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,5
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Three decades later, murder of North Carolina mother remains unsolved
Feb. 26, 2021,
By Andrea Cavallier
''Jill told Dateline her sister was recently separated from her husband, who was stationed in Germany at the time of her murder. Jaye got a job as a waitress at a restaurant in nearby Wilmington and had started dating again.''
''A few months before Jaye’s murder, her cousin, Angela, moved into the house in Leland with her young daughter. Angela told Dateline
Jaye received unwanted attention from several admirers around that time.
There was a man who would write “I love you, Jaye” in the gravel drive of their house. And the man who left a single red rose for her at the restaurant where she worked. But Jaye, with her quiet demeanor, was always kind to them.
''But when the strange calls started, Angela was concerned. She said
the calls began after Jaye placed the ad for the waterbed. The calls would be sexual in nature and the caller would taunt both Jaye and Angela, depending on who answered.
About a week before Jaye’s murder, Angela walked by her room and noticed that she seemed upset.
“She was lying on her bed and I asked her if everything was OK,” Angela explained. “She told me she had a dream about a strange man trying to kill her. After she was killed, I couldn’t shake what she said. It’s like she knew something was about to happen.”
Tomorrow is the day, 23 February that she was murdered.. Please light a candle if you can
" 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."