It Couldn’t Be Helped

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.