Elizabeth (Betty) Mann (1898? - 1941) lived most of her life in San Diego, according to the few newspaper accounts about her, though details about her life are murky. Her maiden name was Kent, and she sometimes went by the name Jessie. The San Diego Evening Tribune for September 29, 1919 contains an annnouncement of the marriage of Jessie Kent, 21, to Frederick Rowe Avery, 29. The couple had two children and divorced sometime around 1924. Betty Avery, as she was thenceforth known, was then involved in a local scandal when she and Dr. Edward C. Mann (1875? - 1937) were arrested on suspicion of violating city morals laws after being discovered together in Avery's apartment. Dr. Mann, a resident of San Diego since 1911, had been twice married. His first marriage, to Elizabeth P. Mann (nee Thomas), produced one child and ended sometime around 1914. In 1917 he married Elsa K. Johnson. Elsa divorced Mann in 1926 after discovering her husband's affair with Avery, who had been working as a nurse in Mann's office, according to newspaper reports. The charges against Mann and Avery were eventually dropped, and they married in 1926.

It is certain from correspondence and newspaper items that Betty Mann had a least one sister, Anita Baldwin of San Bernardino, and possibly another, one Billie Crane of Vallejo. Her uncle, Geo. W. Stafford, was a longtime patient at a hospital for epileptics in Parsons, Kansas, whom she visited on at least one ocassion in 1926. Edward C. Mann was a well-known physician and surgeon who, with his father, was one of two surgeons to attend to President William McKinley after he was shot in 1901. The couple's children and stepchildren include two sons, Darby Mann and Edward C. Mann Jr., and a daughter, Helen Mann.