Betty Gholston, a 44-year-old female from Moulton, Alabama, was killed on November 25, 1996, in a case that lingered for years as one of the city's painful unsolved murders. Although the name initially provided was Alice Gholston, the online sources tied to the case identify the victim as Betty Gholston, and the public accounts of the case center on Betty's death inside her Moulton home.
The story that emerged from later reporting was one of a family refusing to let an old murder disappear. Years after Betty was killed, her brother, Clyde Pruitt, was still pushing for answers. He said he asked authorities to reopen his sister's murder case because he did not want to die without knowing who killed her. That plea helped bring new attention to the case, which had grown cold but had not been forgotten by the people closest to her.
Police photographs from the original investigation showed the surroundings of what authorities described as Betty's bludgeoning death. Her brother and her former husband forced their way into her home and found her dead in a bedroom. Investigators believed she had been killed during a home invasion, though the publicly available reports did not name a clear motive or identify what, if anything, had been taken from the home.
The murder haunted both investigators and Betty's family. For her relatives, the years without answers became their own kind of punishment. Pruitt spoke publicly about how badly the killing had torn the family apart, saying he loved his sisters dearly and wanted to see the person responsible caught. He believed the killer deserved life in prison, not only for taking Betty's life, but for allowing the family to live for years without the truth.
In 2008, Moulton Police Chief Lyndon McWhorter brought renewed attention to the case and recruited help from other agencies to take a fresh look at the investigation. He said the goal was to put a team together and see whether fresh eyes could find something that had been missed. Authorities also hoped that someone in the public might finally come forward with information that could help move the case forward.
A $5,000 reward from the governor's office remained available for information in the case. Police asked anyone with knowledge of Betty's killing to contact the Moulton Police Department. Despite the renewed attention, the online sources do not report that anyone was arrested, charged, tried, or convicted in connection with Betty Gholston's murder. No suspect is publicly named in the available reporting, and the case appears to have remained unresolved in the sources reviewed.
