as we sat in our family's 53 Oldsmobile out in front of my house or hers every time we had ended up making out. What the fuck? She was dead. They killed her. Who are they? She's dead because we made out, I thought. That was a natural thought to me.

Betty and I were Baptists. The cousin thought, because he's like 16, he figured she's dead because God is punishing her for making out with her cousin. Yeah. That's wild. Instead, he goes and tells everybody. Fuck, man. She can't be happy about that, Shelton.

Yeah. So they arrest Mac, though. They have to arrest him. You got to. They got to arrest him. At school, the press is at school, and one girl screams that she can't believe it, not Mac. And she screams and collapses in tears in her friend's arms. Yeah, not Mac.

He couldn't have done that. How about not her? Jesus. Nope. One girl said, we were shocked that one of our own, a popular football player who had been to our parties and dated our friends had committed a heinous crime um uh one woman said here uh quote as more information came out we were shocked to learn that mac and a lot of the other boys we knew had been spending time with betty after they had taken their girlfriends home that's when they started to find that out the girls were like our boyfriends have all been fucking Betty.

So girls would visit Mac at home now so they could boast of knowing him. I know that Mac guy who shot that girl. It was like a I'm cool type of thing. So classmates acted as it was like if it was like some weird tragic Shakespearean thing that couldn't be avoided and nobody blamed him. Yeah. One guy said, quote, We were all supportive because we couldn't believe it we figured that if mac did it there had to be a good reason what yeah i i i would like to go back to mac shoots to a to dispatch you guys let's start there mac doesn't stop until it's dead okay stop acting like he's he's such a nice person he put together a murder kit jimmy yeah and then

drove this girl to his father's hunting grounds he was tired of seeing her limp around yeah that's crazy like we i guess is now's a good enough time to discuss it as any as what the fuck basically. I think she realized by this, but this is theory that who knows if it's true. It happened 60 years ago. I have no idea. But I feel like, I don't know how you feel, but I feel like maybe she fell into a groove of saying this someone kill me thing because that was like her shtick kind of a thing right and i don't know if she wanted to go through with it or not or maybe she had suicidal ideations and maybe she didn't and she tried to harness them and joke about them like a

comic would do maybe i'm not sure but then the thing with mac do you think that she thought basically this is how i will get mac back to get him to talk me out of it and then make this some big breakthrough for our relationship? Do you think maybe that's what it was? There's something to that because she certainly did not have enough suicidal ideations to go through with it because for aspirin and then thinking about throwing herself 30 feet. And no one actually saw her do that. That's just. Yeah, that's what I mean. You know what I mean? She was doing, she's not doing anything.

Costing the school money to fix the stage now, that's all that is. Throwing herself 30 feet to her soreness. She's, this isn't, she made no effort with. Anything real. Real intention of injuring herself absolutely so i think mac was mad enough that she cheated on him and uh this is i i really think he he had every intention of killing her uh because he was so mad at her and and he thought he could get away with it because

he had like an indemnifying note that he was like well i mean she wrote a note away with it who cares i mean that's fine shit you can just write that down. One girl who was a friend of Betty's said that she liked Betty, but she thought that Betty had some problems. She said she was a messed up girl,

Shell, to Shelton here. She asked a bunch of us in P.E. to kill her. One girl, Andrea, feels just awful because she told Betty to stop asking us and just go do it yourself and leave us out of it. Oh my God. But honestly, we didn't think she was serious, just overdramatic. And so the cousin says, what about Mac? How do you feel about that? And this girl said, he's a cold-blooded SOB. And this girl said, he's a cold-blooded SOB.

Yeah, so she said that everybody else, you know. Well, this girl said, I've always thought he was nuts. A girlfriend used to live on his block, and she told me that he'd roam the alley shooting cats with a.22 rifle. Yeah, he has no utter disregard for life. He had a strange sense of humor and i thought he was just creepy i didn't know him well and i didn't want to know him well yeah so this is post-murder so this is post yeah yeah but um take that with a grain of salt but even still with the with the evidence and facts of it the guy was mad yeah leave it there you know what i mean in town though it becomes that poor boy got that messed up girl, got that poor boy to do something.

That poor boy. That's that's the town thing. One guy is overheard saying Shelton's father has the car wash that Roy Orbison comes into. Yeah. And he heard a guy at the car wash. This has nothing to do with Roy Orbison, but I was just connecting that. So one guy, he said, quote, My father overheard a customer say at his car wash, everyone knew that girl was no good. She tricked that boy into killing her. Wow. Yep. That was kind of the the the prevailing wisdom here. Yep. They said, who knows? One kid said, quote, I think Betty trapped herself in a real life drama of her own making that I would believe. That's a good way to put it. She was ad libbing all the way and it spun out of her control. I remember a teacher taking me aside afterwards and asking me, was Betty pregnant? And I said, no, I wish it were that simple. It was a game of chicken and she never backed out.

What a dick thing to say as a teacher. Yeah. Is she pregnant? You think that must be what it is yeah she was gonna lock him down i hear she's a whore so that's what that says right there well kudos to her for through everybody's words banging so many people and not getting pregnant she's she's great at managing uh pregnancy and and not and unwanted ones. Yeah, no shit. At 17, that's incredible.

Wow, holy fuck. So here's some notes she wrote to her friends around this time, too. She said, one note said, to whom it may concern, the time has come to leave, and as I prepare to go, I find it difficult to write the words that will explain. That's how she started that off. This is to different ones of her friends. A guy named Dick. I love you, Dick, which is an unfortunate choice of words.

It sure is. For all that you have meant to me, you've been the greatest friend I could ever ask for. Here's to all the stories we never wrote. Maybe it's better that way. They'll never be exposed to the critics or the public. I hope our story about Jerry makes it. Think of me once in a while and know that I'm glad we met. Gail, I'm sorry about Indiana, but I hope you'll understand.

Here's hoping that you'll always have the best because you're one of the best. I find the tears clouding my eyes as I say goodbye to those I love. May they forgive me. Then she says, Mr. Herring, you're a wonderful man. So many times I've wanted to tell you how much i appreciate you i'm sorry i have to tell you like this but that this is an earlier note from when she was thinking about killing herself and never did so you can't and they were like see look she's gonna kill herself but they're like yeah but three months ago now yeah entirely different if she doesn't

have him involved and she's apologizing and saying goodbye to him. Yeah, that's what I mean. A local journalist said, quote, it looked to most people like a case that was impossible for the defendant to win. I mean, the defendant had admitted he kissed the girl, then blew her away, weighted her body down with lead, and buried it in a pond. What else did the state need? That sounds like a serial killer. That is so cold.

Yeah, that's fucking crazy. So he said, this one guy, he said, so I knew an attorney that ended up taking it, a guy named Warren Burnett. And he said, why the fuck would you take this case as a defense attorney? What's wrong with you? He said, quote, I asked Burnett why he would take it. And Burnett said, church ain't over till they sing. Oh, my God. That's a wow.

OK, so it's not over till it's over type of thing so they said he was a one of the best trial lawyers around this burnett guy he's an ex-marine who was the youngest prosecutor in texas at the age of 25 and then he uh ended up going to the defense side he's a real theatrical kind of a guy big booming voice and i'll tell you one of these. Fuck, I love those. Yeah, he's got a real style and they said he would pepper his arguments with Shakespearean shit and scripture. I think I've heard of this guy. He put the Bible in there

maybe. A lot of these, that was the way to do it back then. They said that at that point he'd never had a client get sent to prison. Really? Yeah, in like the last five years he's been practicing. He's beat the rap every time. Every time.

Yeah. Back then, this is pre-DNA, pre-your phone said you were right there. This is pre-anything. Pre-blood test meaning anything. This is just whoever puts on a more presentable case, that's it. You win. So the strategy here is for mac is temporary insanity oh now listen to this legal strategy the guy is brilliant the defense lawyer under texas

law if jurors find a defendant temporarily insane that is insane only when he committed the crime then you walk free that means you don't even have to go to a mental hospital because you're fine now. You were just temporarily insane. That's how that works. Citing this statute, Burnett, the defense attorney, argued before the district judge that before any trial was to take place, jurors should first have to evaluate Mack's sanity at the time he pulled the trigger. If they determined that he'd been temporarily insane, then he shouldn't have to stand trial for murder.

That's how it works. No one had ever done that. This is from an article, Burnett's line of reasoning flouted legal precedent. Sanity hearings are supposed to take up only the narrow question of whether the defendant is competent to stand trial, not whether he that's what a trial is for, is to find out if he was temporarily insane. That's when evidence comes in. But to the astonishment of everybody over the strenuous objections of the prosecutor, the judge granted the pretrial hearing. The jurors are not going to determine his guilt or innocence. They'd only render a decision as to

whether he'd been insane at the time of the crime whether or not we can try him yep in effect he'd have it's basically but it's not a trial so it's a it's a pre-trial acquittal right so that's how it works that's amazing it's fucking insane it's the wildest we don't want charges filed on this boy's good name if he was insane. If he was insane. Let's get his neighbors to determine it. Let's figure it out, buddy. Bring them on in. People his dad might know.

You know, just everybody. So the hearing takes place in Kermit because that's where the body was found, which is like 45 miles west of Odessa. It's described as where the smell of petroleum hangs in the air. That's how it's described. So that's nice. They said the jury pool was the largest that had of petroleum hangs in the air. That's how it's described, so that's nice. They said the jury pool was the largest that had ever been called in this county, and the last murder to get such attention was a 1947 hotel stabbing. A Winkler County, because that's where Kermit is.

It's in Winkler, not Ector. The clerk, Virginia Healy, said it was a carnival. The defendant was a good-looking boy, and all these clean- cut girls came out of Odessa to ooh and ah over him. Max girls. They, we called them. Oh boy. Yeah. They made up only a fraction of the spectators, but still everybody, they said everybody in the courtroom was on Mac's side except for Betty's parents.

They sat there by themselves crying as this happened, whereas everybody else was angry and yelling and it was a mess. So it's a lot. Arguing for the state is this guy named Dan Sullivan, who seems like a real dipshit if I'm being honest with you. He had only prosecuted up to this point oil field thefts and DUIs. So he wasn't a – We're're gonna get a guy that murdered a girl yep uh and there's a picture of him he does this weird thing where he pushes up his jacket sleeves on his suit but not like 80s style like every year's jacket and your shirt up to the just his jacket whereas his shirt sleeve is still down it's the dumbest looking thing i've ever seen i saw a picture of it in the paper, and I was like, you dipshit.

They said that's his trademark thing that he pushes his suit sleeves up. I'm like, you look like a moron, sir. It's a trademark because nobody does that because you look stupid. No, because it's dumb. Why don't you pull your pant legs up over your knees too? Yeah, but keep your socks up. Right. So the judge's name in this case?

Judge Lord. Really? Wow, name in this case, Judge Lord. Really? Wow, that's something. Judge and Lord. Well, I guess you're in charge. So the big argument in the beginning is whether or not that her pajamas that she was wearing, the duster that she brought, and her shoe that was left behind, whether those would be introduced as evidence. How would they not be introduced as evidence when have you ever seen or heard of a murder trial where what the fucking victim was wearing at the time of the murder wasn't entered into evidence and

easily displayed that is a stat that's that goes that's just they'll stipulate to that they don't even fucking object to it that's obviously you're gonna allow that in why bother objecting they said no we want that out the defense said we don't think that should be in there um this this is crazy the fucking defense also tried to keep the shotgun out of it and the murder weapon and the empty shell that was and the lead weights and the rope and the pair of shoes that he left at the fucking site all the physical evidence he tried to have thrown out and they said sure what yeah how much do they believe in this case it's fucking crazy we don't even need evidence the judge was like no problem no said, yeah, get rid of it. You can't show her clothes.

Is that how much he stands on the confession? It's crazy. So the defense case, his parents, Mac's parents testify, Mr. Herring said he was a happy boy before, always smiling. That old smile is missing. It's not there. It's not there. It's like he's trying to make up for the sorrow he's caused. Wow, that's not there. It's not there. It's like he's trying to make up for the sorrow he's caused. Wow, that's pretty rehearsed.

Then the mother, Mrs. Herring, said that since he's been home because he's out on bail, she found her son lying on the bed at their home a few days after the tragedy. She said, I went in and I laid down with him and I said, Mac, tell me about this. Tell me what happened. And he told me, Mother, it's just like a dream. And I said, did you do it? And he said, I must have. And I got down on my knees and put my arms around him and he just told me over and over again.

I just thought I had to do it. So, yeah, there you go they introduce over the jesus christ they do introduce uh the the i want everyone to know that what i'm about to do in no way implicates anyone else but mac letter that's a big deal so no physical evidence but we'll let this letter in okay that's fine so they do that um now the burden of proof here in this hearing falls on the defense to prove that he's insane. Because that's what this whole hearing is about. There's not anything else. So the hearing began with the defense, not the state.

So it's a flip. So the first person they called is Mac's father. And like we said, he talked about all that kind of stuff. They talk about all that kind of stuff the uh they talked about um uh they talk about all this type of shit they bring other people in multiple character nine character witnesses including odessa high's head football coach um teachers students that are popular and well respected and that sort of thing um you know all that sort of shit the head football coach said he must have been temporarily insane

because that boy's a good boy. He's a good boy, I'll tell you something. So the defense then paraded seven additional character witnesses in there and it was a fucking, it turned into a circus. It was just a zoo of people saying how wonderful he was. Kellis Turner, an Ector County commissioner and former principal of the high school, said

he had known Mac for 15 years and watched him grow up into a fine boy. Damn good boy. Damn good boy. So he's a politician, this guy. Another guy, a former football player with him, who's now attending Texas A&M on an athletic scholarship, so he's as good as it gets down there. He said, he was my friend and still is. He's a good fella.

Fine. This guy, by the way, the guy who went to Texas A&M, was also named most popular senior while he was there, and he said that most of the boys on the football team looked up for Mac, looked up to Mac. They looked up to him. He said, I'm sorry for the tragedy but it didn't affect the friendship I think he's got a good reputation still unreal wow um a substitute

teacher also said that Mac is highly regarded by the faculty at the school and a good friend to lots of people then they the defense brought in a bunch of people saying that Betty wanted asked them to kill her right would you kill me? Would you kill me? Everybody. She said she wanted to die and she wanted someone to kill her. Another person. Heaven must be a nice place. All these quotes from before.

They're bringing them out now. But they also testified they didn't think that she was serious. So either way, one guy here, the seller's guy, he said that I think Mac's a very, very fine boy and I'm glad our son has a friend like him. They said they knew Mac as an honest boy, capable of trust. He said that Mac was the first boy I let my son go out with and use a gun without me being along. Y'all go out there and shoot some things so yeah um they said that she tried and then they go on to um the you know her suicide attempts and all that sort of thing uh then they bring up marvin grice who is a psychiatrist who examined mac three days after the murder oh boy so he says

that obviously betty possessed a death wish here. Between the perfect storm of her death wish and Mac's temporary insanity, it was inevitable, basically. It had to happen. He said that he's on the witness stand. He said that Mac was suffering from gross stress reaction at the time of the tragedy is what he called it. He said that he questioned him three days after that and he said, in my opinion, I was talking to him. At the time I was talking to him, he was sane. He said, but at the time, he doesn't think that he was sane.

He says that you might say that Miss Williams has become a witness for the defense with her note. He goes on to say all that sort of thing. He says he's basing his opinion on the letter written by Betty, his examinations of Mac and conversations with the defense attorney. He said that he told the court that Herring was Mac was, quote, dethroned of his reasoning by persistent pleadings. Temporarily insane. Drove, literally drove him crazy. GSR is really, really powerful stuff. You know, gross stress reaction.

Wow. Dethroned of his reasoning. Sometimes it does. That's literally, she drove him crazy and he finally did it. He said that he doesn't think that Mac knew what he was doing. It just built up until he lost contact with reality. Ripped him off his high and mighty. Yep.

He said he became so mixed up and sick that he felt pulling the trigger was what he should do for her. He was deprived of the power of applying logic. Whoa. kidding me are you fucking joking asshole that is that's fucking wild man james i'm gonna be honest with you um that's you fuck you no matter how many times you ask me i'm never doing it for you and if you do you wouldn't be crazy you'd just be sick of hearing it which is an asshole you can't kill someone for that yeah an annoyed asshole he said at that point he said that the effects of this gross stress reaction were just a temporary thing though and quote he can be trusted now to lead a normal life gsr cleans right up as soon as you clear somebody's brains out of their skull it cleans right up and uh as you clear somebody's brains out of their skull

it cleans right up and uh yeah i'd hire him in my office no problem right now as long as you uncap a young girl you'll be you'll be fine after that oh my god now they also asked him the doctor that the prosecution asked the doctor would it be normal for a person who has a death wish to still discuss going which college she was going to and where she was going to be in a year and make future plans solid question yeah he said he said yes that could happen doctor said absolutely that's wild and they said well how much did you talk to him he goes oh not very much didn't talk to mac very much at all the doctor says and they said they said well did you treat him and this doctor or psychiatrist said that he

never gave mac any treatment and the additional information he received was based on his opinion and opinions of other high school students who had visited him in the past for emotional problems so you put it all together that's what you get. Wow. So the prosecution here is just they got to be like their heads are spinning. They're like, this is fucking wild, man. The judge denied their motion to have Mac evaluated by a psychiatrist for the state. Oh, you can't do that. The judge disallowed physical evidence and then said, no, your guy can't examine him. Only their doctor can examine. One opinion. That's fucked. That's fucked. They said that because they said that his current state of mind is irrelevant. So this doctor talked to him three days after the thing. That would be more relevant. Now it's too late.

It's too late now. Rather than to see if he's full of shit and lying now. So see if he's just a malingering asshole. now so see if he's just a malingering asshole so the prosecution tried to establish jealousy as a motive by calling the guy she banged while Mac was away and all that

sort of thing yeah so he said that he had spurned Betty's advances when they were parked in a secluded spot this is a different guy he said that the incident had not much of an effect on Mac this is a different guy named Bill who was good friends with Mac, who found out about this. He said, we talked and agreed our friendship was more valuable than an argument about a girl.

We shook hands and forgot the whole thing. So he said, bros before hoes, and they shook hands and they were like, we're the first people to ever say that. We're going to be super annoying someday. Hey, want to shop at Affliction? I don't know what that is but yes for some reason let's go so uh matching tap out shirts want to do it we should do it they also focused on howard sellers the one classmate comment that betty's dramatic note exempting to exonerate mac had been conceived in a joking atmosphere. They're saying that note, he's like, I was fucking there when we wrote it. That wasn't her note to legally absolve him.

We were fucking around and she wrote this note of, he's a good guy. Don't blame him for it. This is all my fault. They were joking. That was just dark humor. Wow. And Mac took it and then he's got to fucking get out of jail free car here. That's what they're saying. So they said that this is fucking crazy. Wow. And Mac took it, and then he's got to fucking get out of jail free car here.

That's what they're saying. So they said that this is fucking crazy. The entire proceeding was a perversion of the law, the guy says. Yeah, that's disgusting. Said the jury never heard facts the indictment read, never heard the indictment read or learned how the crime was committed. None of this came out. They didn't talk about the shotgun. It was just, you think he was crazy then or not none of the details it's fucking wild so um anyway they they bring him up there mac testified as well and they said you know what would happen explain the moment that you killed betty and he said i don't know i can't remember

i can't explain he said he has difficulty understanding it all himself and he said I don't know I can't remember I can't explain he said he has difficulty understanding it all himself and he said I've stayed awake at night trying to think so I could explain it to other people sometimes now I think it was a dream sometimes I think it was real sometimes I think I'm watching someone else hey guy it was super real it's it's I'm like temporarily insane it's super weird but as soon as you say I am, I should be fine and go back to what I'm doing. It should be fine. So, yeah, he talked about that Betty would joke about it, but then he thought that she was serious about it. And he said, I know that everything about it is wrong.

No shit. So the defense closed. The defense says this. This is the defense's closing argument here to the jury quote we have before us a simple but tragic matter yeah a disturbed and confused young woman with a death wish prevailed upon a young man who had once been her boyfriend to do her bidding by taking her life in her own words we heard the girl exonerate the young man from her death. Should he have done so?

Of course not. Would he ever do such a thing again? Again, of course not. But a distinguished psychiatrist has explained to us how Mac Herring, operating under this great pressure, lost his ability to reason

when confronted with this ultimate appeal. This was not a normal request. It was not under normal request it was not under normal circumstances the incredible pressure of this extraordinary request got to the young man he was not thinking clearly or properly well that's fucking obvious obviously yeah wow but he was also not thinking about himself he had nothing to hide nothing to cover up that's funny why do you lie to the fucking cops then at first point yeah He should have drove right to the police station and said, this girl just made me kill her because she wanted to kill herself

and I feel terrible. Let's go get her out of the water. That's what a normal person would do. A normal person would have shot her and then been like, oh my God, what have I done? And then sobbed. You don't put her in the fucking water. Well, might as well tie some weights around her with this rope I brought.

That's crazy. Take my clothes off and wait out 20 feet. What are you talking about? water. Well, might as well tie some weights around her with this rope I brought. That's crazy. Take my clothes off and wait out 20 feet. What are you talking about? He had no anger or malice of forethought except for packing a murder kit. He simply wanted to help his former girlfriend unburden herself from all the stresses in her young life. As Dr. Grice told you sitting right here in this witness chair, young people often crack under this kind of pressure. It's just too much. They can no longer think clearly.

Soldiers, policemen, and other adults sometimes even crack under this pressure. It's called gross stress disorder. No, it's not. If our finest citizens can yield to this disorder, who are we to say that a teenager cannot? He couldn't help it. say that a teenager cannot he couldn't help it if our finest citizens can at once crack but then recover to live perfectly normal lives who are we to say this teenager cannot ladies and gentlemen you're going to be asked a single question was the defendant capable of telling right from wrong that's it that's his closing okay oh because that's his whole shtick that's why he wants

all the evidence taken out because the evidence proves fuck yeah yeah the evidence is pretty bad it looks bad now while the prosecution's doing his thing which is whatever it's fine it's exactly what you'd expect the prosecutor to say it's beautiful burnett has a strategy so the audience so the jury doesn't even look at him basically he's he lights a cigarette as this guy starts to do his thing burnett lights a cigarette as the prosecutor goes up right he lets the ash on the cigarette grow he doesn't flick the ash you know distracting a long ash on a cigarette is to people the whole jury is staring at him by the end of it what he does is he puts a fucking paper clip into the cigarette to hold the ash in place so it won't fall he that those are

his court cigarettes that he uses when the other side is doing a closing does it on purpose he does it on purpose and he'll chain smoke till they go all the way down with the audience of the audience the jury staring at him the whole fucking time that's what he did which is pretty wild yeah but all it's showmanship i guess but in without dna and fucking blood typing and you know cameras and phones without all this shit that was considered a reasonable way to defend a client because it's all in this weird showmanship. So the prosecutor closes out by saying, was this out of jealousy, resentment, or even fear for his actions that he tried to hide it?

We cannot be absolutely certain, but the defense was asked to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mac Herring did not know right from wrong. Note that the standard here is not whether he possibly did not know what he's doing but that from an overwhelming body of evidence is it absolutely certain that he didn't know what he was doing so they said that you know doctor the doctor said that he was badgered into undertaking this killing and that he was suffering from something called gross stress disorder before three days ago i'd never heard of such a thing. And perhaps you haven't either, but let's take this doctor's word for it.

Gross stress disorder is a real thing. And he says, but does this make sense that this girl was able to generate this amount of stress and only 11 minutes of talking, right? Broke this kid's brain to the point of that. Um, and sometimes with other people around,

it doesn't make sense to me. And I'm, I'm sure it doesn't make sense to you. The true nature of this matter needs to be determined in trial. Justice demands that we get to the bottom of this whole event. I'm certain that we have more to learn, and I will dedicate myself to uncovering even more of this mystery before that trial occurs. But as far as these proceedings are concerned, look at the evidence. There was a plan, and that plan was carried out exactly. proceedings are concerned look at the evidence there was a plan and that plan was carried out exactly mac herring's behavior was calculated efficient and most of all rational you have to

find that he was sane when he killed betty williams there's really no other explanation for his behavior so jury goes in for 11 hours oh my god in the middle of it they ask that they get the psychiatrist testimony read back to them to make sure they know what they're talking about. So they come back with a verdict of, you, sir, were temporarily insane during this act. Oh, my God. We're real sorry about that. You should ask your dad to stop for ice cream on the way home because you've been through a lot. That's basically what they said. it no i'm shit you not you're good they bought gsd they think that's a real thing that's that fucking cause you to kill a girl every time yeah

the reaction to this um betty's cousin said quote i don't take with his shell said i don't take well to the fact that people don't think this is an important story. He said, I don't believe that Betty ever wanted to die. So he said, when her father lived with my parents, he used to threaten to kill himself in the middle of the night. My mother would sit up with him and try to talk him out of it until he did it one too many times. Then she told him to just go ahead and do it, which he didn't. When Betty said that life wasn't worth living without Mac, I understood it within the context of our family. He said everybody was dramatic,

always saying they were going to throw themselves off a bridge. She just needed a kiss from her cousin and it was fine. They're all very, this is Italian people are like this. You ever, even you watch The Sopranos, oh God, take me now. That's how they all are. You're like, oh, and all the kids roll their eyes. They know grandma's not going to go off themselves,

but they beg for death on a daily basis. So he says, no other event in my life impacted me the way this did. Everything looked different to me afterward. Betty had been murdered, and everybody wanted to sweep it under the rug and make it go away. He said that people were talking shit about her. people were talking shit about her. One guy here, oh, this is,

one of her friends said that I overheard a juror talking about Betty. I remember her saying in a very ugly way, that girl was nothing. She's just white. She's just trash. She's just a trashy, whorey girl. No, she's nothing. To some observers,

it seemed as if Betty's transgressions had eclipsed those of the teenager who killed her. Nobody talked about how Mac could have said no. Who's one of her friends named Sandra said Betty had enlisted him, this worthy young man to do what she didn't have the courage to do herself. She had roped him into doing it in quotes. So she became not the victim but the villain that's how everybody did so the state appeals this saying that basically the the judge did not have the authority to grant a hearing that only evaluated sanity at the time of the crime because it had never been done before and uh basically they say well go after him again then. Try again, motherfucker. So they have another, a second one here, a second insanity hearing.

What? They're allowed to do it again. Again. This time, change of venue. It's moved 600 miles away to Beaumont, Texas. Oh, boy. And this will be quick here. They bring out all of the teachers again.

They really get it this time. His character witnesses are lined up. Howard Sellers said that Mac was his idol. out his uh they bring out all of his the teachers again they really get it this time his character witnesses are lined up uh howard seller said that mac was his idol and quote personified everything that was good yeah um it's fucking wild the state and the state tried to play a dumb shit thing here too they at first tried to they they didn't want to stipulate that the letter that she wrote was really from her they wouldn't stipulate that they had to have handwriting experts come in and line it up they made the defense prove it basically when they already accepted it in the first trial so that's stupid wrote it right they know she wrote it but that's

the only thing that gets him off without that he, he's fucked. So Burnett, again, in his closing here, he said that nearly two years after the murder, the prosecution has still not established a motive. Does the evidence show you any possible explanation? He said until some evidence is brought to show you the psychiatrists were wrong, I'd be inclined to believe him. Verdicts come in. This is 12 days before Christmas here. Yeah, 1963. They find Mac, here we go, not guilty by reason of insanity. Oh, my God.

Not guilty. Applause breaks out in the courtroom. Oh, yeah. The poor boy's been tortured, James. He's been tortured. Mac is mobbed by, this is how that article put it, Mac was mobbed by jubilant supporters. Unbelievable.

Like he just kicked the game-winning field goal in the Super Bowl. It is pretty fucking crazy. He was up for the electric chair, and now he's a free man. Wow. So what do you do after you're accused of murder and you know that everybody knows you at least blew half this girl's brains out whether she wanted it or not disneyland you go yeah you go the fuck away i would think he says i'm gonna stay around here running for office i'm good

he attends texas tech university what where at one point he's introduced to a class as, quote, the famous Mac Herring. Yeah, he got pussy from this, Jimmy. For sure. You know he did. Yeah. He then, after school, returned back home to Odessa. Nobody gave him any shit. Led a completely normal life. Never got arrested.

Never got in any trouble. He was married and divorced twice. He worked as a dock foreman at a chemical company a carpenter a welder and also finally an electrician like his dad here um few of the people still kept up with him and saw him other people moved away that sort of thing here um one reporter says quote i caught sight of him one afternoon in november as he pulled up to his house a mint green frame house not far from where he grew up. His own neighborhood lacks the gracious lawns and spreading trees of his childhood.

The house, which is a bit down at the heels, looks like the province of a man who lives alone. He lives a depressing life. He eats fucking Salisbury steak frozen dinners at least four times a week. Loves it. A meager yard of packed dirt and weeds led to the street and an old rusted pickup sat in the driveway. Mac, who declined to be interviewed, looked indistinguishable from any other working man in Odessa, right down to his beat up truck with toolbox in the bed. Nothing suggested that he was once had been the sharply handsome or held a great deal of promise. At 62, he was utterly had been the sharply handsome or held a great deal of promise at 62 he was utterly unremarkable man um his his friend larry francil again he comes back he says this has not been a

free ride for mac of course not it's ruined two lives one's dead one's still alive and uh because many of the people in town don't want to hear this shit he said that i would suspect that most of us would rather let the thing stay in the past and uh they said there was already enough pain in 61 maybe he shouldn't have shot a girl that's a thing now the legends here um there's a odessa college student named sammy sanchez who was researching a paper that she had to present to her speech class on the best place to spend Halloween, received permission to spend the night in the high school's auditorium, Odessa High School. When I met Sam, this is from the article. When I met Sanchez and three of her girlfriends a few weeks later, they told me in great detail about all the strange and unexplained things that they had heard and seen.

The door that mysteriously slammed closed behind them. The eerie footsteps, the stage lights that had moved when they called out Betty's name. Oh, my God. assumed any drama girl spectral or not would have wanted we let betty know she was the star we sat there in the seats in the theater in the dark and we applauded for her oh my god the kids what they'll do is this is from that article from texas monthly quote when football season ended there was nothing much to do on friday nights except drink beer obviously and stare up at the wide open sky teenagers used to park their cars and pickups across the street from Odessa High School and wait to see the ghost called Betty. According to legend,

she would appear at the windows of the school auditorium at midnight. It's all in the auditorium, all the hauntings. You know, if my spirit was extinguished at a lake 30 miles away, I'd likely find my way back to school. That's where she wants to be. She liked the theater.

So yeah, she could have been on Broadway haunting something, but no. They said that provided students, that students flashed their headlights three times or honked their horn and called out her name. The real Betty, it was said, had attended Odessa High School decades before and acted in a number of plays on the auditorium stage.

But the facts of her death had been muddled with time, and each story was as apocryphal as the last. She fell off a ladder in the auditorium and broke her neck. She had hanged herself in the theater. Her boyfriend, who was a varsity football player, had shot her on stage during a play. These are all the legends. So they said many teenagers, so many of them made the late night pilgrimage to see Betty,

that the high school finally had to paint over the windows of the auditorium because that's all that was out there every fucking night was these people doing this for 40 years. Honking, flashing lights for 40 years. They didn't paint over it until 2007. Wow.

So it was that long. They said students still talk of a presence in the auditorium, but the stories, they never went away. They said that there's flickering lights, noises that can't be explained to objects that appear to move on their own. Some claim to have seen her pacing the balcony or heard her footsteps behind them, only to find no one there. find no one there. They said that rumors have flourished that a coach who knew the real Betty is visited by her on occasion in the field house and that a former vice principal who once caught a glimpse of her after hours was so spooked by the encounter that he refused to be in the school by himself again. The theater arts teacher says in 2015, quote, I hear her name on a daily basis. Whenever something unexplained happens, a book

falls on the floor in my classroom or the light board goes out during a technical rehearsal. Someone always says it's Betty. So yeah, that's become crazy. Um, so the, uh, uh, it's obviously a ghost story clearly. Um, but they said that the, uh, said that the notoriety of the case has faded, but they said that – who's this? Oh, the guy Ronnie White, not Ron White. It's a Texas guy named Ronnie, graduated from Odessa the year the murders took place. The murder took place. in 1978 and he was astonished to hear students talking about fucking betty yeah whose spirit haunted the auditorium and and uh the popular football player who had a hand in her killing he said i couldn't believe what i was hearing i thought good lord they must be talking about

betty williams yeah like i knew that chick january 5th 2019 mac herring dies at age 75 really yep finally so there you go everybody that friend do it for him i hopefully a friend put him out of his fucking misery i don't know that everybody is odessa texas and a hell of a story i'm all for assisted suicide if it's for someone who's sick or yeah someone who's 96 and can't move or that's fine. Not when they're 17 and healthy. Give this girl four years and things are going to be fine. Get her in college. It's a whole new world.

Get her in New York or wherever the fuck. In Dallas. I don't know. Somewhere else. Get the fuck out of Odessa. That's it. So there it is, everybody. Odessa, Texas.

Hope you enjoyed that. If you did enjoy that, tell the world about it. Get on Apple Podcasts or whatever app you're listening on. Give us five stars. Say something nice because it helps drive us up the charts. Not for our ego, just for business. Also, head over to shut up and give me murder dot com where you can get all of your merchandise tickets to live shows, which the new round of live shows will be going on sale very soon here. So get your tickets for those when they come out. We can't wait for that. Also, you can find the links to all the social media. Follow us. We're at Murder Small on Twitter, at Small Town Pod on Facebook, at Small Town Murder on Instagram. Right.

Follow all of that. Patreon.com Oh boy. Slash Crime and Sports is where you get all of the good stuff. And this week is no different. Anybody, $5 a month or more, do whatever you want. You get access to not only the whole back catalog of bonus episodes, which is like 150 of them to binge. But on top of that, you're also going to get new episodes every other week. Two of them, as a matter of fact.

One Crime and Sports. One Small Town Murder. You will have access to it all, of course. And this week, what we're going to talk about for crime and sports, we're going to talk about – we did in this one episode talk – there was a bunch – it was an old-timey athlete from 1902 or something. So we found a bunch of these weird ads in this newspaper that were just ads for crazy medical devices that have been debunked like two months after this ad was out. Crazy ads. We're going to talk about these and some really weird sports headlines that aren't normal and just what it was like to live in 1901

and read a newspaper is basically what it's going to be here. Really fun shit. Trust us on this. It'll be good. And then for Small Town Murder, we are doing what we have to do every once in a while. It's not up to us when they end their season. When they end their season, we do the show.

We're going to talk all about this season of Love After Lockup. It was a long, juicy, crazy one. Holy shit. So we cannot wait to get into that. That is patreon.com slash crimeinsports. And in addition to that, you are getting a shout-out. Yes. And our undying affection, obviously. But you, you are getting a shout out. Yes. And our undying affection,

obviously, but you're going to get a shout out here. As a matter of fact, you're going to get it right now. Jimmy, God damn it. Hit me with it.

Don't shoot me though. I'm telling you right now, please don't shoot me, but hit me with the list of the greatest fucking people on this earth. Hit me with them now. This week's executive producers

are Jeremiah Grother, Linda Heidhoff-Borman nicole uh sava sadia uh carol elizabeth caitlin waller and uh jb and uh yeti in canada thank you guys so much for what you do other producers this week are caitlin smith smith comstein uh herman m and the guys at the parlor pe Peyton Meadows, Barry Lester and the Smelsteins, Susanna Platt, Eros Whiskey and Tequila at Centeno Kennels in Ontario, Canada, Callie Cannoli, I think, Andrew Harper, Sarah Short, Janice Hill, Christine Babel, Lauren Demerath, Sharon Moore, Scott Francis, nope, that's Stephen Francis, Scott Strouth, Reed McGuire, Wisconsin Werewolf, Tyler Mitchell, Christina Furl, I think, Holly Dennis, Amanda Viveros,

Tyler Barnes, Leonard Daviduk, Daviduk? David Duke, I'll bet that's what it is. Morgan Taylor, Emily Drew, Crystal Kempstone, Edwards, James Wallard, Tina Lissicky, Robert Thompson, Heidi Edgett,

Sierra Murray, Naomi Stafford, John Gilmore, Michael Pulley, Jessica Wallace, Larry Kreiderman, Katie Hodges, Kira Dishon, Abra Smith, Savannah Smith, Tyler Hall, Bazingler, Andy Crawford, Nancy Pacioli-Pirazzi, Origins Unknown 088, Emily R. Vicki Christensen. Sean Lambert. Lisa Shiambe. Kayla Corona. Daniel Stinson. Christina with no last name. Gemma Rose.

Raquel Rutt. Carl's daughter. Tiffany Crick. DC Huey. Wade with no last name. Mary Van Ziepel. Mike Garza. Samantha Quintana.

Eric Hansman. Paul Ward. Danny Palmer, Mitchell Noland, Curtis Brown, Catherine Harvey, Mara Holmes, Angela Guthrie, Andy with no last name, Brittany Reardon, Tim Glauike, Thomas Welch, Heather with no last name. J.M. Allstott. Nathan Spicer. Ivy Tudor. Matt Jansen. Oh, wishes. Nakuoma. Naokoma. Andy with no last name. Lizette Roldan. Andy, I said that.

C.J. Marie. Tracy Marshall. Colin with no last name. David Bain. Terry Presley. Jim Winan II. Kelly Smith. Rice Wine.

Rice Win. Rice Win Reese Reese maybe? Perry, Maya Gibbons, Pamela Landry, Paco with no last name, Jenny Vanderbilt, Jonathan Buckley, Emily with no last name, Lisa with no last name, Christopher Bosak, Ganja Ed, Sergeant Case, Josh Reynolds, Kendall Reynolds, Kendall Sangster, Valerie Phelan, Des Kesey, PRFR, Amy Collins, Andrew Novak, oh boy, Becky Sester, Sester, Sexer, oh, you Sexer up, Sarah Rabin, Snagitron Snugtra, Camille Wilcox, Allison with no last name, Jennifer Reiterman, Chris Bede, Christian Hammons, Sam Brockie,

Keeds with no last name, Michaela Harvey, Jamie with no last name, Jared Clark, Kristen Weimer, Chris Buchner, David Mason, Jamie Lane Brosnan, Grace Luterich, Brandy Ellsworth, Raymond Rodriguez, Emily Hove, Jenny with no last name, Rosie Cranwell, Franklin Hines, Dana Horn, Lauren with no last name, Julie Von Baron, David with no last name,

TS Champ for you, James. I don't know what that means. Daniel Lee Coleman, Heidi Mueller, Kendall Brooks, Brandon Floyd, Moya Nassajama, Sterling Bryan, Elizabeth, no last name, Randy Armour, Chris Stamp, Macarega, Dick the Cock Johnson, Jenny McGuire, Michael Shook, Justin Vincente, Kimmy S., Caleb Cyphers, Sam Terry, Vanessa Finethi, Osmond J. Ory, G. with no last name, Jen Grima, Molly Nordenstam, Greg Madison, Tyler Musso, Nicole Hall, Levi Randolph, MJ Brickley, Kimberly Crowshaw, off mj brickley kimberly croshaw west baldwin keaton i as well i as well uh miranda stevens uh william flynn rachel phaler elizabeth brady jesse hey mitchell mitchell risto uh jess

jess collins chelsea ozario uh anthony breedlove blake elam jessica hackhaven rubin uh oki with no last name okay maybe jeremy hewlett sugey sugeugie Warren, Alicia Lemero, Anastasia Morginello, Claire Montgomery, Michael Hoff, Abby Lawrence, Patrick Berg, Riley Bird, Sarah Lombardi, Solis Joe, Dalton Baker, Megan Giselle, Robert Hoisington. Yeah. Robert Hoisington. Yeah. Elaine Davis. Jamie Soledad. John Siebernaller.

Siebernaller. Siebernaller. Randy Hall. Sarah Russell. Leslie with no last name. Courtney Martinez. Led MFing Lawless. Christina Bendagi.

Bendandi? Bendandi? Selena Mason Handy. Mike with no last name. Son sonia haynes main sonia maynes trent hall louise rod we were louise rod oh lindsey ruiz louise rodriguez what is lindsey ruiz uh jamie dean andy gish weston anderson lexi with no last name, Natalie Galatine, Mule Handcock, oh boy, Derek Tuttle, Angela Williams, Blue Gatorade, Melissa Shankle, Allie with no last name, Harley McGee, Brandy Groven, Carl

Klinglebeal, Katie Head, John Jan, Jana Kavanaugh, Emily Willett, Jeffrey Hardesty, Ed Payne, Frank Brown, Angela Davis, Erica Tilly, Liz Colson, Jeffrey Hardesty, Ed Payne, Frank Brown, Angela Davis, Erica Tilley, Liz Colson, Jill Reiser, and Jayla Zote. Thank you guys

and all of our patrons. You're amazing. Thank you everybody so much. From the bottom of our hearts, we cannot tell you and express to you how thankful we are for all that you do for us. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If you want to get a hold of us on social media individually, very easy to do that. Just head over to ShutUpAnd up and give me murder.com there's links that lead to all of it

you can find both of us there or just google smart google search small town murder podcast host we're the only fucking one so there you go that sounds good thank you so much for joining us we will be going on well who knows till the end of time so come back and join us again and until next week everybody it's been our pleasure. Get therapy. Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

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