Detectives (...deleted) and (...deleted) denied my request for my medication and an attorney and kept on interrogating me so insistently and confidently that I eventually began to think that what they were bombarding me with was true and found myself being persuaded that I might have murdered Dr. Wilson, especially since there had been so many other occasions in my life in which I’d done things that I could not remember.
Detective (...deleted) and (...delete) just kept threatening me over and over again that if I didn’t confess to the murder of Dr. Wilson and implicate Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Wilson in it that they’d send me to the electric chair, which frightened me senseless and made me feel desperate to appease them.
They (the detectives) kept telling me that it was Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Wilson they really wanted to get. But if I didn’t help them convict them, they’d send me to the electric chair. The longer they hounded me the more confused, afraid and desperate I became until I reached a point where I was willing to say anything they wanted me to in order to make them leave me alone.
My resentment toward Mrs. Lowe’s rejection was also an incentive which influenced me to make the false statements to the detectives implicating her and Mrs. Wilson in the murder of Doctor Wilson.
I might add that all my life I’ve been intimidated by authority figures, especially policemen, and it has been my inclination when being confronted by them to deflect their anger at me by assigning blame to others, and that’s what I did in that instance. I simply used the theory of the crime related to me to re-fabricate a false and concocted narrative of Dr. Jack Wilson’s murder which involved me as the perpetrator and Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Wilson as conspirators.
In reality, I’ve never even met or spoken with Mrs. Wilson – not even to this day. I was never propositioned by Mrs. Peggy Lowe to murder Dr. Jack Wilson. I made it all up in order to appease detectives (...deleted) and (...deleted), so they would stop hounding me and threatening to send me to the electric chair.
Later on, after I had been transported to the Madison County Jail, and the realization of what I’d told the detectives occurred to me I tried to explain to (...four lines deleted)
...”life sentence” deal offered me by the prosecution in exchange for my false testimony against Mrs. Betty Wilson and Mrs. Peggy Lowe. Throughout my interrogations by detectives and my pretrial confinement, my manic depression medicine was withheld from me. When I tried to make people on the outside of the jail aware of what I was being pressured into doing to Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Lowe, the (...deleted) threatened to punish me and told me that I wouldn’t be given my medication until after I testified against Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Wilson.
Subsequently, I became extremely depressed and ceased to care about anything. I just wanted to get it over with, so I’d be transferred from the Madison County Jail to prison. As a result of my dependency I went ahead and pled guilty to the murder of Dr. Jack Wilson, which I am no positive that I had nothing to do with it and gave false testimony against Mrs. Betty Wilson and Mrs. Peggy Lowe At first I tried to justify the lies I told about Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Lowe in court with the rationale that even though I didn’t actually remember any of what I was saying, that maybe what the detectives induced me to say against them was true. But I realize now with profound certainty that what I really did was lie on Mrs. Betty Wilson and Mrs. Peggy Lowe in order to get myself out of peril and also to get back at Peggy for making me feel that I wasn’t good enough for her.
Having found my solution in Christ, I realize that I cannot live with myself without trying to undo the tragedy I’ve caused these two innocent women, especially considering that their only wrong was in one of them being kind to me. I find myself constantly hounded by the realization of the grief and hardship I’ve caused them, and I’m certain that I can know no peace until my conscience is cleared from this guilt.
Signed,
James D. White
Murder of Dr. Wilson
BettyWilson--My Story Part 1
BettyWilson--My Story Part 2
The Confession of James Dennison White
Poll: Who Plotted to Kill Dr. Jack Wilson?
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