Buried Memories (36 page)

The shed on the Beets’s property where they found the decomposed body of Doyle Wayne Barker buried.

(Photo courtesy Henderson County, Texas Sheriff’s Office)

Barker was found wrapped in a sleeping bag.

(Photo courtesy Henderson County, Texas Sheriff’s Office)

Betty Beets used her .38 Colt Revolver to kill her victims.

(Photo courtesy Henderson Country, Texas Sheriff’s Office)

Deputy Howard Copeland, defense attorney E. Ray Andrews, and Betty Beets on their way to court.

(Photo courtesy David Branch, Tyler Morning Telegraph)

Shirley Stegner, one of Betty Beets’s daughters by her first husband, was arrested in connection with the murders after the bodies were found.

(Photo courtesy The Dallas Morning News/Lon Cooper)

Faye Lane, Betty Beets’s oldest daughter, leaving court after testifying.

(Photo courtesy David Branch, Tyler Morning Telegraph)

Beets being escorted to trial by Deputy Rick Rose.

(Photo courtesy The Dallas Morning News/Lon Cooper)

Rows of sound trucks were part of the national media frenzy over Beets’s execution.

Protestors gathered outside the Walls Unit of the

Huntsville, Texas prison before the execution.

Anti-Death Penalty supporters who described Beets as an abused woman held posters showing her with facial bruises and a black eye.

Betty Beets shortly before her execution on February 24, 2000.

(Photo courtesy Charles Stiff, Photographer, Cedar Creek Pilot, Gun Barrel City, Texas)

Rodney Barker and James Beets attended the execution of their fathers’s murderer. (Photo courtesy Charles Stiff, Photographer, Cedar Creek Pilot, Gun Barrel City, Texas)