'Black Widow' is freed 28 years after murder

With her son, the woman plotted the killing of her husband, a Tampa department store mogul. The parole panel says she is rehabilitated.

By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 13, 2003

TAMPA -- The plot was the stuff of film noir, with a Tampa backdrop and a bewitching femme fatale at its center.

Albert Haber was a 52-year-old department store mogul. His wife, Betty Lou, was a charming former fashion model who wanted to cash in on his life insurance policy. Her son from a former marriage helped line up the hitman.

Now, after spending 28 years behind bars for her husband's 1975 murder, Betty Lou Haber will go free. The Florida Parole Commission said Wednesday that Haber, now 67, has done her time.

The Tampa detective who cracked the case remembers Haber's nickname: the Black Widow.

"Because she was cool and calculating," said Mark Stamatakis, now retired.

Her supporters describe another Haber: a kindly grandmother who learned to crochet pillows in prison and worked tirelessly for other inmates. While incarcerated, she passed her GED test, studied Spanish and sociology, and gave legal aid to fellow inmates as a clerk in the prison library. That earned her an award from a Pasco women's advocacy group.

Parole commission chairman Jimmie Henry, who voted to release her, described her as a model prisoner who poses no threat to society.

"It's very, very unusual for anybody to be incarcerated for this length of time and not receive any disciplinary reports," Henry said. "I think she has been rehabilitated."

Lee Haber, the victim's son, called the decision to release her a travesty of justice. He said his stepmother's refusal to admit to the murder means she hasn't changed.

"How can someone be rehabilitated if they've never admitted to the crime?" asked Lee Haber, 52. "It's not that I want her to eat dirt or anything like that. I want her to admit guilt. She's living a lie."

Haber will be released from the Florida Correctional Institute at Lowell in Marion County on March 8, and will live with a relative in Live Oak. She must also pay $13,500 restitution to her murdered husband's estate.

She can't travel to the Tampa Bay area or surrounding counties -- where the victim's family lives -- without the parole board's permission.

Albert Haber was a widely known businessman who owned clothing stores in St. Petersburg and Tampa. When his body was found in his ransacked Davis Islands home in 1975, his face was so badly beaten he was unrecognizable. He had also been shot in the head. It looked like a botched robbery.

But investigators concluded Betty Lou Haber had plotted her husband's murder with her son, Arnold J. McEver III. The confessed triggerman was Joseph Brandt, McEver's friend, who testified that Haber and her son hired him to commit the murder.

Soon after testifying, Brandt was murdered in prison. Haber and her son received life sentences, without the possibility of parole for 25 years. Under today's laws, they would receive life without parole.

At Wednesday's parole hearing, Lee Haber, the victim's son, pleaded with the commission to keep her behind bars, while Lisa Trafficante, the inmate's daughter, pleaded for her release.

Afterward, Trafficante, 41, said she was elated with the commission's decision. She described her mother as "a very kind person, a very calm person."

"She's willing to take her shirt off her back for someone else," she said.

"She's done her sentence," Trafficante said. "What's the reason for keeping her there after 28 years?"

The Hillsborough State Attorney's Office opposed Haber's release. Spokewoman Pam Bondi called Haber "a cold-blooded murderer who deserves to spend the rest of her life in prison."

"She's a manipulative killer," Bondi said.

Bondi said Haber induced family members to falsify her husband's will after his murder in an attempt to enrich herself.

Stamatakis, the Tampa homicide detective who worked the Haber case, had mixed emotions about her release.

"I was going to say, 'She's probably done her time,' but what (value) do you put on a human life?" he said.

The retired detective remembers Betty Lou Haber as a good actor who put on a skilled show of innocence.

"The average person, looking at her, wouldn't suspect anything," Stamatakis said. "She played a good role."

Lee Haber said his stepmother knew how to pour on the charm. "You'd never be in a room with her when she was mean or vindictive," he said. It was a side she kept hidden.

Despite her socialite status, she was greedy. "Here's a woman who apparently had everything, who was not satisfied with living a lifestyle that was more luxurious than a lot of people," he said.

Betty Lou Haber has had parole hearings every year since 1999, but the parole board repeatedly denied her release. After a hearing on Jan. 15, commissioners again decided to keep her behind bars, by a vote of 2-1.

But two of the voting members were visiting commissioners. On Wednesday, when the regular board met to ratify or reject that decision, it opted to let Haber go by a 2-1 vote.

-- Christopher Goffard can be reached at goffard@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3337.

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