By Two And Two

(CBS)  On May 22, 1992, 55-year-old Jack Wilson, a wealthy, well-known ophthalmologist in Huntsville, Ala., was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat and a knife inside his home.

His wife, Betty Wilson, and her twin sister, Peggy Lowe, were accused of hiring a hit man to kill Dr.Jack Wilson. The key to the case: con man James White, who claimed that the sisters had hired him to kill Jack for $5,000.

Monday Mystery: "By Two And Two," Monday, June 24, 2002, 10 p.m. ET/PT

Author Jim Schutze followed both of the twins' trials. At the outset, this looked like an open-and-shut case. "I was 90 percent sure that this was gonna be a story about two women who were accused of murder and who were indeed guilty," he says.

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But that's not how it turned out. It defies logic, but Betty Wilson was found guilty; her sister Peggy Lowe was acquitted, and many were left wondering how two people facing the same charge, the same evidence, involving the same conspiracy, could receive such different verdicts.

"There's no way Betty can be guilty if I'm innocent," says Lowe. "There's no way I can be innocent if she's guilty."

Two sisters, two juries, two different verdicts, and one burning question: Did Wilson get away with murder - or was Lowe wrongfully convicted?

Police found lots of reasons to suspect Betty. She had a history of alcoholism and adultery. But she says that Jack not only knew about the affairs, but insisted that she have them. Though they often led separate lives, Betty insists she and Jack loved each other.

Police suspected she wanted his money; Betty Wilson lived a lavish lifestyle funded by Jack Wilson's $6 million fortune. In his will, he gave all of his money to his wife.

Four days after the murder, police arrested James White. They'd received a tip that White had talked about killing someone in Huntsville. White was a part-time carpenter, a full-time con man, a drug addict, and a felon.

Under questioning, White admitted that he knew Lowe because he had done some work at her school. Lowe was very different from her sister. She was a middle-class, soft-spoken schoolteache. And if she had little in common with her sister, she had even less in common with White. She knew White, and knew him pretty well. She says she was trying to help him with his problems.

To police, the conspiracy was becoming clear: Betty Wilson wanted her husband killed. She got her sister Peggy Lowe to hire James White to do the job. The detective on the case, Mickey Brantley, still had no physical evidence against anyone, so he bluffed, and told each the others had confessed.

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It didn't work on the twins, but White folded. Assured he could plea bargain his way out of the electric chair, White confessed to murdering Jack Wilson, and said he was paid to do it by the twins.

Wilson and Lowe were charged with capital murder. Wilson was put on trial first. For the most part, the case against her was built not on fingerprints or forensics, but on the word of the confessed murderer, James White.

Prosecutors expected some trouble with White's credibility, but they got a lot more than they bargained for. White had been hospitalized numerous times with psychiatric problems, complaining that he "constantly hears voices but doesn't know what they are saying." He was locked up for selling drugs, escaped, and was diagnosed with "anti-social personality disorder as suggested by a history of violent,impulsive criminal behavior."

Brantley and the local DA offered White a deal, in writing. If he gave testimony "substantiating the complicity and involvement" of the twins in a murder-for-hire scheme, and it could be corroborated, he'd not only avoid the death penalty, but James White, the confessed killer, would soon be eligible for parole.

White took the deal. He testified that Betty and Peggy advanced him $2,500 for the murder. They both denied it. White also said that two days before the killing, the twins met him at this dam, near Peggy's house, and gave him a gun intended to be used on Dr. Wilson.

Wilson denies this: "I think he would have said anything to have saved his own life. He would have said anything."

But White seemed to have proof: After his arrest, he produced a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver he'd hidden. It was registered to Betty Wilson. Schutze doesn't believe White: "You have to believe that Betty, this kind of tough, cunning woman, was so stuid, that she gave a gun registered to herself to James to do the shooting with. Anyone knows that guns are traceable.

But Dr. Wilson was not shot, and crime scene video of the Wilson home shows an open, empty gun case in the bedroom, suggesting White may have stolen the gun on the night of the murder.

There was other evidence. Prior to her husband's killing, while attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at a lodge, Betty placed $200 inside a library book and had a uniformed security guard deliver it to James White, who was waiting outside.

Wilson says that she gave White the money because Peggy asked her to. Peggy says she knew White was an alcoholic and needed help getting to the AA meeting.

White was just one damaging witness. Some of Betty's former friends took the stand, and one, Brenda Cerha, claimed that six years before the murder, Betty said to her, "I want to kill Jack. Will you help me?"

As the trial progressed, the testimony focused more and more on Betty's lavish lifestyle, and her persistent adultery. "I was tried as a slut, as a rich bitch," Wilson says.

Wilson was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

White seemed to be such a good witness against Betty Wilson because he seemed to have such a good memory. He knew where Betty was the day of the murder; what she wore; what was inside her car.

His knowledge was too good, some said. Lowe's Attorney David Johnson developed a theory: White knew so much about the twins, not because he was plotting with them, but because he was improperly - perhaps unwittingly - fed information by the police.

Johnson says that White tailored his testimony to fit what police had discovered about the case.

What made White change his story so many times? After the trial, he said he had been prompted by Detective Brantley's leading questions: "You're sitting there and you're saying, "Well James, are you sure it wasn't such and such a date? James, are you sure it wasn't such and such a date? Are you sure it wasn't this time? Are you sure you wasn't here at this time, and this date?' After a while it becomes a suggestion."

Brantley strongly denies this. But White changed significant details with each statement, and each revision tied the twins more directly to the murder.

How does Lowe avoid conviction? What happens next? Find out in Part 2.



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