I’m always amazed by the cases I discover to research. This one came after reading Joan Didion’s The White Album. She describes the case’s impact on her, and it’s easy to see why.
Betty Louise Fouquet (also known as Betty Louise Lansdown and Betty Louise Baker) is a California woman involved in a widely publicised child abuse and murder case in late 1969. She was formally charged with child abuse and desertion of a child under fourteen.
Abandonment
On 25th October 1969, Lansdown, along with her common-law husband Ronald Fouquet, pulled up to the side of Highway 99 near South Bakersfield and left their four-year-old daughter, Jody, there.
An hour later, Jody was still clinging to the fence. Cold and wet, it took the highway officer several minutes to persuade her to let go. She had been instructed to stay there until her parents returned and to say her name was Jody Smith.
Initially, the authorities couldn’t identify the parents because she had given a false name. However, a former babysitter identified her as Jody Fouquet, and the nanny also provided their Los Angeles home address.
Murder
When the police visited the parents, it became clear that there was something more sinister than just child abandonment happening. They could not locate Jody’s eight-year-old brother, Jeffrey.