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.