Betty Tyson, who served 25 years in prison before her exoneration for the 1973 murder of a businessman visiting Rochester, died Thursday at the age of 75.
When freed in May 1998 Ms. Tyson was the longest imprisoned woman in New York, having served 25 years. She had maintained her innocence for years, and, in prison, became a popular figure among fellow incarcerated women and prison officials at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Even in the face of her wrongful conviction she maintained an attitude that the playwright and author V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, described as “ebullient.”
“She was a very compassionate and a very caring person,” said V, who visited Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where Ms. Tyson was imprisoned, to teach writing classes. “She had an ability to transform any situation, to turn poison into medicine, to turn pain into celebration, to find a way in any system to outsmart it and not be beaten down by it.
“Her whole story is just so unbelievable, that she was in for 25 years for a crime she didn’t commit,” V said of Ms. Tyson. “And she still had such an amazing spirit of love, joy, generosity. … She was just a profoundly alive person. She loved on a different spiritual level.”
(Ensler, the creator of “The Vagina Monologues, changed her name to V after writing a memoir of her childhood abuse by her father. She changed her name to the mononym V to separate herself from her family legacy.)
Ms. Tyson recently suffered a severe heart attack, and had been on life support for weeks at Strong Memorial Hospital.
Ms. Tyson’s exoneration sparked national news, with coverage from major newspapers and television shows, including a segment on ABC’s “20-20.”
Within the walls of Bedford Hills, the state’s lone maximum-security prison for women, Ms. Tyson was known to help newly incarcerated women discover how to survive the trials of prison.
“She was honest and kind and she cared about people who knew a lot less about how to cope and I was one of…
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