When they convicted her brother of murdering his neighbor, Betty Anne Waters knew deep inside that her brother was innocent.
A small-time crook, Kenny, Betty Anne’s brother, was convicted in 1983 of stabbing his neighbor Katherina Brow to death in Ayer, Massachusetts during a burglary.
This is when the single mom and bar waitress decided to sacrifice 2 decades of her life and marriage. She put herself through law school to be able to fight for her brother and free him.
Betty Anne managed to qualify as a lawyer and revealed evidence that helped her clear her brother’s name.
Believe it or not, after 18 long years in jail, her brother was finally free thanks to her.
Amazing Story Turned into a Hollywood Movie
This unbelievable real story was also turned into a movie called Conviction in which Betty Anne is portrayed by stunning two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank.
Sadly, her brother Kenny didn’t get a chance to see his sister’s amazing battle made into a movie as he died in an accident only 6 months after he was released in 2001.
Despite a strong alibi (he was gone to work at a diner around the time that the crime was committed in May 1980); he was still charged because he couldn’t locate the sheets proving his whereabouts when the verdict was made three years after.
She Gave Up so much & Keeps on Fighting for Others
Betty Anne says that what drove her to study for a lawyer is the moment when Kenny attempted suicide in prison.
Throughout the years, she and her family experienced so many hardships, from the moment he was pronounced guilty to the moment they got the call from the prison that he tried to kill himself.
She says that it was Kenny who actually asked her to go to law school because he told her he couldn’t spend the remaining of his life in prison.
He told her ‘Betty Anne, if you go to law school, I know you’ll find a way to free me out of here and prove my innocence’.
This became a promise between the brother and sister-that she will help keep him alive.
It wasn’t easy to go into law school, says Betty Anne. She had a rough childhood and was a high school dropout.
They went through foster homes and there were 9 children in her family and their mother worked three jobs.
Kenny was one year older than Betty Anne and had a close relationship. She admitted that her brother had a temper, but she was 100 percent sure he wasn’t a killer.
So, in her early 30s, married and with two young boys, she enrolled at the local college school. She had a long way to go-she studied for 12 years.
She had to get basic qualifications to be able to start the 4-year degree course that would get her into law school.
Law school was three years and she studied for long hours, 5 days a week.
Her family felt her missing-her husband would often tell her she loved her family more than she loved him. He saw no sense in her studying law school.
Their marriage came to an end and though she explains this wasn’t the only reason they fell apart, it certainly contributed.
Betty Anne finally Frees Her Brother, but Loses Him
After graduating from law school, she acted as her brother’s attorney and requested evidence to be revealed. In 1999 she found blood samples collected as evidence from the crime scene, which they told her previously that they were destroyed.
Also, thanks to an organization Innocent Project, they asked for the court to allow them to test the blood for DNA. The results found that the blood wasn’t Kenny’s or of the murder victim and hence, it showed it couldn’t be Kenny who did the murder.
Still, the prosecutor demanded more. So, Betty Anne took the ex-girlfriends of Kenny to retract their testimonies-they admitted giving false evidence because of threats they got from the police.
Sadly, despite being released, Kenny, at the age of 41, fell 15 feet trying to climb a wall and died from a hemorrhage.
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