In early 1977, a Boeing 747 crashed in the Canary Islands, and five hundred and eighty-three people were killed. The rings of Uranus were discovered that year. The Communist Party was legalized in Spain, and in my hometown, in the summer of that year, Deborah Bettis was found dead in the trunk of her car.
Deborah Leanne Bettis was a blue-eyed blond who wore her hair in a page boy style and worked full-time as a medical receptionist. In early July of that record-breaking summer, multiple complaints of a terrible odor led police to the Gossett Branch Library where her white convertible had been left in the sun for almost a week.
William Bettis, Deborah’s husband, quickly became the prime suspect. In our small pond, Bill’s family were what you might call “big fish”; from the early sixties to the early eighties, they owned and operated a chain of highly successful grocery/ department/ automotive stores. At Bettis’ you could buy new shoes for the kids, do your grocery shopping and have your tires rotated, all under one roof.
Bill Bettis, we would learn, was the black sheep of his family. An ex-Navy man, dishonorably discharged, a gambler and a drinker. He was tall, he was dark and at night, on the news, he pleaded, tearfully, for Deborah’s return.
Deborah Leanne was a simple soul. Bit heavy in the thigh, and self-conscious about it. Do you love me, she’d ask, and Bill would say, nobody loves you like I do, Debs. He would never tell her “I love you” outright, and it made Deborah mad that he made her ask.
If you grew up in the seventies, like me, there’s a Calgon commercial you probably remember. A blond housewife-type in a Chinese laundry says, Mr. Lee, how do you get these shirts so clean? Mr. Lee smiles. Ancient Chinese secret, he says.
Then the scene cuts to the back of the store, to a woman we assume is Mrs. Lee. My husband, some hotshot. She rolls her eyes. Jerks her thumb toward the jerk that she married. Here’s his ancient Chinese secret. She holds up the blue and white box so familiar to viewers, as the announcer begins touting the virtues of Calgon.
The commercial ends with Mrs. Lee, who pulls back a curtain and shakes the now empty blue and white box. We need more Calgon, she tells Mr. Lee. The blond woman turns. Ancient Chinese secret, hunh? And Mr. Lee oh-so-sheepishly grins.
It might be because I come from the South, where male privilege and ignorance often walk hand-in-hand. But when I watched that ad, I envisioned the scene once the camera crew left. I could hear Mr. Lee berating his wife for tossing their future right out the window. I pictured blood spatter on pristine white shirts and some terrible scenes between man and wife.
Terrible scenes like what I imagine were a part of life in the Bettis household. He courted the press and pretended to cry, but Bill Bettis had hired two men to kill Deborah. Paid them five hundred each and they beat her and stabbed her and before she was strangled, they took multiple turns raping Deborah Leanne.
I was twelve at the time. I did not know Deborah. But I can’t imagine her saying to Bill, hey we’re running low on Calgon, you know. Guy like him wouldn’t care for that tone, and I can’t see Bill grinning sheepishly, either. Not an ex-Navy man, dishonorable discharge notwithstanding.
That morning when Deborah Bettis woke up she had no idea the house was unlocked and her husband was gone; the two men he’d hired testified later when she cried out for Bill, they laughed as they told her, he paid us to kill you. That’s why we’re here.
They also assumed that Deborah was dead when they slammed the trunk shut, and left her like so many empty beer cans. They were wrong, she was not, and five days would pass before she was found in temperatures that soared past a hundred degrees.
The prosecution offered a smorgasbord of reasons why William Bettis might want his wife dead. A $30, 000 insurance policy. An affair he was having. Suspicions he had she was planning to leave.
I think she took a long, hard look one day, and said to herself, my husband, some hotshot. Whether she rolled her eyes, I don’t know. But I think Bettis sensed he was losing control, and it sealed Deborah’s fate. No one told Bill when to go buy more Calgon.
In 2017, William Bettis died in prison. His partners in crime have passed away too. The Bettis’ stores became Targets and Walmarts. The library closed for a time, then it moved.
Whenever I pass by the place where it was, I think about Deborah. I think of that summer. Of how far we’ve come and how little we’ve gained. On average, a woman who performs the same job as a man still earns sixteen percent less than her male counterpart. In 2022, a Supreme Court ruling overturned Roe v. Wade. Most recently, Alabama declared frozen embryos are children.
In spite of her eye-rolling, “some hotshot” ways, Mrs. Lee never leaves the back of the store. Even the blond white woman is there, after all, only to pick up her husband’s clean shirts.
Temperatures soared past a hundred degrees; nobody loves you like I do, he said. It wasn’t Chinese and hardly a secret, but Bettis’ motive was practically ancient. She wasn’t leaving, unless on his terms.