Episode 570: The Murder Of Jack Wilson

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hey you weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alena.

And this is morbid honey.

This is morbid honey, it's morbid honey, baby sweetie pie, it's morbid honey. And if you hear, Uh, I don't know if you will, I don't think you will, but I'm just hedging my bets here.

I'm covering my bases, I'm covering my butt. If you hear a lawnmower in the background, it's not my lawnmower. If you hear a lawnmower, no, you don't.

It's one of my neighbors is having their lawn done, and it's loud, loud, but we're trying.

We tried to wait till they were further away, so hopefully they don't come back around these pots. Yeah, I don't feel like you're going to hear it, but again, covering all my bases, you know, I don't know if you're going to hear it. I don't know your life.

I don't know your life, I don't know how good your hearing is. OK, I don't know. Oh my God. We're like, silly goofy because it's the end of the week.

It is the end of the week, a little bit tired. I feel very like, Is that a plane? I think so.

OK, so now my neighbor is mowing their lawn and planes are flying in the sky, planes are flying. Can we have a moment of peace and quiet around here? Jesus never.

That was a loud fucking plane, though it was loud. He was like, Wow, I was like, I don't like that. You're going to stay in the sky.

I don't like that. Please do you good in the sky, you staying up there, I recommend it.

All right, well, with all that silly goofy out of the way. I do have a case that is incredibly tragic because this is morbid. Yeah, it's a wild one, though, the distressing one.

It's a distressing one. I saw an episode of forensic files and I said, doing it well, there you go doing it, and if it's good enough for forensic files, it's good enough for me.

I was raised on that program, that's right, literally, but then Dave really helped me get a lot more information, so we beefed up this case.

We love a Dave moment, we love Dave, we love his podcast, Bring Me the Axe. Yeah, go check it out.

And his other podcast, 99 Cent Rental? Yeah, I mean, look how good he is helping us out. He's got podcasts on podcasts, on podcasts, he's so good.

He's a brilliant mind. That man, I don't really know. I think I'm in a place of old timey right now. This is not super old, you know, that's that's where I live.

Yeah, you brought me into that neck of the woods. I was just researching, like a bunch of old cases. So I feel like I'm just talking like this now, you're talking with a transatlantic accent.

Shouldn't we all? Why don't I just go away? I would love that. I know I feel like that's where I live.

Hey, I'm for it, I would love that. I'll never tell you to stop, just, Hey, baby, that's it.

I don't know, nailed it, I don't know. I'm literally so tired. It's been a long week.

It has, but let's focus on this because this is a gnarly, very sad story. Yeah, and it all starts with a woman named Betty Wilson, so Betty Wilson was born in, I believe. It's called Gadsden, Alabama, on July 14th, 1945..

She was one of four girls born to Oscar and Nell Woods No. Oscar was a police officer, and Nell worked at a factory. OK, friends and family would later remember the Woods family as quote unquote poor, but Betty described the family as typical lower middle class.

So OK, it just kind of depends who you ask, but they were in a family that had a ton. And at a time when most of the rural South was transitioning from wartime production, causing massive layoffs. Oscar's job as a police officer actually kept the family afloat, so it was good that he had that position. And what also helped was, like many police officers at the time, Oscar supplemented his income by accepting bribes from local bootleggers, union busters and gambling operations.

You know, yeah, just just things like, not good things, but just side. Hustles kept food on the table. You know, it's hustle culture, it is. It's not the best, but they had four kids.

That's what he did. Yeah, it's not honest money, but it's money. So in the early years, the Woods home life was, it was. This is. It's dysfunctional.

It's very sad. I know they had a disruptive and a pretty dysfunctional life. Because, in addition to Oscar's involvement in illegal activities, he was also a heavy drinker, and he also carried on multiple extramarital affairs with other women. Saw that coming like multiple women?

Yeah, according to author Jim Schutz Schutz, I believe. During the day, while he made his rounds, Oscar drank. He drank with his women, He drank at the illegal establishments he helped protect, He drank in the police car.

By the time he came home at the end of the day, his condition was somewhere between fairly drunk and stinking. EW Yeah, so he was just shit faced at all times.

Oh, with four young children, yeah, like, come on. So, while that obviously made for quite a challenging home life, Betty recalled. Mother made up so completely for daddy's absences and drunks that we never felt any lack of love or attention. Oh man.

So Nell Nell, right, yeah, Nell was just out here, making sure that just being both parents.

Literally being both parents and making sure that these girls didn't fear, or any of these kids, like, felt any kind of wow. Nell like abandonment from their dad. Nell's an MVP.

Truly, that's a parent right there, that's a parent and a half, yeah. So while her husband was off drinking, cheating, gambling, any of that kind of thing, Nell devoted all of her time and attention to her children.

And by the time Betty and her twin sister Peggy came along, the couple's other daughters. I think it's Jadel is one of their names, and Martha. They were eight and ten years old. So they were kind of establishing their independence, like they could get their food together, get dressed on their own, that kind of thing, yeah. So Nell shifted more of her focus onto her twins, Peggy and Betty.

She lavished them with all kinds of attention, praise. Any penny she earned she spent on her youngest daughters. Nell Wood's life had not been easy, and it never would be. But by devoting all of her energy to shielding her children from their father's drunken, abusive wrath, she managed to actually show them. A life of comfort and love was possible, even when the circumstances weren't ideal. So she really was like.

She went above and beyond and she was a pretty good role model to be like, this could be yours. And obviously it wasn't as easy to divorce back then, and no, she wasn't.

Likely she wouldn't have been able to support four daughters on her own. Yeah, so she was like, I have to stay with your dad, but he's a fucking asshole. So let me do my best that I absolutely can, so that you can have a better life.

Exactly going forward, exactly so. By the time she reached high school, Betty had developed a strong and somewhat theatrical personality.

All her years performing in the school plays and speaking in church had actually made her really comfortable in front of an audience. But she actually preferred to spend most of her time by herself. She was a little bit of a wallflower in that regard, a little bit of a loner, yeah.

But Peggy, her sister, her twin sister, was a lot more gregarious, and Peggy would drag Betty into social situations. OK, so Betty said. Like, she probably, in high school, at least, wouldn't have had as many friends or time spent going to social outings had it not been for Peggy. Yeah.

But it's like they credit each other. Yeah, they do, yeah. But while Betty was shy and bookish in most public settings, she had considerably fewer reservations when it came to boys. She really liked boys.

Liked the boys, Schutz wrote. There was a devilish streak in her that enabled her to do things Peggy would have never dreamed of doing skipping school, coming home late in cars with boys who had been drinking, so so she was.

She was going for it. And it's funny because it's like, I think to Peggy, she's like, Oh, wow. Like, my sister Betty was so shy and I had to bring her out to introduce her to these people, and Betty's like, Yeah, I'm shy.

But like, if I'm hanging out with somebody I think is handsome, let's fucking go, let's go, which like, it's cool for now, oh yeah.

Oh, because I don't know this story, I almost said, this show, I don't know, I don't know the show. Well, you will.

So when she graduated from high school, Betty married her high school boyfriend, and the couple had three boys in very quick succession. But it didn't take long before their marriage started to fall apart. Betty said My husband was a good man, but we both knew we'd gotten married too young. The truth was a little bit more complicated than that. OK, I was sure that was part of it.

Like, they were very like, a nice, yeah, that was, you know, that was really chalking it all up to, like, one thing, yeah. By all accounts, Betty's first husband was said to be a good man. That's, that's the truth.

But he also believed in very specific gender roles, and he wanted to be very much in charge of what his wife did, what she wore and where she went. It was his name, What's that guy's name? Harrison? Oh, the kicker.

What's his last name? Yeah, the kicker, the kicker. was he? the kicker? Yeah, his last name isn't even worth knowing.

He's that guy reincarnated. Honestly, it kind of sounds like that. And the thing was for somebody as spirited as Betty, like we know, she likes to go out and have a good time. Yeah, the idea of having somebody control every aspect of her life was just not something she was going to jive with.

It was unacceptable. I mean, nobody should control any aspect of your life, No, you control your life. And it was also the dawn of the 1970s.

So it went hand in hand with the woman's liberation movement, and things were changing, and women were realizing, like, Fuck this, I don't have to listen to this guy. Times they were a changing and Betty wanted to change with him.

So, recognizing that things weren't working out, they did end up getting divorced. And Betty's husband agreed to keep custody of the children until she got settled because she was moving to Huntsville, Alabama. OK, so he was like, I'll keep the boys, you get settled in Huntsville and then we can work out custody, exactly.

But now, freed from the responsibilities of a children and a husband, of a children, of a children, of children and a husband, Betty wasted no time establishing her new life in Huntsville. Initially, her plan was to get settled, find work and then send for her children. Got it makes sense?

Totally, in some capacity, yeah. But instead, she worked two or three low wage jobs and spent all of her money on clothes, drugs and partying. And essentially completely abandoned those children for quite some time. Wow.

What an asshole move, yes. During the day she worked at the local JCPenney department store, and at night she worked the desk at a local health club. A job that not only helped her pay the bills, but also provided opportunities to meet other young, single people. She later said. I've heard the stories and read the books about me that talked about the wild partying, the drugs and the heavy drinking that went on there.

Some of it was true, and I make no apologies for it. I make no apologies for abandoning my children. Yeah, to party.

Yeah, ok, ok, got it totally.

Got it, girl? OK, I understand, like Women's Liberation 70s, like, Yeah, you don't want to sit around having your husband tell you what to do.

Of course, but you two collectively made the decision to bring three lives into the world, and you both owe those children equal love, attention and care. It's not about you anymore, it's just not.

When you have kids, that's just accept it, that's the way it is, it's not about you anymore, like.

You're not the main, the primary, like, you know, you don't get to party anymore. Sorry, yeah, you gave that up.

Exactly like you can be a full, a full human being. Yeah, while being a parent, absolutely.

But you, you can't. But you don't get to prioritize yourself anymore. exactly, you don't get to prioritize all the time. Privilege shit.

Right, exactly, and not come like and especially just like straight up abandoning your kids, yeah, and just like doing drugs and drinking.

Like, obviously, go get your haircut and have some you time like that's necessary for, like, a healthy, normal relationship, but like, obviously, yeah. But like, don't just never see your fucking kids again and be like, I'm going to go to the bar.

Like, that's that's crazy, like, fuck off, and I think we're like, we're obviously like, overexplaining, because, like, you know, you know how it is, but that's fucked.

Yeah, this situation is so fucked, I'm not going to overexplain it. It's fucked, in my opinion. Well, and it continues to get more fucked.

Yeah, so fuck, that fuck, so fuck. And Betty never did send for her children.

Instead, she spent the first few years of the 1970s working. She worked a few jobs at a time. She dated around, and she just enjoyed the freedom that she felt she never had. Yeah, she's childless now.

So yeah, exactly, look at that now. A few years after arriving in Huntsville, a woman Betty met at the health club recommended that she apply for a job at the newly built. I think it's Humana Hospital, the woman told her. You're too smart and pretty to spend your life doing this, like working at the health club.

And she suggested Betty could use her as a reference, since her husband was one of the investors who funded the development of the hospital. So the reference worked. And Betty did land a job at the hospital as a secretary, a unit secretary, she recalled. From the first, from the very first day, I loved it, I could hardly wait to get to work every morning.

Which it's like, cool, it's wild. That you can, like, dedicate yourself to a job. But not three beings who lived inside of you that you created. Like, whoa, that's cuckoo nuts. That's interesting, I think, eventually, and it's not like the main focus here.

I think eventually she does end up reconnecting with her children, but she didn't raise them. It doesn't sound like that's their business, none of my business.

But just to throw that out there, they did reconnect at some point and then, hey, I'm glad and I think it all worked out. I think she was part of, like her grandchildren's lives for a period of time, OK?

Which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it again. I do not know the story at all, so I'm speaking from total ignorance here of what happens next. You just wait. So the more Betty became involved with the patients, the more. It occurred to her that working in health care, and specifically, like one on one with patients, was exactly what she wanted to do with her life.

So, within the three years of starting as a secretary, she had completed the nursing program at the University of Alabama, and soon she was hired as a dialysis nurse. Wow, so I mean, that's a big accomplishment. And it was through her work at the hospital that she came to meet Jack Wilson in 1976..

He was a newly practicing and noticeably nervous ophthalmologist, or is it ophthalmologist? I always say ophthalmologist, me too, but then you think of, like, aesthetic.

Yes, and it's like, it's not aesthetic, it's aesthetic, aesthetic, and it's like an ophthalmologist.

Actually, yeah, it might be that now that let's google it. So quack, so quack, so quack.

Well, we'll google it. So quack, so quack. Ophthalmologist It feels like that makes sense.

Yeah, I agree, but I've always said ophthalmologist. But what I've learned, especially through this podcast, is that I've been saying things wrong a lot for my life, exactly.

Exactly ophthalmologist ophthalmologist, see. Oh my God.

It's ophthalmologist. No, it's not.

Ophthalmologist Ophthalmologist No, that I don't buy, I won't, I will not subscribe to that.

I'll subscribe to ophthalmologist, but I will not subscribe to ophthalmologist. I won't do that. That sounds like a rap song, literally I won't sounds like.

Ophthalmologist Ophthalmologist, I feel like my brain is breaking. No, I'll accept ophthalmologist, but I'm not he.

I'll continue saying it wrong. He was a doctor who specialized in eye care and health. Boom, there you go, got around it.

Ophthalmologist there it is, just stop saying it, please, ophthalmologist, never.

It's losing all meaning. So she met, she met Jack Wilson, a doctor specializing in eye care and health, and he was performing surgery. This is when they met.

He was performing surgery on an elderly patient, and complications actually, like, arose in the middle of this surgery. It was like a medication allergy that the patient had, so the patient had to be rushed to the dialysis ward to be treated for renal failure. Oh, wow, now. Betty became increasingly frustrated as Jack nervously paced around the room, worrying and repeatedly asking her if the elderly woman was going to be OK. Because this is his patient.

Yeah, and he's a new doctor, he's like, I don't need a malpractice suit. Right off the bat, yeah, but so Betty was like, Jesus Christ, like, can you just let me work on this?

Like, you're pissing me off. But despite her annoyance, she also couldn't help but find what she described as the small, anxious man somewhat endearing. She later said He reminded me of a little boy with an impish smile on his face, all the time, with an impish smile. Yeah, adorable.

He just sounds very like, he sounds very unassuming. Yeah, unassuming, you know, nonthreatening.

Very nonthreatening. Yeah, a little nervous, yeah, a little type a.

Very type A. You know, we don't hate it. Yeah, no, we don't hate it at all. We don't hate that, you know?

Now let's talk about Jack, let's talk about him. OK, Well, like Betty, Jack had been raised under difficult circumstances, his circumstances are just as heartbreaking.

Oh, that's sad. He was born in 1937 to a single mother who lacked the means to raise her children, so he ended up being raised by Werther and Bill Wilson. I don't know if it was like a traditional adoption story, or if it was like a we know. Like his mom knew these people, but they ended up becoming his adoptive parents for all intents and purposes.

So he was raised by Werther and Bill Wilson, OK, now, just as one of Betty's parents had been a pretty hard and cool person. Werther Wilson lacked the warmth and affection that, you know, is stereotypically characteristic of mothers. And she just constantly reminded Jack that his mother had abandoned him, his real mother.

Wow, and this is awful. But she would tell him she's a whore. She walks the streets of Los Angeles. Wow, like a little boy.

Oh, and then, like all the way throughout his life, she would just tell him, That's awful. Your mom's like a whore. Oh my god, can you imagine looking at, like a little boy, a child that you took in, yeah?

To like, protect, yeah. However, if Jack's. I don't even want to call her a maternal figure, because she's not, but what was supposed to be a maternal figure if she was cold and mean, which she was? His father, Bill, was the complete opposite. Bill. Wilson worked as a line cook in a restaurant and spent all day on his feet, often returning home completely exhausted, burned out from a long day. If you've worked in a kitchen as a line cook, you know.

But no matter how tired he was, he always made time for Jack and was always over the moon excited to be with him. Bill, Bill, bill's the real one bill.

Bill, bill, bill. But just as Betty had longed to get out of her small town. Jack spent his days dreaming of a life somewhere other than where he lived, and he was raised in Chicago.

Fortunately, he had always been very, very like, incredibly intelligent, which, along with the determination and motivation instilled in him by his father. Bill actually got him early admission to Occidental College. So during the day he worked just like a regular old job to help support his family, and at night he studied relentlessly for his classes. Now, after they ended up getting married, because they do get married, Jack told Betty He studied and worked hard, and worked so hard. Then because he, quote, wanted to be somebody, because he wanted to make money, because he wanted to be respected. I mean, good for you, man.

He's just got drive, yeah, and he went through it, so he's like, you know what, I wanted to become someone.

Exactly no matter where I came from, right?

Summer is jam packed and the heat is no joke, so we've got to prioritize hydration. We're made of 60 to 70 percent water, so when we're dehydrated, we feel imbalanced. You know, the signs, fogginess, fatigue, that kind of thing.

With all the drinks out there, you want hydration that works, and Liquid IV delivers extraordinary hydration. One stick of Liquid IV delivers superior hydration to water alone. With three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drinks, plus eight vitamins and nutrients, it's hydration for endurance, mental clarity and overall well-being. And it is so freaking easy to mix yourself up a glass of liquid IV or even a bottle of it.

You got a water bottle, pop the top off, pour your little stick of liquid IV in there and you're good to go. Personally, I feel like sugar free white peach is my absolute favorite right now, and I love to drink it poolside. And any time I'm packing my summer bag, you know, liquid IV is in there.

I'm handing it out to people at the pool. Keep yourself hydrated, girlies. It's got three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink and four delicious sugar free flavors white peach, green grape, raspberry, melon and lemon lime. And a zero hydration sugar solution with no artificial sweeteners, it's clinically tested to hydrate more than water alone.

Turn your ordinary water into extraordinary hydration with Liquid IV. Get 20 off your first order of Liquid IV. When you go to Liquidiv.com and use code Morbid at checkout. That's 20 off your first order when you shop Better Hydration today using promo code Morbid at Liquidiv.com. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. It is absolutely bonkers how fast 2024 has gone by.

But one thing that I am super duper proud of that I did in 2024 was go back to therapy. When life goes fast. You guys, it's important to take a moment to celebrate your wins and make adjustments for the rest of the year. Therapy can help you take stock of your progress and set achievable goals for the next six months. Personally, I feel like I am so much more grounded when I'm going to therapy and it just keeps me in check. And I'm so, so happy that I went back this year.

If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, it's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. And all you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. And don't worry, you can switch therapist anytime for no additional charge.

Take a moment visit Betterhelp.com Slash Morbid today to get 10 off your first month. That's Betterhelp.com Slash Morbid.

But he also studied because he was fascinated by the material and the subjects. He felt the idea that a person could suffer from a theoretically correctable vision problem, he felt like that was really frustrating. So he became completely determined to find cures for common vision impairments.

That's badass. He's just like a good person who's completely driven and just like, wants to make a difference. And he was in it for the right reasons, like, obviously, he was in it for the right reasons. Obviously everybody wants to, like, you know, be successful, be respected.

Like, yeah, make money to support your family, all that stuff. And it's like. But he's also in it because he's like, I want to help people. Yeah, he's like, I want to help people's vision issues. Yeah, like, I'm frustrated that people have to deal with this. And if there's something I can do to help, let me learn how to do it.

Yeah, exactly, I just really like him, he sounds like a really nice guy. So that drive eventually took Jack to Memphis, where he studied for his doctorate at the University of Tennessee, and it was there that he met his first wife, Julia.

Jack and Julia's marriage was pretty normal. They lived a quiet life, they had two sons together, and they actually eventually adopted a third son. So he, as an adopted person, was like, I want to adopt a child, yeah, I want to, like, pay it forward.

Yeah, however, as like, ordinary as their marriage was, it was marked by periods of upset. And Julia became more and more frustrated by Jack's almost pathological commitment to his work and the ways in which it kept him from his family. So by 1976, the strain on their relationship was just too much to bear, and Julia ended up leaving Jack with a plan to work things out through a trial separation. But she was like, something's got to change because we have this awesome family and like, I do love you.

You're great when you're here, you're a good dad, but you're exactly you're great when you're here, but you're not here a lot. So at first, Jack was actually shocked when Julia left, and I think I wonder if he was just because. Like, we know people like this, that you are so dedicated to your work that you don't even realize.

That things are falling apart around you. Yes, exactly because you're successful, where you're focusing, right? Exactly. So at first he was like, What?

But the more he thought about it, the more it occurred to him that, having never had a normal, stable life, he didn't really know how to build one with another person. He didn't know that, like, he didn't know what that looked like, yeah, of course, he wasn't taught that.

Yeah, but despite the challenges, Jack spent over a year trying to rebuild his relationship with Julia until he met Betty. From the moment they met, Jack was immediately drawn to Betty. Unlike the more traditional Southern women that he was pretty much accustomed to at that point. I mean, we know, but he was very strong, independent, and she did not seem interested in deferring to men.

Certainly not, no. Their meeting also helped Jack understand that his marriage to Julia really was truly over. Yeah, like there wasn't a lot of hope there.

Yeah, there was nothing that they could salvage. No, it didn't seem like it. So they divorced soon after, but they actually were lucky enough to remain friends with each other. Oh, and that's good.

Yeah, and I feel like that's so what speaks to who they both were, yeah, that they clearly loved each other. It just didn't work.

Exactly, but to Betty and Jack, Betty recalled looking back, Jack and I never really dated. So it was more like they kind of just like met each other. And then, just like it just happened, it just kind of happened on its own, yeah.

They became friendly enough through their work at the hospital and on their second date, Jack said. If we're going to spend the rest of our lives together, he may as well move in with me. I was like, Okay, I'm like, all right then. So about a year after, Jack moved in, because I think they just kind of, like, moved in with each other very quickly, yeah.

Betty got offered a job with a company in Atlanta, which Jack encouraged her to take. He was like, go for it, yeah. The distance was hard, but they were determined to make their relationship work, so they stayed in touch through long distance phone calls and visits whenever possible.

But that all came to an end in 1978.

Now, at this point, they've only been together like two years. Because in 1978, Jack, who had suffered from Crohn's disease his entire life, he needed to get surgery to actually remove part of his lower intestine. That's tough, yeah. But, he said, there was never any doubt as to what I would do.

I quit my job, gave up my apartment and moved back to Huntsville to be with Jack. And I'm just like, Does he know that you have three kids that you just abandoned? Yeah, I don't know if at this point she became, I'm not entirely sure at which point she became, she became reconnected.

Because, like I said, she does eventually okay, and she talks about grandkids. Yeah, so.

I don't know who knows, but I'm like, interesting, interesting that you would. There was never any question there as to what you would do.

But it's like, but you were so quick to just kind of.

And I wonder if I feel like there is some kind of psychology to the relationship that she has with Jack. Because she herself said like, she sees him as like a, not like a little boy, but remember, she said like, she saw him very unassuming, very like, innocent, almost like wounded bird kind of thing, you know?

So maybe it is like she almost is mothering a little bit or nurturing with him. I should say, you know, and I wonder if she said, like to herself, you know? Like, I didn't go back when I should have, and like, is this life? Saying like, maybe I can make up for it?

Yeah, yeah. Is this my second chance to be there for somebody? Maybe I don't know.

Maybe, but the surgery prompted Betty to take the relationship more serious in a short time after Jack's recovery. The two were married to the outside world. Their marriage was the type that most couples aspire to. They were wealthy, successful.

They actually really seemed to enjoy one another's company, and that's nice it is. In a 1996 interview, Betty said We were happy and satisfied with each other. He met every need that I or my children, or my grandchildren had.

So there you go. So, at some point, he became involved in their lives, too. But despite what others saw in Betty and Jack's relationship, or how Betty described it after Jack's death, the truth was that there had been tension involved in the marriage, too. For quite some time. Betty had been charmed by Jack from the moment they met, like I said. But while she found many things about him endearing, the fact was that they were very different people. And that can either work like swimmingly, or it can become the biggest issue.

Exactly now. Jack was incredibly, and to be frank, almost obsessively dedicated to his work. Yeah, that's what it sounds like, very like work first.

And often that came at the expense of other parts of his life, as we see from his previous marriage. Exactly. And I think it's something he tried to work on like.

I don't think it's something that he completely ignored or anything like that, but I think that might have just been who he was, that was part of his personality. But Betty, she was driven and she worked, but she also always made time for a social life. Yeah, she sounds like she did, yes.

And Jack also wasn't materialistic in his professional or personal life, and he really went out of his way to help others. Oh, he sounds so nice, he really does. He sounds like a good guy.

But Betty was far more money and things oriented, like she was kind of materialistic. Yeah, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does become a bad thing here.

And it can be a butting heads thing, yes, and so those were all the kind of like, smaller things that they were butting heads about. Yeah, but the greatest point of contention in their relationship was their intimate life.

And I'm going to try to talk about it as delicately as possible, but it is a huge part of this case. Okay, so, since leaving her first husband and moving to Huntsville so many years earlier, Betty had fully embraced that sexual liberation that helped define the Seventies and Eighties. But Jack, on the other hand, he was very, very shy when it came to the subject. he didn't like to openly talk about intimacy.

If they were going to have a conversation that was even like remotely sexual in nature, Betty would have been the one to initiate that conversation. So for Betty, she felt like this. This was almost an awkward adolescent attitude toward intimacy, and she found it very frustrating. Okay, and things got worse once. Jack had that operation to treat his Crohn's because it resulted in him requiring an ostomy bag.

Now, for Jack, who was shy to begin with, the Ostomy bag made everything a lot more complicated. Oh, that breaks my heart, you can understand, that breaks my heart, I know.

I agree now. The physical reality of the bag itself quote made him even more painfully self-conscious than before. Which, oh, that, like, really breaks my heart, cause he just seems like a good person.

And it's such a it's out of your control, like you did, completely like that just sucks, it does.

And the subsequent surgeries and medications caused various problems when it came to sexual functioning. Okay, so it was also just a it became a physical. Yeah, of course, reality.

Reality Exactly, thank you now. Betty, too, struggled to adjust to the post-surgery lifestyle and confided to friends. And this is just a cunt thing to say.

I'm just going to put that right out there. It's a cunt thing to say. She confided to friends that she found the ostomy bag to be repulsive. That's fucked up, I'm sorry.

But it's fucked up to tell you and talk to your friends and say that. Because if you love somebody, you get past it. Yeah, you just, yeah, you figure out a way to move past it.

Because, sorry, but like, I could never find any one part of my husband to be repulsive. No, I was just thinking that I was like, No. And especially something that he is beyond his control for him, yeah, and that, like, needed to happen to make him his life better.

Yeah, painful physically, but also painful emotionally, like everything, and he's having a hard time coming to grips with it. Your job as a wife and as a support, and I'm not saying like I as a wife, but as a wife. Saying like, as his wife and like his loved one, is to support him.

Yeah, you guys are a team like you build each other up. It's supposed to be teamwork, man, and teamwork isn't saying that. The other one is gross because of something completely out of their control.

I just, I just don't get this, I don't get it personally, yeah, and that's just really mean to say.

It is really mean to say to like, gossip with your friends about your husband. Saying like, that bag that he has to have. Because he had part of his intestines removed, because he's been in severe pain for years. It's repulsive, also as a nurse, to say that that's the other thing.

I'm like, Well, shit, like, cool Betty. Yeah, we love a supportive partner, a supportive queen. But the thing was, Betty had relied on her desirability to prop up her self-esteem for most of her life.

So being romantically intimate was something that she pretty much required in order to feel valuable. Which that sure, I understand that to a degree. Like, you want to be wanted. But rather than adapt to their new circumstances or come up with any alternative way of expressing desire for one another, the problem festered. Yeah, and each of them found unproductive and harmful ways of dealing with stress and the emotional pain of the situation. And it's not like they were going to go to therapy together and figure out, you know, some like sex therapist, and see if they can, you know, make this work some other way. Still, the Seventies.

Yeah, exactly. So Jack retreated into himself, often getting lost in work, which that's, it seems like that's just his MO, you know, like that's what he knows. While Betty, all she knew was heavily drinking and spending most of her time away from her husband years later, when Betty was on trial. So it's fine that I called her a cunt. Oh, the prosecutor would make a big deal of this dysfunction, pointing to it as one of the driving forces for murder.

Oh, but Betty always denied that she and Jack's intimate life was part of the problem. She said. Like all marriages, ours had its problems, but, strangely enough, none of them had to do with sex. Jack and I were both grown people who believed that what we did in our bedroom was our business, as long as both of us agreed. Yes, I had affairs, but I never cheated, and neither did Jack.

But and here's the thing. So Betty's like, I never cheated, I had affairs, but I didn't cheat, and it's like, that's an oxymoron, yeah.

It's like, like that doesn't make sense to most people. No, if I mean, I would assume that if you have an open relationship, you wouldn't consider your other relationships and affairs, yeah.

Right, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, I don't know. it's like, I don't know how that works.

I don't either, and I don't think Jack knew how that worked either. Yeah, so it doesn't sound that way, yeah.

Because whether or not Jack was fully on board with their having an open relationship is very unclear. But at the very least, he did know that Betty was having relationships with other men and typically just looked the other way, and his his acceptance of her extramarital affairs just wasn't sufficient for Betty. She still wanted him to want to be with her, even though he couldn't physically fulfill that desire. Yeah.

It's not that he didn't want to be with her, he was. I was like, I can't in the way that you want me to be. This is different, right? We have a different reality.

Exactly so, even after she joined AA and stopped drinking, she, and even after she managed to find satisfaction with other relationships. Betty continued to resent Jack for what she felt like was a complete desertion of his responsibilities as her husband. Wow. At first, she kept those frustrations to herself, but in time she couldn't contain it anymore.

And she would complain about her marriage to literally any soul that was going to even remotely listen like anybody. So, naturally, those closest to her were like, Hey, have you thought about a divorce? Cause it doesn't really sound like either of you are in this anymore, yeah.

But Betty would always flatly reject the idea, saying she wasn't willing to give up her lifestyle or her role as the wife of a successful doctor. Everything was just smoke and mirrors at that point, of course. So at the end of the night, as the end of the 1990s dawned, not only had Betty's relationship all but fallen apart, other aspects of her life were crumbling as well. After years of regular participation in AA, a place where she actually had found solace and community, several of the other members of the group had become concerned about Betty's presence at the meetings.

Among other things, in the meetings, she had been particularly vocal about her marital problems and kind of like, flashed the fact that she was having affairs with other men. And a lot of other people in the group found that triggering, or kind of viewed it as an indication of her relapse in sobriety. So, whatever the reasons, there was enough of a concern over Betty's behavior that the majority felt it best that she find another AA group. They were like, you can't sit with us, like, how often does that happen?

I wonder, I don't know, to be honest with you, that's wild. I guess. You can kind of understand why they would find that behavior triggering, absolutely.

You know, like it seems a little reckless, it does, I mean, which I'm sure would feel very like. This is what I'm trying to get away from. Like, kind of reckless attitude and laissez-faire attitude to reckless behavior. Yes, exactly, and like.

That's something that people who are in recovery can't really be around and don't need. Exactly. So. She got kicked out of her AA group, and around the same time, several of her own friends were experiencing similar frustrations. Cause it would be strange to have somebody be like, flaunting that, like.

I feel like it would. It would make me a little uncomfortable, cause I'd be like, I can't relate to you, like, I don't know. Well, not only that, but it's just like you just complain about your husband all the time and like, everyone's giving you a so, like, you don't want to be with this man, so don't be with this man.

Yeah, you can't just cite. I want to be rich still, because here's the thing. Like, obviously we cover cases where it's like, I don't want to be with this man, but it's dangerous to get away from this.

This is not one of those cases. Yeah, she could have. He would've been like, Okay, this is just you don't want to give up the lifestyle exactly. For years, she'd been relying on friends of hers and friends of like hers and Jack's to give cover stories to Jack. On nights that she would be out with other men and they were done with it.

According to Jim Schutz, they felt the behavior had become increasingly wrong, morally and destructive. Yeah, it kind of seems that way. It does so.

With her world just falling apart around her and her strongest support systems abandoning her, Betty decided that she needed to take drastic action quickly. Or she was just going to lose everything she had, all that wealth, all that privilege that she'd grown accustomed to. I just want to warn you, this murder, the murder part of this, is very brutal. So, a little before 5pm on the evening of May 22nd, 1992, Jack arrived home from the office and pulled his car into the driveway. Just as he did every other afternoon. A few minutes later, neighbors saw him come outside onto the front lawn, where he used an aluminum baseball bat to drive a campaign sign for a local politician into the ground. And then he went inside.

Okay, that was the last activity anybody noticed at the Wilson House until Betty arrived home from an A.A meeting. I think she found another one a little after 9pm the same night. Betty couldn't have been in the house more than a minute when she came running out of the front door and started pounding on the door of a neighbor.

As far as the neighbor could tell, something had happened to Jack, and Betty needed to call 911. So on the phone with the dispatcher, Betty explained that she'd just gotten back home. And she went upstairs to found her husband's badly beaten body lying on the floor in the hallway just outside their bedroom. So officers arrived at the house a few minutes later and secured the scene, finding Jack, just as Betty had described him, he was on the floor in the hallway, in a lying in a large pool of blood. Somebody had murdered him.

That was very obvious, but more than that, they had brutalized this man. His skull had been crushed in several places, presumably with the aluminum bat that was laying beside him. There were also crushing wounds to his hands, his legs, his arms and his collarbone. Oh, in addition to the crushing injuries, he had been stabbed twice in the stomach. Holy shit.

And there was heavy bruising around his neck, making it appear that somebody, in addition to all of this, had also tried to choke him. What the fuck, overkill to the highest degree. Oh my God. A few days later, when the autopsy was completed, the pathologist would identify the cause of death as any one of the nine blunt force injuries to Jack's skull.

But if that hadn't done it, he most likely would have bled to death from the stab wounds to his stomach. The second of which had been made with a sawing and twisting motion. Holy shit, this like, Oh my god, that's so brutal, it's so brutal.

Now that was, in and of itself, just flabbergasting to investigators that this, this was a home invasion, maybe, and this is what happened to this man, like, what?

Something felt off about this scene altogether from the moment they arrived.

You guys obviously love listening to true crime, and that just makes you super deeper aware of the scary world that we all live in. So obviously you want to keep your home and your family safe, and I personally think that you can do that. With SimpliSafe. That's how I keep my home and my family safe. SimpliSafe is advanced home security system.

That puts you first, Drew. And I actually got SimpliSafe because we had this super weird experience where somebody was like, knocking on our door super early in the morning. It was like three o'clock and I was like, Who the hell is that? But I had no way of telling because I didn't have a SimpliSafe doorbell yet, so immediately after that we got SimpliSafe, and luckily that never happened again.

But if it did, we would have known who it was and been like, get out of here, and then the police could have come like, so easy. Also, SimpliSafe is so easy to set up all by yourself, it is so easy to operate. All the cameras are super duper clear.

And you just have the peace of mind of knowing what's going on at your house at all times, even when you're not there. By partnering with SimpliSafe, I finally gotten real peace of mind. And guys, I want you to have it too. Get an exclusive 20 off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring, just visit simplisafe.com. Slash morbid. that's Simplisafe.com slash morbid.

There's no safe like SimpliSafe. I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop around.

She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low.

Everybody thought I was holding something back. well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

It seemed like somebody had been poking around in the upstairs bedroom, but the house was far from ransacked and there was actually no sign of a forced entry. And it didn't appear like anything had been stolen. All of the valuable items like jewelry, televisions, VCRs, everything was laid out in plain sight. And it would have been some of that would have been easy to grab, like running out the door, you know? But what was curious was that the phone line had been cut. And there were also multiple cigarette butts at the scene, when neither Jack nor Betty were smokers. Now, those two facts, along with the green ski mask found in the bedroom, suggested that the killer had been lying in wait and surprised Jack when he got home. Meaning this wasn't a robbery gone wrong.

This was an intentional murder. So Detective Mickey Brantley found Betty next door at the home of her neighbor, whose phone she had used to call 9-1-1. And he was like, Hey, I got to sit down and talk to you for, like, at least a couple of minutes. So she explained that she returned home a little after nine and she found Jack at the top of the stairs, but she couldn't be sure. She said she actually thought it was possible that when she got home, he might've still been alive. Oh, which, I'm not positive.

But she also added that the couple hardly ever locked the doors because both of them were constantly coming and going so often. Okay, so that's why there was no sign of forced entry, yeah. And finally, she provided the names and contact information for all the other people workers, friends, their children, who had access to the house.

But otherwise, she had no information, and she was deemed, quote unquote, too distraught at the time to be questioned. So they couldn't really go much further now. From the moment Detective Brantley arrived at the scene, he strongly suspected that Jack's murder was not robbery, as others had suggested, but instead a crime of passion. It felt too much to be robbery, right? I mean, there's personal shit behind that.

It seems like it feels like, at least it feels like it. And speaking with friends and family, investigators quickly learned that Jack and Betty's marriage seemed to have been in trouble for quite some time. In an interview with their housekeeper, Shirley Green, they learned that the couple had been sleeping in a separate bedrooms for a long time. And that Betty frequently made derogatory comments about Jack's ostomy bag, which she almost always referred to as his shit bag.

To be that crass, what an asshole like, you're like, what an asshole. Shirley Green, the housekeeper, also told detectives that Betty often entertained quote unquote male visitors at the house when Jack wasn't home. Damn.

So on Saturday, the day after the murder, Detective Brantley was running down some leads when he came across a note about a call that had come into the precinct the day before Jack's murder. The call was from the sheriff in Huntsville, who received a tip from one of their informants, who claimed that she overheard a conversation in a local bar about a quote unquote. Rich person, possibly a doctor or a doctor's wife, was going to be killed, my God now. Brantley called the Shelby County Sheriff's office, where the tip had originated, and traced it back to a woman named Janine Russell, who claimed she was a drinking buddy of the man who was making these threats.

Huh, now? Unfortunately, Janine didn't know any of the specifics, other than the fact that the victim's wife had a twin sister who was romantically involved with the supposed hit man. If you remember, Betty has a twin sister named Peggy, Holy Shit, and now there's a hit man involved.

And the twin sister is dating the hit man, supposedly, possibly according to this, allegedly.

Possibly allegedly, according to this tip. So, the hit man in question was 41 year old James White. He was a handyman whose children went to the school where Betty's twin sister, Peggy, taught first grade.

Oh, shut the fuck up. In Vincent, Alabama, she's a first grade teacher dating a hit man, possibly allegedly.

Possibly possibly. yep, suggestively, that's wild.

Yep, she was teaching in Vincent, which was about two hours from Huntsville, where Betty lived. Damn now. Among other things, James White had a considerable criminal record, a long history of substance abuse and mental health issues, and also a dishonorable discharge from the military. So this guy's got some stuff going on.

A lot on his record, yeah. He also had a spotty employment history. He was fired from jobs frequently for failure to show up, or just never showed up to these jobs at all. During a 10 hour interrogation, he confessed to the killing of Jack Wilson and claimed he had done so at the request of one. Peggy Lowe and her twin sister, Betty Wilson.

What the fuck, yes. According to James White, he met Peggy when his daughter was enrolled in her first grade class. I cannot, I can't.

Like, what I can't? And eventually, she hired him to do some work in her home. After the work was completed, the two continued talking on the phone regularly. And at least on one occasion. Peggy told White that she loved him and this is according to him.

The relationship quote started with a few kisses here and there, he said, and soon they were talking on the phone more and more regularly. No, it was in these conversations that Peggy first mentioned having a friend who was in a quote bad marriage and whose husband mistreated her.

Wrong, incorrect. Eventually, though, Peggy clarified that the friend she was referring to was actually her sister Betty. Between March and April of 1992, the conversation evolved into making a plan to help Betty get out of her marriage. By having Jack murdered, and eventually, James White agreed to commit the murder of Jack Wilson in exchange for $5,000..

$5,000, yeah, to murder a whole ass human.

That what? $5,000, what? It was down on his luck, I suppose. What the fuck kind of person do you have to be?

I mean, what the fuck kind of person do you have to be for any amount of money, but literally 5,000? And also if you look up a picture of Jack Wilson, just adorable, adorable, like he just seemed like the most mild mannered, kind man.

I would not cross the street. If I was walking past him, I would say, Hello, how's it going? hi there? and he'd say, good.

How are you? Yeah, he just feels, oh, it just really heartbreaking it really is, and especially for his children and his first wife, Julia.

Yes, it's like Julia knows, Julia knows how it is to not feel loved in the marriage anymore. Yeah, cause he's like, Cause.

He's working a lot. But they stayed friends, they still stayed friends, exactly like they were able to still, like, care about each other. Just get out of a marriage and you might be able to just be friends.

Yeah, that's the thing. You could still be friends. He seems like he's, you know, a good guy, amicable.

Yeah, oh, but no, damn gotta have status. So, although White James White had a criminal record in Shelby County, none of his arrests were for anything violent.

And there was certainly nothing to indicate that he would commit a capital murder. Holy shit, and one as brutal as this, yeah. So when asked why he'd committed the murder. He rambled on about his expenses and the troubles he'd been having with his ex wife over custody of their children.

But when pressed, he admitted he had done it to prove his love for Peggy. He told investigators I was trying to win Ms. Lowe's love and affection and she was putting me in a crack to prove myself to her. What? According to White, he said.

It started as a joke, but she kept calling and pushing me to get something done to help her sister now. At first, he said, he was only going to take the money and find somebody else to commit the murder. Using the 38 caliber pistol that Betty had given him, Betty Jesus, I know.

You're a first grade teacher? No, Betty? Uh, Peggy's the first grade teacher. Sorry, I'm confusing. It's hard.

Jeez, So Betty. Eventually, he meets Betty and she gives him a pistol and says, like, kill him. But because he was desperately in need of money, he said, he decided to do it himself. In the days leading up to the murder, he said, he went back and forth with himself over whether he should just call the whole thing off. He said Yeah, of course you should have.

He said I've been drinking the last three or four days, popping pills, drinking, smoking dope and all I knew was I wanted to get away. But ultimately he decided to go through with it. Oh, that is a horrible decision. And just to know that, he was like, I hate to say on the fence like it feels like such a casual thing to say.

Trying to come to a human decision, yeah, so. On the night of the murder, Betty had met him at a park nearby, drove him back to the house and told him where to hide in the upstairs bedroom. In the time that passed, between being dropped off and Jack's arrival, James White just poked around the Wilson's home. Which is why it looked like it had been poked through casually going through Betty and Jack's belongings, including Jack's adventure closet, Adventure closet, an adventure closet.

It was filled with helmets and wigs and capes and swords. Shut up. Yeah, just like, you know, this is the most wholesome, like, just wow, I know.

So he went through all this shit, humanized this man as much as he possibly could, yeah, and then went through this, yup, that's fucked up.

Oh yeah, 100 fucked up. So he's go, he's just going through all their shit, like you said, humanizing this man before he brutally attacks him. But James White became startled when the phone rang, and he got frustrated when there was no answering machine to pick it up.

So it just kept ringing and ringing and he was off. I don't know if he was high when all of this happened. But it kind of sounds like the way he says it and the way he's, like, the way he's responding to certain things. He panicked and ended up cutting the phone cord to ensure that the phone wouldn't ring again because it was really stressing him out. He said later about Jack coming home. I didn't hear him come in and we were face to face and he grabbed me and I freaked out. Of course, he grabbed you.

You're an intruder, what the fuck? He then claimed he started grabbing around him for something to defend himself with and eventually grabbed the bat that Jack had just used. To pound the lawn sign into the ground, he said I kept reaching until I found something and I hit him, until he turned me loose and then I ran.

Uh, not, also not that simple. No, you didn't. no, you also strangled this man and stabbed him, stabbed him, like with twisting sawing motions.

Like, come on, that's the thing to hear James White tell it.

Yeah, no one believes that shit.

Oh my god.

Holy shit.

What the fuck is wrong with this asshole, I can't even begin to tell you. Then, to make sure that he completed his task, which it's like, I'm pretty sure you did, yeah. White took out the folding knife that he carried with him and stabbed Jack. First in the chest, just below his right nipple and then in the upper abdomen, sawing through the stomach and right side of the chest.

Oh my god.

Shocked, I know.

What the fuck?

I know, but it's like, obviously this man is involved. He has Betty shit in his possession, the abandoned house next door to him has Betty shit. Jack's blood is on his shoes and he can bring you right to multiple locations where multiple things were used in the murder. Let's be real.

Like, come on now. Given what detectives had learned about Jack and Betty's crumbling marriage and what was discovered in the search of James White's home. The scenario he described seemed entirely plausible. But the part that they were having trouble believing was to the extent to which Peggy was involved in this conspiracy. Because it's like, what?

And it gets crazier. By all accounts, she was a pillar of her community, she was known as a devoted wife, like I said, a fucking first grade teacher. She was a regular attendee of the First Baptist Church of Vinson, where her husband, Wayne, was the minister of music.

Crazy, Okay? Based on what they learned about Betty, it was well within the realm of possibility that she would conspire to kill her husband. But to everybody else, Peggy seemed like the last person on earth who would get caught up in that kind of scheme. They're twins, man.

Folly ado, yeah. Yet every other part of James White's confession appeared to check out, so investigators had no reason not to believe him when he implicated Peggy Lowe.

And District Attorney Mo Brooks asked reporters What other reason would you have for a stranger to come to Huntsville from Shelby County to murder? Dr. Wilson? Have complete access to his home and steal nothing except for the explanation he's given. Yeah, like, it's true.

Like, how can you explain that you can't? So? On May 28, 1992, Huntsville Police arrested Betty White and Peggy Lowe, much to the shock of everybody in Huntsville. And Vinson. Peggy actually managed to post the $300,000 property bond. Thanks to generous church members, church bonds run deep.

But Betty was denied bail. When asked for comment on the arrest, Peggy's husband, Wayne Lowe, told a reporter Those girls weren't raised that way. All I know is when Betty saw it, she could hardly talk. She was in shock and she was just in a daze all through the funeral. Okay?

It's like, Yeah, you can be through a daze in the funeral. Yeah, I mean, no matter what, it's fucked up, it's all fucked up, whether you had a hand in it or not. Yeah, exactly. But Betty's lawyer agreed, saying his client quote would have no motive for wishing her husband harm.

The people who knew them said there was no strife and I've seen no evidence that there was trouble between them. Are the people who knew them in the room with us right now? Like all of their friends, literally everyone who knows them and like people at her AA meeting were like, We can't handle your hatred of him anymore.

Yeah, their friends were like, Yeah, we can't hear you talk about how much you hate Jack anymore, and we can't keep lying to him and keeping him out of the house. While you're entertaining your other manses, exactly like, What are you talking about? Like, that's not even real.

Like, come on, like, try better a little bit, try better there. But, of course, in their investigation, detectives had learned there was actually quite a bit of strife between Betty and Jack going back several years at this point.

And as for motive, the district attorney had a fairly compelling theory that Jack's murder was the result of greed and status. Can you imagine you don't say? In interviews with Betty's friends and associates, they learned that she had made several statements about not wanting to get a divorce. Because she claimed I would lose everything, I would lose my lifestyle.

Oh, boo, yeah. Instead, Betty wished to become a widow, which not only would win her the sympathy of her social circle and gain everybody back. But in addition, she would also retain full access to Jack's estate, which at that point in time was valued at nearly $3 million. Damn, yeah.

Now, in order to avoid the death penalty, James White agreed to a plea bargain. He would receive a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole in seven years. Which I feel like they were like, I feel like they were like, yeah, no parole board is ever going to grant you parole, so we'll put it on the table, but sure, damn. But in exchange, he would have to testify against both Betty and Peggy.

In early July, both women were indicted by a grand jury for first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. With Betty's trial scheduled for February of 1993 and Peggy's trial to follow shortly after. Now, in the months following Betty and Peggy's appearance before a grand jury, the press ran absolutely wild with coverage of Jack's murder. Page after page of newspapers across Alabama, and especially in Huntsville, provided seemingly endless details about Betty's affairs with various men and the extent to which she'd publicly shown her animosity toward her husband. Damn.

And while many of the salacious aspects of her and Jack's life were made public, the press actually focused more heavily on Betty's primary love interest around the time of the murder, a man named Errol Fitzpatrick. At the time of Betty's arrest, he was working as a risk management officer for the city of Huntsville. And with all the negative attention caused by all of this, he actually had to resign from his position. Wow, so like, that's how bad and like how intense things were getting, damn.

Now, while the press picked Betty's life apart, Peggy's friends and family rallied around her to defend her character. Reverend H..L Martin told reporters. Those of us who knew her or who know her, have never seen any evidence of any action that would indicate any bad intent. Peggy is probably one of the strongest ministering people I've seen. She's taken in people who have been thrown out of their homes.

A little girl in the community got pregnant and her family threw her out, so Peggy took her in. Okay, it's like, Yeah, it sounds like she's willing to do a lot for those she loves, yeah.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up, if you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down.

Everyone had an opinion, and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery+.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Peggy's friends took a similarly stunned and disbelieving position, her family friend, Louise McGraw, said. Even if she told me she was involved in this, I wouldn't believe her. In order to be involved with this, she would have to be a Jekyll Hyde personality. Yeah, nobody's like that, so that's good. It's like, yeah, she would have to be.

Yeah, imagine if she was? Yeah, imagine if that existed in the world. Yeah, that'd be crazy nuts.

So crazy that people don't automatically show you that they're a vicious murderer. Most people don't. Murder-for-hire person. Yeah, now. It's worth noting that while many people came to the defense of Peggy Lowe, very few people spoke out on Betty's behalf.

Shocking, I wonder why. Jury deliberation in Betty's case began in early April, with the prosecution being led by Jimmy Fry from the county Prosecutor's office, and Betty's defense being led by Bobby Lee Cook. He was an Alabama defense attorney known for his courtroom theatrics and flair for the dramatics. The best kind.

Oh yeah, now. By that point, the extensive press coverage had obviously affected what was going to be the trial. So it had to be moved from Huntsville to Tuscaloosa, which is so fun to say, Tuscaloosa. But the defense hoped that they would find a less biased or otherwise influenced jury pool out in Tuscaloosa. Yeah.

The biggest problem Betty Wilson's defense faced was James White's confession implicating her and her sister, but also her lifestyle, you know, like the heavy drinking, the extramarital affairs and so on. That, too, presented a considerable challenge in what was a relatively conservative region. These people are going to look at her and be like, that's not going to be good. So, after questioning 96 potential jurors on everything from their faith in the testimony of law enforcement officers, to their feelings about drinking and drug use, and opinions on Betty's guilt or innocence. The pool was finally narrowed down, and the trial was set to begin February 23, 1993. In his opening statement, County District Attorney Jimmy Frey laid out the state's case that Betty Wilson had paid James White $5,000 to murder her husband in order to protect what Frey referred to as her world of privilege.

Wow, which I mean, kind of black and white, yeah, like, if I was sitting there, I'd be like, seems.

Pretty straightforward, makes sense to me. He described Betty as a vain and selfish woman consumed by material needs, explaining to the jury that she feared getting a divorce would mean that she'd be cut off from her lifestyle. And she'd grown accustomed to that and didn't want to lose it, he continued telling the jury, though it appeared she had everything, she wanted more, and not just more, she wanted it all, and she wanted it now.

Wow, by arranging for Jack's murder, Frey concluded. Betty stood to gain millions of dollars in a life insurance payout, as well as Jack's already substantial estate, so his estate was valued at $3 million. But then there was also life insurance on top of that. That's just so sad that like these kind of things, especially when it's like for money or to keep a lifestyle.

Yeah.

Our species is a wild species. Mm-hmm, like, just that. This happens like so often, and with people that are supposed to love each other, not even strangers, right? That it happens so often with people who literally took vows to commit to one another.

Like, you didn't have to do that, like, that's just really wild. Yeah, it never gets anything less than wild. I know it's so true.

So obviously that's a strong argument, and to us, it seems pretty black and white, absolutely. But the prosecution's biggest hurdle was that their case against Betty was largely circumstantial. Yeah, I can see that. They did have a large amount of physical evidence, including hairs found on the ski mask, cigarette butts with DNA hairs found in Jack's hand.

But all of that connected James White to the murder, not Betty. In fact, aside from James White's confession, there was actually almost nothing to directly connect Betty Wilson to the murder of her husband. I can see that. Instead, Fry relied on a state statute that allowed corroboration to be shown through quote-unquote evidence of malice, ill will or threats that the accused has made or demonstrated towards the victim. Interesting.

So Fry called one witness after another, who testified to the animosity and open hostility that Betty felt for her husband, the most damning of whom was the couple's housekeeper. I knew Shirley was coming back, Shirley came back, baby. yeah, I knew Shirley wasn't going to let this go. Mm-mm.

She said, Fuck this woman, I don't like her, and she had heard like, a lot of terrible shit, she'd seen stuff, yeah.

Among other things, Shirley Green testified that when Betty refused to go to Jack's mother's funeral, I'll say that again for you, Betty refused to go to her mother-in-law's funeral. What? And Jack was like, You know what, I might as well be dead like. That's how defeated he was.

Oh, and that prompted Betty to retrieve her handgun from the bedroom, then to hand it to Jack and say, Why don't you do it for me? Wow, this man is on his way to his mother's funeral.

And Betty does.

Is not going to go. And he's upset about it and is like, Okay, like, why don't I just die then? And she's like, Yeah, go ahead, wow, go ahead and do it for me.

That's fucked up, like on another level. Sorry, if you can do something like that, I don't know where your bounds are. You're pure evil, yeah.

According to the testimony from Betty and Jack's former friend, Brenda Sierra, I believe, she said Wilson, meaning Betty stated that she wanted to kill her husband. And she asked Sarah if she would help her or if she knew how to do it. So she was also going around, like looking for other people. I was going to say, So we've got another. Like, you go around and ask my friends, you're not going to find one of them. That says, I asked them if they could help me kill my husband.

Absolutely not, you're just not going to find one. nope, you find one. It means I did, uh-huh.

And it's like, that, hello, exactly. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. it's a duck, quack, quack.

Yeah. Two days into the trial, the state called its most important witness, James White. Fry, was up front, with the jury, saying that even the prosecution found White to be a quote. Wretch, a pitiful human being, he said. But we're not depending on his credibility alone. I mean, he really nailed that description.

A wretch, a wretch, a pitiful human being. a pitiful human being, yeah. The prosecution had produced multiple witnesses and evidence that corroborated James White's claims of having received money from Betty Wilson.

And in addition to that, phone records showed that James White and Betty Wilson had spoken many times in the weeks leading up to the murder. And if you remember, Betty's library book was found in his possession. That proved that James White had been in Betty Wilson's company on at least one occasion. And again, it's like, if it smells like it, it's it, man. Absolutely, I can agree that before that, it's pretty circumstantial.

But when you add this stuff in, it's like there's no coincidence like this. It's like her book is found in his possession, and his hair, blood, fingerprints, DNA is found in her home. And he admits that he did this to Jack Wilson. Exactly, he's admitting that.

And then there's phone records between them and she's walking around asking people, Do you know anyone who will kill my husband? I mean, hello, that's going from A to B to C to D. We're hitting all the points here.

Yeah, I know my calculus, and you plus me equals us here. Okay, look at that. I loved that. No, don't deny it.

Don't deny it, given the circumstantial, quote unquote nature of the case. The defense's strategy was obviously to poke holes in the credibility of the witnesses and to offer alternative explanations. For the claims that Betty had repeatedly made vague threats to Jack's life, the core of their argument was pretty simple. They said James White had implicated Betty and her sister in the murder. Because it was the only way he could get a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. Without his statements and confession, they argued, the state would actually have no case against Betty Wilson.

I always love when they're like, allow me to explain away why Betty made vague death threats against her husband? I can do that. I just want to see all the jury members just lean forward and just cradle their chin and just say, please explain to me, go for it, go ahead.

Give me that explanation why she made death threats against her husband but didn't actually have a part in his brutal murder? For hire, go for it, go right ahead, please. I'm so intrigued.

I'm dying to know. In his opening statement, Betty's defense attorney, Cook, told the jury that James White was a pathological liar with a significant criminal record. That involved everything from drunk driving to kidnapping under cross-examination. Cook shouted angrily at White, saying You're a great, big liar, before starting to pick apart his story. I mean, no one's saying this guy is a good guy. I mean, look, he's a fucking brutal murderer.

Yeah, obviously not. We're just saying, like, we're actually here to prove, like, yeah, he is a piece of shit, and he's wrapped up with this other piece of shit. Exactly so. Cook pointed to the number of times that White had changed key parts of his story.

Remember, I told you that was coming? Including his original statement that he had been instructed to shoot Jack when later he stated that he was supposed to use the bat. And then his original claim that he had run from the house to the truck, which he later changed to say that Betty had driven him back to his truck. Ooh, that's a big inconsistency.

I'll give him that that is that absolutely is. That's a damaging one it is.

To, like, involve her in that part and also take her out and then take her out of it, like, that's like, ooh. But also I think his memory may not have been the most consistent memory, yeah.

There's no. It's not like this guy has credibility like to spare here, exactly, but I'm just saying that's in the defense. I mean, obviously they went for it.

They gifted him that they sure did, or he sure did, yeah. Now, a few days into the trial, the defense produced a surprise witness, David Williamson.

He was a salesman who claimed he had gotten into an argument with James White at a Huntsville hotel. At the time, White claimed to be hiding in the upstairs bedroom at the Wilson House. According to Williamson, the men got into a confrontation when White confronted him, demanding to know what the hell he was doing there. When Williamson responded that he didn't know what White was talking about, James White supposedly said, I'll make that bitch pay for what she's doing to me. I'll show her what lonely is all about.

What the fuck random? According to Williamson, James White had mistaken him for someone else, and then Quote quickly calmed down, apparently realizing he had the wrong person. What now? When he was asked about the confrontation, James White said he had literally never seen that man before. And also that he had never been to the Ramada Inn in Huntsville, where this confrontation was supposed to have taken place.

The fuck so we have this one guy being like at the exact moment that he was supposed to be in this house where his DNA was found on cigarette butts, his fingerprints was found, his hair was found. He wasn't there where he admits that he was no.

No, he was at a hotel and we got in a weird argument. Look at this weird surprise witness we got. I was like, how much money did you get out of this situation? Like that's.

So what a move, I don't know about that, what a move. So, on the final day of testimony, Peggy Lowe was called to testify. Peggy stated that she never wanted to kill Jack, and as far as she knew, neither did her sister Betty.

Yeah, it's crazy, it's just wild that he ended up dead. Yeah, I know, she says it all the time, but, like, you know, jokes.

Funny jokes It's crazy that Betty's only connection to this man is me, his daughter's first grade teacher, so wild, I don't know. On this, the day of my daughter's wedding.

You know, now? According to her, the only money that James White had ever received from either of the women was given in an act of charity intended to help him get through a hard financial time. And there you go, she's like, let me just cover this real quick, yeah.

Yep, I'm just so charitable, so I'm sure there's money that has passed between all of us, but it's total charity. It's charity money. Just out of the goodness of my heart, she told the jury We were trying to help him.

He seemed like a pitiful little man and he was making an honest effort. Seems like somebody who was, yeah. She also explained that the phone calls between the three accused were all related to their attempts to help James White find work and nothing more. Oh my God, so selfless.

It's weird, how did he end up at your sister's house then? So weird. On March 3rd, 1993, closing statements were made in the case, during which Fry highlighted the evidence and testimony that corroborated James White's claims. He told the jury it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to solve this case.

Sure, doesn't? You can feel what this woman was about and what she was after, yeah. The defense, on the other hand, reminded the jury of the mostly circumstantial nature of the case against Betty. And that, they said the evidence of poor character was not the same as evidence of murder, which I agree.

We're not saying that it's just poor character that we're saying here. Yeah, somebody can be a blazing cunt and not be a murderer. Yeah, I've met many of those people, yeah.

But it's like, there's other stuff, exactly, there's other stuff here, which I know. It's the defense's job, they gotta do what they gotta do, it's their job. To be like, you're just picking on her for being a bitch, and that's not fair.

No, it's just the fact that her husband died in this really mysterious, strange way. Looking from an outside perspective, you're like, I don't care if it's your job. I'm mad, exactly. But he got real theatrical, of course, of course.

And he said, Cook told the jury This is not a case of maids Mercedes clothes and jewelry. No, she is not being tried for adultery, she is being tried for murder, for murder. It's like, we know.

It's like, No, we know that we're here. We know there's a whole man that was killed and we got instructions, a whole human being that was killed here, and it's like, we know.

It's not about Mercedes clothes and jewelry. Thank you, that's what we're here for. Yep, we're here because a guy got murdered.

Exactly, for no fucking reason, exactly. The jury's like, I wouldn't be here if it was about clothes, Mercedes and all that. Yeah, that's not how that works.

I'm actually here to do something legit, yeah, so that jury deliberated for less than a day before delivering a verdict of guilty on both charges against Betty Wilson Bye Betty, per an agreement made between the family and the prosecutor's office. Betty was spared the death penalty and instead received a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Damn, Jack's sister, Jane said afterwards. I don't think I would want to be the person to send anybody to the electric chair. She was guilty, and I don't think 30 years in prison is a piece of cake either, honestly, Jane.

Perfectly said, Perfectly said. She's like, You know what? and I feel you, you don't want that on your shit.

I don't want that on my hands. Yeah, she's like, I'm not a murderer. I don't want that on my head. She did what she did, yeah.

And she can pay for it. Wow, the way that they saw fit, what a like. That was a refreshing take on the whole thing, I know.

Good for you, Jane now. After the verdict was read, Bobby Lee Cook, Betty's defense attorney, expressed his outrage to the reporters who had gathered around him in the hall. He told them anyone that would believe that Mrs. Lowe would be engaged in a sexual liaison with Mr. White would have to take leave of their senses.

I think she would have chosen someone more appealing. Consider my senses left. Also, that's not even the main point of this case. No one cares what they were doing. I literally don't give a shit.

They might have just known each other, maybe they didn't, barely knew each other. Who knows, I don't care. They knew each other enough. That money was exchanged, acquaintances were made, and a man ended up dead.

Exactly that's what everybody cares about. I don't give a shit what she's doing. Exactly years later, Charles Hooper, another member of Betty Wilson's defense team, speculated I think Miss Wilson was convicted on her personal conduct.

She couldn't have been convicted on the evidence. The physical evidence was not there to support it. Yes, it was. Sometimes. It's not physical evidence either, and there is physical evidence. It's not all circumstantial.

A large portion of it is absolutely, but sometimes cases are made on circumstantial evidence. Yes, sometimes there's not even a body.

Often you don't need just physical evidence, there is some in this case, but the circumstantial evidence doesn't lie. No, it's evidence. That's why it has the word evidence in it.

Evidence in it, and not circumstantial bullshit, right? That would change things, exactly.

Now, the members of the jury never said why they did vote the way they did. But there may have been a little bit of truth to Hooper's belief that Betty's conviction was due to her moral character. Just a few months later, Peggy Lowe was tried for the same crimes, using the same evidence and more or less the same testimony. But this time, the defense argued that, among other things, Jack wasn't killed in the house, and even that a bat wasn't the murder weapon. Now, recalling the trial, prosecutor Donald Valeska said.

Wow, he kind of said the quiet part out loud, pretty much now. How the evidence was framed in Peggy's case wasn't the only difference the outcome was also different.

After hearing the evidence and testimony, a jury found Peggy not guilty on all charges. Wow, and considering how the same evidence and essentially the same testimony could produce two very different outcomes, it's definitely worth considering the accused themselves. Yeah, absolutely. Betty just came across as pretty much a greedy social climber.

She had a long history of, you know, extramarital affairs, abandoning her children, prioritizing drugs and alcohol. Well, and like Peggy, it's like Betty had the motive. yes, exactly, you know, like the very clear, very direct motive, exactly.

And, you know, in general, one might say that she was of low moral character, which honestly, probably made it easier for a jury to believe that not only did she want out of her marriage, but that she was willing to do anything. She could have to hold on to the lifestyle that she, yeah, had grown accustomed to. On the other hand, though, Peggy Lowe, like we said, by all accounts, she was an upstanding member of her community. She had a long history of community involvement. Charity. She was a fucking first grade teacher, and she also wasn't just a regular attendee at church.

Like I said earlier, she was even married to the Minister of Music. So you put all those things together and it's like, I mean, it doesn't mean food to me. But you can see why it would have influence on a jury. And I think, and again, I don't even think it was. I think they're looking at it to kind of in a shallow way here, where they're like, Oh, they just did it based on moral character and look like this is why. And it's like, No, no, no. Betty has the more direct motive for this.

Exactly, obviously. It seems like Peggy knows, at the very least, that something was going on. Who knows, you know, allegedly, allegedly. I have no idea. Yeah, me either.

But all I know is that Betty was married to this man and walked around saying how much she hated him. Had a ton of affairs and actually asked people if they knew people that could kill her husband exactly. So it's like, I think that was more the thing. Like the actual her walking around telling people she wanted to kill her husband and the fact that she was like, clearly unhappy. But saying I don't want to divorce him because I don't want to lose my money, I feel like that is probably more it.

I think that's definitely the shallow moral character kind of thing, exactly, and I think the shallow moral character did play a role in both trials. And I think it makes sense, in a way, that Peggy got away with it because they didn't really have anything bad to say about her. Well, that's the thing.

There's nothing to rely on there. Which is obviously not to suggest that the jury's verdict was based entirely on morality of these two women. Yeah, but it's unreasonable to assume that it didn't play at least some part in the trials themselves. Yeah, which I'm sure it plays a part in a lot of these trials.

Exactly now, following Peggy's acquittal, James White actually recanted his confession. Interesting In a sworn affidavit, he wrote I was never propositioned by Mrs Peggy Lowe to murder Dr.

JacK Wilson I made it all up, huh? But then, a short time after submitting his sworn affidavit, he claimed that he had been coerced into signing that statement and now maintained that his original statement was and is the true version of events. So nothing makes sense and you can't trust what's going on.

Exactly at all. Despite his being eligible for parole after just seven years, he remains in prison. And his latest bid for parole, which was made in March of 2021, was denied by the parole board. Yeah.

Following her trial, Betty Wilson began serving her sentence at the Julia Tutwiler prison in Watumpka, Alabama. She has always maintained her innocence and has filed several appeals with the state courts, all of which have been denied. In May of 2006, she got remarried to Bill Campbell, an army contractor who actually saw her when a story about her appeared on the CBS show 48 Hours in 2002. Oh, and after learning the details of her story and her sentence, he felt outraged about the injustice. And that's how they started corresponding.

And I guess they fell in love. Wow, yeah. In 2022, independent filmmaker Gene Adam Jr. announced his new project, Finding Betty, in which he takes a closer look at the case in order to prove that Betty was innocent and was wrongfully convicted.

He told reporters I've made this film my life's mission. Because it calls into question the integrity of the justice system itself. I won't give up until justice is done. As of today, though, Betty Wilson remains in prison. Wow. I think the biggest thing is that it's hard for people to understand how one was sentenced and the other was not based on all of the same evidence. Essentially.

So I mean, wow, interesting case, very interesting case, very tragic case.

Yeah, for Jack Wilson, he didn't deserve to die. I mean, nobody deserves to die, but he just got caught in the middle of this crap.

Exactly, and it's like, Oh, what an awful, awful, awful thing. Yeah, wow. And with that being said, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird as any of this, because.

No.

If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com Slash Survey.

Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole and I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time. The impact on victims and what's left once the facade falls away? We've covered stories like a Shark tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment but soon faced mounting bills. An active lawsuit filed by Larry King. And no real product to push.

He then began to prey on vulnerable women, instead selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs. To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Giudice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. you can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.