William Gravlin: It Couldn’t Be Helped
It Couldn’t Be Helped:AccusedWilliam Gravlin·VictimsBette Gravlin·Betty Sue Gravlin·Benson Bentley·Judith Bentley·Dorrie Bentley·Paula Bentley·Walter Bentley
Case at a glance
- When
- September 28, 1964
- Where
- Troy, Oakland County, Michigan
- Perpetrator
- William G. Gravlin
- Outcome
- Found legally sane and convicted of first-degree murder in 1968; sentenced to mandatory life; reported to have died in 1994
The case
William Gravlin, 30, was a Royal Oak, Michigan, firefighter until 1961, when he slashed his cousin’s wife with a knife and was committed to Pontiac State Hospital, which discharged him in July 1964. His wife, Bette, 40, lived at 2121 Garson in Troy with their five-year-old daughter, Betty Sue, and Bette’s five children from her first marriage: Benson, Judith, Dorrie, Paula and Walter Bentley, aged 17 to 10.
A week earlier Bette had asked for a divorce, and Gravlin moved to his mother’s house in Clawson. Late on September 27, 1964, he took a taxi back. Around 2 a.m. he killed all seven with an axe and a hammer; Betty Sue alone was shot. He covered each body with a blanket and left an apology note on every one. Hours later he told a passing motorist, then a police officer, what he had done.
He tried to plead guilty at his arraignment. Doctors diagnosed schizophrenia; in January 1965 he was found incompetent and sent to Ionia State Hospital. Declared fit in December 1967, he was tried by a judge alone for the murder of 16-year-old Judith Bentley. In March 1968 the judge found he had known right from wrong and convicted him of first-degree murder, with a mandatory life sentence in April. In 1974 the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled his years at Ionia had to count toward it.
Case photographs
Where it happened
Troy, Michigan, where the Gravlin family lived
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Jason Neal has been writing true crime since 2019 and is the author of the True Crime Case Histories book series.
The full written account of this case is in True Crime Case Histories: Volume 28: Book · Paperback · Audiobook