00:00:01
She had missed a meeting and then not to hear from her, this isn't right. It would have been impossible to get up every day knowing that she was gone.
00:00:12
I had to believe we would find her alive. Text her. She always got right back. I've seen her step out the shower to answer her phone.
00:00:24
Then one day, she didn't. Immediately, my spidey senses were high. Where was Naila?
00:00:31
I sent her an email, all caps, are you alive? There was no sign of her and such a confusing trail of clues.
00:00:40
Even the calls to 911 were silent. No voice, no struggles could be heard. That's going to be kind of eerie.
00:00:47
Yes it is. In my heart, I knew she's not coming back. One of the suspects had an alibi until a camera caught him in a lie.
00:00:56
He lived a life of a lot of smoke and mirrors. And the strangest clue of all, there, in an empty parking lot.
00:01:04
Six perfectly stacked cardboard boxes. Why were they there? What was in them? It was right adjacent to a lagoon.
00:01:12
Whoa. I watch enough Dateline to know that's probably not a good sign. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
00:01:19
Here's Keith Morrison with Smoke and Mirrors. It wasn't like this, you have to understand.
00:01:32
It wasn't gray. It wasn't cold. No flecks of snow to drift and catch the bitter breeze.
00:01:39
No. No, it was hot, and it was late after midnight, September 27, 2007. Pretty secluded area next to a forest preserve.
00:01:49
So it was. And it was clear and dark and still and vacant. here where the deep wood fought back against the decaying suburban sprawl.
00:02:00
And then, nothing was clear at all. I remember crying this violent cry. You're experiencing everything, but it's not true.
00:02:10
You're just waiting to wake up. It just feels like you're in, literally like in a nightmare.
00:02:14
Yes, still does. The name you'll want to remember is Naila. The meaning was one who succeeds.
00:02:27
This is Naila's mother, Maria. I wanted her to be successful, and she was. She lived her name.
00:02:34
Quite true, as frankly have the rest of them in this big family. This is Leah, the firstborn.
00:02:41
We might need a graph on a chart because it's kind of involved. Full siblings, half siblings, quarter siblings once removed, that sort of thing.
00:02:53
Very blended. We share one parent, so technically half siblings, but that word is kind of offensive to me
00:02:59
because to me it implies that it's something less, and I've never felt that way.
00:03:04
I've never used that word. We're just siblings. One big, close, happy family. So said John, the youngest.
00:03:12
It's simple for us because, you know, we grew up together from the time we were young,
00:03:16
so for us it's like we're one big family. Not one, but two Ashleys. She's Ashley with the E, and the other one's Ashley with the Y.
00:03:23
That's this one. And imagine this. I think this is kind of unusual, kind of rare.
00:03:30
Yes. That everybody gets along. Yeah, everybody gets along. It's a good thing. Although when we were kids, it was a lot more crazy to other people.
00:03:40
Hi! And in the middle of this big family was Naila. Happy birthday, half. I love you.
00:03:46
Little moot, they used to call her. because once she decided something, all arguments against were moot.
00:03:55
She was very sure of herself from really the earliest time. Yes, Naila Franklin was going somewhere.
00:04:03
She was like my hero. I looked up to her. She always just accepted you for who you were.
00:04:07
It's almost like she glowed when she walked into a room. After college, Naila came home to Chicago
00:04:12
and began building a career eventually in pharmaceutical sales. At 28, she owned a condo in the heart of the city.
00:04:20
I think everything she wanted to be, she was. Just as a theme, fabulous, was the aspiration, and I think she definitely meant that mark.
00:04:28
But always, number one, really, she stayed in touch. Never failed. Call her, she'd call back right away.
00:04:37
Text her, she'd reply instantly, always. She managed to water all of her relationships.
00:04:44
She spent time with everyone. friends, family. That's a pretty special skill. Yeah, to manage that in your career.
00:04:53
There were men, of course there were, though she was, shall we say, discerning. The young men she
00:05:01
dated were of a caliber that, you know, we expected of her. What sort of guys did she like?
00:05:08
Successful, nice, respectable men. Professional men. She was dating a plastic surgeon guy,
00:05:14
and this guy and that guy. She took up briefly with a dashing investor who drove a white Bentley.
00:05:21
And then in July 2007, Naila attended an art gallery opening and he came. This lawyer from Milwaukee, Andre Wright.
00:05:32
She had a big, beautiful smile. She's a very pretty woman, very warm personality.
00:05:37
And we just kind of walked around the space looking at different pieces, talking about my interests.
00:05:44
what I was looking for in a piece of art. Obviously, I tried to engage her and suddenly this is a different search.
00:05:49
Yeah, I mean, the artwork became of little interest to me at that point. Just like that was all over for both of them You know I don want to go all Hallmark card on you or anything like that That okay But I mean this was clearly kind of a transcendental moment or something
00:06:08
Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Aila's family loved Andre. What family wouldn't? She brought him to my child's first birthday party. He brought my baby a gift.
00:06:18
I was like, who does that? Because he's a nice, quality person. They liked you. I think so, yeah.
00:06:25
Yeah. Due to her influence. You started planning on moving in together, right? On being together.
00:06:33
We did. And that was happening pretty fast. It felt good, though. I mean, it just felt natural.
00:06:38
It was long distance. He in Milwaukee, she in Chicago. They stayed connected by phone and email and text all day long.
00:06:47
I would call it every morning. And no one seemed to notice any dark force, any unseen thing festering in the heat of that hot late summer didn't feel the warning didn't
00:06:59
know who said what to whom it was september 18th a tuesday that tuesday morning i thought i had
00:07:06
called her on my way to work but i was interrupted and she called me and said hey what happened to
00:07:12
my call and i said oh i thought i had so we spoke for a bit exchanged emails later and uh
00:07:20
And then just kind of went about the day. Evening came. He, in the flush of love, called again.
00:07:27
No answer. Left her a message saying I was heading home and got a text message back from her phone
00:07:35
saying she was at a dinner and would reach out later. Wait a minute. You'd been calling her every day, talking all the time.
00:07:43
Yeah. And she said, I'm at dinner. I'll call you later. But she didn't. Then, 9 p.m., one of the Ashleys called Naila.
00:07:54
Naila who always picked up the phone for a sister. I got a text message that said something along the lines that I'm at dinner and I'll call you in a few.
00:08:03
Did that sound like her? No, it wasn't like her to not answer the phone. I've seen her step out the shower to answer her phone.
00:08:10
I send her an email, all caps. Are you alive? One of those half-in-gest, half-worried things you say
00:08:21
without knowing what a good question it was. Not only was Naila increasingly hard to reach,
00:08:30
even worse, she hadn't shown up for work that day. When we return... Immediately, my spidey senses were high.
00:08:39
And one more ominous sign. Three calls to 911 from her cell phone. No voice, no struggles could be heard, light music in the background.
00:08:49
It's going to be kind of eerie to hear that, huh? Yes, it is. September 19, 2007, dawned in Chicago like any other late summer day.
00:09:10
Hot, humid, windy. The usual. except for one thing. Naila Franklin, ambitious, dependable, and always on her phone,
00:09:20
was suddenly radio silent, even with her new love, Andre. I called her that morning, emailed her, called her again early afternoon.
00:09:30
And that's when he sent her that all-caps email, Are you alive? And you probably didn't mean it the way it really was.
00:09:38
No, it's like to say to someone, Are you there? At the end of the workday, big sister Leah did get a call.
00:09:45
Not from Naila, but from Naila's boss. He said she had missed a meeting. Immediately, my spidey senses were high.
00:09:53
So, of course, I tried to call her, didn't get her. So Leah called Naila's friends and her other siblings.
00:09:59
Had anyone heard from Naila? I didn't speak with her that day. I didn't speak with her the day before.
00:10:04
And I said, no, I haven't. I actually haven't. I've been really busy, and I haven't talked to her.
00:10:09
A cold fear took hold of Leah. She called the Chicago PD, filed a missing persons report.
00:10:15
And then she drove over to Naila's condo, knocked on the door. No answer. She got a key.
00:10:20
She went in. You see her eggs and coffee that she had just left there, just out.
00:10:26
Something's wrong. Just like, you know what? This isn't right. And then Leah got professional.
00:10:33
She knew how. She's a public relations executive. and she called every media contact she had.
00:10:39
You kind of went wide on this thing. Your PR impulse really kicked in. Yes. Leah's experience told her not to hope too much for media help
00:10:48
for one very unfortunate reason. Quite frankly, I don't know of a lot of women of color
00:10:57
or people of color who get the same attention by the public in general. You know, there's that old saw in the media business
00:11:05
And in fact, there's some truth to it. No, yeah. I think it's not just the sauce.
00:11:09
Yeah. The good looking young blonde goes missing and the whole world wants to know about it and stay talking about it for years.
00:11:17
Black woman's not quite the same deal. No. And there is reality to that. It troubles the mind that when people of color go missing, or if it doesn't fit the narrative of gun violence or gang violence or something like that, then somehow it's not real.
00:11:36
So Leah knew, but Leah was not to be denied. You decided they were damn well going to cover it.
00:11:42
Well, they were. And maybe this was because of Leah's media savvy. The next morning, Naila's picture was all over the news.
00:11:51
Flyers with her picture are taped to traffic posts and handed out to people passing by We were in the streets and putting up any place we could downtown suburbs They phoned and texted and emailed their friends
00:12:07
but no one reported seeing Naila. No one. Naila's sister kept replaying their last conversation.
00:12:16
She called me and she said, I've got something to tell you. And before she could tell me,
00:12:22
she got a call on the other line. And she clicked over and she said she'll call me back.
00:12:27
She didn't call you? She didn't call me back. Awful, but a person's mind could churn up in the dark.
00:12:34
As day one became two and then day three. I kept calling her and kept calling her.
00:12:39
I just kept thinking, she's going to answer, she's going to answer, she's going to answer.
00:12:42
There's no handbook for this, so you wake up and you think it's a bad dream. And no, it's still real.
00:12:47
The case of the missing pharmaceutical representative landed on the desks of Sergeant Mia Oliore and Detective Greg Jacobson
00:12:57
who, right away, scanned Naila's phone records and found something alarming. Just after 10 p.m., the night Naila vanished,
00:13:07
her cell phone made three calls to 911. Chicago Marginal. No voice, no struggles could be heard, no background noise with the exception of some light music in the background.
00:13:25
That's going to be kind of eerie to hear that, huh? Yes, it is. Is the person physically unable to complete the conversation and just able to dial a 911?
00:13:35
So the investigator set about talking to just about everybody Nayula knew. There was interviews completed through doctors she had visited to try to retrace her steps and people she had encountered.
00:13:46
A lot of people were talking. Of course, anyone that we knew had a relationship with her.
00:13:51
Maybe the SBR campaign helped because... We had some anonymous tips, people saying that they saw her at this location.
00:14:00
But not a single one of them led to Naila. By now, the detectives believed they were dealing with a serious crime.
00:14:08
And yet... She's missing. Technically, there hasn't been a crime committed. That makes it somewhat awkward when you're looking into it.
00:14:15
But anyone that we knew that had contact with her, the boyfriend that she was in Wisconsin with the weekend before she went missing, they were all interviewed.
00:14:22
That boyfriend from Wisconsin, Andre, had come to Chicago, was helping with the search, and soon was, perhaps, the subject of it.
00:14:32
They came to you. They did. The perfect boyfriend, now, to police, a perfectly obvious person of interest.
00:14:39
Coming up, a discovery in an empty parking lot. It was in a pretty secluded area right adjacent to a lagoon.
00:14:50
Woo. I watch enough Dateline to know that's probably not a good sign. A strange sight to be sure.
00:14:55
But what, if anything, did it have to do with Naila when Dateline continues? And there's this big search.
00:15:19
Yes. How overwhelming was that? You don't realize how the world seems so big when you're looking for someone.
00:15:28
Imagine, all of Chicago and Naila could be anywhere. Tied up in some basement, in the trunk of a car.
00:15:36
But worse. Then, middle of the night, 20 miles south of town at a place called Calumet City,
00:15:43
a local cop was on routine patrol checking out a golf course parking lot. His name is Calvin Lucius.
00:15:50
So as I got to this area right here, I noticed right in front of me six perfectly stacked cardboard boxes, you know, shipping boxes.
00:16:01
Sitting right there on the parking lot? Sitting right on the curb. So it stood out.
00:16:04
So I'm looking like something's not right here. Inside the boxes, pills, hundreds of them.
00:16:12
I was thinking, okay, this might be something big as far as, you know, some type of narcotics and drug-related case.
00:16:18
Except, look more like samples, something a pharmaceutical rep would have been handing out free to doctors.
00:16:25
What were they? Just different type of medicines. I can't even pronounce the names.
00:16:30
What were they doing here? On the label, the address to a storage locker, and a name, Naila.
00:16:40
And pretty soon... The FBI and Chicago police, everybody was out here looking. Including Detective Greg Jacobson.
00:16:48
It was in a pretty secluded area next to a forest preserve, which was right adjacent to a lagoon.
00:16:55
Whoa. I watched enough Dateline to know that's probably not a good sign. Was Naila down there in that murky water?
00:17:02
We had light trucks out there. They drudged the lagoon. Back and forth they went, scoured every inch of the pond and the thick woods behind it,
00:17:11
and found one weird thing. There was some jewelry that was on some of the bushes.
00:17:19
Pearls and such just hanging there. The cops checked with their friends. Look like Naila's, they said.
00:17:26
Except Naila wasn't here. But remember Sister Leah's PR campaign? Not far away from there, next town over.
00:17:35
The person saw a newscast and they were like, that car's been on my block for a couple days.
00:17:41
And thank God they saw that and thank God they cared enough to call it in. That call came from here, Hammond, Indiana, just down the road from Calumet three days after Naila vanished.
00:17:53
A black Chevy Impala We rushed out there to see it It was hers You open that trunk the last thing you want to think is that there something in that trunk
00:18:06
Unfortunately, there wasn't. You obviously do a workup on the vehicle. Did you find any prints, any DNA, anything useful at all?
00:18:13
I think our evidence technicians that processed it described it as it was wiped clean.
00:18:18
Including in the trunk? Yes. Yes. Believing somehow she might find her sister, the younger Ashley drove out there.
00:18:26
The car was parked in front of an abandoned house. And I went and I banged on the door and looked through the windows.
00:18:34
I screamed her name. I didn't want to leave. I had to be taken from that area. Of course, the cops canvassed the neighbors.
00:18:44
And what do you know? They had seen a male mulling around the vehicle and then enter another vehicle and leave.
00:18:52
And that was a few days prior to us actually locating the vehicle. Did they give you a good description?
00:18:56
A male African-American, thin build. That description might have fit a lot of people in Naila's life.
00:19:03
Like, for example, her new boyfriend, Andre Wright. Police had questioned him right away, of course, about their relationship and where he was when she disappeared.
00:19:12
And they asked about when last time I saw her was, last time we spoke. Or could that man mulling around the car have been someone else,
00:19:21
like that previous boyfriend, the investor? His name was Reginald Potts. But before the cops could find him, he stepped up and called them.
00:19:30
He wanted to know why the Chicago police wanted to talk with him. He agreed to stop by headquarters for a talk.
00:19:38
He gives us a lot of information. He'd met her a year earlier, he told them, by pure chance, really, on the street in the ritzy Gold Coast.
00:19:47
She was sophisticated, so was he. They dated briefly, realized it wasn't for life.
00:19:53
Though a girl could do worse, what with his white Bentley and duplex overlooking the lake.
00:19:59
He lives in a very large apartment complex at High Rice. Nice place. Beautiful. In an upscale area in the city.
00:20:05
It's where you want to live. Wow. Reginald told them everything he did the day Naido vanished.
00:20:11
Everywhere he went, very detailed. The day's events, early evening shopping with friends at Target,
00:20:17
bar hopping later with not one but two girlfriends, separately of course. And after that, an intimate plan with a third girlfriend.
00:20:27
They make arrangements to meet at Reginald's apartment around midnight on the 18th.
00:20:32
This guy gets around. If you got a Bentley, your options are open. I guess so. As investigators headed off to check Reginald Potts' alibi,
00:20:42
down in Calumet City, Officer Calvin Lucius was again cruising vacant parking lots,
00:20:48
this time a mile or so from where he found those boxes, when a partner noticed something.
00:20:54
He saw a pair of earbuds hanging from the tree. Bright little baubles showed up in the dark.
00:21:00
What else was in that abandoned place? At the edge of the midnight woods. Coming up, it's now a different type of investigation, and detectives take a closer look at a man from Naila's past.
00:21:16
She sensed there was something off about him. It's a grassroots effort by family and friends.
00:21:34
for all the frantic activity, the phone calls, the flyers, the organized looking about.
00:21:40
It was a rare quiet time, nine days in, when Naila Franklin's sister felt it. We had a prayer service at our church.
00:21:49
In my heart, I knew, I was like, you know what, she's not coming back. And that very night, in the 3 a.m. hush of Calumet City,
00:21:59
night patrol officer Calvin Lucius felt his way past the glittering earbuds his partner saw hanging from a tree
00:22:05
to the inky black fringe of forest at the back of a long-abandoned parking lot behind a derelict video store.
00:22:14
I probably got like maybe right around in this area and just looked over, and the body was there.
00:22:20
What was that moment like? Shock. You don't know if it's her or not, but you have an idea because it's a female body.
00:22:28
They had to resort to dental records to confirm it was Naila. I think this type of death, it doesn't just kill that person.
00:22:37
It kills a lot in the family. It's the absence of a piece of you because that person's not here.
00:22:45
I can't describe it. It's like you know it's happening, but it just doesn't feel real.
00:22:52
It just feels like you're literally in a nightmare. An autopsy confirmed. The death was by asphyxiation.
00:22:59
So now it was homicide. But who was the killer? Not Andre. Confirmed he was in Milwaukee when Naila vanished.
00:23:09
Everything with him checked out. As for being questioned. Are you upset by it? Not at all. No. They should have done that. That was part of doing their job.
00:23:18
So what about that investor, Reginald Potts, the one who had been so helpful? Well, this was curious.
00:23:25
When the detectives went to visit his high-rise apartment, they couldn't help but notice.
00:23:30
The exterior to one of the doors was extremely damaged. like it had been forced open.
00:23:35
Huh. That's weird. Maybe not so weird, there was an explanation. Reginald Potts was recently visited by members of the Cook County Sheriff's Department
00:23:47
in an attempt to evict Reginald Potts. Of course, this was 2007. Lots of people were falling behind on their mortgages.
00:23:56
But by the look of it, Reginald's ran deeper than that. He was constantly in default.
00:24:03
Fifteen pairs of Gucci shoes and not a bed to sleep on. Not a bed to sleep on? A mattress.
00:24:10
No furniture. Not a pot or pan in the kitchen, but yet, what he believed were important items to surround himself with.
00:24:20
Cars, clothing, high-end restaurants. They're for show. The Bentley, it turned out, belonged to somebody else.
00:24:30
And Reginald juggled girlfriends and hookups and an ex-wife who was raising one of his children
00:24:35
and an ex-girlfriend with whom he'd had another. Didn't take Naila long to figure it out, or so her friends told the police.
00:24:42
She sensed there was something off about him, and that's probably where she decided to, you know, look a little deeper.
00:24:51
So she ended it. And as she did, she warned whomever she could about Reginald, even one of his other girlfriends.
00:25:00
Watch out for this guy. He's bad news. And he's cheating on you. Yeah, they were in communication about Reginald.
00:25:08
Naila told Andre that when Reginald found out, he wasn't happy. He got wind of that and reached out to Naila in a threatening manner.
00:25:18
Sent her nasty emails and voicemails. Did she worry about that a lot? She didn't exhibit any worries to me about it.
00:25:30
But she must have been worried. Detectives found a report that Naila had called a non-emergency police phone number,
00:25:36
asked about filing an order of protection against a threatening ex-boyfriend. She mentioned Mr. Potts.
00:25:43
So yes, Reginald Potts was a murder suspect. But he wasn't exactly hiding from the police.
00:25:50
Remember, he'd given them a very detailed alibi to check out. He's pretty specific on where he's at.
00:25:58
And as the weeks went by, he seemed quite eager to help. And he continuously called me on my cell phone.
00:26:05
Really? Yes. Called you to tell you what? Try to direct an investigation. Why haven't we talked to Hugh Eccles and Castor Eccles?
00:26:13
His friends, the Eccles, were with him much of the day, he said. They were at a Target store, shopping.
00:26:21
And sure enough, Mr. Eccles confirmed his account. There they are on surveillance cameras at the Target store, which would seem to exclude Potts as a suspect.
00:26:32
If he was shopping, he wasn't kidnapping and killing Naila. But this was curious.
00:26:38
For some reason, Reginald did not show up on camera. So if you're ever going to commit a crime, do not do it at Target,
00:26:44
because they're going to have everything down to your sign, your transaction on the keypad.
00:26:49
Very clear. Meaning, either he managed somehow to avoid every camera in the store,
00:26:56
or his friend lied for him. So they hauled Reginald's buddy down to the station,
00:27:01
and after a few go-rounds, he admitted not only that Reginald wasn't at the target, but...
00:27:07
He did receive a phone call from Reginald Potts, and then traveled to Hammond in order to pick him up because he needed a ride.
00:27:15
Hammond, Indiana, the town where Naila's car was found. On the 6th of December 2007, Reginald Potts was arrested for the murder of Naila Franklin.
00:27:29
But Reginald, quite vehemently, denied killing her. This is the evidence, okay? We can put you in the fabrication.
00:27:38
Fabrication? Yes, said Reginald. He was being framed. Coming up, a suspect bears all.
00:27:49
Why are you taking the clothes off? Because I am. What's that? Because I am. Okay.
00:27:54
But would he reveal the truth when Dateline continues? Here we are in a little room in a Chicago police station.
00:28:12
Let's see that as what you say. Reginald Potts is under arrest for the murder of Naila Franklin.
00:28:17
The detectives are certain they have their man. But Mr. Potts? Everything I have adamantly denied that I was ever there period Reginald Potts appears to be insulted they even asked And I can tell you you lying
00:28:33
Naila? He was nowhere near her, he said, the day she vanished. Listen to me, I was not in her apartment on the 18th period.
00:28:42
Or her building. Or a apartment building. Of course, they told him. They had evidence.
00:28:47
A police frame-up to which the detectives said, Yes, including Naila's apartment building.
00:29:12
and there is Reginald, plain as day, with Naila, arriving and leaving with her. On that very day, she disappeared.
00:29:22
So you knew he was there? Yes. But Reginald doubled down on his denial. I am certain that I am nowhere near
00:29:30
inside of Naila Franklin's apartment building. Accused the police of fabricating evidence.
00:29:36
And if you have, you have been very creative with Photoshop. I guarantee you cannot bring me getting off in an elevator at Naila Franklin's house.
00:29:45
If you have, you've been very creative with Photoshop. He talked and talked, denied and denied.
00:29:51
We can put you in the investigation. All without any apparent desire for an attorney.
00:29:57
But when they asked him to stand in a lineup so witnesses could have a look. There's no lawyer here that can bear with us on what is going on.
00:30:06
who's speaking to whom in the lineup room, the person who's hearing me, I definitely would not feel comfortable.
00:30:11
There's a lawyer here, a state's attorney here from No County. A state's attorney is not representing the people
00:30:16
and representing the case. I would not feel comfortable at all, at all. So, they waited for Reginald's attorney to arrive.
00:30:25
And then, it got odd. Reginald, the attorney's right there? Yes, sir. Why are you taking the clothes off?
00:30:34
Because I... What's that? Okay. Your attorney's right here. We want to take you for a lineup right now.
00:30:43
Will you step in the other way? Reginald removed all his clothing and refused to stand in the lineup.
00:30:49
That's an interesting tactic. Yes. Have you ever seen that before? No. So, no lineup.
00:30:58
But they charged him anyway with capital murder. Naila, by then, had been dead three months.
00:31:04
I was definitely relieved. I was kind of surprised that it took so long, but I was relieved.
00:31:10
Relieved, too, that Reginald Potts, as was his right, demanded a speedy trial. But then...
00:31:18
Reginald Potts used every resource at his disposal to delay the process. NBC Chicago's Charlie Wojciowski watched in something like amazement
00:31:28
as Reginald turned speedy justice into something else altogether. He hired lawyers. He fired lawyers.
00:31:36
He tried to act as his own attorney. At each step of the process, the trial itself had to be reset.
00:31:43
One, two, three years passed that way. In the fourth year after the murder, Illinois abolished capital punishment,
00:31:50
so that was off the table. And still, Reginald's actions forced delays. This is one of the most bizarre cases we've seen in Chicago.
00:31:59
Just as Naila's family had reached out to the media, Reginald Potts tried to launch a PR campaign from behind bars.
00:32:09
His family reached out trying to convince me that there may be some way that he's not associated with this crime, that it might be someone else,
00:32:16
that there was a rush to judgment. He talked to a newspaper columnist who wrote sympathetically about his treatment in jail.
00:32:23
And every delay, every manipulation was slow torture. I very much believe that everyone should have a fair and just trial and that too often people who are poor or people of color do not or most often they don't get proper representation and they don't get a fair shake in our court system.
00:32:43
But this was not that. And then finally on October 28 2015 on a crisp fall day in Chicago the state versus Reginald Potts began It had taken eight years to get here Cook County Assistant State attorneys
00:33:02
Maria McCarthy and Fabio Valentini, brought the case against Potts. This was a case with no eyewitnesses,
00:33:11
no confession, no video of the crime, no physical evidence linking Reginald Potts to the crime,
00:33:16
and a cause of death that was based on primarily exclusion. We don't try many cases like that.
00:33:25
And not many cases with a defendant quite like Reginald Potts. Coming up, an accused killer's defense.
00:33:37
I'm not a monster. He's smarter than the average criminal, but not as smart as he thinks he is.
00:33:42
And after eight years, a verdict. What really tormented me all these years is that there's a possibility that justice won't be done.
00:34:05
For eight years, Laila Franklin's family struggled through their incomplete grief.
00:34:10
What really tormented me all these years is that there's a possibility that justice won't be done.
00:34:18
There was no real forensic evidence, only circumstantial things. Though, according to the prosecutors, there was a whole smorgasbord of proof.
00:34:28
That video of Reginald Potts with Na'ila the day she vanished? The video at the Target store that did not show him and thus blew up his alibi.
00:34:39
Naila's friends testified she showed them emails and played a voicemail in which he threatened her.
00:34:45
Naila played that voicemail for them because she was so terrified. And essentially, in that voicemail, he said to Naila,
00:34:53
I'm going to have you erased. I'm going to make you disappear. In fact, said the prosecutors, that's exactly what he did.
00:35:02
Snuck into her building, led her terrified to the garage, where he strangled her, stuffed her body in the trunk of her own car.
00:35:11
And how did they know he took her out to the suburbs to dump her body and her car?
00:35:16
Cell towers linked their phones together like a trail of breadcrumbs. From the moment that they walked out of that vestibule to the garage,
00:35:26
she's not seen by anybody, she's not calling anybody, she's not answering calls,
00:35:31
her texts are all odd, but her phone and his phone are together. lockstep the entire rest of the day.
00:35:38
Right to the abandoned video store, behind which they finally found Naila's body.
00:35:44
No coincidence he chose that particular spot so far from Chicago, said the prosecutors.
00:35:49
And we find out that the video Mac store is owned by Potts' brother-in-law. His friend, the alibi witness,
00:35:55
now testified for the prosecution that, yes, he initially lied for Reginald, but didn't know it was to cover up a murder.
00:36:03
And remember those three strange hang-up calls to 911 and those odd texts her family and boyfriend received? It was Reginald Potts using
00:36:12
Naila's phone hours after he murdered her, said the prosecution. A clever killer's attempt to throw
00:36:19
off a missing person's investigation. He's smarter than the average criminal, but not as smart as he
00:36:25
thinks he is. But Reginald Potts was nothing if not strategic. His defense was to refute their
00:36:33
evidence and discredit the prosecution. Defense attorneys need to create reasonable doubt. In this
00:36:39
case, it was very difficult to determine cause of death. So immediately the defense is going to rush
00:36:44
to that idea and say, well, you can't really tell how they died. And it's little things like that
00:36:49
in the hopes that one juror or two jurors will latch on to that and say, I can't convict. They even
00:36:54
disputed the cell phone evidence the prosecution believed since the case. The defense has alleged
00:36:59
that the idea that you can triangulate a cell phone signal based on the cell it pings on a tower is somehow flawed.
00:37:07
After two weeks of testimony and argument, the jury had the case. Did Reginald's arguments persuade them?
00:37:13
Two hours and 15 minutes after they began, the jury answered no. They pronounced Reginald Potts guilty of first murder I was so relieved It like okay that passed Now it the next thing
00:37:30
The next thing was sentencing nearly four months later. Still waiting and hoping he doesn't get like four years or something stupid like that.
00:37:40
But again, they had no idea what was this man all about. There was a hearing to help the judge make a decision.
00:37:49
about sentence. Normally just arguments, recommendations from both sides. But not this
00:37:56
time. The prosecution called 35 witnesses to tell the judge a hair-raising story about Reginald Potts.
00:38:05
Reginald was not quite the gold-plated success story he appeared to be. He lived a life of a lot
00:38:10
of smoke and mirrors. He's a con man who fooled a lot of people. And when the con man was challenged,
00:38:16
Everybody, even law enforcement, was a target. He would kill me, he would kill my family, my family would never be safe.
00:38:24
He was struck three times by Mr. Potts in the face. He spent much of his adult life in prison, where he assaulted guards.
00:38:32
I was struck in the right eye by Titani Potts. All of that was too prejudicial to present a trial, but now absolutely relevant.
00:38:41
And he took her back by the elevator, and I heard, slap! This guy has been an absolute menace his entire adult life.
00:38:48
Do you see Mr. Potts in court today? And when a woman stood up to him, witness after witness testified that Reginald betrayed them, bullied them, and much worse.
00:38:57
He choked her, choked her out, and threw her on the bed. This guy not only had a propensity for violence against women, but he had a propensity specifically to choke and strangle them.
00:39:07
He's a sociopath. He lies as easily as he breathes about anything, no matter how stupid.
00:39:14
If he tells you what time it is, look at your watch. That bad, huh? Yes. The guy's a monster.
00:39:22
A monster who, however briefly, fooled even the sophisticated, successful Naila to her mother's eternal sorrow.
00:39:31
You don't know who you're letting into your life. They don't always come looking like a monster.
00:39:39
There's a kind of ceremony about these things. Everyone gets to talk. Nayela's murder stole from our community of right life.
00:39:49
Nightmare still taunt me with her screaming, moaning and reaching out, begging for her life.
00:39:55
But Reginald, Reginald cried, denied everything. The jury of my peers came back with the verdict that I believe is false.
00:40:05
And I believe it is invalid. And I believe that a court of appeals will overturn that.
00:40:08
But for now, this court has to honor what they said and impose a sentence. But I tell you, Your Honor, I am not the person that Ms. McCarthy has tried to paint in this courtroom.
00:40:22
I'm not a monster. I'm not a monster. We waited to see if the judge would buy Reginald's story or the prosecutor's, and here it was.
00:40:35
You are a cold, calculating, conniving coward of a con man who must be punished.
00:40:46
And indeed he was, life without parole. Take him away. So, that was justice. The most Naiva's family could hope for, terribly important, and strangely empty.
00:41:01
It's still not done. She's still not back. You still can't talk with her? No. They try to remember Naila not as a murder victim,
00:41:12
but as the beautiful young woman she was, the vibrant center of her family. But grief, real and painful, comes to visit every day.
00:41:23
You know, people will say, oh, well, she's your spirit and she's your angel and she's in a better place and all this other stuff.
00:41:29
I'm like, yeah, but I want her here. I don't want my 28-year-old sister to be my angel.
00:41:35
I want her to be right here in the thick of it with me. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
00:41:45
Thanks for joining us.