Buried Memories (27 page)

“Did she say how she was going to do it?”

After Shirley recounted how her mother murdered Barker, Bandy knew that the jury had heard the most damaging evidence against Betty Beets. He passed the witness.

When E. Ray began his redirect, he didn’t want to venture over the dangerous ground of Shirley’s testimony. Instead, he decided to malign Shirley.

“Have you been heavy into shooting drugs?” he asked. Then not waiting for an answer, he continued, “Do you pass out frequently? Have loss of memory?”

“I used to do drugs, but I don’t anymore.”

“Now you’re a pot head?”

“No, I just drink Budweiser.”

Andrews hurried past the snickering in the courtroom. “You’re charged with murder and you had a bond set at a million?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. You’re out of jail now. What’s your bond?”

“The charge of Jimmy Don Beets’s murder was dropped so my bond was set at $5,000.”

“Only $5,000?” His eyes rolled in disbelief. “And you’ve been told you’re not going to the penitentiary or anything of that nature?”

“No, sir.”

“They just came by and told you to come over and tell us this and we’ll reduce your bond?”

“No, sir. It was my decision to make my statement.”

Trying one more time to discredit her, E. Ray said, “I understand people can hallucinate under LSD or methamphetamines.”

“I don’t do drugs anymore, sir,” Shirley said firmly.

George Chaney had been a document examiner for thirteen years while he worked as a special agent with the Secret Service. Now he held the same profession in the private sector. He had spent hours scrutinizing the handwriting of both Jimmy Don and Betty Beets.

Bandy asked, “When you reviewed the J.C. Penney insurance policy, did you inspect the signature on the bottom of the application?”

“Yes. It was not Mr. Beets’s authentic signature. It was not genuine.”

He had examined numerous checks of Betty’s, the bill of sale for the boat, the transfer of title, and called Betty’s writing, “very unique.” In his opinion, the signature “J. D. Beets” on all the documents had been in Betty Beets’s handwriting.

Bandy passed the witness to E. Ray, who couldn’t refute what the writing expert had said. However, E. Ray shined brightest when he had to come up with smoke and mirrors.

“Sir,” E. Ray began pleasantly. “You said you were with the CIA?”

“No, sir, the Secret Service.”

“How much are you getting paid to come down here and testify?”

“Five hundred dollars, which is not our normal fee; we usually charge more.”

“Five hundred dollars?” E. Ray said appreciably. “You expect to get paid, don’t you?”

The man frowned at the question. “Yes, sir, hope so.”

“I hope you do too,” E. Ray said, turning away from him and pacing by the jury. “You’ve never been mistaken about any of your documents that you compared?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“You’ve
never
been mistaken?” E. Ray said, mustering an expression of disbelief.

“If I have, no one’s told me.”

“How many times have you testified in court?”

“Roughly sixty times,” Chaney said.

“Okay, you’re the man from the CIA from Dallas, Texas, who’s never been mistaken,” E. Ray said, followed by lighthearted snickers from the courtroom.

“Would it surprise you to know that we’re not denying that Betty signed ‘J. D. Beets’ to this title up here?”

“I didn’t know that,” Chaney said.

“If they’d asked you that, we wouldn’t have had to pay you that money, would we?”

“Probably not, sir.”

“Then we could have done without you,” E. Ray said in an attempt to discredit the prosecution for bringing an unnecessary witness.

That was enough for Bandy, who was on his feet to protest. “Your Honor, can’t we keep this to questions and answers?”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” E. Ray offered.

Bandy wanted more apology out of Betty’s defense lawyer than that. “I’d like the court to admonish counsel about his sidebar remarks.”

“If I say I’m sorry, isn’t that a sidebar remark?”

Now Judge Holland had had enough. “Mr. Andrews, if you would,
please.”

As the days of the trial rolled on, E. Ray Andrews tried to discredit any witness the State threw at him. When he questioned Rick Rose, Andrews referred to Rose’s breakthrough information as from his “Confidential informant, second-hand information.”

The jury sat attentively listening to each side without letting their expressions divulge any opinions they might have already formed.

Dr. Charles Petty, the chief medical examiner from Dallas, carried a brown cardboard box into the courtroom. The slightly built, bespectacled man was highly accredited, but when the rumor went through the room that the box contained the actual skulls of both Wayne Barker and Jimmy Don Beets, the courtroom crowd saw Dr. Petty as weird.

“The skulls will be there,” he had previously told the investigators, “just in case the photographs fail to show every detail.”

Bandy led him through his impressive credentials, then asked, “Did you perform an autopsy on Jimmy Don Beets?”

“If you want to call it that,” Petty replied. “All I received were the bony parts of the body.”

Bandy picked up an enlarged photograph that had been facedown on his desk. It depicted the bones of Jimmy Don Beets on a stretcher that just happened to include another stretcher showing the bones of Wayne Barker.

E. Ray vigorously objected to the State getting in a shot of Barker’s skeleton. But since Barker’s death had already been introduced, the judge overruled his objection, and allowed the photo to be passed to the jury.

Dr. Petty testified that he had X rays taken of Jimmy Don Beets’s skull for positive identification of the body, since Beets had dental X rays made shortly before his death. Beets’s dentist supplied the doctor with X rays that matched perfectly. Then Petty picked up a large, detailed photograph of Beets’s head and pointed to the bullet hole that entered at the base of his skull. Another photograph showed part of his rib cage and a bullet hole in his trunk that was close to his heart. Petty noted the four areas of fractures: at the base of the skull, on the cheekbone, and one above each eye.

In Wayne Barker, Dr. Petty had discovered three bullet holes that resulted with fractures to his ribs and jawbone. Barker’s third bullet attested to the practice shot Betty had discussed with Shirley.

As the doctor spoke, jurors looked down at the photograph of the two murdered men, then glanced at Betty before passing it on to the next juror.

By the time E. Ray had his turn, he’d had his fill of technical jargon. He asked, “Do you know who killed these people?”

Petty frowned at the audacity of the question, “No, of course not,” he huffed.

Then Andrews said, “What did you say about the presence of a fracture on Jimmy Don Beets?”

The doctor again discussed the four areas of fractures.

“Could that skull fracture be caused by a fight with another man?”

“Yes, it could.”

E. Ray grinned while jury members glanced at each other, appearing that they had heard a whole new scenario. “So you’re just basing the cause of death on your medical opinion because of the presence of bullets?”

“Yes,” the doctor admitted.

Andrews surprisingly scored a few points with Dr. Petty’s testimony, especially that Jimmy Don’s skull could have been fractured during a fight with another man, taking the killing off Betty’s shoulders.

When Bandy redirected, he asked, “Doctor, could that fracture have been caused by a shovel hitting the body after it had decomposed?”

“No, in my opinion, it’s not the type of injury one would expect with a shovel.”

“Could that fracture have been caused by a bullet entering the back of the skull?”

“Not in my opinion.”

Bandy frowned and began pacing. The answer didn’t seem logical to him. Then he looked back at the photo. The bullet had obviously made a round hole. The damage was to the soft tissue, like the brain.

“Doctor, would it be compatible with the body being dragged down some steps?”

“Yes, it could be.”

Bandy went back to his chair, thinking of how Jimmy Don had been yanked down the steps of the trailer. But did any of this really matter? The man had obviously died from the bullet wounds.

Allen Jones, a firearms examiner with the Dallas County Forensic Lab, entered the courtroom through the double doors from the outside foyer. He had fourteen years experience with firearms and was an SMU graduate who had trained at the Smith & Wesson Handgun factory. He had attended the FBI Academy at Quantico, and now taught about firearms in police academies.

Having heard enough of his credentials, E. Ray threw up his hands, and said, “Judge, he’s got to be an expert, just gotta be!”

Bandy gave E. Ray a “There he goes again” glare and asked Jones, “Did you have occasion to examine the projectiles received from Dr. Petty on or about June 10 of this year?”

“From both bodies,” Jones said, “we detected that the bullets were a special type of .38-caliber, semijack-eted hollow point bullets manufactured by Remington. They came from a weapon having six grooves in the barrel that turned with a left-hand twist.”

Bandy handed him State’s Exhibit 11, a Special Colt revolver.

“We test fired this gun,” Jones explained, “and found that test bullets showed this gun gave the bullets the same spiraling detected on those bullets found with the bodies. It’s my opinion that all of the bullets could have come from that gun.”

“So you’re saying that those projectiles were fired from that revolver?” Bandy asked.

“Could have,” Jones reiterated, “but because of the oxidation of the metal, I cannot state that they were.”

Listening to the expert answer Bandy’s questions, E. Ray picked up on the difficulty of describing minute details of the bullets because of the condition of the metal. On cross, he concentrated on that difficulty.

“You can’t state to this jury that these bullets that were introduced up here were fired from that pistol, can you?”

“That’s correct.”

“In fact, you can’t tell us anything for certain outside of your education.”

“You’re right,” the gun expert had to admit.

Court recessed for lunch, and Deputy Maureen Pagent took Betty Beets to the ladies’ room. The many women in there immediately stopped talking, and only gawked until Betty had washed her hands and left. In court, they thought of her as evil, but up close, the petite woman looked normal and vulnerable as she smiled at them.

The conversation resumed, every woman giving her opinion of Betty’s hairstyle and clothes. Then they left for the Jubilee House for lunch, or tried to grab a quick burger at a drive-through. Others took their sack lunches and ate under the trees on the courthouse grounds.

The afternoon session began with a petite redhead, Hilary Benton, from Garland, Texas, who had purchased Jimmy Don’s boat on July 24, 1984. Betty Beets had sold it to her after the two met in a Cedar Creek boat repair shop. Mrs. Benton identified Betty in the courtroom as the person from whom she bought the boat. Bandy admitted the bill of sale into evidence.

“At the time you made the purchase,” Bandy asked, “did you know that Mr. Beets was missing?”

“No, I did not.”

“You carried that title to work and had it notarized, didn’t you?”

“Yes, she had a power of attorney.”

“Did you know that a power of attorney ceases when the grantor dies?”

“No, sir.”

“So you assumed it was legal?”

“I didn’t read the instrument. It was a half piece of eight and a half by eleven paper with ‘Power of Attorney’ at the top, and some legal writing under that. It looked legal.”

Andrews passed his opportunity to cross-examine.

In a surprising move, especially to E. Ray Andrews, the prosecution rested.

E. Ray nodded to Bandy and the other lawyers to accompany him to the judge’s bench to have a conversation out of earshot of the jury.

Andrews said, “Judge, I’ve not released any of these witnesses that have been subpoenaed. I intend to use them, but I asked to be given ample notice. Now all of a sudden Bandy rests. It’s gonna rush me up.”

Bill Bandy said, “I didn’t make the decision to rest until the minute I did. I had several more witnesses that I anticipated calling, and probably would have run until noon tomorrow, but the way it went, I decided just to shut it down.”

E. Ray Andrews crossed his arms over his chest. “You think it’s going that good, huh?”

TWENTY-FIVE

The Henderson County courtroom was large, but not large enough for the growing crowd wanting in. Now people began lining up as early as 6:30
A.M.
in front of a building that didn’t open until 8:00. Once the doors were unlocked, onlookers ran up the white marble stairs to form another line in front of the second-floor courtroom. People crowded and pushed, jockeying for better positions than they had had outside.

E. Ray Andrews began his fight for Betty’s life, and he summoned her oldest daughter, Faye Lane, as the first defense witness.

Slipping back into his “good ole boy” role, Andrews asked, “You wasn’t subpoenaed by me, was you?”

“No.”

“Did your sister tell you anything about helping your mother bury anybody?”

“No.”

Bandy objected as it being hearsay, but Holland overruled.

“Did you ever talk to your brother, Robby Branson, about—”

“No.”

“Hold on here, let me finish, about helping your mother bury Jimmy Don Beets?”

Faye, an obviously friendly witness for the defense, couldn’t wait to say things that would help her mother. But this time she again flipped from previous testimony, now saying she knew nothing about the murders.

“Did you ever know anything about your mother trying to collect insurance?” E. Ray asked.

“No. Well, I knew there was some insurance on Jimmy Don where Betty’s the beneficiary, but not that she’s trying to get it.”