Beets put to death for killing husband

Last-minute appeal to governor rejected While a crowd of protesters kept a quiet vigil outside the brick walls of Texas' death chamber, Betty Lou Beets was executed Thursday

Friday, February 25th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Last-minute appeal to governor rejected

While a crowd of protesters kept a quiet vigil outside the brick walls of Texas' death chamber, Betty Lou Beets was executed Thursday despite pleas that she be spared because of years of domestic abuse.

A 62-year-old great-grandmother, Ms. Beets was put to death by injection for the 1983 killing of her fifth husband, who was found buried near her fourth husband outside the couple's mobile home.

Ms. Beets gave no final statement as she lay strapped to the death chamber gurney. She made no eye contact with the victim's family, but smiled at her attorney and spiritual adviser, whom she had asked to be her witnesses.

She coughed twice, gasped, sputtered and was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. Death came less than an hour after Gov. George W. Bush's office announced his rejection of a one-time, 30-day stay of execution.

The crowd of about 100 included mostly death-penalty opponents but also a few in favor of the execution.

"Exterminate the Black Widow," said one sign carried outside the prison.

Ms. Beets was the second woman put to death in Texas since the Civil War and the fourth in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed resumption of capital punishment in 1976.

In rejecting a stay of execution, the governor said he agreed with the jury that Ms. Beets is guilty of murder.

"I'm confident that the courts, both state and federal, have thoroughly reviewed all the issues raised by the defendant," said Mr. Bush, whose office was inundated with calls and letters seeking mercy for Ms. Beets.

'Black Widow'

In recent weeks, Ms. Beets, the so-called Black Widow of Henderson County, granted a series of media interviews in which she spoke of lifelong physical and emotional abuse that lasted through seven marriages to five husbands.

Though expressing sorrow "for the problems of my life that caused the family pain," Ms. Beets never accepted guilt. She also said she could not remember details of the murder of her last husband, retired Dallas fire department Capt. Jimmy Don Beets. Shot in the back of the head, he was found buried under an ornamental wishing well in the yard of the couple's home near Gun Barrel City.

She was indicted but never tried in the shooting death of her fourth husband, Doyle Wayne Barker, whose body was found buried under a tool shed in the same yard. She also pleaded guilty to shooting and wounding her second husband.

Witnesses to Ms. Beets' execution included the slain men's sons, who have dismissed her claims of violence in the home.

The sons, James Donald Beets and Rodney and Jeff Barker, watched from an observation room reserved for the murder victim's family.

After the execution, Mr. Beets said he was unsure whether it "brings any closure."
"It ends it all, but it doesn't bring back the dads we loved," he said. "I forgive her, I asked God to forgive her."

Victims' rights

Rodney Barker, wearing a black cowboy hat, emerged outside after the execution and threw both arms up in a victory gesture.
"I want people to know victims have rights, too," he said. "I want the world to know there will always be a death penalty in the state of Texas. The state of Texas did the right thing tonight by putting Betty Lou Beets to death."

Mr. Barker expressed frustration that it took the state more than 14 years after conviction to carry out the execution. He likened her prison time to a hotel stay with room service.
"I felt that the state of Texas has finally done something for me," he said.

Though Ms. Beets' children visited her in the weeks before her death and pleaded for mercy on her behalf, none of them witnessed her execution, at her request.

Instead, her attorney Joe Margulies and her pastor, Paul Carlin, who runs a prison ministry in Crockett, were Ms. Beets' witnesses.
Afterward, an agitated Mr. Margulies decried the spectacle he witnessed.

"What happened is not ennobling and is nothing about which we should be proud," he said. "It is an act of which we should be deeply ashamed."

Through the day on Thursday, Ms. Beets was solemn, and she declined a last meal, said Larry Todd, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

She spent the morning visiting with friends and family and the afternoon with the prison chaplain.

Smaller crowd

While the execution attracted protesters to the Walls prison, which houses the death chamber in downtown Huntsville, it did not generate the of the 1998 execution of Karla Faye Tucker. Ms. Tucker, who used a pickax in a double murder, expressed remorse and wanted to live to lead others toward Christianity.

An estimated 1,200 people thronged the prison at the Tucker execution, along with a few hundred journalists. Officials said about 50 media representatives covered the Beets execution.

The protesters in Huntsville on Thursday included Ronald Carlson, brother of one of Ms. Tucker's victims.

"I don't think we as human beings have the right to destroy what God has created," he said, attributing his position to a belief in Jesus Christ.

Also in the crowd was David Good, grandson of the murdered Mr. Beets. He carried a sign that said: "God Bless Gov. Bush, by-bye Betty."

Pattern of abuse

The Beets case attracted attention because of her recent claim to have been a victim of abuse since childhood. The issue of domestic violence was not raised to a large extent in her trial, where prosecutors said she killed Mr. Beets for about $100,000 in insurance benefits.

Ms. Beets said recently that she did not realize she suffered from battered woman's syndrome until after she arrived in prison.

"I didn't know about the pattern," she said.
The syndrome describes the condition where self-esteem is so low after years of abuse that a woman cannot break out of the cycle or leave an abusive relationship.

Mr. Margulies, Ms. Beets' attorney, has said there was no evidence that Mr. Beets abused Ms. Beets physically but their relationship did include "severe emotional torment."

Groups opposed to the death penalty and domestic violence had taken up Ms. Beets' cause.

"If the jury had the opportunity to hear during the punishment phase the long history of abuse, it's quite possible it would have been a different result," said Bree Buchanan, public policy director for the Texas Coalition on Family Violence.

Seeking clemency

More than 1,100 letter writers asked Mr. Bush to grant clemency, while only two letters favored execution, the governor's office reported. Almost 1,000 phone calls were made on Ms. Beets' behalf, with 55 callers wanting her death sentence carried out.

Mr. Bush could not have commuted her death sentence, because the state's parole board did not make such a recommendation. The governor's only option was a 30-day stay, something he has never granted in his five years as governor.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, were among those voicing their belief that Ms. Beets should be spared.

Though Ms. Beets only recently raised the domestic violence issue, her case has had a long, roller-coaster history in the criminal justice system. The conviction was overturned once in state and once in federal appeals court, but the verdict was reinstated in each instance.

The last of Ms. Beets' appeals was exhausted Thursday when the U.S. Supreme Court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected appeals that accused the state of failing to follow its own rules in reviewing Ms. Beets' case.

Ms. Beets' execution was the ninth in Texas this year and the 208th since executions resumed in Texas in 1982.

Staff writer Christy Hoppe in Austin contributed to this report.