Body discovered in Lowell
The following article was updated in the SouthCoast Today/ The Standard Times on January 11, 2011;
LOWELL, Mass. -- The body of a girl found partially covered with leaves and wood timbers in a city park was identified yesterday as Tabitha Potter, 11, who had been missing since Tuesday.
An autopsy confirmed the girl's identity, but authorities said that while the case is being investigated as a homicide, they were awaiting further tests before deciding on a cause of death. Detective John Guilfoyle said dental records were used in identifying her.
Police had focused their search on Shedd Park, where the body was found, since Tabitha was reported missing Tuesday night. She lived near the park and liked to play basketball there, police said. But it wasn't until Friday afternoon that a woman walking her dog discovered the body. The woman, who declined to give her name, told The Sun of Lowell that her Doberman pinscher pulled her into the woods towards a pile of wooden timbers. It was there, underneath the timbers, that the woman spotted an elbow and shoe-covered foot. The rest of the body had been covered with leaves that looked like they had been intentionally placed, the woman said. She then called to a passerby and the two of them reported the gruesome discovery to police. "I don't think I'll go back to that park for the rest of my life," the woman said Friday night, still visibly shaken hours after her discovery.
Tabitha had been raised by her father, Alan Potter, and grandmother, Shirley Gendreau, after her mother Melissa died shortly after Tabitha was born. Gendreau said she last saw Tabitha Tuesday afternoon when the girl put on some new school clothes and headed out of the house. The two had plans to go school shopping that evening, in preparation for the first day of school on Wednesday. She never made it.
Friday evening, after four days of frantic searching, Tabitha's stepmother Donna Potter said the family hoped the ordeal would soon be over. "We've had four days of not knowing where the hell she was," she said. "I said today, 'Please God, let me know so we can put it to rest.' I guess this way's better than thinking of her out there alone."
Tabitha attended fifth grade at the Butler Middle School last year and was scheduled to begin as a sixth-grader there on Wednesday.
Daniel Pinna 
Kathy Pinna 
