"Want to go to prison?"
Lipscomb University junior Amanda McDowell lacked one class to finish her criminal justice minor. The "Society and the Law" course, her advisor told her, was available that semester in spring 2010 only as part of Lipscomb's Initiative for Education program, offered at the Tennessee Prison for Women.
Would she want to complete the course behind bars?
"Surely Lipscomb wouldn’t put us in a dangerous situation," McDowell recalled thinking. "But I never even remotely knew anyone who went to prison."
A graduate of Oak Hill School and Brentwood Academy, McDowell brought gum and Hello Kitty stickers to share that first day of class.
After going through security she met a bubbly, engaging classmate wearing a prison-issued pale blue
shirt and denim pants. Many of the inmates kept to themselves, but Michelle Lockwood-Tipton, TDOC No. 00364813, smiled and talked with the "outside" students.
Lockwood-Tipton found herself drawn to the classmate who brought gum and stickers and wore pink dye in her hair.
"We didn't have a lot of color in prison," she said.
The girl with the pink streaks in her hair eventually found out more about her new friend.
She'd been convicted in 2003 for her role in an Oct. 4, 2000 robbery that ended with the beating death of hotel clerk Pamela Sue Hale.
'I didn't know what I was doing'
Lockwood-Tipton was 21 and trapped in an abusive relationship the night her boyfriend, Brandon Tipton, told her they were going to break into an empty business to steal money. In fact, Tipton ended up driving to the Family Inns East in Pigeon Forge and beating Hale to death with bolt cutters. When Lockwood-Tipton recoiled in horror and tried to drive away, he threatened to hurt her.
They made off with $600 and got married two days later.
"I didn't marry him on my own free will," Lockwood-Tipton testified during her 2003 trial. "I didn't know what I was doing at the time."
Tennessee prosecutors can charge someone with felony murder if the person is involved at all in a dangerous felony that causes a death.
"Oh my God, what just happened?" Lockwood-Tipton said that night, she later told jurors. "Is she going to be OK?"
Tipton told her not to worry, she told jurors.
"He kept saying, 'She'll be just fine.'"
Tipton bought a ring the next day and married her the day after that.
Lockwood-Tipton was convicted of felony murder and second-degree murder. A judge sentenced her to life with the possibility of parole in 51 years.
'A crime she didn't commit'
McDowell and Lockwood-Tipton don't remember how they clicked, but the two just did. After going through security screening before each class, Lockwood-Tipton, three years older than McDowell, would look for her friend to catch up before class. Soon they were sharing meals and exchanging letters.
"Michelle, (adopted big sis)," McDowell wrote to her in a letter early in their friendship, "so glad to see you yesterday! I hope you have a good week and don’t encounter too much drama from anyone."
The closer they got, the more McDowell learned of the crime, the more she became convinced Lockwood-Tipton's sentence was too harsh.
"She was doing time for a crime she didn't commit," McDowell said.
The class ended but their friendship bloomed. They wrote and talked by phone for the next 15 years, McDowell visiting at least once a month. The unlikely duo consider themselves best friends.
"I enjoy all of our visits — and I will never get tired of visiting with you, and getting to know you," Lockwood-Tipton wrote to McDowell in November 2010. "You have been one of the biggest blessings of my life, and I’m so thankful to have you present in my life."
McDowell said some questioned why she went to the prison as often as she did.
"There will be always people who’ll have a hard time viewing our relationship as a traditional friendship," she said, "but we’ve never had a hard time with that."
'It's kind of terrifying'
Lockwood-Tipton was 23 when she was sentenced to life, not eligible for release until age 74.
A commutation Gov. Bill Lee signed in 2023 made her eligible far earlier.
"Ms. Lockwood-Tipton was 21 years old and had no criminal record when, under the influence of her then-boyfriend, she agreed to commit robbery," Lee's order read. "During that robbery, her boyfriend killed the victim."
The order noted that during her two decades behind bars, Lockwood-Tipton completed courses, worked, served as a mentor and was involved with programs including training support dogs.
"She is a trained paralegal who has earned her bachelor's degree and is currently pursuing her master's degree through Lipscomb University."
Lockwood-Tipton was 43 when she walked out of the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville on Aug. 27. The week before, she had intense, conflicting feelings about leaving, she told The Tennessean.
"For the last 25 years, it's something I've hoped for," she said from a prison phone before she started crying. "And now it's so close, I'm just like, it's really happening. And it's kind of terrifying in a way.
"I was 21 when I came here. My entire adult life has been in this place. And I've built a life here. And I've got friends here who are closer to me than even my family because ... they know details of my life that nobody knows.
"The anxiety of going out there into a world that's going to be completely brand-new to me? And I'm feeling the grief of leaving people behind. More than half of my life has been here."
On her release day, Lockwood-Tipton cried in the hot August sunshine. With one hand, she rolled a red cart carrying her a bathrobe, some books and personal items. The other covered her mouth as she cried. Three wardens walked outside to wish Lockwood-Tipton well. One hugged her.
Three people were waiting for Lockwood-Tipton on the outside. Her brother, Dustan Duren. Prison chaplain Angela Wittenberg, owner and director of Hananiah House, which Lockwood-Tipton would soon call home.
And McDowell.
Lockwood-Tipton hugged her brother first and then McDowell. The three then drove to the halfway house.
After dropping off her things, Lockwood-Tipton and her brother went with McDowell to eat club sandwiches at Sante Fe Cattle Company, shop at Kohl's and Famous Footwear, get treats at Yogurt Mountain and pick up some groceries at Publix.
"I see Amanda and Michelle as sisters," Wittenberg said. "They are best buddies who share all kinds of things. It’s clear they love each other."
Feeling stuck
McDowell grew up in a house with a pool on a 2-acre lot, across from the private Oak Hill School where she played soccer.
As a kid, she shared her toys and happily went with her mom on visits to nursing homes as part of church outreach programs.
"Amanda was a very good kid growing up," her mother, Kathy McDowell, said. "She was very kind."
McDowell graduated from Brentwood Academy in 2004 and decided on Lipscomb University for a communications degree.
Lockwood-Tipton grew up in East Tennessee with an abusive, alcoholic dad who was in and out of her life. He punched her in the face several times at a Christmas family gathering and threw her into the tree, in front of everybody, she said. She shuffled between her grandmother and her mom. There was little love in either place.
Lockwood-Tipton remembers inviting Jehovah's Witnesses in, just to connect with someone.
At 18, Lockwood-Tipton got pregnant, had an abortion, fell into a deep depression and attempted suicide with pills. She met Brandon Tipton at 20. She asked him to help her move her things into an efficiency apartment in Pigeon Forge when she started living on her own for the first time.
Brandon Tipton moved in four months later and started urging her to marry him, she said.
She knew he was trouble when he started pressuring her to do drugs. First weed, then pills. Then he started talking about breaking into empty businesses to steal.
Her manager at the Log Cabin Pancake House in Pigeon Forge, where she worked as a waitress, tried warning her away from Brandon.
"I was 20," Lockwood-Tipton said, "so you say, 'Don't do it,' and I want to do it."
She felt stuck.
Lockwood-Tipton said he never hit her, but that Brandon was emotionally abusive, especially when she considered breaking up.
"How can you say you want to leave when you know how bad it feels to be left?" he would say.
The day of the murder, Brandon Tipton pressured her to take Klonopin, an anti-anxiety medication that can make someone feel drunk, intensely calm and euphoric.
He hatched the plan to break into a business after hours.
A murder and a feed store wedding
The pills left Lockwood-Tipton feeling disoriented.
"I was outside myself looking in," she said.
The couple abandoned plans to break into the closed store in Gatlinburg on Oct. 4, 2000, because a police cruiser was nearby. So they drove to the hotel.
Lockwood-Tipton was standing in front of 48-year-old clerk Pamela Hale when she said Brandon Tipton attacked the clerk from behind.
"All I see is this black-pointed thing, and he swings. He just swings," she testified three years later at her trial.
Lockwood-Tipton said she ran outside and tried to drive off. She testified that she hit Brandon with the car, hurting his knee, before he threw the hotel cash drawer in the car and jumped in.
They married at Temple's Feed Store, the owner serving as officiant, after getting a marriage license across the street at the Sevier County courthouse. Lockwood-Tipton said she believes Brandon pressured her into the marriage, hoping spousal immunity would keep her from testifying against him.
On July 13, 2001, Lockwood-Tipton saw Pigeon Forge police cars outside their apartment.
"Today is the day," she thought.
The victim's daughter, Nisha Hale Hurst, took the stand during Lockwood-Tipton's sentencing.
"You don't know what you took from me," Hurst said, crying at times and noting that not only had she lost her mother, but that her children lost their beloved Grandma Penny.
"You still have your family," Hurst said from the witness stand.
Hurst discussed Lockwood-Tipton's early release in a Sept. 29 social media post.
"Where has the consequence and accountability for bad behavior gone, and holding people accountable for their actions, watching it happen and being a part of the action?" it read.
Lockwood-Tipton said she has thought often about Pamela Hale and her grieving family over the years. The conditions of her parole do not allow her to make contact.
"I've always thought about what their lives were like growing up without their grandmother and then her mom," she said. "I would always say prayers for them.
"I know that there's nothing I can do ever to bring that life back. But I just hope the things I do and the joy that I put out there, the optimism that I put out there, that it somehow gives honor to her life," Lockwood-Tipton said, her voice catching.
"Even just saying that feels so small."
A life sentence — and a burgeoning friendship
Lockwood-Tipton was stunned to learn she was facing the same charges as Brandon Tipton, first-degree murder and first-degree felony murder.
"I believe I deserved to be punished. I knew about it when it was happening," she said. "I could've helped somebody and didn't. I ran straight to my car. I didn't let somebody know.
"But I wouldn’t plead guilty to first-degree murder. I would not plead guilty to something I didn’t do."
Brandon Tipton did plead guilty to first-degree murder and felony murder, to escape the death penalty. He is serving life without parole in Northeast Correctional Complex in Mountain City in East Tennessee. They haven't kept in touch, Lockwood-Tipton said, and she's planning to seek a divorce. That wasn't possible while she was incarcerated.
Lockwood-Tipton spent her first month in prison crying alone in her cell.
Then one day, a guard brought her a stack of mail. Relatives, high school teachers, her mom's church friends, even people she'd befriended while in Sevier County's jail, all wrote letters. Her mom and her grandmother started visiting. Some of the darkness lifted.
Lockwood-Tipton started taking classes, including correspondence courses to become a paralegal.
She jumped at the chance to join the Lipscomb University program when it launched in 2007. And she quickly felt connected to McDowell when they took the same class three years later.
"She was outgoing like I was," Lockwood-Tipton said. "And the same humor, a little dry, a little snarky, always funny."
"Obviously," McDowell said, smiling.
"Obviously," Lockwood-Tipton said with a nod.
"She embraced who I am, she accepted me where I was, and she found this way to incorporate me into her family and friends," Lockwood-Tipton said. "To me, that spoke volumes."
Soon, the two were sitting together at a visiting area table nearly every week, sharing Big Ass Cheeseburgers, a popular vending-machine and convenience store brand, along with Snyder's jalapeno pretzel bites, Milky Ways and Dr Pepper and playing checkers and dominoes and putting together puzzles.
The art of becoming a better person
Over the next 15 years, the two exchanged more than 1,000 letters and cards, had thousands of phone calls and more than 300 on-site visits.
The two talked about family, about friendships, about their jobs — Lockwood-Tipton made $1 an hour and left prison with thousands of dollars in savings. McDowell would send pictures of her adventures and the cute furniture in a new apartment. Lockwood-Tipton would send homemade cards and letters with drawings on the envelopes.
McDowell eventually started bringing along her mom and her boyfriend, Dan Rogers, the Grand Ole Opry's vice president and executive producer
"I was struck by how it was clear that Amanda was a meaningful part of a special bond rather than a participant in a decade-long service project or a bystander on some sort of justice journey," Rogers said in an email.
"Like any good friendship, the one she shares with Michelle seemed to involve give and take, emotional growth, laughter, and the general art of becoming a better person because someone is a part of your life."
Lockwood-Tipton kept taking Lipscomb classes, one a semester, until she earned a bachelor's and master's degrees. She worked with the prison chaplain to address and start healing from her childhood trauma. In her last few years inside, she started training dogs to be service animals.
McDowell, starting a career as a Nashville Realtor and property manager, said she was inspired and encouraged by Lockwood-Tipton's industriousness and her positivity.
"There were a lot of days where I was down about something and then I would think of her because she has the best attitude of anyone I've ever met," McDowell said. "I was like, if she can get through what she deals with every day, then I can get through what I'm dealing with."
Diving in
McDowell and several relatives and friends eventually hired lawyers who were successful in a commutation bid.
"Ms. Lockwood-Tipton is surrounded by the support of her family, friends, faith community and others," reads the governor's order, which stressed that she not engage in any illegal behavior.
"She shall live the life of a good citizen," it read.
That good life began right away. She is now working as a dog trainer and helps with chores at the halfway house. She launched a social media account; her first post featured a breakfast of fruit and an omelette, with "It's a Beautiful Morning" as the soundtrack.
"One of my favorite things so far is being able to cook on a stove, bake in the oven and use real utensils…and not having dividers on my plate," she wrote with the photo. "It’s lovely."
Within 10 days of being released, Lockwood-Tipton visited McDowell, whose home has a pool, and put on the one-piece black swimsuit she bought on Amazon.
"Oh my gosh! I’m in a pool!" she said while splashing around. "Ok, ok, ok, I’m gonna go under water! I’m gonna hold my nose."
She came back up, smiling. "I went under water and I didn't drown!"
After an hour in the pool, the two ate sandwiches and chips from Mitchell's Deli in East Nashville.
Then they jumped back in.
Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com.
Past reporting from The Knoxville News Sentinel was used in this article.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Prison class sparked a friendship that changed two lives
