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Betty Williams - Odessa

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 8:49 am
by Johnsusername
Has anybody ever come across this story before? A friend sent me it.

A true story about a high school girl from Odessa (yes - that Odessa) who suffers a tragic death at a young age.

Police uncover a story about a mildly popular girl, but behind the exterior is a very unhappy young woman who has something of a death wish. Spends a lot of time with boys. Keeps a detailed diary which her father finds. Unhappy with life. Then ultimately ends up dead in strange circumstances. Her body is pulled out of the water.

Sound familiar? I mean it all sounds quite unbelievable and, well, fictional, but as far as I can tell it's a real event. Maybe the forumites in the USA might have heard of it?

https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/a ... ore-dying/

Re: Betty Williams - Odessa

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 8:43 am
by Soolsma
Sounds familiar indeed. Who knows. Frost seems to have drawn inspiration from a mysterious death of a girl before.

Frost:
"The inspiration for the television series Twin Peaks sprang from a nightmarish little bedtime story my grandmother Betty Calhoun planted in my ear as a young boy,"

"Betty, whose interest in the facts was, at best, glancing, framed this tale more along the lines of a cautionary ghost story: don't go out in the woods at night, etc.

"Poor Hazel's body was found on the banks of the pond. Mystery ensued. Uncertainty about the perpetrator lingered, and may still.

"Some weeks later, a calf, stuck in the mud and bleating for help under a dim half moon, was mistaken for the spirit of the lost girl by a couple of local drunks, who fled the scene in terror.

'Some 20 years later, half-remembered details of this sad tale swam through my sub-conscious during the creation of a similarly doomed character named Laura Palmer."
The Hazel that Frost was referring to was Hazel Drew, a 20-year-old woman whose body was discovered in 1908.

Re: Betty Williams - Odessa

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 1:37 pm
by REdKing
I stumbled onto the story working on my Odessa piece for 25 Years Later.

https://25yearslatersite.com/2017/11/16 ... nd-murder/

Someone in the comments turned me onto the Texas Monthly piece.
I'm a librarian at Texas Tech's Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. I work on our digital newspaper project.
I'm only mentioning that because John "Mack" Herring later attended Texas Tech.
Below is a link to the 03/23/1961 issue of the Pampa Daily News. There is a great write-up on the story on page 4.


http://hdl.handle.net/10605/319427

Re: Betty Williams - Odessa

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 1:22 am
by Johnsusername
REdKing wrote:I stumbled onto the story working on my Odessa piece for 25 Years Later.

https://25yearslatersite.com/2017/11/16 ... nd-murder/

Someone in the comments turned me onto the Texas Monthly piece.
I'm a librarian at Texas Tech's Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. I work on our digital newspaper project.
I'm only mentioning that because John "Mack" Herring later attended Texas Tech.
Below is a link to the 03/23/1961 issue of the Pampa Daily News. There is a great write-up on the story on page 4.


http://hdl.handle.net/10605/319427

Wow, great article! I never knew much (or anything) about Odessa. Now I do! I like the idea of the wild west style stand off with Cooper and the three men in the cafe. The whole idea of him as the Sheriff - no wonder they used Wild West by Lissie as one of the guest songs.

Re: Betty Williams - Odessa

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 12:56 pm
by LateReg
Johnsusername wrote:
REdKing wrote:I stumbled onto the story working on my Odessa piece for 25 Years Later.

https://25yearslatersite.com/2017/11/16 ... nd-murder/

Someone in the comments turned me onto the Texas Monthly piece.
I'm a librarian at Texas Tech's Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. I work on our digital newspaper project.
I'm only mentioning that because John "Mack" Herring later attended Texas Tech.
Below is a link to the 03/23/1961 issue of the Pampa Daily News. There is a great write-up on the story on page 4.


http://hdl.handle.net/10605/319427

Wow, great article! I never knew much (or anything) about Odessa. Now I do! I like the idea of the wild west style stand off with Cooper and the three men in the cafe. The whole idea of him as the Sheriff - no wonder they used Wild West by Lissie as one of the guest songs.
Wild West also specifically contains the lyric about a world where you can get back all you've lost...and then the lyric about going rogue in the wild, wild west, and Cooper does go it alone in a new world meaning to get back what was lost, and the land assumes a sense of lawlessness befitting the Western genre. And Clint Eastwood's daughter is the waitress. There's just so much here. And the songs specifically carry so much meaning. The Return has a lot in common with the Western genre in general, and resembles The Searchers, with Cooper on a quest to save the girl (which isn't exactly how The Searchers goes).

Anyway, great stuff about Texas, thanks!

Re: Betty Williams - Odessa

Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2018 7:40 am
by marchug
REdKing wrote:I stumbled onto the story working on my Odessa piece for 25 Years Later.

https://25yearslatersite.com/2017/11/16 ... nd-murder/
Wow. That was great. And it actually made me want to revisit TP:TR for the first time since it aired...
Thanks!