Critics claim candidate Bush ignores condemned woman's pleas

February 15, 2000
Web posted at: 8:47 p.m. EST (0147 GMT)

From Correspondent Charles Zewe

DALLAS (CNN) -- Death penalty critics say a woman who claims she was a battered wife will be executed next week because Texas Gov. George W. Bush is ignoring her pleas for mercy.

Beets received a death sentence for the 1983 murder of her fifth husband

The critics say Bush is ignoring the pleas in order to demonstrate his tough, pro-death penalty stand as he runs for president.

Betty Lou Beets, known as the "black widow," was convicted of killing her husband five years ago. The hard-of-hearing great-grandmother, 62, is now days away from dying by lethal injection.

"I haven't lost hope," insists Beets, one of 47 women living under a death sentence in the United States and one of 3,600 inmates nationwide living on death row.

Beets likely will become only the second woman executed in Texas since the Civil War. The first was pickax murderer Karla Faye Tucker, who was executed two years ago despite a campaign to show her rehabilitation and repentance while in jail.

Beets received a death sentence for the 1983 murder of her fifth husband, Jimmy Don Beets. Police believe the Dallas firefighter was killed for his life insurance and pension money.

She was also charged -- but never tried -- for the 1981 murder of her fourth husband, Doyle Barker.

The bodies were found buried in the yard of Beets' mobile home. Both men had been shot in the head.

Beets claims she was raped as a child and abused by all five of her husbands.

"He drug me by my feet all through the house, kicking me with his boots," said Beets, describing the abuse by Jimmy Don Beets.

For that reason, she and death penalty opponents say, she should be spared.

"It would explain much of why she did what she did," said Rick Halperin of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

But sons of the murder victims said she is lying.

"There were never no marks on her, and my dad was a big man," said James Beets.

"She's not crazy, she's just evil," said Rodney Barker.

Experts say there's little hope Bush, who has presided over 112 executions, will grant Betty Lou Beets a reprieve.

"I support the death penalty because I believe it saves lives," Bush has declared.

Bush's pardon board has granted clemency to only one death row inmate, and that came after it was clear he was wrongly convicted.

"Whatever valid, mitigating claims someone may have mean nothing to him -- nothing," said Halperin.

Beets, meanwhile, said her impending execution is like waiting for an abusive husband to come home.

"But every time that a battered woman looks into a mirror with her face battered and bruised, then she'll get a reflection of me because at that time we all look alike," said Beets.