On the south side of Fort Worth, Texas, a day of unimaginable horror unfolded on February 8, 1975, ending the lives of two young women, 24-year-old Betty Williams and 21-year-old Vera Hill. Both women were friends with 24-year-old Kenneth Granviel, a man who would soon be revealed as a serial killer. The little that is publicly known about Betty, a Black woman, comes from the tragic circumstances of her death, which became a key part of the case that sent her killer to death row.
That Saturday, Betty Williams went to Granviel's apartment. Accounts from Granviel's later confession state that she first asked to use his telephone. A subsequent conversation about cigarettes led Granviel to lure her into his bedroom. There, he suddenly attacked her, turning her upside down to disorient her before beginning a brutal sexual assault. The assault was interrupted by the arrival of Vera Hill, who lived with Granviel and had come to the apartment.
To prevent Vera from discovering the attack on Betty, Granviel retrieved a knife from the kitchen and viciously stabbed her in the chest, stomach, and back until she collapsed. He then returned to the bedroom to continue his savage attack on Betty. He raped her and assaulted her with both a knife and a hammer. Despite the horrific assault, Betty was still alive when Granviel decided to leave the apartment.
His violent spree was not over. Granviel drove to a friend's house, where he asked to use the phone. Once inside, he held the family hostage, raped the friend's mother, and then kidnapped one of the daughters, forcing her back to his apartment. Upon his return, he found Betty still clinging to life, attempting to tend to her severe wounds. In a final act of cruelty, Granviel ordered her to stop, and she complied. Betty Williams succumbed to her injuries shortly thereafter.
Overcome by a sudden wave of what he would later describe as guilt, Granviel took his latest victim and drove to the Pilgrim's Galilee Baptist Church, picking up the Reverend Roy Lee Spearman. He told the pastor he wanted to be "taken out of society" and then drove to the Fort Worth police station. There, he confessed to the murders of Betty Williams and Vera Hill, as well as the slaughter of five members of the McClendon family—Laura, Linda, and Martha McClendon, and two young children, Steven and Natasha—four months earlier, on October 7, 1974. He led detectives to his apartment, where they found the bodies of Betty and Vera.
Kenneth Granviel was charged with seven counts of capital murder. During his trial, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming he could not control his actions. A jury found him guilty of the capital murder of two-year-old Natasha McClendon and sentenced him to death in October 1975. Though his initial conviction was overturned on a technicality, he was retried, convicted again, and once more sentenced to death.
After more than two decades of appeals, Kenneth Granviel was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, on February 27, 1996. The case of Betty Williams and Vera Hill, though overshadowed by the sheer scale of Granviel's crimes, was crucial in demonstrating a pattern of violence that ensured he would be permanently removed from society. The investigation into their murders remains officially closed, a chilling chapter in the history of Fort Worth crime.
