Buried Memories (21 page)

A tidy little woman waited her turn to speak. “Saw it with my own eyes,” she told the reporter. “The family used to stand in their yard and shoot turtles with a rifle.”

Newspapers throughout the state had erased their planned headline stories and ran the gravedigging photographs as front-page news. Television channels broke into scheduled shows to reveal the action going on at Cherokee Shores, and ran up-to-the-minute videos of Betty’s front yard. Quickly, the story spread nationwide.

Shirley Thompson, now Shirley Stegner, had just returned from her honeymoon the day after her mother’s arrest. She had no knowledge of the arrest, nor of the drama that had taken place in her mother’s yard the night before. A sheriff’s deputy knocked on her front door that Sunday morning.

The deputy entered her small apartment in Balch Springs. He asked to speak to Shirley alone.

“This is my husband,” she said proudly, “whatever you have to say, he can hear.”

“All right, ma’am. Don’t know if you heard we arrested Mrs. Betty Lou Beets yesterday.”

Shirley sank down in a chair and her husband went to her, taking her hand.

“Because?” Shirley asked hesitantly.

“We found a couple bodies in her yard.”

“What?” her husband screamed.

Shirley looked at the floor.

“Ma’am, I’m here to arrest you on two counts of murder.”

“Two?” Shirley’s hand covered her mouth. “Did my mother tell you that?”

“No, ma’am, but we have reason to believe you were involved in the murders of Jimmy Don Beets and Doyle Wayne Barker,” he said as he took handcuffs from his pocket. “You have the right to remain silent. . . .”

Employees and customers alike at the Cedar Club sat around bemoaning Betty Beets’s arrest. The brightly lit neon that outlined beer signs on the walls seemed festive and out of place for the somber mood permeating the room.

The club manager was the most shocked, since she had enthusiastically hired Betty. “She was great,” she said, looking at her customers. “Brought in a good crowd and everybody loved her. She knew everybody in town and everybody knew her.”

“I really liked her,” said a middle-aged woman. “Listen, there are two types of waitresses. There’s the kind that pays attention only to men. The other is fair to both men and women. That’s Betty. She was always nice to me.”

A man in jeans and cowboy boots sat slumped over the bar, numb with disbelief. “Y’all, I’ve got to say that Betty’s a great person. Did you ever hear her get into an argument with anyone?”

The patrons shook their heads.

“I just can’t believe she did what she’s been charged with.”

A man in the back of the club listened to the conversation that floated around him as he shot pool. The click of his cue stick swishing balls across green felt was all the others heard from him, until he cleared his throat to speak.

“Seems to me it was just this week that Betty bragged about getting a whole bunch of money.” He stopped to pocket the seven ball. “This is the truth, I swear. She told me she was going to collect on Jimmy Don’s life insurance and his pension.”

“I talked to Betty a lot,” another man said. “We always had fun and I asked her out. Then I said something one night that she didn’t like. Hell, can’t remember what it was now, but her entire face changed. Her eyes turned to slits and her bottom lip jutted out. Still gives me shivers to think about it.”

Rick Rose sat in his office sorting out the growing stack of documents in front of him. He had already taken numerous interviews from people who knew Betty Beets, and a pattern emerged.

The people she wanted something from, including her bar customers, or people who could do her favors, reported that they just loved the little woman. An officer with the security company who patrolled her area said, “Mrs. Beets was as polite and pleasant as you could ask for. She was always very neat.”

Betty’s neighbors, not necessarily in a position to be of service, all gave negative images of Betty. Added to their chagrin that Betty had brought devastation and disruption to their lives on the scenic shores of Cedar Creek, she had snubbed them. If they said hello, she ignored them. When they waved from their automobiles, they received no response. The neighbors unanimously labeled Betty Beets a very unfriendly person.

Chad Higgins had been a real-estate developer for years in the Cedar Creek area. He told his next-door neighbor about a conservative, very polite, quiet-spoken woman who had approached him a couple of years earlier.

“She was interested in buying the Frontier Club in Seven Points,” he remembered.

“One of your famous blue-collar, biker bars?” his neighbor replied.

“Yes, and now that I’ve seen Betty Beets’s picture in the paper, I know for sure that’s who I talked to.”

His neighbor shook his head, and said, “The parking lot’s always full. What’s that bar like on the inside?”

“How would I know?” Higgins replied. “I don’t even go into my own clubs. They’re rougher than hell.”

Rick Rose looked up when Ray Bone strolled into his office. Everyone thought of Ray as a handsome man. Rose only saw the hate in his yellow eyes. “Eyes as yellow as a chow dawg,” Rose would say.

“Sit down, Ray. I just wanted to touch base with you. Since Betty’s been arrested, I know where she is and you haven’t had to call me. I’ve just been wondering what’s going on?”

“I talked with Faye Lane the other day,” Bone said. “You know, Betty’s oldest. She sure made it plain that Phyllis and Shirley did the killings.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I don’t know what to believe. Phyllis told me about the killings a while back and she said I’d be next. I took it all to be bullshit.”

Bone glanced out of the window. “But as it turns out, the bodies were in the places I’d been told. Before all this broke, Phyllis kept saying if I knew what was under the wishing well, I wouldn’t spend another night in that house.”

Sunday afternoon at two-thirty, Shirley Thompson Stegner stood before Justice of the Peace O. D. Baggett, who charged her with murder.

Night arrived by the time Shirley had been booked, photographed, and fingerprinted. She refused to speak, and asked for the only attorney she knew, E. Ray Andrews. By phone, Andrews insisted that she not say a word to anyone.

Shirley had a history of drug abuse, and now shaking and scared, she probably would have liked something to calm her nerves, but in jail, she assumed they’d give her nothing. However, no drug could prepare her for what happened next.

After a female deputy gave Shirley the white prison garments to change into, she marched her into the women inmates’ section. Further segregated cells separated inmates with minor infractions from those who had been charged with felonies.

Shirley caught a glimpse of her mother in her cell. The deputy continued to take her closer. Shirley wanted to run away. She had enough of hearing her mother talk about killing and burying Wayne Barker, and she had tried to stop her every time she wanted to rehash the story of Jimmy Don’s murder. For the last several months, she had tried to avoid her mother because she felt so uncomfortable around her.

The deputy turned down the aisle housing Betty’s cell. Then to Shirley’s horror, the woman unlocked the very next cell to Betty’s and ushered Shirley inside.

TWENTY

Jamie Beets became very much a part of the action once his father’s body had been found. Mike O’Brien kept him apprised of everything his office did.

When Jamie heard of Betty’s bail being set at one million dollars, he could see his father’s assets evaporating to buy Betty’s release and pay for her defense. Two days after her arrest, he filed a motion for a protective order of his father’s property, declaring that he was the rightful heir to his father’s estate.

Betty had asked for a tablet and pen, then spent the next hour composing a letter to Ray Bone:

“Well, Ray,” she wrote, “here we are at the crossroads again. Only the cross is a lot larger this time.” She talked about her utilities being turned off and the bank repossessing the trailer. She elaborated on how hard she had worked to get the trailer, but didn’t mention she had killed Doyle Wayne Barker to keep it.

“You said one time how much you needed me. Did you ever stop to think how much I needed you too?” She talked of wanting him to rescue her, but knew that wasn’t possible. She admitted turning to the bottle to forget her troubles, but professed that it hadn’t helped. She lamented that her family was gone, and gave her children as the reason she had tried so hard all these years.

“Please, Ray,” she continued writing, “don’t hurt me anymore. Don’t put me in that corner.” She admitted feeling lost and alone with no one to turn to. She had wished Ray would have been that person, and now questioned why she ever thought he could be.

She ended her letter by telling Ray to take care of himself and stay out of trouble.

Then she signed her name. Betty’s signature was proud. Written with a heavy hand, the “Bs” were large and wide. Her name appeared stylized, artistic, and self-assured.

Rick Rose and Michael O’Brien were still putting pieces of the puzzle together, and help kept pouring in.

Phyllis Coleman’s husband, William, called Rose to tell him about a time in May of 1983 when he had gone to the Beets’s trailer and saw Jimmy Don building a shed. William spoke of Jimmy Don’s irritation over Betty’s insistence that he build the shed in the exact spot that she chose, the spot that turned out to be Wayne Barker’s grave.

The next day, a neighbor who lived on Red Oak Drive, a few houses down from Jimmy Don’s blue-painted house, contacted Rose. “I just couldn’t keep this to myself,” the neighbor began. “There was a time shortly after Mr. Beets disappeared that Betty Beets’s oldest son was digging in the backyard over here. It was between one to three in the morning.”

“What first made you aware of this?” Rose asked.

“Because they made so damn much noise. They played loud music, they were always talking loud and fussing. Someone inside the house was yelling at somebody else.”

“Betty’s oldest son’s name is Robby,” Rose offered. “Did you see him do anything else besides dig?”

“Yeah. He’d also get into his truck, which was bronze and tan. Then he’d rev his engine, making even more noise when he left the addition. A few minutes later, he’d be back and start digging again. Guess this went on for three nights or so.

“Then the next thing I knew, they moved a couple Doberman pinschers onto the property. Had them chained up in back like they were guarding something. After a while, Betty and her sons moved out, but one of them would come back a few times a week to feed and water the dogs.”

Rick Rose thanked him for his information, but he had already visited with many of Betty’s neighbors. They had all mentioned the dogs, and at the time the neighbors thought they were there guarding Jimmy Don’s body.

Rose put more stock into testimony from family members, or ex-family members. So when Shirley Stegner’s ex-husband, twenty-eight-year-old Jody Ray Thompson, visited Rose at the sheriff’s office, Rose let him know how much he appreciated his coming forward, since Shirley wouldn’t say a word to law enforcement.

“Just felt I should get here and tell you all I knew about it,” Thompson said. “Shirley and I were married when Jimmy Don Beets was reported missing. I sure did like that man. He seemed to get along so well with Betty. Really thought they had a good marriage.”

Thompson went on to relate Shirley’s call from her mother around six-thirty
P.M.
on August 5, 1983, and how upset Shirley was, wanting her husband to drive her immediately to Cherokee Shores.

“Are you sure of that time?” Rose asked.

“Yeah. Remembered it was light outside.”

Rose pondered this. Shirley had told her sisters that Betty had called her around midnight and that it was after one
A.M.
before they got to their mother’s house.

“I stayed outside while Shirley went in to talk with her mother. While I was out there, Jimmy Don never came out. I thought that was odd because his pickup was still there.