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May 14, 2008

Man first to be sentenced to death in county since 1985

By Jayson Larson

Randall Wayne Mays, meet Betty Lou Beets.

On Tuesday, the histories of Mays and Beets became intertwined when Mays was handed a sentence of death by 392nd District Court Judge Carter Tarrance. Mays became the first Henderson County resident to be given a death sentence since Beets, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985.

Before Mays — who was convicted of fatally shooting Henderson County Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Ogburn on May 17, 2007 — it had been nearly a decade since Henderson County saw its last capital murder case.

In February 1999, David Wayne Green of Athens was convicted of capital murder in the deaths of Paul David Jacobs Jr. and Phyllis Lynn Webb. Jacobs and Webb were shot execution style on Oct. 11, 1997, near Mill Pond following what testimony revealed was some kind of argument. After the jury returned and the court imposed a sentence of life in prison, rather than death, weeping family members of the victims expressed anger that Green would be allowed to live.

A month later, the county saw another capital murder go to trial when Robert Clinton Hinkle was tried for the Dec. 21, 1997, shooting deaths of 39-year-old Gary Junell of Eustace and 48-year-old Henry Adams of Log Cabin. A third man was also shot during the incident at Hinkle’s Eustace residence. Hinkle — who testified on his own behalf — said he believed the three men were about to try to kill him before he opened fire. The Henderson County District Attorney’s Office did not seek the death penalty in the Hinkle case. Instead, he got life.

A death sentence handed down to James Walter Moreland in 1983 marked the first time in half a century such a fate was imposed in a Henderson County courtroom. Moreland, a Kentucky native with nothing more than an eighth-grade education, was executed on Jan. 27, 2000, for the stabbing deaths of two Eustace men: Clinton C. Abbott, 53, and John Royce Cravey, 41. Moreland was 22 at the time of the killings, which happened on Oct. 9, 1982.

“My life is all I can give,” Moreland said moments before being executed, uttering his final statement while strapped to a gurney. After addressing his father, he turned to the family of his victims and said, “I stole two lives and I know it was precious to y’all.”

Beets offered no final statement, but the proceedings were anything but quiet outside the TDCJ building in Huntsville where she was executed. Several groups of protesters — some in support of the death penalty, some against it — were scattered around the area when Beets was executed on Feb. 24, 2000.

The infamous “Henderson County Black Widow” was convicted in 1985 for the death of her fifth husband, firefighter Jimmy Don Beets. Mr. Beets’ body was found buried under a wishing well being used as a garden on Mrs. Beets’ property in the Cherokee Shores subdivision in Payne Springs. Investigators later ruled he had been shot to death. Police also found the body of Mrs. Beets’ fourth husband, Doyle Wayne Barker, buried in the yard. Barker had gone missing in 1981.

Mrs. Beets was said to have murdered her fifth husband to collect on a $100,000 life insurance policy.

Her execution gained international attention not only because of the circumstances surrounding the case, but because she was only the second woman to be executed by the state of Texas since the Civil War. One protester said he traveled to Huntsville from France to protest Beets’ execution.

Moreland and Beets were among 40 Texans executed by the state that year.

Before Moreland, the last county resident to be executed was Clyde Moore in 1950. One other Henderson County resident, Elmer Pruitt, is listed as having been executed between 1923 and 1973, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice records.

Henderson County could see two more capital murder trials hit the courtroom this year. Kemp resident Michael Lyndon Whitman faces a capital murder charge in connection to the Oct. 25, 2007, death of two-year-old Makaki Overturf of Tool. A third man, Edward Ray Smalley, is also scheduled to stand trial in a capital murder case in connection to the September 2007 murder of Athens resident Tony Moore.

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