A former police chief explores how the system failed her sister -- and rural Missouri
In 2013, Betty Frizzell’s sister was charged with murder. Frizzell’s 2021 memoir, “If You Can’t Quit Cryin’, You Can’t Come Here No More,” explores the aftermath of the crime that left her brother-in-law dead: Frizzell’s investigation into what really happened, her growing doubts about her sister’s culpability and her interactions with the man she believes really did it.
But more than that, Frizzell’s story is the story of her family — a small-town Missouri clan so dysfunctional, Frizzell ultimately decided she had no choice but to move far, far away. As she explains in the introduction to the book, her sister is far from the first Frizzell to face a murder rap: “Murder is generational in our family.” Combine the family’s tendency to a quick temper with huge amounts of opioids, and violence was inevitable.
Frizzell is the former police chief of Winfield, Missouri, and now works as an investigator for the state of Washington. As she explained on Friday’s St. Louis on the Air, her sister Vicky Isaac had been involved in the regional pro wrestling circuit, and both she and her eventual husband, Chris, had no problem getting painkillers in large quantities.
“She kept telling me these are prescribed pills, this is a doctor that prescribed them,” Frizzell explained. “But I knew from my time in law enforcement what a rabbit hole that can be, what a person can fall into.”
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2022-01-20/a-former-police-chief-explores-how-the-system-failed-her-sister-and-rural-missouri
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