When TikToker Betty (@bettyxxoxx) was 16 years old, her prison pen pal sent her $500 to buy her first car. They started writing to each other when she was 14.
After her mom died, her dad signed her up for a pen pal program to connect with new friends, and her name somehow reached a man at the Pendleton Correctional Facility.
His name was Donald Lock, and they were very close. They wrote for about five years, exchanging letters, pictures, and poetry. They even talked on the phone. Betty and her dad did not have a close relationship. He was very distant.
So, Donald became her father figure. At the time, Betty was being groomed and assaulted by a family member, and Donald gave her the courage to get out of that situation.
Donald was in prison for life. He allegedly stabbed a woman with scissors in self-defense. Betty didn’t have any way of looking up his records back then. It was 1989, so she had no choice but to believe him.
When she turned 16, he sent her $500 to buy her first car. They lost contact when she was around 20 or 21. Since then, she has always wondered how he was doing. After having her daughter, she looked him up and found an extensive article about him.
He was sent to an orphanage at three years old and suffered a lot of abuse. He assaulted a woman when he was 15 and spent eight years in prison. From then on, he did several similar crimes.
He did stab a woman with scissors, but left out the part where he assaulted her. Her name was Nina Wallace, and she fought back. He ended up killing her with the scissors.
“She had an envelope with his name on it because he had just bought a refrigerator from her, and she wrote his name on an envelope, and the police found it and tied him to it,” said Betty.
“And so, he was convicted and serving life…He’s come up for parole several times, but he won’t plead guilty. He won’t admit it and show remorse.”
According to an article that was published in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette in 2007, Donald Lock was in and out of state institutions and mental hospitals for most of his life. He was considered aggressive, hostile, hyperactive, antisocial, and engaged in sadistic acts.
When Donald was three years old, his father, Paul, brought him and his two brothers to an orphanage. Paul had worked for the railroad and lost a leg in an accident.
Their mother had taken off with his settlement check, abandoning the family. For the next four years, their parents fought over them.
Eventually, their mother and her new husband won custody and took the boys home. However, the boys suffered physical abuse at the hands of their mother’s new husband, Kenny. After a year, he started abusing Donald in the bedroom.
When he was 10 or 11, Donald started committing petty theft. He got caught and cried out for help at a meeting with the judge. He told the judge about the abuse that was happening at home. However, the judge did not believe him.
He began lashing out in bigger ways. He was sent to a reform school, and his crimes went from simple shoplifting to breaking and entering. He also stayed in mental hospitals. At 15 years old, he groped two elderly women. He stayed in the juvenile system until he was 17.
Then, he met Marjorie, a pastor’s daughter. They got married at 17 and had kids together. Two years later, in June 1965, Donald attacked a woman.
She fought him off, and he fled when the woman’s young son ran into the room. Donald was sentenced to 15 years in prison and served a total of eight years.
He didn’t want to leave prison until he received help for his problem, but he was released in February 1973 without receiving any counseling or treatment.
He decided to get some psychiatric help on his own. But it was expensive, and the medications made him vomit and pass out. Marjorie divorced him while he was in prison. He married again in 1973 to a woman named Jane.
On February 20, 1974, Donald knocked on Nina Wallace’s door. She was surprised to see him, but invited him in out of the cold. He attacked her, but she fought back hard. He stabbed her in the chest at least 10 times with a pair of scissors.
Five days later, the police arrested him. He confessed to the murder but not to the assault. If he pled guilty, he could be released sooner, but he refused to because he claimed that he did not assault her. By 2003, he had already served 29 years in prison.
His wife, Jane, divorced him, but then he married Nancy, who hired a prominent defense attorney for him. After Nancy, there were Sharon, Cindy, and Ruby. So, he had four women marry him while he was in prison for murder.
For Betty, learning the truth about Donald was both heartbreaking and complicated. She does not deny the positive role he played in her life, but at the same time, that does not erase his violent actions.
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By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
