Beets, Betty Lou

Born into poverty in North Carolina. Left profoundly hard of hearing from measles at age 4 or 5, but did not get her first hearing aid until about age 40. Claimed to have been physically, mentally and emotionally abused since the age of 3; got married at age 15 and dropped out of public school. Apparently all of her five husbands (all hearing) were also abusive; despite repeated reports to the police, her situation never improved. She was convicted of shooting and wounding her second husband, also charged but never tried for the 1981 shooting death of her fourth husband since his body could not be found. Two years after her fifth husband went missing in 1983, a tip to the police led to the discovery of his body and also that of the fourth husband, both buried in her yard near Gun Barrel City, TX. In 1985 she was tried and convicted of the fifth husband's murder, allegedly to collect on his life insurance policy, although she blamed her son for one murder and another ex-husband for the killing of the other. Put on Texas' death row, appeals to then-governor George W. Bush failed and the state of Texas executed her by lethal injection. She is believed to be the first deaf or profoundly hard of hearing American executed for a capital crime. Most articles about this case fail to mention her deafness, and apparently neither the jury nor the court realized that she could not fully follow the court proceedings because of her deafness. The jury apparently was also not told of her lifelong history of being abused.