AND I SAID, “RUN, RUN FOR THE DOOR. RUN FOR THE DOOR.” AFTER killing 9-year-old Faith and six-year-old Liberty, John Battalia recorded this voicemail. Good night, my little baby. I hope you’re resting in a different place. Dallas convicted killer John Battalia is now dead. February 1st, 2018, Huntsville, Texas.
A 62-year-old man is strapped to a gurnie inside the Huntsville unit execution chamber. The room is quiet. Witnesses fill the seats on both sides of the glass. [music] No family sits on his side. Not one person. On the other side of the glass stands a woman, a mother. She has waited nearly 17 years for this moment.
The execution was supposed to begin at 6:00 in the evening. It [music] didn’t. For over 3 hours, last minute appeals raced all the way to the United States Supreme Court. A final [music] attempt to keep this man alive. The court said no. When the warden asked if he had any final words, he paused.
Then he spotted the woman behind the glass. He looked directly at her and he smiled. No remorse, no apology, just a smirk aimed at the one person he had spent years trying to destroy. But here is what makes this case truly different from anything you have heard before. [music] This man did not just murder his two young daughters.
He made sure their mother heard every single shot live over the phone. What happened before that phone call and everything that came after is something that will stay with you long after this video ends. Before we talk about the man on that gurnie, like this video, share it, and subscribe to this channel.
Your support means the world to us. Mary Faith Betaglia was 9 years old. Her little sister Liberty May Betaglia was six. Both girls were students at John [music] S. Bradfield Elementary School in Highland Park, Texas. They were bright, loving, and full of life. They trusted the people around them completely. the way children are supposed to.
Their mother would later describe them in one word, [music] brave. And before this story is over, you will understand exactly why she chose that word. Their mother was Mary Jeene Pearl. She lived in Highland Park, Texas, one of the more well-known and established communities in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Mary Gene was a respected woman, educated, grounded, [music] and by every account, a deeply devoted mother.
She met John David Betaglia through social circles in Dallas. At the time, he carried himself well. He was charming, well-dressed, and easy to like. To the people around them, he looked like a man who had everything together. They married on April 6th, 1991, and in the years that followed, they had two daughters, Faith and Liberty.
To friends and neighbors, the family looked picture perfect. Betaglia was openly affectionate with the girls. He called them his best friends. People who knew him during those years described him as, and these are their words, an exemplary man, a devoted father, a stable presence. But behind that image, something was very wrong. Over time, Mary Gene began living with constant verbal abuse and emotional manipulation.
By January 1999, she had endured enough. She separated from Betaglia. She never thought he would hurt the girls. That belief would cost her everything. So who exactly was John David Betaglia? He was born on August 2nd, 1955 on a military base in Enterprise, Alabama. He was of Italian ancestry. His father was a military man, [music] which meant the family never stayed in one place for long.
As a child, Betaglia moved across the country and even spent time in Germany. He eventually landed in Dumont, New Jersey, where he graduated from Dumont High School. After high school, he enrolled at Fairley Dickinson University. He started out as a premed student, then switched to accounting. He dropped out in 1976, reportedly at the urging of a friend.
Around the same time, he got into trouble with the law over illegal drug use. [music] His father stepped in. The decision was made. He would join the United States Marine Corps. Inside the Marines, Betaglia did well. He worked his way up to the rank of sergeant, but military life eventually lost its appeal.
[music] He left the service and set his sights on a new goal. He moved to Dallas, Texas, where his father lived and enrolled in night classes. He earned his certified public accountant license and even did some modeling on the side. To everyone who met him, he looked like a man who had rebuilt himself. Disciplined, professional, successful.
But there was another version of John David Betaglia, one that only the women closest to him ever saw. His first wife was Michelle Getty, an attorney in Dallas. They had a daughter together named Christy. It did not take long for the violence to begin. Betaglia assaulted Michelle outside the school where Christy was a student.
On a separate occasion, he attacked her at a bus stop in direct retaliation after she filed a harassment complaint against him. That attack was severe enough to break her nose and send her to the hospital. In 1987, Betaglia pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and received 2 years of probation. Court records confirmed this was not a single outburst.
[music] It was a pattern and it was only getting started. On April 6th, 1991, John David Betaglia married Mary Jean Pearl. To the outside world, it looked like a fresh start, a new chapter, a happy family in the making. It was anything but. Over the next several years, Betaglia put Mary Jean through a slow and relentless campaign of verbal abuse and emotional manipulation. He insulted her.
He humiliated her. He wore her down day after day, year after year. By the time she finally made the decision to leave, nearly 9 years of her life had been consumed by it. In January 1999, she separated from him. He was barred from the home. But leaving did not make her safe. On December 24th, 1999, Christmas Eve, Baglia came for a visit with Faith and Liberty.
What happened next shocked everyone who heard about it. He attacked Mary Gene in front of all three of his daughters, Faith, Liberty, and Christy, [music] his daughter from his first marriage. According to the report, he punched her more than 20 times and kicked her, leaving her covered in cuts and bruises. The girls were terrified. They begged him to stop.
He pleaded guilty once again, misdemeanor assault, two more years of probation. A restraining order was issued. Mary Gene filed for divorce immediately after the attack and the divorce was finalized in August 2000. Still, Taglia refused to let go. Despite the restraining order, he kept violating its terms. Around Easter of 2001, he began making harassing phone calls to Mary Jean, accusing her of being unfaithful, leaving threatening and abusive messages on her answering machine.
Then, something darker crept into his thinking. He began telling himself and others that faith and liberty were not actually his biological children. He was building a mental wall between himself and his own daughters. What he was building toward in those weeks would later be described in court as the ultimate act of revenge.
Here is what makes this case stand apart from so many others. There were no co-conspirators, no accompllices, no one was hired, no one was recruited. John David Betaglia planned and carried out this act entirely on his own. And somehow that makes it even harder to process. By the time May 2nd, 2001 arrived, Betaglia already knew what was coming.
Mary Gene had reported his probation violations to his probation officer. The harassing calls, the threatening voicemails, the continued contact he was forbidden from making. He also knew he had been using marijuana, which was another direct violation of his probation terms. An arrest warrant had been issued that very morning.
Police had already notified him that he needed to turn himself in. He had time to think. He had time to make a choice. And the choice he made was murder. Court records confirmed that when police searched his apartment after the murders, they recovered 16 firearms. A fully loaded revolver was also found in his truck.
Baglia was not a man who lacked access to weapons. The weapon he used that evening was a.357 Magnum Colt Python revolver. He loaded it himself inside the apartment while Faith and Liberty had their backs turned, completely unaware of what was about to happen. He also used the custody arrangement as cover, a scheduled dinner visit.
Relatives handed the girls over in a shopping center car park with no knowledge of the warrant issued earlier that day. No supervision, no oversight, just Baglia alone with his daughters. And the phone call to Mary Jean was no accident. Court records establish it was deliberate. He wanted her to hear everything.
If you’re finding this case as disturbing as I do, hit that like button. Let’s keep going because it gets worse. May 2nd, 2001. That morning, John David Betaglia received news that should have stopped everything. An arrest warrant had been issued for him. The violations had piled up. The harassing phone calls to Mary Jean, the threatening messages he had left on her answering machine, and his use of marijuana, all of which directly broke the terms of his probation.
Police contacted him and made it clear, “Turn yourself in.” He did not. Instead, he kept his afternoon plans. Under the existing custody arrangement, Betaglia was scheduled to take Faith and Liberty out for dinner. Because of the restraining order, he was not permitted to collect them from Mary Jean’s home. So, the handover happened the way it always did in the car park of a shopping center in Park Cities.
Relatives brought the girls and passed them over. 9-year-old Faith and 6-year-old Liberty climbed in, smiling, trusting, with no idea what their father knew that afternoon. The relatives who handed them over had no idea about the warrant either. As far as everyone around those girls was concerned, it was just another dinner visit, it was not.
Instead of driving to the mall, Betaglia drove straight to his loft apartment at the Adam Hats lofts in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas. He brought the girls inside. Then he picked up the phone and called Mary Jean with her on the line. He handed the phone to Faith. He told his 9-year-old daughter to ask her mother a question.
In a small, confused voice, Faith asked, “Why do you want daddy to go to jail?” Mary Jean’s heart dropped. She could hear the uncertainty in her daughter’s voice. She could sense something was deeply wrong. Then everything changed. Faith had turned around. She had seen something. And in an instant, her voice went from confused to terrified. No, Daddy.
Please don’t. Don’t do it. Mary Jean screamed. She begged the girls to run. It was too late. He shot Faith three times. He shot Liberty five times. Mary Jeene heard every single shot through THE PHONE. RUN. RUN FOR THE DOOR. RUN FOR THE DOOR. THAT’S ALL MARY Gene Pearl could say as she listened on the phone while her husband shot and killed their daughters.
She heard her daughters die. When the gunfire stopped, Baglia picked the phone back up. His voice was calm, flat, completely empty of feeling. He said, “Merry fing Christmas.” Court records established that those words were deliberate, a direct and cold reference to the Christmas Eve attack of 1999, the night he had beaten Mary Gene in front of her children. This was his revenge.
Planned, personal, precise. Mary Gene ended the call and immediately dialed 911. Back inside the apartment, Betaglia walked to the answering machine in his daughter’s bedroom and pressed record. He left them a message. Good night, my little babies. You were very brave girls. Very brave, Liberty.
You were oh so brave. I love you so much. Bye. What he did next is something that is almost impossible to believe. He left the apartment. He went to a bar with his girlfriend and then he walked into a tattoo parlor and had two red roses inked onto his left arm. One for faith, one for liberty, as though he were honoring people he had loved, not children he had just taken from this world.
When police responded to Mary Jean’s 911 call and arrived at the Adam Hats lofts in Deep Ellum, they found exactly what she had feared. Faith and Liberty were dead. Both girls had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Inside the apartment, officers recovered 16 firearms. In Betaglia’s truck parked outside, they found a fully loaded revolver.
Betaglia himself was not there. Officers tracked him to the tattoo parlor where he had gone after leaving the bar with his girlfriend. The fresh ink, two red roses on his left arm, was barely dry. When officers confronted him outside the building, he did not go quietly. He fought back. It took multiple officers to bring him down.
By the time he was restrained and placed under arrest, he had a black eye. In the days that followed, Mary Jeene made a discovery that was almost unbearable. There was a message on the answering machine in her daughter’s bedroom. His voice, calm, unhurried, calling them brave. She had to live with that. Years later, Christy Betaglia, Betaglia’s daughter from his first marriage, who had been present the night he attacked Mary Gene on Christmas Eve, publicly stated her support for his execution.
his first wife, Michelle Getty, said the same. Faith and Liberty were laid to rest at a funeral held at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in North Dallas. They were buried at Hillrest Cemetery beside Mary Jean’s father. This was not a case that required months of detective work. There was no mystery, no unknown suspect, no trail that needed following. He made no attempt to hide.
He offered no alibi. He behaved like a man who saw no reason to run. Court records show that Texas authorities established his motive quickly and clearly. This was an act of direct retaliation against Mary Gene Pearl for reporting his probation violations and pushing to have him sent back to prison. In custody, Betaglia showed no remorse.
By multiple accounts, he was calm, almost indifferent, as though what he had done carried no weight at all. But the detail that haunted investigators most was not found at the crime scene. It was found on an answering machine in a little girl’s bedroom. the voice of a man who had murdered his two daughters just hours earlier, speaking softly, calling them brave, saying good night.
When his case finally went to trial, what the jury heard in that courtroom left them deliberating for just 19 minutes. There was no long investigation, no cold case file, no years spent chasing leads. The case against him was built almost instantly. Mary Gene had been a live witness to the entire attack, hearing every moment over the phone.
The 911 recording captured what came next. Physical evidence filled his apartment. 16 firearms were recovered on the scene and a loaded revolver sat in his truck. The answering machine recording from the girl’s bedroom added yet another layer. The.357 Magnum Cole Python was matched directly to Betaglia and his own words to Merry Gene, Merry Fing Christmas would later become one of the most damning pieces of evidence presented at trial.
Officers also noted that he had visited the tattoo parlor after the killings. The tattoo artist who worked on him that night became a witness for the prosecution. Prosecutors walked into court with everything, a clear motive, a documented history of violence, solid physical evidence, and a mother who had heard her children die.
On April 22nd, 2002, the capital murder trial of John David Betaglia opened at the Frank Crowley Court’s Building in Dallas, Texas. Blackman built the prosecution’s case in careful deliberate layers. He started with the first marriage, the assaults on Michelle Getty, the broken nose, the hospital admission, the 1987 guilty plea.
He moved forward to the 9 years of verbal abuse inside the second marriage, the Christmas Eve attack of 1999, the restraining order violations, and the threatening voicemails. Each layer pointed to the same conclusion. This was not a man who snapped. This was a man with a long and documented history of targeting the women in his life.
Both Michelle Getty and Mary Jean Pearl took the stand. Two women, two marriages, one identical pattern of abuse. But it was Mary Jean’s account of the phone call that visibly shook the courtroom. Hearing her describe in her own words what she heard that evening, every voice, every plea, every gunshot left the room in silence.
The jury needed just 19 minutes to return a verdict. Guilty of capital murder, the highest charge available under Texas law. During the penalty phase, the defense shifted strategy. They argued that Betaglia suffered from bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. Presenting forensic psychiatrists and family members to support the claim.
The jury was unmoved. On April 30th, 2002, the same 12 people who convicted him sentenced him to death. As he was led away, Mary Gene looked at him and said he should burn in hell forever. She told the court that the next time she intended to see him was when the needle went into his arm. Years later, she changed her mind and showed up anyway.
Christy Betaglia publicly backed the death sentence. The appeals process began automatically. The legal fight that followed would drag on for nearly 16 years. After sentencing, John David Betaglia was transferred to the Palinsky unit near Livingston, Texas, the facility that houses Texas men’s death row.
He spent his years there without a single public expression of remorse. When other inmates or reporters raised the subject of his daughters, he reportedly mocked the question. He told people around him that he had not killed his daughters because, in his words, they were only his legal children, not his biological ones. He used that distinction as though it meant something.
His lawyers worked through the courts steadily, filing appeal after appeal in an effort to have his death sentence reduced to life without parole. None succeeded. In March 2016, an execution date was finally set. But just hours before it was carried out, the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a halt. The question before the court was whether Betaglia was mentally competent to be executed.
Under United States law, a person must understand that they are about to be executed and have a rational understanding of why. Psychological evaluations followed. Betaglia told examiners that he was the target of a sweeping conspiracy, one that included both of his ex-wives, his former defense attorneys, the prosecutors, the trial judge, the jurors, and the Ku Klux Clan.
He also claimed he had been drugged and remembered nothing about the murders. Three of the four psychologists who examined him concluded he was unfit for execution. The trial court disagreed entirely, ruling that Betaglia was malingering, deliberately faking or exaggerating symptoms to delay his death.
A second execution date was set for December 2016. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted that one, too, saying the earlier competency review had been too shallow and needed deeper examination. Then came the evidence that settled the argument. A recorded phone call between Betaglia and his father was obtained.
In it, Betaglia described the death penalty process as as a damn chess game. Those words told the court everything it needed to know. In September 2017, the Court of Criminal Appeals released a 78page opinion confirming that Betaglia was competent and that the execution would move forward. On October 31st, 2017, his death warrant was signed.
The date was set, February 1st, 2018. That morning, he woke at 7:00 and ate his final meal. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, corn, and cornbread. The execution was scheduled for 6:00 in the evening. Lastminute appeals to the United States Supreme Court pushed it back by more than 3 hours.
His lawyers argued the execution drugs were expired and could cause pain. The Supreme Court rejected every appeal just before 9:00 that night. Inside the execution chamber at the Huntsville unit, the witness room was divided. On the convict’s side, no one, not a single person, came to sit for John David Betaglia.
On the victim’s side stood Mary Jean Pearl. When the warden asked if he had any final words, Betaglia said no. Then he saw her behind the glass. He looked directly at her and he smiled. Well, hi Mary Jean. I’ll see y’all later. Bye. Go ahead, please. At 9:18 in the evening, the lethal injection of pentobarbatital began. Betaglia closed his eyes, then opened them. He lifted his head and laughed.
“Am I still alive?” Then quietly, “Oh, I feel it.” He exhaled twice. He began to snore. And then he stopped moving entirely. The official time of death was recorded at 9:40 in the evening, Central Standard Time, February 1st, 2018, exactly 22 minutes after the injection began.
Mary Jean stepped back from the glass. Faith and Liberty Betaglia never got to grow up. But their story changed things. In direct response to this case, Texas lawmaker Toby Goodman sponsored a bill requiring judges to consider a parents history of domestic violence before granting unsupervised visits with children.
The Texas Senate passed it without a single opposing vote. Governor Rick Perry signed it into law and it took effect on September 1st, 2001, just months after the murders. Two visitation centers were born from that same grief. Hannah’s House was founded as a direct result of this case. Faith and Liberty’s Place, run by Dallas domestic violence shelter, The Family Place, was established specifically in memory of the two girls.
Judge David Finn, who had previously dismissed an assault charge against Betaglia, resigned from the bench and ran for Dallas County District Attorney. Mary Gene campaigned publicly against him. He received only 25% of the vote. In 2003, author Irene Pence published a full account of the case titled No Daddy Don’t, a father’s murderous act of revenge.
Faith and Liberty were buried in North Dallas beside their grandfather. Their father spent his final years insisting they were never truly his. In the end, the only people who ever truly claimed them were the ones who loved them. Which moment in this case hit you the hardest? Drop it in the comments below. And if this story moved you, subscribe.
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