ABOUT AUTHOR
JERRY ALLEN POTTER

Jerry Allen Potter was born on January 14, 1941 in Weslaco, Texas,  a farming community near the Mexican border and the Gulf of Mexico.  The eldest of five children and the son of a blacksmith, Mr. Potter began writing stories as a small child.  In his teen years, he worked as a sports stringer for five newspapers in the Texas area.  He also covered sports for the school paper, and soon landed a job doing the same for his hometown weekly. Mr. Potter attended Bethany Nazerene College (class of '64), earning a B.A. in Theology and Philosophy.  

There, he met and married Prebble Jordan, an Education major.  Upon graduation, Mr. Potter became an ordained minister, and served as a pastor until 1968 when he left the church to teach, also learning to write and paint.

For a brief period, he pursed a career as a book salesman for a distributor and publisher, then moved to Monterey, California (1975),  where he opened his own art gallery, painted marine works, and continued to write.

His first novel, Silence in Eden, was published by Crowell-Harper and Row in 1978.  Publisher's weekly reviewed the book, calling it "darkly erotic and powerfully written."  Over the next five years, Mr. Potter published three more novels, all mysteries:  A Talent for Dying, If I Should Die Before I Wake, and Needle.

His fifth book, Dalhart Windberg, Artist of Texas, was published by the University of Texas Press in 1984.  He then co-authored the book The Windberg Technique of Oil Painting, with Dalhart Windberg.

Soon afterward, Mr. Potter became interested in the MacDonald case.  He accepted a position as Sales Manager for a medical book distributor, in order to support himself while investigating the case.  He and co-author Fred Bost spent  twelve years conducting interviews, reading Freedom of Information Act releases of theretofore secret case files, and compiling the data necessary to write Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders.

We mourn the loss of Jerry Potter on June 25, 2004, after a valiant struggle with cancer.