KY KY - Betty Gail Brown, 19, Lexington, 27 Oct 1961

[Melquiades]

The thing with false confessions is that they're usually one of two things :

1) beaten/psychologically torn out of people by over-zealous local cops looking for a conviction.
2) made by people with psychological problems seeking attention by connecting themselves to a notorious crime.

This case of a drifter arrested in Oregon just deciding to blab in great detail and specifics about a mostly-forgotten murder committed in Kentucky years earlier doesn't appear to fall into either group and I find it hard to discount. But who knows.

 

[Shade13]

The thing with false confessions is that they're usually one of two things :

1) beaten/psychologically torn out of people by over-zealous local cops looking for a conviction.
2) made by people with psychological problems seeking attention by connecting themselves to a notorious crime.

This case of a drifter arrested in Oregon just deciding to blab in great detail and specifics about a mostly-forgotten murder committed in Kentucky years earlier doesn't appear to fall into either group and I find it hard to discount. But who knows.

It was a huge deal in kentucky when it happened, but people forgot it when it went cold. But when he made his confession, it became huge news again. The problem for the prosecution was these so called things he was confessing to that only the murderer knew....was a lie. This case was blown from the get go with all the details given out about the murder to the press. The papers were running wild with the story because it was such a huge deal. So everyone knew the details of the murder...meaning he didn't confess to something that was unknown. He was just repeating what everyone else knew. Of course, the Oregon police officers probably didn't know that.

Their second issue was they could never really place him in the area. They knew he was in lexington and he commonly slept on park benches in the vicinity of the murder. But there were probably a 1K or more men within the vicinity of her.

And considering he was drunk for like the entire decade leading up to the murder and after the murder, it's hard to say if he told the truth about much. I think he had a lot of mental issues.

 

[?!?]

Sent this in as a suggestion to Othram -- no response....

 

[dotr]

2017

May 10, 2018
A conversation with Bill Goodman and Robert Lawson about Lawson's book 'Who Killed Betty Gail Brown?'

Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? - The University Press of Kentucky

On October 26, 1961, after an evening of studying with friends on the campus of Transylvania University, nineteen-year-old student Betty Gail Brown got into ...

www.kentuckypress.com

''On October 26, 1961, after an evening of studying with friends on the campus of Transylvania University, nineteen-year-old student Betty Gail Brown got into her car around midnight—presumably headed for home. But she would never arrive. Three hours later, Brown was found dead in a driveway near the center of campus, strangled to death with her own brassiere. Kentuckians from across the state became engrossed in the proceedings as lead after lead went nowhere. Four years later, the police investigation completely stalled.''

''Robert G. Lawson was a young attorney at a local firm when a senior member asked him to help defend Arnold, and he offers a meticulous record of the case in Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? During the trial, the courtroom was packed daily, but witnesses failed to produce any concrete evidence.''

 

[JenJoy]

Thanks to everyone who posted all these links! My name is Jenny & I'm new here...I'm a 48 year old true crime aficionado who just heard about Websleuths while watching the first episode of Web of Death earlier today. I am excited to be here and look forward to exploring the site, and hopefully providing some help. I am especially interested in cold cases. I am going to start working on this one now. I don't imagine I will find anything more than you guys already have though! But I'm still going to look into it, it's very intriguing. If I find anything interesting I will post it on here.

 

[JenJoy]

I'm reading through the Herald Leader archives from the time and just came across this interesting tidbit that, so far, I haven't seen mentioned in any other article. Seems like a pretty important detail to me! Like maybe she left the dorm and stopped to get something to eat on the way home, and met the perpetrator there. We know that she had dinner with her parents that evening and left there about 7:00 p.m. It's estimated that she died at 1:30. So if she had a lot of food in her stomach, surely that wasn't from the dinner at her parents'. And also, by the time she left her study session, it had been around 6 hours since she had last eaten, so I'm sure she was hungry! Can't imagine they had a bunch of food at the study session.

 

[JenJoy]

Also this... making this clue even more important...

 

[Betty P]

Thanks to everyone who posted all these links! My name is Jenny & I'm new here...I'm a 48 year old true crime aficionado who just heard about Websleuths while watching the first episode of Web of Death earlier today. I am excited to be here and look forward to exploring the site, and hopefully providing some help. I am especially interested in cold cases. I am going to start working on this one now. I don't imagine I will find anything more than you guys already have though! But I'm still going to look into it, it's very intriguing. If I find anything interesting I will post it on here.

Welcome, @JenJoy ! It’s nice to have you here. There are quite a few members here who like to follow and discuss cold cases. Hope you stay for a while.

In one of those old local newspaper stories I recently saw a reference to a report that Betty had been seen having a meal at a nearby restaurant with someone else that night. I’ll look for the news story.

 

[?!?]

Thanks to everyone who posted all these links! My name is Jenny & I'm new here...I'm a 48 year old true crime aficionado who just heard about Websleuths while watching the first episode of Web of Death earlier today. I am excited to be here and look forward to exploring the site, and hopefully providing some help. I am especially interested in cold cases. I am going to start working on this one now. I don't imagine I will find anything more than you guys already have though! But I'm still going to look into it, it's very intriguing. If I find anything interesting I will post it on here.

I recommend the book -- lots more there than in the papers...

 

[JenJoy]

Welcome, @JenJoy ! It’s nice to have you here. There are quite a few members here who like to follow and discuss cold cases. Hope you stay for a while.

In one of those old local newspaper stories I recently saw a reference to a report that Betty had been seen having a meal at a nearby restaurant with someone else that night. I’ll look for the news story.

 

[JenJoy]

Betty P (sorry I messed up the reply funcion lol) Yes I saw that as well! I believe it was a week or two after her death that a waitress came forward saying that she had served Betty Gail and a female she was with, & the police brought the waitress downtown and had her look through all of the pictures of the Transy students, and an undercover detective even brought her to Betty Gail's funeral and burial, to see if she recognized the other woman, and she never did. And then from what I have read it seems that that lead kind of fizzled out because they could never corroborate it. But that's one of many things in this case that I feel like weren't followed through all the way, at least from what I can glean from the newspaper articles.

 

[JenJoy]

I recommend the book -- lots more there than in the papers...

Definitely, yes! That's my next step after I comb through all of the newspaper articles I can find. The newspapers are obviously not very reliable. I have already found several misprints of dates or other facts, and also conflicting reports, which makes finding the truth even harder of course.