The day before Thanksgiving in 1982, Elizabeth Bettis left her job at Sugars only to be found murdered the next day. Who was the man she was seen fighting with the night before? The list of suspects grows as investigators consider every possibility, from a known patron of Sugars to a possible serial rapist, with suspicion even on law enforcement as the lack of evidence in her vehicle stumps detectives.
Who was Elizabeth? Did her lifestyle put her at a greater risk? Did her murderer not only get away with it, but commit more crimes? Join us for another episode where we shine a light on a cold case, another box in the basement.
Support Box in the Basement Victims
The day before Thanksgiving in 1982, Elizabeth Bettis left her job at Sugars only to be found murdered the next day. Who was the man she was seen fighting with the night before? The list of suspects grows as investigators consider every possibility, from a known patron of Sugars to a possible serial rapist, with suspicion even on law enforcement as the lack of evidence in her vehicle stumps detectives.
Who was Elizabeth? Did her lifestyle put her at a greater risk? Did her murderer not only get away with it, but commit more crimes? Join us for another episode where we shine a light on a cold case, another box in the basement.
Support Box in the Basement Victims
Please be advised this episode contains detailed discussions of violence and may not be suitable for all listeners.
Arlene (2):There's no address listed for Ruth Elizabeth Bettis death certificate. Just to reference to a low water crossing near a ghost town outside of Austin, Texas. Ruth left work at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, November 24th, 1982 with a passenger in her car. And was found the next morning behind a patch of Cedar trees shot to death with a 22 caliber weapon. This is the story of a young woman whose whole life was ahead of her.
Arlene:Hello, and welcome to box in the basement podcast. I'm your host, Arlene.
Leah:And I'm Leah.
Arlene:In 1996, my world was shattered when my uncle Leon Lorella is. Was shot execution style and a small town in Texas. To this day, his murder remains unsolved. And the pain of that injustice continues to haunt me, my family and Leon's friends and coworkers. Here at box in the basement. We want to shed light on the overwhelming number of unsolved murders and disappearances here in Texas and beyond. Ultimately, we want to get justice for Leon. And for all the victims whose cases are sitting, collecting dust in a box, in a basement.
Leah:1982 was a violent year. With the Falklands war and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon happening abroad. And the still unsolved Tylenol murders in Chicago, spreading terror across the U S. The personal computer was times man of the year. The first CD player was sold in Japan. John Belushi died of a drug overdose at age 33, an Epcot opened at Walt Disney world. The LA Lakers won the NBA championship. The New York Islanders won the Stanley cup. The San Francisco 49ers won the super bowl and the St. Louis Cardinals won the world series. Lionel Richie's truly top the billboard hot 100 the week of November 24th, followed by Laura Brannigan and Olivia Newton, John. TG Shepherd's war is hell was number one on the country charts followed closely by Ricky Skaggs, Charlie pride and Alabama. Space by James Michener, sat, atop the New York times bestseller list. And let me tell you as a history major, both undergrad and at the graduate level, I've been able to make my way through some dry den stuff, but I have never been able to finish a Michener book. I've had Texas on my bookshelf for 20 years. The empire strikes back was the number one movie at the box office that week. But ITI was the top movie of the year, far and above. Bud light made its debut in 1982, as did diet Coke. GI Joe. The Commodore 64 and Nike air force one. It was a big year for pop culture. Austin is the capital of Texas with a population of just under a million people as of 2021. And that's Austin proper, not including the greater Metro area, which consists of almost 2.5 million people today. It's the fourth, most populous city in Texas and the 10th, most populous city in the U S. In 1982, when this crime occurred, Austin had around 350,000 people living in the city limits. Pioneers traveling westward across what is now the United States started settling the Austin area along the Colorado river in the 1830s. The Spanish colonists set up missions and settlements in the area, a century earlier. Austin originally known as Waterloo replaced Houston as the capital of Texas when Texas was still an independent Republic. As it was in a location, convenient to the trade and travel routes of the day. After Texas became a state in 1845. The city of Austin grew up around the state government entities and the university of Texas. The Texas oil boom, largely missed Austin at first. But eventually took hold after the great depression. The public works administration enabled the city of Austin to build numerous parks and manmade lakes in and around the city. Today Austin is a vibrant city that is considered a center of technology and information technology. And the university of Texas at Austin remains one of the most prestigious public universities in the country. Austin is home to Tesla's corporate headquarters. Keller Williams Realty. Indeed and Yeti. 3m apple, Amazon AMD, Cisco eBay, electronic arts, Facebook, Google, HP, Intel, Nintendo, PayPal, Samsung, and Xerox also have major offices in Austin. If you want a tech job, Austin is a good place to be. Yeah, we've considered moving to Austin since you'd be able to get a good job. They're pretty easily. And it's just a cool place. We've spent quite a bit of time there it's the live music capital of the world. As much as I'd like to just get in the car and go to live shows on a whim. I think I'd stroke out, dealing with that traffic every day. Anyway, Austin, like many other major cities in the early 1980s experienced a wave of violent crime. 1982 was the bloodiest year on record with 69 homicides landing on the desks of Austin and Travis county law enforcement. Austin proper accounted for 57 of those homicides, which was a 46% increase over 1981. And murder rates had been climbing over the previous years. There are a lot of reasons for this upward trend in violent crime.
And we won't get into great detail here. It's just important to understand the context.
Arlene:Elizabeth Ruth Bettis was born on September 26th. 1963 and Austin to Dell and Rebecca Bettis.. And had a sister three years older than her named Catherine. She went by Elizabeth, at least for most of her short life. Dale Bettis was a Naval officer. So the family moved around a lot.
Jerry Elizabeth, early years. As she and her sister attended schools in England, Switzerland, and throughout the new England. Delane Rebecca Bettis divorce when Elizabeth was six years old. And eventually she ended up earning a scholarship to an expensive prep school in Connecticut. Where she was a natural born artist. Excelling in dance, music and poetry. That all began to fall apart as she progressed through high school however. Elizabeth began to push back, fighting against comparisons with her older sister. And moving to south Carolina to attend college at the age of 16. She's eventually transferred to Southwestern university school of fine arts in Georgetown, Texas. Near Austin to be closer to her father who was teaching at the university of Texas at the time. She'd quit school entirely by the spring of 1982. And it's important to note that by this time Elizabeth started going by the name Gibson with her friends. This was her. Mother's great. Grandfather's name. Just for clarification in case you do some research on your own. We'll continue to call her Elizabeth. As that's how her family knew her. Elizabeth started dancing and waiting tables at sugars. And Austin topless bar and the summer of 1982. And was making$500 a day in 2020$4. And from what I've read money was kind of a driving factor in her choices at the time. When her parents got divorced, things were pretty tight, at least for a little while. Even though Elizabeth was the younger sibling, she felt like she kind of had to take on the role of caretaker. Her mother went to work when she was pretty young. But she often had trouble making ends meet. Elizabeth was acutely aware of the disparity between her family's financial status and that of her classmates being a student at a swanky prep school. Some people might see her working at a topless bar as another act of rebellion. But I honestly think it was mostly a financially driven decision. It wasn't a trashy bar. It was in a decent part of town and it tended to attract a less sketchy clientele than other strip clubs in Austin. I think she saw an opportunity to make decent money and went after it. But that's just my opinion. Various interviews say, Elizabeth, wasn't super thrilled about the job. But she did it to pay the bills until she could find a different job. I'm not going to criticize or shame anyone for working at a topless bar. Regardless work is work. Records show that right before her death, she paid off her car and then bought a thousand dollar baby grand piano with cash. That's over$3,000 in 2020 for money. 19 year old, Elizabeth Bettis was last seen in the parking lot at sugars after her shift ended around 7:45 PM on Wednesday. November 24th, 1982. The day before Thanksgiving. She was in her light blue 1969 Volkswagen beetle, arguing with a man standing outside. A witness described the man as being a slender well-dressed black man, about 30 years old. Six feet tall with a closely cropped Afro. The man then got into Elizabeth car with her. And they drove off about 15 minutes after leaving the bars parking lot. The blue VW beetle was seen pulling into a field on a defunct dairy farm at sprinkle cutoff in Northeast Travis county. This is about seven miles from sugars. Elizabeth bed. His body was discovered on Thanksgiving day. And the tall grass of that field on the old dairy farm. Her car was about a hundred yards away. She had been strangled, sexually assaulted. Beaten. And shot above the right eye with a 22 caliber handgun. The medical examiner put her time of death somewhere between 10:00 PM and midnight the night before. Investigators didn't find any evidence in her car, which led them to believe that she'd been attacked, where she'd been found. However, as we'll find out later in our discussion. One of the suspects in Elizabeth's death was an Austin police officer. So someone cleaning the car and removing evidence is not completely out of the question. Some of the older articles I've read, covering the case. Say there wasn't any evidence found at the scene either. But we have to keep in mind that it was a cold, rainy, wet day. And this was 1982. Trace evidence was an entirely different animal. Unlike many of the other cases we've covered so far. Police actually had several good suspects for this murder. Good enough that their identities were made public. Yeah, this is kind of a nice change. From a research perspective. I have a little more to work with. First. We have a guy named Leonard Williams. He was a 29 year old maintenance worker for this city water and wastewater department. And he turned out to be a serial rapist who had forced his victims to drive out to the very same area where Elizabeth Bettis, his body was found. It sounds like a good fit in theory, but Williams didn't match the description of the man last seen with Elizabeth. Also William's abducted his victims. At knife point. And let them all live. Well, it's not unreasonable to believe that he'd escalate to murder. Eventually the lack of stab wounds or slash marks led investigators to conclude that Williams wasn't their guy. It was simply too big of a stretch. Next we have Louis Sonny, Juan. Who has a really weird connection to Elizabeth Bettis. First of all, he was the son-in-law of the owners of the old dairy farm, where her body was discovered and was on the property the day her body was found. To fully understand why he was considered a suspect. We have to go on a little tangent here and talk about another Austin area murder. That of Deborah Baker in Georgetown in 1988. A guy named mark Norwood went on trial for that murder. And people close to the case. We're afraid that this legal team would bring up Elizabeth Bettis murder. And implicate Sonny, you won in both killings. Norwood and won, knew each other and worked together at one point. And Juan's own ex-wife. And daughter spoke negatively. About Juan Jaron, the Norwood trial. One was well-known to local law enforcement. He had a substantial rap sheet And was generally not held in high. regard. So was he just a convenient distraction for the defense in the other trial? You think. Elisabeth's body being found on his in-laws property while he was there, though. That's a pretty wild coincidence. Yeah. And he knew Elizabeth bed is at least in passing. He was a customer at her grandfather's appliance shop. So he knew who she was, but, and this is a big, but. It's important to note that by the time nor would went on trial for Deborah Baker's murder, 71 was dead. So my gut is telling me that he was a distraction. Pin it on the dead guy with a rap sheet who can't defend himself. And about the location of elizabeth spotty. In this particular scenario, I think it was a coincidence. As much as I hate coincidences. But remember that the serial rapist, you mentioned preferred to take his victims to that area. So it's possible this was a copycat or an attempted copycat. And I don't know, but maybe it was a popular place for illegal activity in general. It's pretty out of the way. Finally, as far as official suspects who have been made public go. Investigators liked to Austin police department officers for the murder. These two men were seen sitting with Elizabeth at the bar that night. And one of them was seen leaving the bar with her. With the second cop following just a few minutes later. What bothers me here is the fact that these two cops covered up the fact that they'd been with Elizabeth Bettis that night. They were only found out six years after the fact during a DEA investigation. By that time, one of the cops had already left the department after an unrelated internal investigation and the other cop was never charged. If there was any link to her murder, it wasn't strong enough to bring a case against him. The biggest thing that made investigators believe a cop might be involved. With the lack of evidence at the scene and in the Volkswagen. It caught would have knowledge of evidence collection and crime scene processing. So it's not an unreasonable assumption. Right. That's possible. I think if a cop was involved, though, it had something more to do with drugs. We haven't mentioned it yet, but Elizabeth Bettis was known to use cocaine on occasion. This was the early 1980s after all. Her talk screen, post-mortem showed that she'd use cocaine the night she was killed. One article. I read speculated that maybe this would be a more believable reason. Elizabeth would have been murdered by a cop. Especially if these two cops were shady. Maybe she was collateral damage in an attempt to cover up using or moving Coke. It doesn't really matter at this point. What I think though, because nobody has ever been charged in this case has been sitting cold for decades. If it wasn't any of those four suspects then who killed her? She was a bit of her free spirit. At least in her private life. But she didn't seem to have any real enemies. She lived in a house with another couple, played the piano, Jaron her free time. And she worked the day shift at a topless bar. So several interviews I read with acquaintances said she was extremely trusting and believed the best of people. And I don't want anyone to take this as me, victim shaming. I'm absolutely not doing that. A coworker of hers at the bar said she had a tendency to do things other people wouldn't do because she just trusted people. Her roommate also told a story in an interview about how she witnessed Elizabeth Lita guy on in order to get cocaine. And this actually scared the roommate it's possible. Elizabeth simply got tangled up with the wrong drug Slinger and couldn't talk her way out of a bad situation. That's kind of what I was thinking. The gosh she was seen arguing with in the parking lot at the bar is the last person known to be with her. It's reasonable to believe this is the guy that killed her. But who was he? Was he a boyfriend? Or someone Elizabeth was getting drugs from. Nobody seems to know. He wasn't either one of the cops she'd been in the bar with just a little while earlier. We know that much. Elizabeth roommate did say in an interview and I quote. I think if someone offered her something, she wanted like cocaine. And she always wanted it. She would have gone with them. And quote. So that kind of makes me lean towards your theory that it was something to do with drugs. She. just found herself in a bad situation with the bad guy. It's been over 41 years since Ruth Elizabeth Bettis was murdered outside of Austin, Texas. If you have any information regarding her case, please contact the Travis county Sheriff's office tip line at 5 1 2. 8 5, 4, 1 4, 4, 4 or Crimestoppers at 5 1 2 4 7 2 8 4 7 7. You can also submit a tip through the Travis county Sheriff's office website or email the cold case unit at cold case at Travis county, tx.gov. This podcast has a bigger purpose than Just providing information and the entertainment. The homicide victims, families rights act is a bipartisan bill that was signed into law by Congress in 2021. And we want to see it put into action. This law establishes a systematic process for reviewing case files. Related to cold case murders. The focus is on providing a mechanism for the families and friends of murder victims. To request a formal review of such cases. We need an attorney or teams of attorneys and legal professionals To take on the bold and brave fight against the system around the country. In our case, we need someone to fight for Leon to help not only put fresh eyes on the case. But to get his body zoomed, to search for evidence that was not collected the first time around. We and other families and friends need assistance with getting foyer requests. It blows our minds that so many murders occurred from 1976 to 1997. In Brownwood, Texas under the watch of the same investigators, responsible for handling Leon's case. We're going to look at all the unsolved murders in Brownwood. And maybe even if you solved ones, if it helps uncover what was happening in that era that left so many families devastated. And a community living in fear. If you want to hear more about victim focused. Unsolved cases. And get updates about what we know. Please subscribe, like and share our podcast. Also visit our website. Justice for leon.com to donate to our cause to hire an attorney. You can also join our email list to stay current on developments on Leon's case and other cases. We cover as they happen. pleaSe follow and lagger. Bigger Facebook pages for box in the basement. And justice for Leon Corellas and follow our Instagram pages I'd also like to ask that you signed my petition for my uncle. Leon Lorella says case to be reopened and reviewed with fresh eyes. And you can find our petition on change.org. I also have a GoFundMe page to hire an attorney to help me get a copy of his autopsy. That I had been denied for 27 years. You can find the GoFund me by searching for Leon Lorella that's L a U R E L E S. Thank you for joining us. Be kind later Gators.