Betty Williams, a beautiful and lively girl, and John Mack Herring, a handsome soccer player, ended their relationship in their final year of high school, leaving Betty’s world seemingly shattered. It’s said that Betty requested one last favor from John , which ultimately led to her demise.
The Rebel Girl
Betty Williams (also known as Elizabeth Jean Williams) was the eldest of four siblings in Odessa, Texas, USA. Her mother worked in sales, while her father, a carpenter, struggled to find steady work and was quite strict, often lecturing Betty in hopes she’d become more obedient.
Betty enjoyed working with a local youth group, though she saw herself as a rebel compared to the others.
She dreamed of escaping, aspiring to become an actress one day. Betty loved the thrill of standing under the stage lights. She participated in the school drama club and planned to pursue theater school after graduation. In her bedroom, Betty plastered walls with movie posters, scripts, and devoured magazines detailing Hollywood scandals.
Yet despite her longing to leave Odessa, Betty knew her parents couldn’t afford her college education, and her part-time job wouldn’t cover it either.
So, instead of chasing her Broadway dreams, Betty planned to live at home after graduation and attend a nearby community college.
Some nights, Betty snuck out the back door after her parents slept, walking four blocks to where boys gathered to chat. Many girls liked this, but few dared like Betty. She didn’t hide the fact that she wasn’t a prim girl.
The Shocking Diary
On March 22, 1961, Betty was reported missing after she didn’t return home with no word. When police came to the high school to investigate, they heard some stories about Betty.
Betty’s group of friends at the drama club revealed that Betty often sneaked out of the house to meet boys and sometimes had sex in their cars. Friends say that Betty was only serious about one of these guys. That is a famous football player named John Mack Herring. They dated last summer but broke up.
After the breakup, Betty had a relationship with an older man, a DJ at a radio station. Additionally, she also dated one of John Mack’s friends, who was a soccer player. This news spread throughout the school, and many students called Betty awful names.
Friends said that some incidents may have altered Betty’s perspective on her life, possibly leading her to depression.
During their conversations with the police, they were hesitant to disclose anything for fear the police would tell her parents, who were very traditional.
After his daughter went missing, Betty’s father found her diary. In it, Betty writes about her sexual experiences. The father was shocked and devastated by this.
Love Wounds
Friends of Betty Williams said that although she had sex with many men, this girl was only serious with one man. It was a male student who was also a football player named John Mack Herring.
Tall and handsome with jet-black hair framing his long face, John stood out despite being described as reserved and introverted.
In the summer of 1960, John and Betty started dating. However, Betty wondered if they were truly in love. John always kept things secretive when they were together, never taking Betty to crowded places or introducing her to his friends.
Perhaps out of wounded pride from her boyfriend or to incite jealousy, one night Betty intentionally stayed in the car with John’s closest friend, also a voted most handsome soccer player in the class.
This further deteriorated their relationship. John decided to break up and started dating a beautiful redhead. Betty wrote to a friend: “I’ve never felt so humiliated and torn apart. I feel so lonely and abandoned… This is hell!” “Betty said she wanted to die if she couldn’t be with John,” Betty’s cousin revealed.
Unusual Behavior
That fall, Betty felt even more heartbroken when the new drama teacher assigned her a backstage role instead of a leading part in a new play. Worse still, she knew John would play one of the lead roles. So, not only did she lose the lead role, but she also had to watch John perform with someone else.
Bored with the breakup and the prospect of not being in any play in her senior year, Betty felt hopeless. She began telling friends she’d rather die and that “heaven must be a better place.”
Betty bragged about attempting suicide by taking four aspirin pills or climbing onto the roof and planning to jump onto the stage below but lacked the courage at the last minute. Even when Betty talked about wanting to die to anyone or exhibited unusual behavior during rehearsals for the new play, everyone just thought she wanted to be the center of attention. Eventually, she started asking friends if anyone could kill her.
After Betty went missing, one by one her friends were called into the principal’s office, where the police asked them to disclose what they knew. Among them, a student named Ike Nail recounted a story that caught investigators’ attention.
Ike confessed that he took Betty home after rehearsal the night before. Upon arriving home at 10 p.m., Betty suggested he return in half an hour and meet her in the alley behind the house. As agreed, at 10:30 p.m., Betty sneaked out of the house and got into Ike’s car.
They had parked in the alley for a while when they were startled by headlights approaching them. Betty immediately recognized the approaching car as John’s. Betty then got into John’s car while Ike drove away.
John quickly became the next person the police wanted to question.
Suspicious Story
According to witness Ike Nail’s testimony, on the night Betty Williams disappeared, while they were in the car, Betty’s ex-boyfriend, John Mack Herring, arrived. At that moment, Ike heard Betty exclaim, “Oh my God, I didn’t think he would come.”
Earlier, Betty boasted to Ike that she had convinced John to help her die, but until then, Ike still believed it was just a joke. So, he didn’t intervene when Betty got into John ‘s car and left.
The police quickly went to meet John. He said he last saw Betty at the rehearsal for the upcoming play. When questioned about the information Ike had provided earlier, John immediately changed his story, saying they drove around and talked. Around midnight, he dropped Betty off at home and hadn’t seen her since.
But inconsistencies in John’s story made investigators believe that this young man knew more than he was saying. When asked whether he dropped Betty off at the front or back door of the house, John replied that he left her at the front door and drove away instead of waiting for her to go inside safely.
The answer struck investigators as odd. According to Ike, Betty was wearing only a short pink nightgown when she sneaked out of the house that night. This wasn’t the type of clothing a girl would wear when standing in front of a house at midnight. Furthermore, Betty snuck out without her parents’ knowledge, so she likely wouldn’t choose the front door.
Desire for Death
John was taken to the police station for further questioning. Eventually, after 45 minutes, he broke down and confessed everything.
John said that one night, as he was driving Betty home after rehearsal for the new play, Betty suddenly asked if he was willing to kill her. Betty said she would point a gun at her head while John would squeeze the trigger. John laughed at the absurd idea, and Betty laughed along.
But in the days that followed, Betty relentlessly asked her ex-boyfriend. During one performance, Betty dragged John into the prop room backstage, saying she was in agony and wanted to die. Finally, John agreed, and they began to plan.
John said Betty begged him to kill her and that everything he did was fulfilling Betty’s wish. John confessed to committing the crime with a handgun chosen by Betty herself.
John agreed to take the police to the crime scene. It was a hunting ground rented by his father, about 26 miles from town. From the highway, they turned onto a winding dirt road and continued until John signaled to stop at a desolate area full of pumps.
John pointed out where his and Betty’s footprints led down a steep path to a pond. Here, they found the ground next to the pond soaked in blood.
The Body in the Pond
In a steady voice, John told the investigators that he shot Betty next to a cargo container and submerged her body in the water. John wasn’t entirely sure about the exact location of the body.
When asked by the officers if he could locate the body, he immediately took off his jacket, shirt, shoes, jeans, and socks and waded into the pond until the water reached his chest. In the middle of the pond, John oriented himself by looking at the trees on either side and then dove underwater. A while later, John resurfaced and swam back to the shore, pulling something very heavy. As they approached the water’s edge, detectives could see John pulling up a pair of human legs.
It was Betty. The body was still wearing the light pink nightgown. Around Betty’s waist were tied two weights made of lead to keep the body submerged underwater. The victim had been shot in the head with a handgun.
The police noticed that John showed no emotion, no signs of remorse or fear when pulling up the victim’s body or when recounting how he shot her.
The Final Kiss
John said he did so after Betty continuously asked him to kill her and they began to plan. On the night Betty died, John took ropes and weights from where they performed the play. Then, John drove to pick up Betty.
John recounted what happened that night. According to John, when they arrived at the hunting ground, they sat down and talked for a while. “She seemed happy,” John recalled.
Then, they walked to the pond together. Trembling, Betty hurried back to the car to get a towel. When she returned to where John was waiting by the pond, she took off her shoes. Before firing the gun, John suggested kissing his ex-girlfriend one last time to remember her.
John was charged with first-degree murder. When news of John’s arrest for killing Betty spread throughout Odessa, many were shocked and skeptical. They couldn’t believe John could commit such a crime. Meanwhile, many blamed Betty for ruining John’s life. In fact, rumors focused more on Betty than on John.
The Strange Letter
As news spread far and wide of John Mack Herring’s arrest for killing Betty Williams, many were shocked and skeptical. They couldn’t believe John could commit such a crime. Meanwhile, some blamed Betty for ruining John’s life. Betty was seen as a loose girl and a manipulator, wanting John to beg her to abandon her suicidal thoughts and possibly rekindle their relationship.
During the trial on February 20, 1962, John’s confession painted a picture of a planned murder.
According to him, before driving Betty out of town and shooting her straight in the head, John admitted to preparing lead weights, ropes, a loaded gun, and even a miner’s helmet to guide him as he submerged his ex-girlfriend’s body in the pond. In front of the lawyers, John showed little emotion.
During the trial, the defense argued that John had a temporary loss of sanity at the time of the murder. Betty’s earnest pleas ultimately overwhelmed John.
A letter written by Betty was presented before the court. In it, she asserted that no one else was involved in what she was about to do.
The letter read: “I want everyone to know that what I’m about to do has nothing to do with anyone else. I’m saying this to ensure that no one else is blamed but me. I have issues that are mostly of my own making. I’m fighting a battle within myself… Instead of admitting defeat, I’ll retreat quickly into the realm of the dead.”
The letter also mentioned John: “A friend who saw my suffering to such an extent agreed to help. His name is John Mack Herring, and I pray he won’t suffer for what he’s doing for me. I take full responsibility for myself, only myself!”
The Death Wish
The defense argued that the letter written by Betty showed that only Betty was responsible for her own death. Three classmates also testified that Betty had asked them to kill her.
Moreover, a witness at the trial was psychiatrist Marvin Grice, who examined John three days after the murder. Marvin stated that John had been “mentally overwhelmed” by Betty’s plea. “He became confused and weak to the point of feeling that strangling Betty was the right thing to do. John lost the ability to think, to apply logic,” Dr. Marvin said. However, according to Marvin, this “overall stress reaction” was only temporary.
The final trial took place in November 1962. After 11 hours of deliberation, the jury ruled that John had indeed suffered a temporary loss of sanity on the night of the murder and acquitted him.
Upon hearing the verdict, John slumped in his chair and wept, while friends rushed to comfort him. Amidst the jubilant crowd, Betty’s parents quietly left the courtroom.
Many thought that after the incident, John would start a new life elsewhere. But John chose to stay. After attending Texas Tech University, John returned home, building a quiet life for himself and staying away from legal troubles. John married and divorced twice, working various jobs such as dock foreman for a chemical company, carpenter, welder, and electrician. Meanwhile, Betty gradually faded into obscurity.
John passed away in January 2019 at the age of 75.
