When her brother was wrongly convicted of murder, Betty and her family were dealt a blow. She knew it in her heart that her brother was innocent. But only a barmaid who had dropped out of high school, what could she do to help her poor brother?
Back in the 1970s, Betty dropped out of high school a year before completing it, and started working part-time as a waitress in a restaurant, with her brother Kenny. He was a year older than his sister and they were very close because they had survived a really rough childhood to get where they were. “We went through three or four foster homes,” Betty said in The Sun
Eventually, Kenny left the restaurant and moved back to their hometown of Ayer so he could look after their grandfather. Then, a neighbor was robbed and killed. Because Kenny already had a criminal record for being a crook, the police immediately thought of him as a suspect.
However, Kenny had a strong alibi. He had been working all night long at a diner and had been to go court in the morning that day.
Almost 3 years after the murder, he was arrested
Two and a half years later, Kenny was arrested by the police and charged with the murder. His family considered hiring a lawyer, but the $50,000 cost was beyond their means. However, since he knew he was innocent, Kenny told them not to bother.
“Kenny said, ‘Please, don’t do that, because it would just be a waste – all the evidence shows I’m innocent,’” Betty tells in The Guardian.
Betty reached back to the diner where Kenny had been working, knowing that the timecards from almost 3 years ago would prove his innocence.
“I was worried, because it had been more than two years. But the girl in the office said, ‘Yes, I just looked them out for the police, and they’re on their way over now to pick them up,’” Betty said.
In a terrible twist, the court mentions there was no timecards offered as evidence. It was a blow for Kenny and his family.
There was only one thing left to do
Betty was convinced of her brother’s innocence, but it was not enough. A net of circumstances conspired against him, including the testimony of an angry ex-girlfriend, which rendered his case more and more bleak. When he was found guilty, they were all in shock.
In the process, Betty dedicated two decades of her life – and even lost her marriage. “My husband used to say, ‘You love your family more than me’. He didn’t see any sense in me studying law. It wasn’t the only reason the marriage ended, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Betty Anne was left to bring up her two sons — Ben, then aged four, and Richard, six — while she juggled studying with bar work at night to make ends meet. But the sacrifice was all worth it.
During her studies in law school, Betty came across the Innocence Project after reading a paper on DNA. This was the breakthrough she needed. When her brother was on trial, DNA was not yet an exact science. So she set out to find the samples from the case and compare them with her brother’s. And just like that, after 18 years in jail, Kenny was exonerated. Even his ex-girlfriend recanted her testimony.
Share
