Beverly Rose Potts:1951, Cleveland, Ohio
Beverly Rose Potts was born on April 15th 1941. Her parents were Elizabeth Treuer Potts and Robert Potts. Beverly’s parents had been born in 1899. They lived at 11304 Linnet Avenue on Cleveland’s west side. Robert Potts worked at The Allen Theater as a stage hand. Beverly had an older sister named Anita Lois Potts born in 1929.
Beverly was ten in the Summer of 1951. Anita was already a graduate of Notre Dame and was working as a secretary at the National Cash Register Company in Cleveland.
Beverly had spent several weeks of the summer with her cousins in Hudson, Ohio. That’s a little town south of Cleveland. She went swimming often there and even took lessons. She and her great aunt went blackberry picking. She played with her cousins and neighbors there. Her family took the last photos of her there that summer. She returned home to Cleveland in late August.
August 24th, 1951 was a Friday. Beverly and a friend decided to go to a show together in Halloran Park. At first they rode their bicycles but did not see a convenient place to leave the bikes. So, they rode the bikes home and then walked back to the park.
A traveling circus type performance called the Showagon had set up there. Apparently it came to town every year.
Halloran Park is a very short walk from Beverly’s home. The neighborhood is a lovely place with mostly two story brick homes with ample shady porches. Tall trees line the sidewalks.
Toward the end of the show Beverly’s friend decided to leave when some local boys began throwing tomatoes at the stage. Beverly decided to stay. It was around 9 p.m.
Beverly began walking home but was abducted somewhere along the way. Her father began looking for her around 10 p.m. Searches also took place in the following days.
A few tipsters reported seeing a man talking to Beverly at the park. Beverly’s family felt that she would not speak to strangers. Perhaps the man had approached her and she politely responded to whatever he said. A girl in 1951 was supposed to be polite and answer an adult who asked them a question. Perhaps the girl they saw wasn’t Beverly though. Perhaps it was a different girl altogether.
Presumably a lot of people would have been walking home or leaving the park at around the same time. Yet no one saw anything. No one reported a scream. To me this suggests a perpetrator possibly with some experience.
Beverly’s father and her sister Anita naturally both took time off from work in the following week. Her father helped with searches and Anita stayed home with her mother to help out with phone calls and the activities of daily life. She was very much needed there. Beverly’s mother was inconsolable.
The street that Beverly lived on was very dark in the evenings with all the mature trees still full of leaves in August and the close set homes. On the end closest to 117th street, near the park, it was especially dark.
Early on, the Potts family began receiving prank phone calls. They were forced to make the heartbreaking decision to change their phone number. I imagine that this ordeal was incredibly stressful. Your young daughter is missing. You want to keep the old number in case, by some miracle, Beverly would find a way to call home. But, cruel pranksters kept calling and the switch had to be made.
Crowds of people gathered outside the house to gawk. Reporters and officials came by often.
A few pieces of clothing were found but Beverly’s family was confident that these never belonged to Beverly.
Police followed up on tips given by taxi drivers. A couple had given rides to men going to the park that evening. One man was a 51 year old sailor on the Lakes and another was a 42 year old machinist. Those two men were located and questioned. Police interviewed all the known sex offenders in the area. One man, a 56 year old sex offender, lived close to the Potts home and he was arrested because he was being evasive when first questioned.
They also arrested a teen girl known as "The Hot Rod Queen" and her friends but released them later.
Did they search that sex offender’s home? Did he have a car? He seems like someone who might have had it he best opportunity.
None of these men were named. The sex offender registry did not come about until very recently really. It would have been helpful for people and children to know who the known sex offenders were. That information might have saved Beverly’s life. We know now that men who abuse children never really stop doing it. They find ways to hide it. They take on jobs and professions that put them above questions. Many of them, we now know, become preachers or priests. Many of them volunteer or work around children. Even with a sex offender registry many of them get away with it for decades.
Gradually the newspaper coverage dwindled as did the tips coming in. Beverly’s name would come up again in news articles in the 1960’s and 1970’s when other teen girls and young women were abducted, assaulted and murdered.
August ended and school started. It must have been very sad for Beverly’s friends and teachers to start the school year without her.
Anita Potts later married a Marine named Robert Joseph Georges. He served in Vietnam and earned the rank of Captain. Both of them have passed on now. Anita died in 2006 and her husband in 2012. They are buried in Florida.
In May of 1956, Elizabeth Potts fell ill. She was admitted to the hospital but passed away at the young age of 57.
In 1970, Robert Potts passed away. He is buried next to his wife in Cleveland.
10 year old Beverly Rose Potts has never been found.
But there are clues still. Earlier in May of 1951, another girl was kidnapped. (Or kidnaped if you use the spelling of the time.) Gail Ann Michel was a five year old when she was abducted by a man from near her home.
The Michel family owned a little delicatessen and store at 12002 Detroit Avenue. That’s just a few blocks north of Halloran Park and Beverly Potts’ home at 11304 Linnet. (Another small store was at the end of Linnet Ave where Beverly lived. Perhaps the perpetrator frequented both stores at different times.)
Five year old Gail Ann Michel was kept overnight by this man in his room and was left at a downtown Department Store. The staff at May’s got a pretty good look at him. He was a white man around 30-40 with black hair and wore a tan colored suit.
There was no mention in the paper of sexual assault but that was the likely motive. Gail said the man gave her ginger ale and ice cream. She said they had traveled to the apartment in a taxi and then a bus. She wasn’t able to tell police much about where the apartment was located.
A joyful reunion followed between Gail and her parents.
Several people described seeing Gail walking with this man before they left her neighborhood. None of them intervened and asked him who he was. None of them prevented him from taking Gail. They all assumed that the two knew one another somehow. Gail did not appear upset. They assumed he was an uncle or friend of the family. They didn’t feel it was their place to say anything.
Was the same man involved in both crimes? I think it is very possible. A predator was living among these people. Gail was young enough that she could not relate much about her abductor. He would have read the papers though and taken note of how many people saw him and described him. Perhaps he learned from this and decided to be more stealthy next time.
He had abducted Gail in the daylight. He took her in a taxi and a bus. Many people could have seen them together. He was spotted leaving Gail in Mays Department Store. He might have realized how foolish he had been.
So, he abducted Beverly in the dark. Did he have a car this time? Perhaps he had borrowed a car that August night or bought a vehicle sometime between May and August.
Where did he take Beverly? Did he drag her into a garage or shed or abandoned building? Was her abductor part of the Show Wagon crew? Did he drive away with her out into the country? Why has she never been found?
Why did police not find the man after he kidnapped Gail? There were lots of eyewitnesses. Surely a sketch could have been produced and distributed. Often in those days if a woman or girl was raped but not killed police just sort of let it slide. The thinking was that no harm was done. As if two men had exchanged punches but both walked away. I think they probably said that Gail was alive and home. "No harm, no foul. Why ruin a man's life by arresting him?" (See my video or blogpost about Avril Terry's murder in Boonville, IN. 1960. Her killer had been let go time and time again over decades when all he had done was rape little girls. He served time for raping a boy though. For that crime they actually punished him.)
Beverly Potts' case is still open. If you have information about the disappearance of Beverly Rose Potts please call The Police Department in Cleveland non-emergency number at 216-621-1234.
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