Disappearance of Beverly Potts
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Beverly Potts | |
|---|---|
 The best-known photograph of Beverly Potts | |
| Born | Beverly Rose Potts April 15, 1941 |
| Disappeared | August 24, 1951 (aged 10) Cleveland, Ohio |
| Status | Missing for 73 years, 4 months and 3 days |
Beverly Rose Potts (born April 15, 1941) was an American girl from Cleveland, Ohio who in 1951 became the subject of a famous missing persons case when she disappeared only a few blocks from her home, after attending a show in a nearby park.
Disappearance
Blonde, blue-eyed Potts was described as a shy, quiet and responsible child, fascinated by the performing arts, who was due to enter the fifth grade in fall 1951. On August 24 she and friend Patsy Swing were given permission to see the Showagon, an annual summer children's performance event which that evening was being held in Halloran Park, less than a quarter of a mile from the girls' homes on Linnet Avenue. This was a special treat, as the park was generally considered unsafe after dark, when large trees dimmed the surrounding streetlights. It was also frequented by the local vagrant population.[1]
The two girls initially headed to the park about 7pm, but at eight o'clock--deciding it would be easier to maneuver on foot through the large crowds--they returned home to drop off their bikes, arriving back at the show sometime before 8:30. A few minutes later, Swing, made uneasy by the gathering darkness, suggested they head home. However Potts said she had been given permission to stay for the entire show, which was not due to end until after nine o'clock, so Swing returned alone. She would later say that she had last seen Potts in the crowd still watching the performances onstage.[1][2]
At about 9:30, with the show over and the park emptying, a thirteen-year-old male acquaintance of Potts' saw her heading diagonally across the park in a northeasterly direction, about 150 yards from the corner of Linnet and West 117th streets. This would have been the quickest route to her home, which would then only be a few minutes' walk away. The boy recognized Potts by her distinctive 'duck-like' gait, walking with toes pointed outward. Several other witnesses claimed to have seen a girl resembling Beverly near a battered black 1937 Dodge coupe idling on West 117th street, apparently speaking to the two young men--one dark-haired and one blond--inside. The various witnesses placed this encounter anywhere between 8:30 and 9:30, but all were in agreement that they had not seen the girl entering the car.[1]
When Potts did not return home by about ten o'clock, her family began searching the area. About an hour later, still not having found her, they called the police.
Investigation
The police immediately began a large-scale search of their own but were likewise unable to find any trace of the missing girl, even after several days' investigation including door-to-door canvassing of nearby neighborhoods, tracing suspicious cars, searching nearby waste land and using a plane to survey open railway cars. They took and thoroughly investigated many thousands of telephone tips, which had been spurred by the extensive press coverage of the disappearance, but none provided any solid leads. Investigators were, however, quickly able to clear her immediate family--father Robert, mother Elizabeth and 22-year-old sister Anita--of any suspicion. Beverley's home life had been stable and by all accounts happy, and there appeared to be no reason for her to have run away.[1]
Further complicating the case was the fact that Potts was known to be unusually shy--especially around males--and particularly cautious of strangers, making it unlikely that she would have either been lured away by a random predator or gotten close enough to have been forcibly abducted by one. Investigators theorized that the girl had most likely been enticed into a nearby house or car on her way home by someone she knew, perhaps a local woman, with the promise of a babysitting job--despite her youth, Potts was regularly hired as a sitter for local children--or a request to run an errand.[1] It was thought that the girl's body might have been buried in one of the nearby houses on Linnet Avenue, and at least one search to that effect was carried out in 1973, in the basement of what by then was an auto body shop. However, no signs were found there or elsewhere, and no plausible local suspect was ever uncovered at the time or since.[2][3]
Suspects
Several other suspects have emerged over the years, but none can be definitively linked to the case.
In 1955 Harvey Lee Rush, a drifter and Cleveland native, told police in California that he had killed Potts after luring her to a nearby bridge with candy; however he placed the murder in 1952, a year after Potts' actual disappearance. Rush recanted his entire story shortly after being extradited to Cleveland, saying that he had confessed merely as a way to get back to his hometown.[4]
In 1980, two retired Cleveland police detectives, James Fuerst and Robert Shankland, revealed that in 1974 they had received a tip from a local attorney's client whose brother had supposedly confessed to abducting Potts. The detectives subsequently found and questioned the brother, who, they said, had readily admitted to having lived near Halloran Park in 1951 and making a habit of picking up and molesting young girls there. The man did not remember abducting Potts in particular, but said he had "flashes" involving a girl named Beverly. Fuerst and Shankland were convinced the man was guilty, but the county prosecutors' office refused to pursue the case, citing a lack of evidence.[5]
William Henry Redmond, an Ohio native and former carnival worker, was indicted in 1988 for the 1951 Pennsylvania murder of ten-year-old Jane Marie Althoff. While in prison, Redmond reportedly told a cellmate that he had killed three other young girls. When questioned about the Potts case in particular, Redmond refused to make a statement one way or the other. He was in the general area at the time of Potts' disappearance and had a record of child molestation convictions dating back to 1935; however Potts would have been considerably older than his previous victims.[1]
In 1994, a letter was discovered under a carpet in a Cleveland house, written by a woman who claimed to have caught her husband disposing of Potts' body in their furnace. Upon being traced and questioned by police, the woman said that the allegation was false; she had written the letter solely as a revenge fantasy against her abusive husband.[6]
More letters were sent to reporter Brent Larkin of the Cleveland Plain Dealer beginning in 2000, purporting to be from an elderly and infirm man who claimed that he wanted to confess to molesting and murdering Potts before his imminent death. The anonymous author pledged to turn himself in on August 24th 2001, the fiftieth anniversary of Potts' disappearance, but shortly beforehand wrote again to say he had had to enter a nursing home and would be unable to honor his promise or otherwise reveal himself. An extensive investigation failed to turn up any clues to the author's identity; Larkin now believes the letters to have been a hoax.[7][8]
Aftermath
The enduring mystery of Potts' apparently random disappearance and the extensive investigation quickly captured the imagination of the press and by extension the entire city, becoming notorious especially among parents fearful for their own children's safety. It has since become one of Cleveland's most well-known missing-persons cases.[2] Thea Gallo Becker, author of Legendary Locals of Cleveland, says that it "remains one of the most haunting and heartbreaking mysteries in Cleveland history.".[9]
Potts' mother died in 1956--reportedly hastened by "heartbreak" over her daughter's disappearance--and her father in 1970. Beverly's only sibling, Anita, continued to search for her until her own death in 2006. There is a memorial marker to Beverly situated next to the graves of her parents.[7][2]
References
- ^ a b c d e f James Jessen Badal (2005). Twilight of Innocence: The Disappearance of Beverly Potts. Kent State Press. p. 165. ISBN 0873388364.
- ^ a b c d Bibb, Leon. "Disappearance of 10-year-old Beverly Potts, who vanished 63 years ago, still haunts Cleveland" (Archive) Newsnet5. May 9, 2014. Updated May 12, 2014. Retrieved on September 7, 2014.
- ^ "Search for Girl missing 20 years ends in failure". The Morgantown (WV) Post. UPI. 19 April 1973. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
- ^ "Murder story a hoax: Man says he confessed to get back to Cleveland". The Kansas City (MO) Times. AP. 17 December 1955. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
- ^ "Police may have solved 23-year-old-kidnapping". The Bryan (OH) Times. UPI. 18 August 1980. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
- ^ Cooper, Cynthia L. and Sam Reese Sheppard. (1995). Mockery of Justice: The True Story of the Sheppard Murder Case. University Press of New England. ISBN 1555532411.
- ^ a b Good, Meaghan. "The Charley Project: Beverly Rose Potts". The Charley Project. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
- ^ Larkin, Brent (29 September 2012). "Investigators still chasing Amy Mihaljevic's killer". The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
- ^ Becker, Thea Gallo. Legendary Locals of Cleveland (Legendary Locals). Arcadia Publishing, 2012. ISBN 1467100293, 9781467100298. p. 53.
Further reading
- Badal, James Jessen. Twilight of Innocence: The Disappearance of Beverly Potts (True Crime Series). Kent State University Press, 2005. ISBN 0873388364, 9780873388368.