Betty Lou Gray married her high school sweetheart but after 29 years of marriage, she’d grown tired of his controlling, manipulative ways and she wanted a divorce.
Of course, Betty Gray may have most been encouraged to leave after falling in love with Roy Leavitt.
Regardless of the reason, Betty was planning to divorce her husband and Bill Gray realized he was going to lose half of everything – all of which he considered his – and no one was going to be there to wait hand-and-foot on the kidney transplant patient.
On a hot July night in 1989, Betty Gray was taking one more step away from Bill when she went to stay the night with her friend, Reeda Roundy. After several hours of girl talk and wine, the women turned in the for night.
They would never wake up.
As the women lay sleeping, someone crept into the Roundy home and shot them. A cryptic satanic message was written in Betty’s blood and left amid 18 candles.
While the killer intended for investigators to believe it was a random act committed by members of the occult, the many clues left behind by an arrogant know-it-all didn’t send detectives down a dark path but rather to a pawnshop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Author Dixie Murphy follows the three decades of history between the much-loved Betty Gray and her husband Bill Gray in her debut book When Greed Turns Deadly. From their elopement in Las Vegas, through years of financial successes and failures, to the disastrous event that tore a family apart, Murphy shares everything about the Grays life.
The tale of Betty Lou Gray‘s time as a daughter, sister, wife, and mother and her horrific ending is endearing and heartbreaking but I’m not so sure I got the whole story. When Greed Turns Deadly is most definitely written with the aid of Betty’s family and, as such, there is not one good thing to say about Bill Gray. And while I feel certain Bill was a greedy, manipulative man who constantly put on like he was sicker than he really was, I feel just as certain there must have been something good about the man for the marriage to have lasted 29 years – more than fear or guilt.
Secondly, the first half of the book is fantastic but the second half is the trial and nothing more than a repeat of the first part just quoted from the trial.
And then there is the political mumbo jumbo of a District Attorney who wasn’t keen on filing murder charges against the widower and then fails to get re-elected – ugh!
I give When Greed Turns Deadly three stars because it started out strong and it was an intriguing story but I think it would have been much better served in a collection of short stories – especially at a price of $21.95 for paperback which, in my opinion, is a total turnoff. (If you want to read it, purchase the Kindle or Nook version for only $7.99)
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