In theory, it could have been administratively closed because the suspect was dead, but with all that supposed evidence I would think they would let the community know that there was no longer a killer out there. This lack of clarification on the part of law enforcement irked me. Was the case closed or wasn’t it? Did they have positive proof that Potter was the killer or were they only guessing it could be him and no one was challenging their assumption?
I decided to talk to the Potter family. When I told Michael’s parents that I thought their son might be innocent of the murder of Anne Kelley, they welcomed me into their home.
The story they told me was really sad. They were grieving over their son’s suicide, and then five months later the police showed up and insinuated that he killed Anne Kelley. The family was stunned. Why would they accuse their son of doing that? It’s bad enough that a child committed suicide, but then to be told that he sexually assaulted and murderered a woman was another thing altogether.
They said he was always a sweet kid, that they didn’t see any violence in him. Michael wasn’t perfect; he had dropped out of school, and he did have a problem with his girlfriend. He was depressed. He felt like a failure. They believed that was why he killed himself. They couldn’t believe he had anything to do with Anne’s death.
I asked if I could see the autopsy report, and they gave it to me.
There was nothing in the autopsy about any briar marks or scratches anywhere on that boy’s body. The medical examiner should have noted such abrasions if he saw that trauma, however minor. Instead, outside of the damage caused by the actual shotgun blast, the rest of the body was “unremarkable.”
Then I wondered about the rest of what I had heard—whether there was actually blond hair and DNA found that matched Michael.
It turned out that neither existed. That’s why the police couldn’t announce that Michael Potter murdered Anne Kelley. They didn’t have any physical evidence connecting him to the crime, only that he conveniently committed suicide five days later.
I called Anne Kelley’s father, and he said that the police told him that Michael Potter killed his daughter and he was told about the scratches and the matching DNA and hair.
He chose to believe the police, and in his mind, there was nothing more to discuss. He didn’t want to hear anything about it from me or anyone else. He said his wife was satisfied hearing that Michael Potter killed their daughter. She accepted it because believing it gave her closure.
“I don’t want you to ever contact my family again, and if you do, I’ll sue you,” he told me.
And that was the last time I spoke to the Kelley family.
I understood if the police couldn’t develop evidence that Walt was the killer. They had to have evidence; without that, they couldn’t charge him with a crime. Although I thought that the police mishandled the case, I wouldn’t want them to arrest someone without probable cause. That would be another miscarriage of justice.
I could even live with the fact that they thought Michael Potter had something to do with it, if enough of the evidence supported such a conclusion.
But when they pinned the crime on him and told the grieving families of both Michael Potter and Anne Kelley, that crossed the line for me. That, to me, was inexcusable.
Why wouldn’t they do their job? Why didn’t they just bring Waltin and interview him? Why didn’t they take a DNA sample from him? And if they still couldn’t bring a case and an alleged perpetrator to court, then at least they would have tried.
In my opinion, if anyone stopped to compare the evidence supporting Walt Williams’s possible involvement in the murder and the evidence supporting Michael Potter’s, they would have a few short lines on Potter’s side of the paper and a whole lot of lines on Williams’s side. But for some reason—for some yet unclear reason—I
I decided to talk to the Potter family. When I told Michael’s parents that I thought their son might be innocent of the murder of Anne Kelley, they welcomed me into their home.
The story they told me was really sad. They were grieving over their son’s suicide, and then five months later the police showed up and insinuated that he killed Anne Kelley. The family was stunned. Why would they accuse their son of doing that? It’s bad enough that a child committed suicide, but then to be told that he sexually assaulted and murderered a woman was another thing altogether.
They said he was always a sweet kid, that they didn’t see any violence in him. Michael wasn’t perfect; he had dropped out of school, and he did have a problem with his girlfriend. He was depressed. He felt like a failure. They believed that was why he killed himself. They couldn’t believe he had anything to do with Anne’s death.
I asked if I could see the autopsy report, and they gave it to me.
There was nothing in the autopsy about any briar marks or scratches anywhere on that boy’s body. The medical examiner should have noted such abrasions if he saw that trauma, however minor. Instead, outside of the damage caused by the actual shotgun blast, the rest of the body was “unremarkable.”
Then I wondered about the rest of what I had heard—whether there was actually blond hair and DNA found that matched Michael.
It turned out that neither existed. That’s why the police couldn’t announce that Michael Potter murdered Anne Kelley. They didn’t have any physical evidence connecting him to the crime, only that he conveniently committed suicide five days later.
I called Anne Kelley’s father, and he said that the police told him that Michael Potter killed his daughter and he was told about the scratches and the matching DNA and hair.
He chose to believe the police, and in his mind, there was nothing more to discuss. He didn’t want to hear anything about it from me or anyone else. He said his wife was satisfied hearing that Michael Potter killed their daughter. She accepted it because believing it gave her closure.
“I don’t want you to ever contact my family again, and if you do, I’ll sue you,” he told me.
And that was the last time I spoke to the Kelley family.
I understood if the police couldn’t develop evidence that Walt was the killer. They had to have evidence; without that, they couldn’t charge him with a crime. Although I thought that the police mishandled the case, I wouldn’t want them to arrest someone without probable cause. That would be another miscarriage of justice.
I could even live with the fact that they thought Michael Potter had something to do with it, if enough of the evidence supported such a conclusion.
But when they pinned the crime on him and told the grieving families of both Michael Potter and Anne Kelley, that crossed the line for me. That, to me, was inexcusable.
Why wouldn’t they do their job? Why didn’t they just bring Waltin and interview him? Why didn’t they take a DNA sample from him? And if they still couldn’t bring a case and an alleged perpetrator to court, then at least they would have tried.
In my opinion, if anyone stopped to compare the evidence supporting Walt Williams’s possible involvement in the murder and the evidence supporting Michael Potter’s, they would have a few short lines on Potter’s side of the paper and a whole lot of lines on Williams’s side. But for some reason—for some yet unclear reason—I
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