The moments leading up to Betty Williams’ death are pretty straightforward. Her and her ex-boyfriend Mack exit his car onto his father’s hunting lease. They talk for a little, then walk down to a small stock pond, Mack with a gun in hand. They stand by the water for a moment when Betty remarks that it’s a little chilly and she returns to the car to retrieve her duster. She returns, and Mack asks her for a kiss, to remember her by, he says. She obliges, thanks him, saying that she’ll always remember him for this act of kindness. She kneels. Mack lifts the gun and Betty takes hold of the barrel, placing it to her temple. “Now,” she says. Mack pulls the trigger.
The events leading up to and following this night become ever more complicated, muddying the lines between right and wrong, making us question our conversations with people we think we know, and calling upon us to consider what it really means to be “sane.” The aftermath of this event would bring out some of the ugliest aspects of human nature, class, and wealth, making this a crime where the most poignant violence lied with neither Betty nor Mack, but with the busybody, know-it-all’s of Odessa Texas in 1961. It was the friends and neighbors, the “good girls” and the self-proclaimed “Christians” who I find the most vile and reprehensible in this case.
As for Betty and Mack, their identities are a bit complicated.
Betty told anyone who would listen that she wanted to die, she even asked some of them if they would do it for her, saying she had the desire, but not the fortitude necessary to go through with it. Things weren’t boding well for her lately. She had earned a reputation as a bit of a slut, for the first time in her high school career, she had not been given a part in the upcoming play, there were problems at home and a recent breakup, but the crux of Betty’s sadness lay in the fatalistic way she viewed the future.
Betty was wise beyond her years and knew that Odessa was too small for her, she knew she was capable of much more, but, a true depressive realist, Betty knew that college tuition was something neither she nor her family could afford. She was beginning to feel hopeless, and was likely suffering from an undiagnosed mental disorder. She wanted to die.
Mack was a Football player, but not a particularly noteworthy one, and his favorite pastime was hunting. There was something unique to the way Mack hunted, others would always point out. While most boys his age would consider a wounded animal a failed shot, Mack trailed it and killed it, preferring not to see a creature suffer.
That suffering is something he’d claim he saw in Betty, and he felt for her like she was one of those wounded animals. He was confused and flustered on the stand, not fully understanding his actions himself. He just thought she really needed his help. She got to him, he said.
Mack’s strangeness was on full display when he led detectives to the stock pond, stripped to his underwear, and pulled Betty’s body out of the water. There was clearly something wrong with Mack as well. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that untreated mental illness is a theme in the cases I like to cover. The idea of killing someone simply because they asked you to is not something most people would ever consider, yet I disagree with the defense that Betty’s insistence wore down Mack’s capacity for reasoning. I think Mack was already struggling in that department.
That being said, I think Mack’s defense used what they had available to them at the time, in a small, Texas town, and they went with what would probably make sense to most people. I do applaud his lawyer, Warren Burnett, because it is said that he took careful precautions to avoid attacking Betty’s character, something quite rare for a defense attorney to be considerate of. It was for naught, however, for the town took it upon themselves to malign Betty’s character every chance they got.
I don’t hold fault with either Betty or Mack in this case. Mack has been described as a cold, heartless sociopath by Betty’s supporters, and Betty’s name has been drug deep through the Texas mud by both Mack’s supporters and random gossipers around town. It’s these people that disgust me. These grown adults who’s perverse curiosity compels them to ruminate on the sexuality of a teenage girl. It’s no wonder their children were just as terrible — cheering Mack on, and acting as a fan club while he, by all accounts, remained solemn throughout the trial, still unsure of what he had done and why he had done it.
It’s possible to see this crime as someone who desperately wanted to die, and someone with a compromised ability to reason agreed to help them carry it out. Neither of these two seem level headed to me, and I don’t think we need to throw stones at one’s character to save the other’s.
Just because there may have been something off with Mack doesn’t mean Betty manipulated him. She’s not the villain in this scenario. The villains are the man at the local car wash, telling people, “Everyone knew that girl was no good. She tricked that boy into killing her.” Or the woman on the jury, who remarked, after the verdict had been read, “That girl was nothing.” Everyone who gossiped about the promiscuity and manipulative nature of the late, tormented Betty, everyone who cheered at the trial, everyone who believed Betty had ruined this poor boy’s life, those are the villains.
Mack and Betty were two teenagers who didn’t quite understand the world around them. Together, they made the ultimate mistake, but we should be examining the way we teach teenagers about mental illness, not scrutinizing their fucking habits.
