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On January 16, 1965,Alex Arnold Jr. was thirty-three-year-old man who had been born in Lexington and lived most of his life there, except for two yearsin the military during the Korean War and one year of incarcerationin a state prison in LaGrange, Kentucky. After being released from prison, Arnold found himself in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where he became disorderly in a public place, attracted the attention of a Klamath Falls police officer, and was taken into custody for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. Near the end of his third day of incarceration, Alex Arnold found himself in the middle of an alcohol withdrawal syndrome called delirium tremens and told a jail employee that he was going to kill himself. While under 24-hour watch, Arnold admitted to the murder of Betty Gail Brown.

When Judge Joseph Bradley opened court on October 4, 1965, for the murder trial of Alex Arnold, he found amost unusual situation: a courtroom without a single empty seatand with an overflow crowd standing against the walls. The prosecution stated that the state’s evidence would provide details about the discovery of Betty Gail’s body in her own car on the Transylvania campus and that the evidence would leave no room to doubt that the young student had been murdered, and would attempt to prove Alex Arnold was guilty of the murder. This chapter details the witnesses, testimony, and evidence presented by the prosecution and defense. After the jury could not come to a unanimous decision, Judge Bradley dismissed the jury, declared a mistrial, and announced that the case would be put on the court’s January 1966 docket for retrial.