Noel Rivers-Schutte
Seton Hall Law​

In 1977, the Supreme Court of Washington ruled that in a self-defense case, a woman is entitled to have the jury consider her actions from her perception.
1 in 4 American women will likely experience domestic violence in their lifetime.
Noel Rivers-Schutte
Seton Hall Law
 
Battered woman syndrome. Not included in the DSM, but still a very real pattern of symptoms and behaviours that have been attributed to persistent violence from their male intimate partner(s). In some cases, this can result in a lethal dose of temporary insanity wherein the female victim may retaliate against her abuser. Of course I am paraphrasing my own understanding as it pertains to relevant case exploration. Although I stand by the assertion that there is a clear double standard between the sexes that has been created and fortified by a patriarchal entity, the last quarter of a century has brought some undeniable social progress. Twenty five years ago, society denied that sex workers can be raped altogether – today, women/femmes are still dismissed and derided for the actions of the men in their lives. So, yes, things have improved to a point. Female adults can now own property, and have their own bank accounts and credit cards. However, we’ve also obviously backtracked on reproductive rights and such. This isn’t about women’s rights, though I am certain that the patriarchy has played a role in the skewed perceptions of women who kill their husband(s). Of course not all women who kill their husband(s) are genuine in their claims, as criminals are notoriously dishonest. Betty Lou Beets is just such a controversial case.
Born Betty Lou Dunevant of Roxboro, North Carolina, in 1937. Sources say Betty had a considerably rough childhood, with hearing loss due to the measles at three and allegations of sexual abuse that is alleged to have started when she was the tender age of five years old. There are no medical or police records to support these claims. However, it is documented that her mother was committed to a mental hospital for length(s) of time, leaving her to take on a caregiver role to her younger siblings at the young age of twelve. At the age of fifteen, Betty married her first husband, Robert Franklin Branson.
Now, up to this point in Betty’s life, 1952, I’ve not found any documentation of intellectual capacity or physical abuse resulting in head trauma. However, various documents citing her trial and appeals noted that she had a learning disability and traumatic brain injury(ies). Accounts of their seventeen years long relationship vary ever so slightly, but what is clear that at some point Robert and Betty dissolved their relationship and Betty claimed Robert had abused her. They remained estranged, but they rekindled their relationship after Betty attempted to take her own life. In 1969, this presumably tumultuous relationship, which bore five children, came to an end. By the following year, Betty married her second husband for the first time.
Billy York Lane married Betty in 1970 and, again, in 1972. During her marriage(s) to her second husband, as we see our first documented signs of an escalating cycle of abuse. Their relationship was short-lived, with a perilous end. Charges were against Betty, when she shot Billy in the back. Those charges were subsequently dropped, after Billy confessed to initiating the violence and breaking her nose. Shortly thereafter, in 1973, Betty began dating her third husband, Ronnie Threlkold.
Betty’s relationship with Ronnie lasted a bit longer, but their marriage followed the volatile pattern we see when we look at her previous marriages. I did not uncover any documentation of abuse cited for this relationship, and admittedly, I didn’t dig very deep. However, I feel my experience with abuse/trauma cycles affords me some room to speculate on potential filler for the gaps and inconsistency in evidence of abuse.
Before we get too far, I would like to clarify that I will not be making any claims or allegations of abuse in the case of Betty Lou Beets. I am in no way an expert on Betty, but my combined experience provides some perspective on the subject matter that was Betty Lou Beets. With that, I would like to offer the possibility that Ronnie led a bit of a double life. There is a nuanced understanding of abuse(rs) that exists now that has changed the way we see marital dynamics of the past. When Betty began dating Ronnie in 1973, women could not get a bank account or credit card in their own name. This changed the following year, in 1974, but by then Betty would likely have been invested or even trapped in her commitment to Ronnie.
Abusers don’t enter into a relationship overtly controlling or physically aggressive. This goes without saying I should think. If the disingenuous opinions I’ve observed have taught me anything, it’s that far too many people condemn survivors of abuse:
“Why didn’t you just leave?”
“Maybe you should have picked better”
“Not all men…”
I will acknowledge that many of those who participate in victim-blaming do so indirectly and without malice. Unfortunately, that does little to counter the ingrained social construction designed by patriarchy to subjugate and oppress anyone who does not align with the views of the ruling class. The intricacies of an abusive dynamic rarely occur to those fortunate enough to never experience abuse. Combined with social and legal biases of the time, the documented allegations of abuse throughout Betty’s life may serve as evidence of a cycle of potentially traumatic events.
Near the end of her marriage to Ronnie, Betty ran over Ronnie with the car and they subsequently divorced in 1979. Betty married her fourth husband, Doyle W. Barker, later that same year.  This is where things start to turn for the worse. Sources cite documented domestic violence throughout Ronnie’s previous marriages, as well they show Betty’s son recall his own account of the abuse his mother withstood at the hands of Ronnie. In April of 1980, Betty miraculously survived severe head trauma and bodily injuries sustained in a near -fatal car accident. Not many details were given about the accident it’s, though her injuries are documented in detail. Barker continued to assault Betty, disregarding her broken body and permanent brain damage. At some point after her injuries should have healed, Doyle went missing. I’m sure those who knew Betty best suspected that his disappearance may have been linked to her bruised and swollen face, their concern was for Betty. Over the next few years, Betty turned to alcohol and amphetamine-effects of diet pills. This combination may have led to her psychotic episodes during this time, and in 1982, she met and married her fifth husband, Jimmy Don Beets.
Betty’s relationship with Jimmy Don was short-lived, and I am as yet unsure if overt abuse was present when he disappeared in August of 1983. Sometime shortly thereafter, Jimmy Don’s boat was found capsized on Lake Athens leading authorities to assume he had been lost in a fishing accident. Between his disappearance in 1983 and when his remains were found in 1985, Betty had shot Jimmy Don in the head with a .38 caliber handgun and, with the help of her (son?), buried him in her backyard alongside her fourth husband, Doyle. At no point did she make any attempt to collect insurance or a life insurance policy, yet she committed murder, allegedly for those payouts.
The question is not so much whether she had killed two of her husbands, rather this is about what motivated her to kill. According the all-male jury “of her peers”, prosecution, and court of public opinion, Betty Lou Beets is a Black Widow who killed her husbands for insurance money and sheer malice. Her defense attorney, coerced Betty into signing all of her literary and media rights to his underage son by promising he would testify to the point that she had never pursued insurance policy payouts. I assert that is was coercion; I find I difficult to believe, even at a stretch, that a defense attorney didn’t know he couldn’t be both defense representation and witness. E. Ray Andrews had written into his contract with Betty Lou Beets that he would testify on her behalf that while she pursued a fire insurance claim, she never pursued life insurance policy payouts for either of her deceased husbands. Which is rich, considering the prosecution’s singular focus was that she murdered them for their life insurance and pension. Instead of finding her adequate counsel and acting as her witness, which may well have swayed the jury, Andrews satisfied his own self -interest and forewent acting as her witness.
After the trial ended, and Betty was sentenced to death, E. Ray Andrews's career skyrocketed. He went on to be elected District Attorney of the same jurisdiction that tried Betty, and, later, plead guilty to accepting a substantial bribe to fix a murder case. He was sentenced by the same judge who presided over Betty’s post-conviction appeal, but as poetically just that may be, it is not the end of political intersections with politics. Although she was sentenced to death row in 1985, Betty wasn’t executed until 2000, fifteen years later—an election year.
Some sources suggest that, in an attempt to appear tough on crime, Republican candidate and Texas governor George W. Bush presided over one hundred and twelve executions; one of which was a woman, Betty Lou Beets. A woman who declined her final meal and made no final statement. A woman whose entire family left her alone in her final moments, including the two that had helped her bury the bodies. Doyle's son was present, though he was there for closure; rightfully so. His perception fueled the media fire that painted an obviously battered woman as a black widow. Now, I’m not in anyway diagnosing Betty Lou Beets with anything, nor am I condoning her actions. However, I also cannot help but empathize with her plighted existence. 

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To learn more about Betty Lou Beets, check out:
 
Buried Memories
https://a.co/d/0b7A2xh
 
Memories of an Execution
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/lawineq/vol20/iss1/4/?utm_source=scholarship.law.umn.edu%2Flawineq%2Fvol20%2Fiss1%2F4&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages
 
Alcatraz East Crime Library
https://www.alcatrazeast.com/crime-library/famous-murders/betty-lou-beets/

Question:
Where do men get off thinking they get to decide what it means to be a woman? Where did the audacity originate? Because this isn’t a new phenomenon, it has been happening for twice as long as relevant history; it is considerably longer if you want to get into it. Somehow, they speak for us, decide what is and isn’t acceptable, and design gender role philosophies that nurture their lack of desire to grow. It wasn’t all that long ago that they tainted all that is feminism, so much so that internal misogyny still to this day is deeply embedded in our society. But, seriously, where did it start? What has been the point? Men like to say that it was for protection. Still, when you consider the existence of female Viking warriors [confirmed by genomics], the idea of needing men for anything outside breeding becomes less believable.

I don’t know. Maybe I am entirely off base — I would have been committed at best, in almost any Christian society, potentially stoned at worst. (And not in a good way, unfortunately.) I read too much, I argue too often, I’m stubborn to a fault, I have zero desire to have children — not that motherhood was made out to be a blessing in the environment of my youth, but the prospect never appealed to me. Nevermind my legitimate mental health issues. The list of reasons men have created to target free-thinking, independent women is laughable when you think about it. Imagine basing your identity on your ability to debase and demean anything challenging your conception and understanding of a Divine Masculine. Do you suppose it irritates them that science suggests that a thriving woman may be genetically and intellectually superior to a man of similar circumstance? Science has developed a male-donor-free reproduction option. They made the discovery about fifteen years ago, making headlines in 2007.

              “Women have more power to affect the universe around them than men do.”

Confession Time!
The highly entertaining idea of men being so bothered by women who succeed and transcend their glass ceiling that they have to revert to juvenile bullying tactics. That’s not to say I was never all sorts of angry and bothered by their oblivion. Now, I can’t take them seriously. Imagine having an identity so fragile that the mere existence of an alternative perspective is earth-shattering. Every time I get online, I see another man baffled at the idea of women existing for any reason outside men’s consumption. It’s so bad that even the good guys are hardly worth the effort and energy that goes into rearranging a social calendar; the more solitary of us find less and less appeal in the dating pool altogether. The world of heterosexual men crumbles as they realize women are done wasting time to be their conquest, and of course, it even went viral.

Naturally, many men blame women. How 62% of men polled being undesirable is women’s fault is beyond me. What’s that old adage? If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck…

KTLA Morning News, 2022

Do your shadow work.
Some random self-proclaimed “nice guy” might be reading this right now, bottom lip stuck out, and brows furrowed. “What about me?” he asks. If you’re phishing for accolades, you’re in the wrong place. The men that need to be validated for their bare minimum and baseless words are about a decade of lessons hard-learned too late for this party. Men’s sense of self is not the responsibility of the women they seek to date. It’s theirs. The psychological trauma and obstacles I endure daily take priority over men’s nefarious intentions and physical desires. Go to therapy, work on yourself — grow as a human being, and educate yourself beyond the mainstream media and news.

Self-talk matters. Yes, absolutely. However, it doesn’t stop there. With self-talk comes self-reflection, comes self-awareness. Healing isn’t a singular conversation where you finally realize you were wrong. Authentic healing comes from consistently choosing to hold yourself accountable for what is yours.

We are not here for you.
I know, I know. It’s so confusing. Because “what else is there” other than sex at the whim of a man, right? Funny, you should ask. Anything. There are books and live performances, extreme sports, philosophy, cooking classes, singles mixers, kickbacks, coffee dates — do you see where I’m going with this? Life is so much more than the shallow intentions of some id-driven ape with a white-washed education and more mouth than moxie. Single women are no longer upset they haven’t coupled up. We are agitated that our aspirations are brushed off as girlish fantasy, our dreams mocked, desires exploited. Internal misogyny has become so ingrained that even some of the most successful women struggle with moments of debilitating self-doubt when striving for [and achieving] more than our grandmothers ever could have dreamed.

If my time driving for rideshare taught me anything, it’s this: women are relieved when the person driving them home is a woman. Think about that. The idea of a man they do not know having access to where they live is so disturbing that their immediate reaction upon realizing their driver is also a woman is a sigh of relief. This is especially true after dark, of course. But I heard the same cleansing breath every shift, at least once, regardless of the hour.

Solitude doesn’t scare us; our sense of peace is finally affordable.
It is true that women once relied on men out of necessity. The less we as women depend on men, the more we realize that there often isn’t much to like about them. Many women who date men are more afraid of meeting new men than much else. A video posted by user Crimedramastalk on TikTok last year highlights five safety tips influenced by her time as a criminologist. Avoiding dating apps makes the list, of course. My own experience with dating apps is more than enough to deter me from meeting men, in general, at this point. I always hear about men being protectors, but I cannot say I have ever met one — however, I can confidently testify that I have met countless predators.

Interestingly, much of our social standard today was developed in Post-War American suburbs. And when you broaden that scope, you unveil one of the examples of why straight white men are public enemy number one. Histories are all but entirely erased by a society that can’t look itself in the mirror.

The bar is above the bare minimum. Not that it ever really was, but dick isn’t enough anymore. Bare minimum effort is so far below the bar that it’s officially a prerequisite for conversation. At this point, some of us are so content within our own space that the idea of entertaining a man-child is the least appealing option. We’ve been working on ourselves, each remembering her inner Goddess. We’ve worked on healing ourselves and nurturing growth and prosperity, which has overwhelmingly been made possible by reducing toxic masculine influence and control. Women dating men have widely recognized the maternal role they’ve adopted in hetero-normative relationships. That awakening has shaped our collective perspective, and as a result, we demand more for ourselves.

If men want their needs met, they are now expected to meet women’s needs. In many cases, their reaction resembles an angsty teenage (suburban) anarchist. Lots of chest beating and whining, minimal problem-solving. Rest assured that men are, in fact, a product of their environment. Society, as designed by ill-informed [again, primarily white] men with inflated egos, has produced several generations of insufferable entitlement and poor leadership. As a social experiment, American society has failed miserably — but I digress.

Simple ≠ Easy
Unfortunately, while we are not responsible for trauma sustained at the hands of a society riddled with chaos and imbalance, we are responsible for repairing the damage it causes within. I know it’s unfair and thoroughly fucked. Maybe things would have been different if men of yesteryear learned to soothe their bruised egos with something other than genocide and slavery. Because that’s what the capitalist system is built on, isn’t it? Under-educated and culturally inept working-class drones, afraid of the world outside their own bubble. Which perpetuates the toxic cycles that hinder social progress.

If a man genuinely wants a partner, he is now required to put the work in to make himself a better version of himself. Women are no longer entertaining cowardice nor placating unresolved issues. Those lacking adequate emotional intelligence will be left where they stand. It’s nothing personal — well, it kind of is. Just because you fix yourself doesn’t mean that every woman you meet will be open to receiving you. Not everything is about you.



Thanks for reading!