Epilogue

Did Alex Arnold kill Betty Gail Brown? I have been asked that question hundreds of times and have never found it easy to answer. My difficulty with the question began almost as soon as I saw Arnold for the first time, in a jail cell in Lexington two or three days after he had confessed to the killing and been charged with murder. Although Arnold was not at the time hallucinating about mind-reading machines or talking to creatures on the walls of his jail cell, he was quite obviously still suffering mental impairments. He had lost his access to alcohol a little more than a week earlier and had been sitting alone in jail for most of that period; he seemed to have passed through the worst of his withdrawal symptoms, but was not even close to a total escape from the consequences of at least ten years of drunkenness. He had lost the “good feelings” he gained from drinking (elevated mood, self-confidence, and nonexistent inhibitions) and had found in their place high anxiety, low energy, some disorientation, and a crystal-clear desire to be left alone. It was under these conditions, speaking very softly and seeming almost to be talking to himself, that he said, “I killed her.” Had he made this statement under normal circumstances, in a clean and clear state of mind, it would have been easy to believe that the state had found the killer of Betty Gail Brown. But the circumstances under which the statement was made were far from normal, although they were much closer to normal that those that prevailed a few days earlier when he signed the confession that led to his prosecution for murder....

Conclusion

After getting the jury’s decision, out of relief and not at all for purposes of celebration, Judge Eblen and I spent the evening together having a private dinner and talking about both the past and the future: Eblen: Very close to a dead heat, I would say. I wonder how many of the seven who backed our position believed that he was innocent and how many of them simply had reasonable doubt about his guilt....

The Trial

When Judge Joseph Bradley opened court on October 4, 1965, for the murder trial of Alex Arnold, he found amost unusual situation: a courtroom without a single empty seatand with an overflow crowd standing against the walls. The prosecution stated that the state’s evidence would provide details about the discovery of Betty Gail’s body in her own car on the Transylvania campus and that the evidence would leave no room to doubt that the young student had been murdered, and would attempt to prove Alex Arnold was guilty of the murder. This chapter details the witnesses, testimony, and evidence presented by the prosecution and defense. After the jury could not come to a unanimous decision, Judge Bradley dismissed the jury, declared a mistrial, and announced that the case would be put on the court’s January 1966 docket for retrial.

Events Preceding Trial

On the basis of a sworn affidavit from Captain Cravens showing reasonable grounds for believing that Alex Arnold had murdered Betty Gail Brown, Judge Richard P. Moloney of Lexington’s Police Court issued a warrant for Arnold’s arrest that included an order that arresting officers present him to a judge. Judge Moloney asked Amos Eblen, one Lexington’s of the most experienced and highly respected attorneys, to represent Arnold as he had no money for legal counsel. Eblen brought on Robert Lawson as co-counsel for the case, and they began interviewing him on January 25, 1965 after his incarceration to prepare for Arnold’s trial. The chapter also discusses Arnold’s background, the preliminary hearing, and Arnold’s indictment for murder.

Cooling Down of a Hot Case

Investigators invested much time and energy tracking downhundreds of speculative tips and leads trying to find Betty Gail Brown’s murderer. They workedalmost around the clock for days and weeks after the killing,struggled to separate promising tips and leads from unfoundedrumors and speculative beliefs, and at the end of their efforts andstruggles found themselves almost totally baffled by what theystill faced: a horrific murder, no real suspects, no evidence of motive,no clues as to identity of the killer, and a rapidly darkeningroad in front of them.This chapter looks at various people of interest during the course of the investigation, including a former cafeteria worker at Transylvania, a medical technician at St. Joseph’s hospital, and students.

The Initial Investigation

This chapter examines the investigation of Betty Gail Brown’s murder. It details the crime scene investigators found the night Betty Gail was located, as well as the autopsy performed to determine cause of death. Within a few hours of the murder, the police department mobilized close to twenty detectives and other officers to work around the clock looking for witnesses and evidence of the crime. The usual reluctance to release information to the media and the public did not prevail, and the police release of information about the Brown murder was truly extraordinary. Two days after the police discovered Betty Gail’s body and after her photograph had appeared in local newspapers, a waitress at a restaurant regularly frequented by Transylvania students contacted police authorities to report she had information that might be important to their investigation. She told investigators that she had seen the murder victim in the restaurant where she worked at some point in time between midnight and 1 o’clock on the night of the killing. Unfortunately, after many attempts, the waitress could not identify the victim’s companion on the night of the murder, and the early lead provided by the waitress turned into a dead end.

Arrival of a Real Suspect

On January 16, 1965,Alex Arnold Jr. was thirty-three-year-old man who had been born in Lexington and lived most of his life there, except for two yearsin the military during the Korean War and one year of incarcerationin a state prison in LaGrange, Kentucky. After being released from prison, Arnold found himself in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where he became disorderly in a public place, attracted the attention of a Klamath Falls police officer, and was taken into custody for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. Near the end of his third day of incarceration, Alex Arnold found himself in the middle of an alcohol withdrawal syndrome called delirium tremens and told a jail employee that he was going to kill himself. While under 24-hour watch, Arnold admitted to the murder of Betty Gail Brown.

The Murder of Betty Gail Brown

This chapter gives background information on the murder of Betty Gail Brown, a smart, studious student who attended Transylvania College in 1961. On October 26, 1961, Betty Gail went to study with friends on campus. Close to midnight, she got into her Simca and prepared to leave once they were finished, but never made it home. It wasn’t until her parents alerted the authorities that she was found just after 3 a.m., strangled to death by a brassiere.