“There’s a part of me that kind of laughs and thinks Betty would have loved that,” Gayle Guffey Ross said of the rumors surrounding her best friend from high school still haunting the OHS halls. “She would have eaten that up. She made her mark.”

For years the community and Odessa High School students have perpetuated rumors of Betty Williams haunting the OHS auditorium after ex-boyfriend Mack Herring killed her on March 20, 1961, a killing later dubbed “kiss and kill.”

Herring was later found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity in the killing, but it’s the scrutiny of Betty from more than 50 years ago that still bothers her then-best friend and cousin to this day.

“Another part of that makes me very angry and upset, because I look back on this incident from a completely different perspective,” Ross, who now lives in the Dallas area, said. “I remember the agony and tragedy of it. I remember how so trashed she was after she was killed.”

Shelton Williams, Betty’s cousin and author of the book “Washed in the Blood” about her killing, has helped create a documentary to finally get her on TV and clear up misunderstandings about her death.

The story of Betty Williams will be featured on Investigation Discovery’s “A Crime to Remember” in the show’s third season, serving as the finale, Shelton Williams said.

“It goes all the way back to my motivations to writing the book: Betty was an aspiring actress and she never got an opportunity to get on screen,” Shelton Williams said. “So it has been my goal since the beginning to have something on screen. I am very satisfied with the people who are doing it.”

Ross said the dehumanization of Betty bothers her to this day, and the group of people who supported Mack — including a large group of girls who attended all his hearings — still “makes me sick,” she said.

“What happened was Betty’s memory wound up being quickly and easily completely trashed,” Ross said. “It was like they erased her as a human being and put some trashy cartoon in her place. By doing that, it was easier to say, ‘Well look at who she was and how she behaved — it was no big loss.’ ”

Ross said she and Betty developed something akin to a “bromance,” in which they laughed at how much more sophisticated they were than anyone else in true teenage fashion. Ross said she saw Betty laugh and be happy, as it seemed to her that “life just exuded from her fingertips in invisible sparkles.”

But Ross said the Betty she saw was not the Betty most saw, as she often portrayed a darker version of herself to others, especially with boys, to whom she presented as fragile and tragic.

For those who see Betty as an urban legend, Ross said she was an example of the very real effect her death had on those close to her.

Ross said Betty’s death probably affected her course in life, both professionally and personally, as Ross was told later that she most likely suffered from a dissociative state immediately after the girl’s death, as she slept nearly 20 hours a day and felt removed from her body when she was out and about.

Professionally, Ross said acting was never the same for her, and she suffered panic attacks before shows, likely triggered by the fact Betty was killed just before their performance of Winterset, in which Ross was the lead and Betty was the stage manager.

Despite her strong feelings about how Betty is viewed, Ross said she still sees Mack as a tragic figure, one who was caught up in a game between the two in which the wrong decisions were made.

Ross said she’s believed for 50 years that the whole scenario was something of a joke between the two in which neither would stop until the other did; Betty, in an attempt to win back Mack, hoped he would have stopped, Ross said.

“I think Betty used this to get Mack’s attention and sympathy,” Ross said. “For both of them, this was almost a joke. They didn’t laugh about it, but it was almost a dare.”

Shelton Williams said he hopes to continue spreading Betty’s side of the story with the world. He also said he hopes that this will bring the true memory of Betty back to life, opposed to the ghost legend that she’s become.

“I want Betty’s side of the story (to be told),” Shelton said. “At the time of the incident, and even now, I thought her side was completely ignored and over time she has become a novelty rather than a real person. She was a very real person with a very good personality.”

In the episode on Investigation Discovery, writers will focus on Betty’s story, but Shelton said it will be much more than just re-hashing what has already been told.

Instead the episode will also contain discussions on stress, depression and other similar feelings that young adults, such as Betty and Herring, often go through. Shelton said he hopes the discussion on the mental health will help young people understand those factors better and possibly prevent another tragedy from taking place like it did to his family many years ago.

Ross said regardless of if Betty slept around as said in the popular discourse at the time of the trial, her death was a “great loss.”

“As much as possible, I do not think about this,” Ross said. “Because it is so incredibly — and even now as I’m thinking about it I’m getting tears in my eyes — it is so difficult to think about that time.”

The episode is set to air at 9 p.m. Dec. 29 on Investigation Discovery.

“She was funny, smart, she was talented and the image you get of her is this crazy girl and there is just way more to it than that,” Shelton Williams said. “People ask me if writing the book meant closure for me, but I always tell them that I will get some personal closure when I see Betty on screen because it has really been my goal.”