Who Killed Beverly Jaye Potter Mintz? Nearly Three Decades Later, Murder Remains Unsolved
"Lorene Potter ran from her daughter's blood-spattered bedroom in Leland, N.C. on Feb. 23, 1987, her grandson held tightly in her arms.
"Mean man hurt Mommy, Mommy cry," he had said when she scooped him up and fled through the rear door, Potter later told her family. He was just a day shy of his second birthday.
Potter ran to the florist shop next door. The florist called 911 and before long, multiple patrol cruisers with the Brunswick County Sheriff's Office lined the driveway leading up to the Village Road home of 23-year-old Beverly Jaye Potter Mintz. A forensics team and agents from the State Bureau of Investigation soon joined the officers.
"It was a very violent, brutal, and chaotic scene," Tony Cummings, a retired investigator with the State Bureau of Investigation, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday."
"Godwin, the criminal investigative psychologist, disagrees.
"I believe the individual had been stalking her," he said. "The person was comfortable watching the house and going in. He knew there was not an adult male in the home, so he had to be watching."
Godwin added, "The newspaper ad could be a ruse left at the crime scene to taunt [investigators]."
For Braswell, Godwin's theory makes the most sense.
"She had started receiving strange calls every so often before she was killed," Braswell said. "The calls always came after she got home and the person would hang up, so that's another reason we are thinking somebody was watching her."
While the two men disagree on the killer's modus operandi, they do both believe the killer is an experienced criminal, who left the Mintz's son alive because he was confident the child would not be able to identify him.
The killer, both men said, also slid in and out of the home during a short window of opportunity, without anyone taking notice.
"It is one of the things that stands out the most," Godwin said."
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