Source: Reddit
When finishing up my degree in criminal justice we had to learn about how the justice system works and how sometimes it doesn’t.
For about two weeks we studied a case from the early 90s of a woman that had killed her husband.
Because the case is public record and a very interesting read look up Betty Frieberg 1993
The setting was small town iowa and the husband was the town drunk. Everyone in town knew him for a drunk, a brawler, a womanizer and overall just a bad person.
His wife was the stay at home mom as she wasn’t allowed to work or leave the house aside from get groceries.
He would go home, beat her and violate her sexuality and the cycle would go on and on and the whole town knew. Neighbors were a quarter mile down the road but still would call the police when they heard noises.
It was well documented and because he was never a threat to their daughter the police did nothing aside from take him to jail like a revolving door. Each time he got out he’d beat her up again.
Their daughter was away at college but came home for Thanksgiving. While the father was at work the daughter told the mother that her father had violated her sexuality and that she had even had an abortion because of it.
This was the breaking point for the mother. She got her revenge 100 fold
When daughter went back to school after the holidays and husband came home she killed him with his gun at the kitchen table.
The table is important because it was a big farm table used for chopping up deer and other livestock. Doing the butchering was her job and she was good at it. If I could find the case report it has pictures of the table and clear marks of chopping.
She chopped up her husband and scattered his body over neighboring farms, fed what she could to her livestock and cleaned up.
Months went by and winter came and left. Police investigating his disappearance even questioned her while sitting at the table drinking coffee. She explained the marks on the table by explaining that she butchered her own meat and showed the officers her deep freeze.
The investigation went on for months until finally a neighbors dog brought back a body part. They identified it as belonging to him and she was arrested on the spot.
She plead not guilty and refused any offers. It went to trial and 12 of her peers judged her not guilt due to Extenuating circumstances. She confessed to the crime, explained why she did it and how and that she had no real choice because no one was going to help her. The farm was hers and she refused to give it up as it had been her family’s home.
She was let go entirely for the murder charge.
The next week we had betty as a speaker to the class to discuss the case and she was awesome. At the time she ironically sold dismemberment insurance for aflac.
Betty if you every read this know you’re seen as a figurehead for battered women and you pulled off the best revenge I have ever been able to study.
