July 7, 2025 • 48 mins
Nailah Franklin was a young pharmaceutical sales rep for Eli Lilly. Until September 2007, she was casually dating Reginald Potts, a 32-year-old businessman. The two broke up when Nailah learned about Reginald’s lengthy criminal history and sexual relationships with other women. But, unfortunately, things did not end there.
Join us at the quiet end for our rewatch of Smoke & Mirrors. In this episode of Dateline Unforgettable, Keith Morrison looks back at the case of a Chicago woman from a big family who went missing. Investigators began to suspect a man in her life who was full of secrets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-brewery--4126935/support.
Record your voicemail at tiegrabber.com for our feedback segment or send us an email to truecrimebrewery@tiegrabber.com
We love receiving your feedback and most of our case choices come from listener suggestions!
Join us at the quiet end for our rewatch of Smoke & Mirrors. In this episode of Dateline Unforgettable, Keith Morrison looks back at the case of a Chicago woman from a big family who went missing. Investigators began to suspect a man in her life who was full of secrets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-brewery--4126935/support.
Record your voicemail at tiegrabber.com for our feedback segment or send us an email to truecrimebrewery@tiegrabber.com
We love receiving your feedback and most of our case choices come from listener suggestions!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery. Ty Grabbers, I'm Jill and
with me as always is the.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
One and only Reshod. I'm big.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yes. So today we just decided we'd stop by and
talk a little bit about an episode of Dateline Unforgettable
that we watched a couple days ago and enjoyed it,
and I thought, hey, let's chat about that. So, yeah,
Keith Morrison is the correspondent, but that's just a coincidence.
I didn't know that when we started watching it.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
You say that, yes, but I have my doubts.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
But he's very poetic in this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah. This episode's titled Smoke and Mirrors, and it's about
a young woman who was named Naila, Naila Franklin. Yeah,
so after midnight September twenty seventh, in two thousand and seven,
it's a clear, dark, still hot night in a vacant
wooded area where the deep wood fought back against suburban sprawl.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Well that's a quote from Keith yes, you can't.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Still, I'm not going to take credit for that.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Okay, but this is basically where the nightmare began.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yes, it is. And Keith says that the working title
for this episode was Naila's nickname, which is little Moot.
So why do they call her that?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I think it was pretty cute. It was because when
she argued or made up her mind about something, arguing
against her was moot, right, so they called her little Moot.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Little Moot.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, so her mother named her Nayila, she said, because
it means one who succeeds, and Naila was very successful.
Her mom, Maria wanted her to be happy and successful,
of course, like most mothers do. And this was a
large blended family. She had full siblings, half siblings, quarter siblings,
(02:20):
but they didn't like to be called step or half.
They just liked to be siblings. They were very close,
and one of the sisters said that it kind of
minimizes or lessens the relationship they had to call them
half sisters because it implies that it's something less, and
that's what we do in our blended family too. We
don't say step or half or any of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
No, they're all sibs.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Right, exactly, just a close, happy family.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
So the youngest one that was John says that they
grew up together in a big, happy family. And there's
even two Ashley's in it. There's an Ashley ending and
actually ending with a y.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, and apparently everyone got along and Naila she was
right in the middle. She was called little Moot because
you couldn't argue with her. It was moot. And her
sister Ashley with a Y tells Keith that Naila was
very sure of herself even from a young age, so
very brave, outgoing, sure of herself and actually kind of
(03:23):
a hero to many of them because they knew she
was going places in life and doing good things.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Well, she continued education. She graduated high school and went
to college, so right there, that's.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
An inspiration absolutely.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
So after she went to college, Nayila moved back to
Chicago and began a career with a pharmaceutical company. So
she was a pharmaceutical sales rep, which means that you
get to make office calls on doctors and their staff
try to convince them to use your product.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So she was able to buy her own condo in
the city by.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Age twenty eight, yeah, so she must to have been
fairly successful.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah. But things in the pharmaceutical sales kind of changed
over time, right, because you have some stories of just
some crazy stuff that used to happen.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I don't know about crazy.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, things that would be illegal now.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
It used to be a lot more liberal, yes, in
terms of how the pharmataceutical companies spent their money, and
you could get a lot of benefits.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
From them if you were a doctor, if.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You're as a doctor.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Not us folks, Oh no, not as nurses. We didn't
get shit.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Nah, gotta be the doctor, right right, So just as
an example, I do.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So there's a company called gen and Tech and they
make growth hormone. Uh huh, that's one of their products,
which is a pediatric thing, right, Yeah, And I used
to prescribe growth hormone, and then of course they wanted
me to prescribe gen and Tech's growth hormone. So we
had a yearly meeting, big meeting with speakers and all
(04:58):
the food and drink you could want. They fly you
to and from the meeting, take you on a trip
during the meeting, a little side trip. You could even
bring a significant other. Now, over time it started to
get less attractive. So the first thing that went was
that significant others didn't get to go for free just
(05:19):
the doctor. I mean, it's a lot of stuff that
you could do, but they I don't think they do
that anymore. I haven't been on one of those things
in years.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Well, I mean there could be some ethical problems with
it now, I think you think, do you think, Yeah,
you know, if you're paying someone off to prescribe your drug,
it's really doesn't seem very legit, although it was legal
back then, back in the day. Yeah. So now though,
when Naila was working, they still would bring samples of
drugs to the doctors, and I think it's still like
(05:50):
buy you lunch and stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Right, they could, and they still can as far as
I know. But it's just it's not like we'll take
you to a first class restaurant. We'll come by with
some sandwiches and feed you.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Right, that type of thing. Yeah, where did the glamour go? Huh? So,
according to her siblings and her mom, Naila was very
good at staying in touch and returning calls, so kind
of the opposite of me. I hate returning calls.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Yeah, I don't even call you.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Well, you don't because we live together.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
I just show up and there you are.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well you need to because I am not good at
answering calls. I'll answer a text. I just have this
feeling when I return a call, Oh shit, how long
am I going to be stuck on this?
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And then I want to kind of have something else
to do, like multitask, so I'm not wasting my time
on the phone, which I shouldn't think that way, but
I do. And I'm like, oh, what could I be
doing to be productive while I'm on that call? Anyway?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
That's me.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That was not Naila, much better person than I am.
Always texting and calling right back. And even though she
had a really big family and a lot of friends,
she always was able to keep in touch. So she
made that effort she did, which must meet. It meant
something to her.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well, yeah, I think you did. And Naila dated different men,
but she was pretty discerning. She liked professionals like doctors
and businessmen. She is briefly seeing a handsome investor. The
impressive thing about him, I think was that he drove
a white Bentley, although that wasn't impressive to Nahila.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Nayila, I don't know I mean she started seeing him
in July and it was very short lived.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
He didn't last long.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
No, Then she met a lawyer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin when
she was at an art show and opening for an artist,
and his name was Andre White. Super handsome guy. Would
you agree, Yeah, I would. Very well spoken, very handsome,
nicely dressed. Seems like he and Nayila would have been
a good match.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah. They were a good looking couple, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Absolutely, she's gorgeous. So Andre sits down to talk with
Keith Morrison and he describes Nayila as beautiful with a big,
warm smile, and he talks about when he first met her.
They were walking around the art opening and talking about
their interests, and Keith says to Andrea, this was a
(08:10):
transcendental moment. He's so poetic. And Andrea agrees. Also, Nayla's
family loved Andrea, and why wouldn't you. He was a
successful attorney, handsome, kind, everything that you would want for
your daughter, really, at.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Least a first look.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, well yeah, and he.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Was seen as just a nice quality guy. Yep.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Nayla actually brought him to a niece's birthday party and
he brought her a gift, So that really got him
some points with the family.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Well, that will get you a lot of points, that's
for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And things were moving along pretty quickly. They were even
talking about moving in together eventually. It just felt really natural.
Andre tells Keith, but it was long distance. He lived
in Milwaukee and she lived in Chicago, and they both
had pretty big career.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, so if the relationship was continuing or going to continue,
at some point, they were going to have to decide.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Who moves where exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, But for now, it's just a nice relationship, a
long distance relationship. But it was. It was a good,
good relationship.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yep. They would actually text throughout the day and then
like text good morning, text good night. So it was
pretty close, it seems like, even though it was long distance.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So according to Andrea, he called Naila every morning and
everything sounded good. No one noticed any problems on the horizon,
and Keith talks about any dark force. There was nothing
like that festering in the heat in Chicago. There were
no warnings heard, and who knows who knows who said
(09:50):
what to whom? Right, that's right. So let's go to
September eighteenth, two thousand and seven, which was a Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
That was a Tuesday, and Andre did something that was
a rarity. He missed it the morning call. He was
preoccupied with work. Then Nayila called and said, hey, what
happened to my call? So they spoke for a little
bit and later on they exchanged emails.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, Andre had his normal work day and then in
the evening he called Nayila again, but now there was
no answer, and this was pretty much unheard of, right,
she would answer her phone.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, they always got an answer.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So he left a message saying he was heading home
from work, and he got a text message telling him
that she was at dinner and she would reach out later,
which was a little weird. And then she never did,
which was very weird and concerning.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
It was and further concerning. At nine o'clock, her sister
actually called Nayila and she also got a message saying
that she was at dinner and would call her back.
But it just wasn't like Nayila did not answer a phone.
In fact, her sister had seen her jump out of
the show shower to answer her phone.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So Andre sent her an email in all caps, are
you alive? Now? This was half in Jess's but half
worried comment. You know how you do just to say
to somebody, hey, where are you? But he was actually
getting a bit worried, of course, though at the time
he had no idea what a significant question this would
turn out to be. Yeah, that's right, which is horrible.
(11:24):
So the next day, September nineteenth, it was dawn in Chicago.
It was summer, so it was the usual heat, humidity,
and wind. But Naila, ambitious, dependable and always on her phone,
had just gone silent. Even her new love Andre hadn't
heard from her that day.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yes, she's just vanished. Nobody's heard anything from her.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
No, so big sister Leah didn't get a call from Nayila,
but she got a call from Naila's boss. Naila had
missed a work meeting. Now this is not something she
would ever do, not ever have to be on her deathbed,
she did not miss work. So immediately her sister was
very alarmed. She tried to call Nayila but couldn't get
(12:09):
hold of her. So she called the other siblings and
some of Nayla's friends, asking if anyone had heard from her,
But no one had spoken to her. In over twenty
four hours now, and Leah felt a real cold chill
of fear at that point, knowing that something just wasn't right.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So Leah called the Chicago police and found a missing
persons report. Then she drove over to Nayhela's condo. No
one answered the door. We was able to get a
key and went inside. Eggs and coffee had been left
out on the counter, but no sign of Nayila.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
So how worried would you be?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I'd be very majorly worried at this point. Yes, we
know how faithful she was answering and returning calls exactly.
The fact that she hasn't for almost twenty four hours,
that's a concern, big concern.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Well, I mean, we do read and hear a lot
of true crime stories, and it's the people who are
in constant contact that get found sooner, or people discover
something's wrong sooner. If you're one of these people who
talks to their family every week or two or even
every month, it could be a long time before anything happens.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Oh sure could?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I mean, even with her job, how many jobs are
really going to do a welfare check right away? They're
going to wait?
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, puts this woman's in her twenties, yeah, twenty eight.
Not like she's a high school kid or a grade
school kid.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
No, she's a professional woman, very responsible. So her sister, Leah,
who was a public relations expert, decided to call every
media contact that she had. So the thing was, Leah
knew something that, unfortunately, Keith says, is something that we
all know very well. The attention in missing person's case
(13:59):
is mostly centers around the young white women, the blonde woman,
and Naila was a black woman, beautiful, very beautiful, but
not white, not blonde. Leah tells Keith that she doesn't
know of many people of color who get the media
attention or attention of the public in general. And this
is so true, and this is part of the reason
(14:20):
why he chose this case, because it is hard to
find any well covered cases involving people of color, transgender people,
anyone who's not you know, the white, pretty blond girl.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, and even if you are a white, pretty blonde,
if you're a sex worker, that's a strike against you.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
So yeah, if you're poor, you're on welfare.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There's a lot of stuff gets you out of here.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, it's really not fair like most of life. But
This is called the missing blonde woman's syndrome, and it's
definitely a real thing. Keith acknowledges this, but he really
doesn't address it as much as I had hoped he would. Still,
I give him credit for bringing it up.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Well, he kind of brought it up, but he didn't
want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
It, not a lot. I mean, the sister talked about
it more than he did. He actually mentioned it as
a thing, and the sister's like, duh, pretty much right, Yeah,
she didn't say that, but that was her response, Like,
of course, of course he's undertalking it. So Leah says
that cases of missing black people don't get attention unless
it's under the narrative of like gang or gun violence
(15:30):
or you know, even police violence, which is something that's
very current now. So she knew what she was up against,
and she was a media expert. So likely because of
Lea's media savvy, Naila's case was out there. The next
morning lots of publicity. The news talked about her case
and showed video footage of her family and her friends
(15:53):
putting up flyers all over the city. They covered all
of downtown and the suburbs, and they phoned and emailed friends,
but no one had seen her.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Naila's sister kept replaying the last conversation she had had
with Nayila. Nayela called her and said that she had
something to tell her, but before she could tell her,
she got another call and so let me take this call,
and boom. They never never got around in discussing what
it was she had to tell.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Her, yes, right, So that's a bit of a mystery.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
And so the thoughts going through the minds of Naila's
family and friends were disturbing, to say the least, As
Keith says, awful what a person's mind can turn up
in the dark. As day one turned into day two
and day two into day three.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, so this case landed on the desks of Sergeant
mia Oleori and Detective Greg Jacobson. And the first thing
they did, or one of the first things they did,
is they looked over Nayla's phone records, because you can
find out a lot from that, and they did find
something kind of alarming right away.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, nothing they could do anything about it, though. So
just after ten o'clock on the night that Nayila vanished,
her cell phone made three calls to nine one one However,
no voice could be made out, and there was no
signs of a struggle or anything. All that a listener
could hear was some light music in the background.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
So this is really troublesome because then it seems like
someone had been able to make this nine to one
one call, but for some reason had been unable to speak.
So the investigators started talking to just about everyone who
Naila had known, and then, as a result of her
sister's pr campaign, some anonymous tips came into the police.
(17:40):
So people would say they'd seen her in a wal
Mart or Target, or at a gas station, but you know,
none of these led to them finding Nayila. And I
think most of the people who called in were you know,
genuine wanting to help.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah. No, they definitely wanted to try to help.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, So I don't think it was anyone just trying
to cause problems. But there's so many it's just a
lot for the police to deal with.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Now, at this point, detectives felt that they were really
dealing with a serious crime, but it was still just
a missing person's case officially. At this point, all they
knew is that she was missing, that's right, And there
weren't really any physical signs that something bad had happened
to her, other than the fact that she just was
(18:29):
out of touch with everyone and couldn't be found. Now,
of course, she hadn't been using her you know, debit
cards or her phone or anything either, which makes you
think something bad happened to her.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Oh, absolutely nothing gives you any inclination, as she could
still be alive.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
No, that's the scary part.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Now. The boyfriend who lived in Wisconsin, that's Andre. He
drove down to Chicago to help with the search. And
since he was a boyfriend, and actually the most recent boyfriend,
he soon became a person of interest.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, and he and Keith discussed this, and Andrea just
seems very reasonable. He says, of course they had to
investigate me. I had no problem with that. That's just
something they had to do is clear me so they
could move on with the investigation. So he definitely doesn't
seem guilty of anything. He seemed just as upset as
(19:22):
her family members trying to find her. You know, maybe
they weren't seeing each other that long, but he definitely
was in love with her, and it seemed like they
were thinking they'd spend their future together.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, it looked like they were heading that direction.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
It did, so, you know, Chicago's a very big city
and Naila could have basically been anywhere. Then, in the
middle of the night, twenty miles south of the city,
in a place called Caliumet City, a local cop named
Calvin Lucius was on patrol and he was patrolling empty
parking lots and he got to a golf course parking
(19:56):
lot and when he pulled in there, he said that
he saw six perfectly stacked cardboard boxes right at the
edge of a wooded area. So Lucius felt that something
wasn't right about this at all, and he wondered if
maybe it was related to some illegal drug dealing because
inside of these boxes there were medication samples, but you know,
(20:17):
not like drugs that people are going to want to steal.
Probably it was more like what a sales rep would
hand out to doctors when they make their visits.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yeah, it's like several days worth of a medication, so
you can try it.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, trial packs and things like that, right, all types
of prescription medications. But then on one of the boxes
there was a label with the address of a storage
locker and it had Nayila's name.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
So the thinking is that this is Nayila's samples got
taken from her trunk, from her car.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, sure, what else could it be? Got her name
on it, So now this is a bad sign though
as far as finding Nayila, she hasn't run off with
a friend or anything. Something's wrong.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I haven't heard from her. And then you find this stuff, Right, she.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Missed a meeting.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Not good.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Nobody even knew where her car was. No, so the
FBI and homicide detectives got involved and they came to
that area to examine what had been found. This was
a pretty secluded area. It was next to a forest
reserve and it was adjacent to a lagoon, which was
scary because if you have a body of water there,
(21:26):
you're going to worry. Did somebody dump a body there?
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Absolutely, So the pond in the woods were searched and
the one strange thing they found was some jewelry. There
was a string of pearls hanging in the bushes. So
the police took them, of course, and showed them to
Nayla's friends, who said, yeah, that looks like Naila's.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah. Then someone in the next town over called the
police after hearing about Naiyula's disappearance and her car, which
is a black Chevy Impala, was located in ham in Indiana.
So the car had been wipe clean, including a trunk,
so no DNA fibers or fingerprints could be recovered.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, so if you can imagine, her family were just
losing it. They were so upset. This is not looking good.
It's looking very bad. In fact, now there.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Isn't any bit of good news has come out of
here yet.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
No one of NILA's sisters went to the location where
her car was found, and it was in front of
an abandoned house. So she banged on the doors and
windows of that house, but no one answered. She was
screaming and refused to leave and actually had to be
taken away from the area. She was hysterical. And you
(22:43):
can imagine if someone you love's car is sitting on
a street somewhere that you're not familiar with and it's
an abandoned house there, what are you going to think?
And are you going to want to leave? You're going
to want to search that house if nothing else you do.
So she basically had to be dragged away, but the
police they were doing their job, they canvassed the neighborhood,
(23:04):
knocking on doors, speaking to anyone they could, and some
of the residents had seen a man mulling around the vehicle,
they said, and then they saw him get into another
vehicle and lead. The description of this man may have
matched many of the men in Naila's life, including her
boyfriend Andrea, her brother. It was kind of a generic
(23:25):
description of a young black man. Andre was questioned about
where he was when she disappeared, when he had last
seen her, and more questions. He was interviewed again about
their relationship, but he really just seemed like he was
just as worried as her family and didn't have anything
to do with her disappearance.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Yeah, and then the officers began looking into Reginald Potts.
This was the guy she'd gone out with briefly prior
to going out with Andre, so she was seeing him
casually until the late summer of two thousand and seven.
Now they had broken up. After this, Nayla had learned
that he had a lengthy criminal background. That's bad enough,
(24:07):
but also Reginald had a habit of sleeping around with
other women, a lot of other women. In fact, he'd
even fathered a daughter with one of them.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah, so she found that out and was not going
to put up with it. She was a strong young
woman who's not going to take that kind of shit
from any man. And she told him so.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Yeah, which he didn't receive two nicely.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
No, so the police are looking for this Reginald Potts.
Potts did call the police back, and he seemed really
nice and agreeable. He agreed to stop by headquarters and
talk with the detectives, and when he got there, he
was giving them a lot of information. He did not
seem to be hiding anything at all. He said that
he'd met Nayila about a year ago by chance on
(24:54):
the street in the ritzy Gold Coast area of Chicago.
Pot said that he was sophisticated and so was she,
and they'd started dating. He said they dated for a
short time and they'd both realized it wasn't for life,
and it was a mutual breakup according to him. Now
we know that's not what we heard from Naila's friends
(25:16):
and family.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
No, he didn't quite the opposite.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
But Reginald Potts lived in a high rise in a
very upskill area of Chicago, and he drove a white Bentley.
He told the police a detailed story about his activities
over the past few days since Niela had disappeared. So
at Bentley, you hardly ever hear of that. It must
be super expensive. Do you have any idea how much
those costs?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Well, they cost about what a Rolls Royce cost.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
That's kind of what I was thinking. It was comparable
to Big Bucks. Yeah, so like one hundred thousand, oh easily, easily,
probably more. Yes, Well yeah, now I've seen people buying
Mercedes for over one hundred thousand or even those Jeeps
are like seventy eighty thousand. Yeah, it's not inexpensive craziness. Now,
that's why I like driving my ten year old Mini
(26:04):
Cooper no car payments. So Reginald told the police a
very detailed story about his activities over the past few
days since Nyila had disappeared.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
So's that like, I'm going to get my alibi out
there right away?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, I think he was being proactive. Yeah, So Reginald
told them that on the day Naila vanished, he'd gone
shopping in the early evening with friends at Target. Then
he'd gone bar hopping. Later, he'd gone with one girlfriend
and then another girlfriend separately, and then he had intimate
plans with a third girlfriend for that night. So he
(26:41):
said that he and the third girlfriend had made arrangements
to meet at his apartment at midnight on the eighteenth.
So this pots guy seemed to get around.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Seemed to get around. He's got three dates in one night.
Holy cow.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, And I wonder if that was true. It might be.
So the detective he was talking to said something about
the Bentley opening up his options with women, and that's
just I guess it's just kind of gross. I don't
like people being judged by physical things they have possessions,
especially cars. It's just kind of not my thing. But
(27:15):
you know, if you're driving a nice car, you're going
to look wealthy. Of course, you're going to attract more people,
whether you're a man or a woman.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Oh yeah, got to look good.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Well a car doesn't make you look good.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Sure it helps, Okay, who would you look after, say,
the identical guy is driving a Bentley or a fifteen
year old Toyota. Who's going to get more of your
attention the Toyota.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Don't you know me by now? The Toyota, for sure?
And if it was a hybrid, or an electric car.
Even bet that would be the guy for me.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, So investigators going ahead, they're checking on original Potts's alibi. Meanwhile,
police officer Calvin Lucia it was again checking on vacant
parking lots. Now he was about a mile from where
he had found those cardboard boxes when his partner noticed something.
They're are earbuds hanging from a tree.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, Keith says, bright little bobbles showing up in the dark.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
That's what he said.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Now do you think he writes any of this?
Speaker 3 (28:19):
I think so he did, or I think at least
he gets approval after it's written, Oh.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
For sure, because he's like the dateline star at this point.
I just wonder how much of this he writes, or
if he just has great writers, because that's just gives
you a very poetic vision.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, it does. I would think at the minimum he
gets to prove it and check it over.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Of course, I agree with you there, And.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
He probably has some ideas that he wants put down
on paper.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Probably he probably has certain writers that know him. Yeah, yeah,
and they know what he's going to say and help
him to say it in certain ways. He also says,
what else was in that abandoned place at the edge
of the Midnight woods. That was good, Yeah, it is good.
So now it's day nine of this extensive search for
night Ela, and unfortunately, her naked and decomposed remains were
(29:14):
recovered from that desolate wooded area. It was behind a
vacant video store in Calumet City, so near where the
boxes of drugs had been found in that ten days
since she'd gone missing. Of course, she'd been very badly decomposed.
It was hot and it was humid, and she was outdoors.
(29:35):
It took time, but medical examiners found that her cause
of death was asphyxiation. So she was strangled or suffocated.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, either way, it's a homicide.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yes, definitely a homicide.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
So the boyfriend that the current boyfriend andre his alibi
checked out, so the police went to talk to mister
Potts at his high rise. Now they noticed that the
ex the theory of one of the doors was extremely damaged,
like had been forced open, And it turned out that
Reginald Potts had been recently visited by the Cook County
(30:10):
Sheriff's Department because they were attempting to a victim.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
So however, he got into that apartment. I don't know,
but he certainly couldn't afford it. I could imagine a
really nice high rise in Chicago would cost you at
least five grand a month or one bedroom.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Oh, I'm not even going to guess on that. It's
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, probably more than that. In two thousand and seven,
there were many people suffering from economic losses, but Reginald's
case ran much deeper than that. He was actually constantly
in default on his bills. He had very expensive clothing
and that Bentley he was driving, but his only furniture
(30:51):
was a mattress on the floor. He didn't have a
couch or a chair or a TV anything. He didn't
even have dishes or pots and pans in his kitchen,
So you could kind of tell what kind of person
he was just from that. Everything that was important to
him was just for show, the clothing, the cars, the
superficial things, right, But inside he's hollow. He's got nothing
(31:16):
of significance, No he doesn't, and no stability, so he's
basically a con man.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Well, actually the Bentley was someone else's, well, not surprising,
and he has an apartment or condo with nothing in it,
so it hadn't taken Naila very long to figure out
that this guy was not person for her. Something was
off about him, that's for sure. He had too many
(31:44):
women in his life juggling them. So she ended her
relationship with him. And not only that, she had warned
everyone she could about him, and that included current girlfriends.
So that's not going to make her real popular with
mister Potts.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
No, he got very angry about this, and he began
sending her nasty emails and even left life threatening voicemails.
But according to Andre, Naila had not shared any of
these concerns about Reginald Potts with him, which is understandable.
You get a new boyfriend and he just seems great.
Do you really want to tell him I was going
(32:20):
out with this loser two months ago, who's stalking me?
Speaker 3 (32:25):
No?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I mean that might turn some guys away. I don't
think Andre would have I think he would have stood
by her. But I could see her concerns things are
going well with this new guy. She doesn't want to
say anything that's going to make him have second thoughts.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
No, I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
No, and maybe she's, you know, not giving it that
much thought. Anyway, She wants to be done with him clearly.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yeah, Well it doesn't sound like they dated that long
a time.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
No, No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
So I can see where she just said. I'd say it,
I'm done with.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Him just a few weeks. But then she'd kind of
gone on this crusade to warn other women, and that
had really pissed him off, right, because he was a
con man. He was kind of a little George Santos type.
Everything was just a fucking lie, everything, everything, pretty much, Yes,
but Naila had actually called a non emergency police phone
(33:16):
number asking about filing an order of protection against a
threatening ex boyfriend named Reginald Potts. She'd done that shortly
before she went missing, But after she's missing and he's
being looked at, Reginald Potts really didn't avoid the police.
He took the opposite tact. He'd been calling them and
giving them details and staying very involved in the case now,
(33:40):
probably to push the investigation in a direction away from him.
He actually continually called one of the detectives on his
cell phone too, and a friend confirmed his alibi of
on the night Nayela went missing, that Reginald was out
shopping at Target with this friend and that was supposed
(34:02):
to just be the end of it, right, he has
an alibi.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Right, except for one small problem.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yeah, So police looked into it, and what do they find.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Well, they found that none of the video footage showed
Reginald where he said he was right.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Nothing on the target. And you know, Target has cameras
everywhere all over the store. At the checkout there would
also be a record if you used a debit card
or credit card there.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah, so he's just not.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Nothing outdoors at the target. Nothing. But they did see
his friend there who was he was supposedly supposed to
be with.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Yeah, So either Potts had managed to avoid every camera
both inside and outside of the target, or he had
got his friend a life for him.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I'm going to go with the ladder right away.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
I'll choose that option also, and.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
The police did too, of course.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
So the police took the friend back to the station
to question him some more, and the friend admitted that
not only had Reginald not been at the Target, but
he had received a phone call from him and had
driven to him and to pick him up because he
needed a ride.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Hammond, Indiana, that's the town where Naila's car had been.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Found that's right, so not surprisingly maybe. On December sixth,
two thousand and seven, Reginald Potts was arrested for the
murder of Franklin, but Reginald denied killing her. He said
that he was being framed. He was very animated during
the interrogation. He's even laughing at times.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Oh god, yeah, it was weird. Did you see that?
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Yes? Yeah, The police continued to interview him. Keith says
interrogate is too harsh a word, so he used interview.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
That's our Keith. But yes, someone who's being interviewed about
a woman who was murdered and they're laughing, there's something
seriously wrong with that. That means someone is really mentally
not there. Because if you weren't guilty, wouldn't you be
concerned whether she'd broken up with you or not. You'd
have concerns. But this guy is laughing and seems to
(36:11):
think the whole thing's funny.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yeah, joke. The interview, according to Keith, was unforgettable and bizarre.
Potts was adamant that he had nothing to do with
Nayula's disappearance and said that he had nothing to do
with the murder.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Well, the detectives told them. You know, there are cameras everywhere,
including Nayuli's apartment building, so we hadn't even thought of that.
They had camera footage of him that was just clear
as day, so you could see him on the day
she disappeared, arriving with her and then leaving with her.
But even though he was confronted with this, he doubled
(36:48):
down in his denial.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
That's not me.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
He even accused the police of fabricating evidence, so of
making up the footage, which is craziness, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
So when the police asked Potts to stand in a
lineup so witnesses could identify him, he refused. Then he
asked to call his attorney, so they ended up waiting
for his attorney, and when the attorney arrived, Potts was
in the interview room, but he'd taken all his clothes off.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah. They actually asked him, why are your clothes off?
And he said because I wanted to take them off
or something weird like that. Yeah, so this guy's not
right at all. Then the police, because his lawyers there,
wanted to take him directly to the lineup, but he
refused that absolutely, so no lineup. Still, though he was
charged with capital murder, and by this time Naila had
(37:39):
been dead for three months. But as time went on,
Reginald Potts used every tactic possible to delay his trial.
He hired lawyers, then he fired those lawyers, and then
he even said that he wanted to defend himself. And
each time he made one of these changes, of course,
they had to reset everything and start over. So he's
(37:59):
costing time and money for the county and he just
does not give a shit. He's actually almost seeming to
enjoy it, is what I kind of got from it.
He just enjoyed the attention.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Well, I'm getting that vibe also, Yeah, just some of
the stuff we watched.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Yes, So three years went by with this just going
on and on, and in the fourth year after NILA's murder,
Illinois abolished capital punishment, so the death penalty was off
the table for Reginald.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Yeah, but still there were more delays. Potts tried to
launch a pr campaign with the help of his family,
and his family actually even asked the police if maybe
they were wrong about him your own family, ha.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Finally, October twenty eighth, twenty fifteen, his trial began, taking
eight years to get to this point.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Isn't that amazing that it took that long? It is
just amazing it could be delayed that long. One good thing, though,
is that he was held in jail the whole time,
so at least he wasn't out there free like a
lot of these bastards are. You see it all the time,
especially if they're well off. If you're a rich, professional
white guy, you pretty much can get out on bail.
(39:16):
It seems that way anyway. So the Cook County Assistant
state Attorneys who were prosecuting this case did see it
as a bit of a challenge. It really wasn't open
and shut. Potts was smarter than the average criminal, according
to detectives, but still not as smart as he seemed
to think he was right. He thought he was smarter
(39:36):
than everyone, and he clearly wasn't right. But the problem
was there was really no forensic evidence against him. But
friends whom Naila had played the threatening voicemails from Potts
to testified that he had said I'm going to have
you erased, I'm going to make you disappear. So that's
a clear death threat.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Sounds like a threat, And.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
There were two or three of her friends who had
heard these and they could identify it was his voice
and when it had been left on her phone, So
that was helpful.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Yeah, And the prosecutors told the jury that was exactly
what Potts had done. He had snuck into Nayila's building,
led her into the garage, strangled her, and put her
body into the trunk of her own car. Now they
knew that he had driven her out to the suburbs
to dump her body and her car because the cell
phone pings their phones. Pots Is and Nayilas were together
(40:33):
for the rest of that day and the only thing
heard from her were those odd texts that had likely
been written by Potts and actually turned out to be
written by Potts.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yes, exactly. So not that smart if you take your
phone and her phone with you to get rid of
the body. So yeah, he wasn't that.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Smart even I know that.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah. So also, you know she was found behind that
abandon in video store, and this couldn't be a coincidence either.
I think her body was found behind that abandoned video
store that was owned by Reginald Pott's brother in law,
So Potts was familiar with the location. That has to
(41:15):
be more than a coincidence.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah, I would think on the face of it, it
doesn't much matter. But if he was familiar with that
area and knew of places to dump bodies and stuff like.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
That, well circumstantial at least to me.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
It's an important fact.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, I think so. So. Potts's former friend, the alibi witness,
testified for the prosecution.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Now.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
He admitted that he had lied for Reginald Potts, but
said that he had had no idea that it was
to cover up a murder, and those nine to one
one calls with music in the background and the strange
text received by her family had all been set by Potts,
who was using her phone hours after he'd murdered her,
trying to send people off the trail.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yeah, he was. Now, his defense was to refute the
evidence and discredit the prosecution. So it had been difficult
to determine cause of death, and the defense used that
to plant doubt. They even disputed cell phone evidence. According
to the defense, the triangulation of cell phone signals was flawed.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I have seen things
where it is a little bit flawed, but this seemed
pretty overwhelming because those two phones were matched up for
a long period of time.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yeah, and that's a valid finding.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Yeah, I think so. So after two weeks of trial,
the jury began their deliberations and just two hours and
fifteen minutes later they came back with a guilty verdict
for first degree murder. So it seemed like they had
a pretty easy time finding him guilty.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Yeah, they didn't deliberate very long, did they.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
No, And of course this is a relief for her family,
but still it doesn't bring her back. And I think
people get their hopes up that they're going to get
justice and they're going to feel better, and then many
times after the trial, Yeah you've gotten justice, but it
really doesn't change your life. You still don't have Naila anymore.
Her life is still over.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah. I don't know how much better it's going to
make me feel.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, it's better than
having the murderer free, but it's really not going to
make you feel any better about the horrible loss that
you've suffered.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
So at the sentencing hearing, the prosecution had thirty five
witnesses who testified about Reginald Pott's life as a con man.
He had threatened others before, and he had actually spent
much of his adult life in prison, so a background
check on him would have told her a lot. Witness
after witness testified that Pott's mistreated women, He cheated on them,
(43:56):
he bullied them, and most startlingly, he had choked several women.
He had this history of violence, especially choking and strangling women. Now,
apparently he hadn't killed a woman before, but he had
killed Naila, and if he'd gotten away with it, I
feel pretty sure he would have done it again.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Yeah, he would have.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
So Potts had tricked Naila and when she'd figured him out,
he had become violent. So at his sentencing hearing, he
cried and denied everything to the judge, and he said
over and over, I'm not a monster.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Yeah. Now the judge called pots a cold, calculating, conniving
coward of a con man. How's that for some alliterations?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
A lot of seas.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
He was sentenced to life without parole.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
So from what the judge said, you can see that
his crying and his arguing had no effect whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Got him nowhere.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Keith at this point talks about why the case was
unforgettable to him, and that's I like this series of
Dateline unforgettable because you get to see the correspondent, whether
it be Keith or Andrea or Josh or Dennis. Dennis.
I always forget Dennis. I know, poor Dennis, the forgotten correspondent,
So I guess Dennis is not so unforgettable. But no
(45:19):
matter who it is, it's really interesting to hear why
this case was unforgettable for them. And I really hope
that it was the correspondent who got to pick out
these cases and it wasn't just something made up, because
to me, Keith seems really genuine about this. He says,
this is something he couldn't get out of his mind.
He says it wasn't the strange interview with police, but
(45:42):
it's actually the young woman he never met that he
will never forget, Naila. He thinks about her loving family
and how they coped with her loss, and in his
interviews with them, he actually felt like he knew Nayila
or little Moot as her family called her. So I
can imagine just doing the podcast you get feelings for
(46:03):
these people.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Oh, definitely your.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Heart breaks, and if you're going out and interviewing all
the family members like Keith does or you know any
of them do I could see that it would leave
an impression on you, and some would more than others, certainly,
So that's why it's really a great way to replay datelines.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Yeah, it works well.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, So the episode ends with her sister talking about
the loss, and they play video of Naila, this happy
young woman, and she was beautiful and it's a horrible loss,
and that Pots is a real fuckhead.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
That sums it up quite nice.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
That's my summary. But I enjoy these unforgettables and I
think we'll do another one again.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
Soon once in a while.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
It's a good kind of change of pace type of thing.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Yeah, and I like to do a little extra for
our premium members because you know, they do a lot
for us, they do. And what else do we have
coming up up for a premium episode in February? As
long as I have you here, maybe you can give
our listeners a little sneak peek.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Well, in February, we're going to talk about a police
chief who is killed by a person unprovoked attack. It's
going to be interesting, all right.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Well, I look forward to that, and I look forward
to seeing all of you at the Quiet End soon.
Thank you so much for your support, and thank you
for listening, and we'll see you soon at the quiet end.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Come one down, there's plenty of beer left.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Absolutely bye, bye.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Bye guys. A
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery. Ty Grabbers, I'm Jill and
with me as always is the.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
One and only Reshod. I'm big.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yes. So today we just decided we'd stop by and
talk a little bit about an episode of Dateline Unforgettable
that we watched a couple days ago and enjoyed it,
and I thought, hey, let's chat about that. So, yeah,
Keith Morrison is the correspondent, but that's just a coincidence.
I didn't know that when we started watching it.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
You say that, yes, but I have my doubts.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
But he's very poetic in this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah. This episode's titled Smoke and Mirrors, and it's about
a young woman who was named Naila, Naila Franklin. Yeah,
so after midnight September twenty seventh, in two thousand and seven,
it's a clear, dark, still hot night in a vacant
wooded area where the deep wood fought back against suburban sprawl.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Well that's a quote from Keith yes, you can't.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Still, I'm not going to take credit for that.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Okay, but this is basically where the nightmare began.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yes, it is. And Keith says that the working title
for this episode was Naila's nickname, which is little Moot.
So why do they call her that?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I think it was pretty cute. It was because when
she argued or made up her mind about something, arguing
against her was moot, right, so they called her little Moot.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Little Moot.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, so her mother named her Nayila, she said, because
it means one who succeeds, and Naila was very successful.
Her mom, Maria wanted her to be happy and successful,
of course, like most mothers do. And this was a
large blended family. She had full siblings, half siblings, quarter siblings,
(02:20):
but they didn't like to be called step or half.
They just liked to be siblings. They were very close,
and one of the sisters said that it kind of
minimizes or lessens the relationship they had to call them
half sisters because it implies that it's something less, and
that's what we do in our blended family too. We
don't say step or half or any of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
No, they're all sibs.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Right, exactly, just a close, happy family.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
So the youngest one that was John says that they
grew up together in a big, happy family. And there's
even two Ashley's in it. There's an Ashley ending and
actually ending with a y.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, and apparently everyone got along and Naila she was
right in the middle. She was called little Moot because
you couldn't argue with her. It was moot. And her
sister Ashley with a Y tells Keith that Naila was
very sure of herself even from a young age, so
very brave, outgoing, sure of herself and actually kind of
(03:23):
a hero to many of them because they knew she
was going places in life and doing good things.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Well, she continued education. She graduated high school and went
to college, so right there, that's.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
An inspiration absolutely.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
So after she went to college, Nayila moved back to
Chicago and began a career with a pharmaceutical company. So
she was a pharmaceutical sales rep, which means that you
get to make office calls on doctors and their staff
try to convince them to use your product.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So she was able to buy her own condo in
the city by.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Age twenty eight, yeah, so she must to have been
fairly successful.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah. But things in the pharmaceutical sales kind of changed
over time, right, because you have some stories of just
some crazy stuff that used to happen.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I don't know about crazy.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, things that would be illegal now.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
It used to be a lot more liberal, yes, in
terms of how the pharmataceutical companies spent their money, and
you could get a lot of benefits.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
From them if you were a doctor, if.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You're as a doctor.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Not us folks, Oh no, not as nurses. We didn't
get shit.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Nah, gotta be the doctor, right right, So just as
an example, I do.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So there's a company called gen and Tech and they
make growth hormone. Uh huh, that's one of their products,
which is a pediatric thing, right, Yeah, And I used
to prescribe growth hormone, and then of course they wanted
me to prescribe gen and Tech's growth hormone. So we
had a yearly meeting, big meeting with speakers and all
(04:58):
the food and drink you could want. They fly you
to and from the meeting, take you on a trip
during the meeting, a little side trip. You could even
bring a significant other. Now, over time it started to
get less attractive. So the first thing that went was
that significant others didn't get to go for free just
(05:19):
the doctor. I mean, it's a lot of stuff that
you could do, but they I don't think they do
that anymore. I haven't been on one of those things
in years.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Well, I mean there could be some ethical problems with
it now, I think you think, do you think, Yeah,
you know, if you're paying someone off to prescribe your drug,
it's really doesn't seem very legit, although it was legal
back then, back in the day. Yeah. So now though,
when Naila was working, they still would bring samples of
drugs to the doctors, and I think it's still like
(05:50):
buy you lunch and stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Right, they could, and they still can as far as
I know. But it's just it's not like we'll take
you to a first class restaurant. We'll come by with
some sandwiches and feed you.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Right, that type of thing. Yeah, where did the glamour go? Huh? So,
according to her siblings and her mom, Naila was very
good at staying in touch and returning calls, so kind
of the opposite of me. I hate returning calls.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Yeah, I don't even call you.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Well, you don't because we live together.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
I just show up and there you are.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well you need to because I am not good at
answering calls. I'll answer a text. I just have this
feeling when I return a call, Oh shit, how long
am I going to be stuck on this?
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And then I want to kind of have something else
to do, like multitask, so I'm not wasting my time
on the phone, which I shouldn't think that way, but
I do. And I'm like, oh, what could I be
doing to be productive while I'm on that call? Anyway?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
That's me.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That was not Naila, much better person than I am.
Always texting and calling right back. And even though she
had a really big family and a lot of friends,
she always was able to keep in touch. So she
made that effort she did, which must meet. It meant
something to her.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well, yeah, I think you did. And Naila dated different men,
but she was pretty discerning. She liked professionals like doctors
and businessmen. She is briefly seeing a handsome investor. The
impressive thing about him, I think was that he drove
a white Bentley, although that wasn't impressive to Nahila.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Nayila, I don't know I mean she started seeing him
in July and it was very short lived.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
He didn't last long.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
No, Then she met a lawyer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin when
she was at an art show and opening for an artist,
and his name was Andre White. Super handsome guy. Would
you agree, Yeah, I would. Very well spoken, very handsome,
nicely dressed. Seems like he and Nayila would have been
a good match.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah. They were a good looking couple, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Absolutely, she's gorgeous. So Andre sits down to talk with
Keith Morrison and he describes Nayila as beautiful with a big,
warm smile, and he talks about when he first met her.
They were walking around the art opening and talking about
their interests, and Keith says to Andrea, this was a
(08:10):
transcendental moment. He's so poetic. And Andrea agrees. Also, Nayla's
family loved Andrea, and why wouldn't you. He was a
successful attorney, handsome, kind, everything that you would want for
your daughter, really, at.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Least a first look.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, well yeah, and he.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Was seen as just a nice quality guy. Yep.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Nayla actually brought him to a niece's birthday party and
he brought her a gift, So that really got him
some points with the family.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Well, that will get you a lot of points, that's
for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And things were moving along pretty quickly. They were even
talking about moving in together eventually. It just felt really natural.
Andre tells Keith, but it was long distance. He lived
in Milwaukee and she lived in Chicago, and they both
had pretty big career.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, so if the relationship was continuing or going to continue,
at some point, they were going to have to decide.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Who moves where exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, But for now, it's just a nice relationship, a
long distance relationship. But it was. It was a good,
good relationship.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yep. They would actually text throughout the day and then
like text good morning, text good night. So it was
pretty close, it seems like, even though it was long distance.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So according to Andrea, he called Naila every morning and
everything sounded good. No one noticed any problems on the horizon,
and Keith talks about any dark force. There was nothing
like that festering in the heat in Chicago. There were
no warnings heard, and who knows who knows who said
(09:50):
what to whom? Right, that's right. So let's go to
September eighteenth, two thousand and seven, which was a Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
That was a Tuesday, and Andre did something that was
a rarity. He missed it the morning call. He was
preoccupied with work. Then Nayila called and said, hey, what
happened to my call? So they spoke for a little
bit and later on they exchanged emails.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, Andre had his normal work day and then in
the evening he called Nayila again, but now there was
no answer, and this was pretty much unheard of, right,
she would answer her phone.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, they always got an answer.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So he left a message saying he was heading home
from work, and he got a text message telling him
that she was at dinner and she would reach out later,
which was a little weird. And then she never did,
which was very weird and concerning.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
It was and further concerning. At nine o'clock, her sister
actually called Nayila and she also got a message saying
that she was at dinner and would call her back.
But it just wasn't like Nayila did not answer a phone.
In fact, her sister had seen her jump out of
the show shower to answer her phone.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So Andre sent her an email in all caps, are
you alive? Now? This was half in Jess's but half
worried comment. You know how you do just to say
to somebody, hey, where are you? But he was actually
getting a bit worried, of course, though at the time
he had no idea what a significant question this would
turn out to be. Yeah, that's right, which is horrible.
(11:24):
So the next day, September nineteenth, it was dawn in Chicago.
It was summer, so it was the usual heat, humidity,
and wind. But Naila, ambitious, dependable and always on her phone,
had just gone silent. Even her new love Andre hadn't
heard from her that day.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yes, she's just vanished. Nobody's heard anything from her.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
No, so big sister Leah didn't get a call from Nayila,
but she got a call from Naila's boss. Naila had
missed a work meeting. Now this is not something she
would ever do, not ever have to be on her deathbed,
she did not miss work. So immediately her sister was
very alarmed. She tried to call Nayila but couldn't get
(12:09):
hold of her. So she called the other siblings and
some of Nayla's friends, asking if anyone had heard from her,
But no one had spoken to her. In over twenty
four hours now, and Leah felt a real cold chill
of fear at that point, knowing that something just wasn't right.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So Leah called the Chicago police and found a missing
persons report. Then she drove over to Nayhela's condo. No
one answered the door. We was able to get a
key and went inside. Eggs and coffee had been left
out on the counter, but no sign of Nayila.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
So how worried would you be?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I'd be very majorly worried at this point. Yes, we
know how faithful she was answering and returning calls exactly.
The fact that she hasn't for almost twenty four hours,
that's a concern, big concern.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Well, I mean, we do read and hear a lot
of true crime stories, and it's the people who are
in constant contact that get found sooner, or people discover
something's wrong sooner. If you're one of these people who
talks to their family every week or two or even
every month, it could be a long time before anything happens.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Oh sure could?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I mean, even with her job, how many jobs are
really going to do a welfare check right away? They're
going to wait?
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, puts this woman's in her twenties, yeah, twenty eight.
Not like she's a high school kid or a grade
school kid.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
No, she's a professional woman, very responsible. So her sister, Leah,
who was a public relations expert, decided to call every
media contact that she had. So the thing was, Leah
knew something that, unfortunately, Keith says, is something that we
all know very well. The attention in missing person's case
(13:59):
is mostly centers around the young white women, the blonde woman,
and Naila was a black woman, beautiful, very beautiful, but
not white, not blonde. Leah tells Keith that she doesn't
know of many people of color who get the media
attention or attention of the public in general. And this
is so true, and this is part of the reason
(14:20):
why he chose this case, because it is hard to
find any well covered cases involving people of color, transgender people,
anyone who's not you know, the white, pretty blond girl.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, and even if you are a white, pretty blonde,
if you're a sex worker, that's a strike against you.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
So yeah, if you're poor, you're on welfare.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There's a lot of stuff gets you out of here.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, it's really not fair like most of life. But
This is called the missing blonde woman's syndrome, and it's
definitely a real thing. Keith acknowledges this, but he really
doesn't address it as much as I had hoped he would. Still,
I give him credit for bringing it up.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Well, he kind of brought it up, but he didn't
want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
It, not a lot. I mean, the sister talked about
it more than he did. He actually mentioned it as
a thing, and the sister's like, duh, pretty much right, Yeah,
she didn't say that, but that was her response, Like,
of course, of course he's undertalking it. So Leah says
that cases of missing black people don't get attention unless
it's under the narrative of like gang or gun violence
(15:30):
or you know, even police violence, which is something that's
very current now. So she knew what she was up against,
and she was a media expert. So likely because of
Lea's media savvy, Naila's case was out there. The next
morning lots of publicity. The news talked about her case
and showed video footage of her family and her friends
(15:53):
putting up flyers all over the city. They covered all
of downtown and the suburbs, and they phoned and emailed friends,
but no one had seen her.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Naila's sister kept replaying the last conversation she had had
with Nayila. Nayela called her and said that she had
something to tell her, but before she could tell her,
she got another call and so let me take this call,
and boom. They never never got around in discussing what
it was she had to tell.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Her, yes, right, So that's a bit of a mystery.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
And so the thoughts going through the minds of Naila's
family and friends were disturbing, to say the least, As
Keith says, awful what a person's mind can turn up
in the dark. As day one turned into day two
and day two into day three.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, so this case landed on the desks of Sergeant
mia Oleori and Detective Greg Jacobson. And the first thing
they did, or one of the first things they did,
is they looked over Nayla's phone records, because you can
find out a lot from that, and they did find
something kind of alarming right away.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, nothing they could do anything about it, though. So
just after ten o'clock on the night that Nayila vanished,
her cell phone made three calls to nine one one However,
no voice could be made out, and there was no
signs of a struggle or anything. All that a listener
could hear was some light music in the background.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
So this is really troublesome because then it seems like
someone had been able to make this nine to one
one call, but for some reason had been unable to speak.
So the investigators started talking to just about everyone who
Naila had known, and then, as a result of her
sister's pr campaign, some anonymous tips came into the police.
(17:40):
So people would say they'd seen her in a wal
Mart or Target, or at a gas station, but you know,
none of these led to them finding Nayila. And I
think most of the people who called in were you know,
genuine wanting to help.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah. No, they definitely wanted to try to help.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, So I don't think it was anyone just trying
to cause problems. But there's so many it's just a
lot for the police to deal with.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Now, at this point, detectives felt that they were really
dealing with a serious crime, but it was still just
a missing person's case officially. At this point, all they
knew is that she was missing, that's right, And there
weren't really any physical signs that something bad had happened
to her, other than the fact that she just was
(18:29):
out of touch with everyone and couldn't be found. Now,
of course, she hadn't been using her you know, debit
cards or her phone or anything either, which makes you
think something bad happened to her.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Oh, absolutely nothing gives you any inclination, as she could
still be alive.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
No, that's the scary part.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Now. The boyfriend who lived in Wisconsin, that's Andre. He
drove down to Chicago to help with the search. And
since he was a boyfriend, and actually the most recent boyfriend,
he soon became a person of interest.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, and he and Keith discussed this, and Andrea just
seems very reasonable. He says, of course they had to
investigate me. I had no problem with that. That's just
something they had to do is clear me so they
could move on with the investigation. So he definitely doesn't
seem guilty of anything. He seemed just as upset as
(19:22):
her family members trying to find her. You know, maybe
they weren't seeing each other that long, but he definitely
was in love with her, and it seemed like they
were thinking they'd spend their future together.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, it looked like they were heading that direction.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
It did, so, you know, Chicago's a very big city
and Naila could have basically been anywhere. Then, in the
middle of the night, twenty miles south of the city,
in a place called Caliumet City, a local cop named
Calvin Lucius was on patrol and he was patrolling empty
parking lots and he got to a golf course parking
(19:56):
lot and when he pulled in there, he said that
he saw six perfectly stacked cardboard boxes right at the
edge of a wooded area. So Lucius felt that something
wasn't right about this at all, and he wondered if
maybe it was related to some illegal drug dealing because
inside of these boxes there were medication samples, but you know,
(20:17):
not like drugs that people are going to want to steal.
Probably it was more like what a sales rep would
hand out to doctors when they make their visits.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yeah, it's like several days worth of a medication, so
you can try it.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, trial packs and things like that, right, all types
of prescription medications. But then on one of the boxes
there was a label with the address of a storage
locker and it had Nayila's name.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
So the thinking is that this is Nayila's samples got
taken from her trunk, from her car.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, sure, what else could it be? Got her name
on it, So now this is a bad sign though
as far as finding Nayila, she hasn't run off with
a friend or anything. Something's wrong.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I haven't heard from her. And then you find this stuff, Right, she.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Missed a meeting.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Not good.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Nobody even knew where her car was. No, so the
FBI and homicide detectives got involved and they came to
that area to examine what had been found. This was
a pretty secluded area. It was next to a forest
reserve and it was adjacent to a lagoon, which was
scary because if you have a body of water there,
(21:26):
you're going to worry. Did somebody dump a body there?
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Absolutely, So the pond in the woods were searched and
the one strange thing they found was some jewelry. There
was a string of pearls hanging in the bushes. So
the police took them, of course, and showed them to
Nayla's friends, who said, yeah, that looks like Naila's.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah. Then someone in the next town over called the
police after hearing about Naiyula's disappearance and her car, which
is a black Chevy Impala, was located in ham in Indiana.
So the car had been wipe clean, including a trunk,
so no DNA fibers or fingerprints could be recovered.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, so if you can imagine, her family were just
losing it. They were so upset. This is not looking good.
It's looking very bad. In fact, now there.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Isn't any bit of good news has come out of
here yet.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
No one of NILA's sisters went to the location where
her car was found, and it was in front of
an abandoned house. So she banged on the doors and
windows of that house, but no one answered. She was
screaming and refused to leave and actually had to be
taken away from the area. She was hysterical. And you
(22:43):
can imagine if someone you love's car is sitting on
a street somewhere that you're not familiar with and it's
an abandoned house there, what are you going to think?
And are you going to want to leave? You're going
to want to search that house if nothing else you do.
So she basically had to be dragged away, but the
police they were doing their job, they canvassed the neighborhood,
(23:04):
knocking on doors, speaking to anyone they could, and some
of the residents had seen a man mulling around the vehicle,
they said, and then they saw him get into another
vehicle and lead. The description of this man may have
matched many of the men in Naila's life, including her
boyfriend Andrea, her brother. It was kind of a generic
(23:25):
description of a young black man. Andre was questioned about
where he was when she disappeared, when he had last
seen her, and more questions. He was interviewed again about
their relationship, but he really just seemed like he was
just as worried as her family and didn't have anything
to do with her disappearance.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Yeah, and then the officers began looking into Reginald Potts.
This was the guy she'd gone out with briefly prior
to going out with Andre, so she was seeing him
casually until the late summer of two thousand and seven.
Now they had broken up. After this, Nayla had learned
that he had a lengthy criminal background. That's bad enough,
(24:07):
but also Reginald had a habit of sleeping around with
other women, a lot of other women. In fact, he'd
even fathered a daughter with one of them.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah, so she found that out and was not going
to put up with it. She was a strong young
woman who's not going to take that kind of shit
from any man. And she told him so.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Yeah, which he didn't receive two nicely.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
No, so the police are looking for this Reginald Potts.
Potts did call the police back, and he seemed really
nice and agreeable. He agreed to stop by headquarters and
talk with the detectives, and when he got there, he
was giving them a lot of information. He did not
seem to be hiding anything at all. He said that
he'd met Nayila about a year ago by chance on
(24:54):
the street in the ritzy Gold Coast area of Chicago.
Pot said that he was sophisticated and so was she,
and they'd started dating. He said they dated for a
short time and they'd both realized it wasn't for life,
and it was a mutual breakup according to him. Now
we know that's not what we heard from Naila's friends
(25:16):
and family.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
No, he didn't quite the opposite.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
But Reginald Potts lived in a high rise in a
very upskill area of Chicago, and he drove a white Bentley.
He told the police a detailed story about his activities
over the past few days since Niela had disappeared. So
at Bentley, you hardly ever hear of that. It must
be super expensive. Do you have any idea how much
those costs?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Well, they cost about what a Rolls Royce cost.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
That's kind of what I was thinking. It was comparable
to Big Bucks. Yeah, so like one hundred thousand, oh easily, easily,
probably more. Yes, Well yeah, now I've seen people buying
Mercedes for over one hundred thousand or even those Jeeps
are like seventy eighty thousand. Yeah, it's not inexpensive craziness. Now,
that's why I like driving my ten year old Mini
(26:04):
Cooper no car payments. So Reginald told the police a
very detailed story about his activities over the past few
days since Nyila had disappeared.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
So's that like, I'm going to get my alibi out
there right away?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, I think he was being proactive. Yeah, So Reginald
told them that on the day Naila vanished, he'd gone
shopping in the early evening with friends at Target. Then
he'd gone bar hopping. Later, he'd gone with one girlfriend
and then another girlfriend separately, and then he had intimate
plans with a third girlfriend for that night. So he
(26:41):
said that he and the third girlfriend had made arrangements
to meet at his apartment at midnight on the eighteenth.
So this pots guy seemed to get around.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Seemed to get around. He's got three dates in one night.
Holy cow.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, And I wonder if that was true. It might be.
So the detective he was talking to said something about
the Bentley opening up his options with women, and that's
just I guess it's just kind of gross. I don't
like people being judged by physical things they have possessions,
especially cars. It's just kind of not my thing. But
(27:15):
you know, if you're driving a nice car, you're going
to look wealthy. Of course, you're going to attract more people,
whether you're a man or a woman.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Oh yeah, got to look good.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Well a car doesn't make you look good.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Sure it helps, Okay, who would you look after, say,
the identical guy is driving a Bentley or a fifteen
year old Toyota. Who's going to get more of your
attention the Toyota.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Don't you know me by now? The Toyota, for sure?
And if it was a hybrid, or an electric car.
Even bet that would be the guy for me.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, So investigators going ahead, they're checking on original Potts's alibi. Meanwhile,
police officer Calvin Lucia it was again checking on vacant
parking lots. Now he was about a mile from where
he had found those cardboard boxes when his partner noticed something.
They're are earbuds hanging from a tree.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, Keith says, bright little bobbles showing up in the dark.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
That's what he said.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Now do you think he writes any of this?
Speaker 3 (28:19):
I think so he did, or I think at least
he gets approval after it's written, Oh.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
For sure, because he's like the dateline star at this point.
I just wonder how much of this he writes, or
if he just has great writers, because that's just gives
you a very poetic vision.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, it does. I would think at the minimum he
gets to prove it and check it over.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Of course, I agree with you there, And.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
He probably has some ideas that he wants put down
on paper.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Probably he probably has certain writers that know him. Yeah, yeah,
and they know what he's going to say and help
him to say it in certain ways. He also says,
what else was in that abandoned place at the edge
of the Midnight woods. That was good, Yeah, it is good.
So now it's day nine of this extensive search for
night Ela, and unfortunately, her naked and decomposed remains were
(29:14):
recovered from that desolate wooded area. It was behind a
vacant video store in Calumet City, so near where the
boxes of drugs had been found in that ten days
since she'd gone missing. Of course, she'd been very badly decomposed.
It was hot and it was humid, and she was outdoors.
(29:35):
It took time, but medical examiners found that her cause
of death was asphyxiation. So she was strangled or suffocated.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, either way, it's a homicide.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yes, definitely a homicide.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
So the boyfriend that the current boyfriend andre his alibi
checked out, so the police went to talk to mister
Potts at his high rise. Now they noticed that the
ex the theory of one of the doors was extremely damaged,
like had been forced open, And it turned out that
Reginald Potts had been recently visited by the Cook County
(30:10):
Sheriff's Department because they were attempting to a victim.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
So however, he got into that apartment. I don't know,
but he certainly couldn't afford it. I could imagine a
really nice high rise in Chicago would cost you at
least five grand a month or one bedroom.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Oh, I'm not even going to guess on that. It's
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, probably more than that. In two thousand and seven,
there were many people suffering from economic losses, but Reginald's
case ran much deeper than that. He was actually constantly
in default on his bills. He had very expensive clothing
and that Bentley he was driving, but his only furniture
(30:51):
was a mattress on the floor. He didn't have a
couch or a chair or a TV anything. He didn't
even have dishes or pots and pans in his kitchen,
So you could kind of tell what kind of person
he was just from that. Everything that was important to
him was just for show, the clothing, the cars, the
superficial things, right, But inside he's hollow. He's got nothing
(31:16):
of significance, No he doesn't, and no stability, so he's
basically a con man.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Well, actually the Bentley was someone else's, well, not surprising,
and he has an apartment or condo with nothing in it,
so it hadn't taken Naila very long to figure out
that this guy was not person for her. Something was
off about him, that's for sure. He had too many
(31:44):
women in his life juggling them. So she ended her
relationship with him. And not only that, she had warned
everyone she could about him, and that included current girlfriends.
So that's not going to make her real popular with
mister Potts.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
No, he got very angry about this, and he began
sending her nasty emails and even left life threatening voicemails.
But according to Andre, Naila had not shared any of
these concerns about Reginald Potts with him, which is understandable.
You get a new boyfriend and he just seems great.
Do you really want to tell him I was going
(32:20):
out with this loser two months ago, who's stalking me?
Speaker 3 (32:25):
No?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I mean that might turn some guys away. I don't
think Andre would have I think he would have stood
by her. But I could see her concerns things are
going well with this new guy. She doesn't want to
say anything that's going to make him have second thoughts.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
No, I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
No, and maybe she's, you know, not giving it that
much thought. Anyway, She wants to be done with him clearly.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yeah, Well it doesn't sound like they dated that long
a time.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
No, No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
So I can see where she just said. I'd say it,
I'm done with.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Him just a few weeks. But then she'd kind of
gone on this crusade to warn other women, and that
had really pissed him off, right, because he was a
con man. He was kind of a little George Santos type.
Everything was just a fucking lie, everything, everything, pretty much, Yes,
but Naila had actually called a non emergency police phone
(33:16):
number asking about filing an order of protection against a
threatening ex boyfriend named Reginald Potts. She'd done that shortly
before she went missing, But after she's missing and he's
being looked at, Reginald Potts really didn't avoid the police.
He took the opposite tact. He'd been calling them and
giving them details and staying very involved in the case now,
(33:40):
probably to push the investigation in a direction away from him.
He actually continually called one of the detectives on his
cell phone too, and a friend confirmed his alibi of
on the night Nayela went missing, that Reginald was out
shopping at Target with this friend and that was supposed
(34:02):
to just be the end of it, right, he has
an alibi.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Right, except for one small problem.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yeah, So police looked into it, and what do they find.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Well, they found that none of the video footage showed
Reginald where he said he was right.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Nothing on the target. And you know, Target has cameras
everywhere all over the store. At the checkout there would
also be a record if you used a debit card
or credit card there.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah, so he's just not.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Nothing outdoors at the target. Nothing. But they did see
his friend there who was he was supposedly supposed to
be with.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Yeah, So either Potts had managed to avoid every camera
both inside and outside of the target, or he had
got his friend a life for him.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I'm going to go with the ladder right away.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
I'll choose that option also, and.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
The police did too, of course.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
So the police took the friend back to the station
to question him some more, and the friend admitted that
not only had Reginald not been at the Target, but
he had received a phone call from him and had
driven to him and to pick him up because he
needed a ride.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Hammond, Indiana, that's the town where Naila's car had been.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Found that's right, so not surprisingly maybe. On December sixth,
two thousand and seven, Reginald Potts was arrested for the
murder of Franklin, but Reginald denied killing her. He said
that he was being framed. He was very animated during
the interrogation. He's even laughing at times.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Oh god, yeah, it was weird. Did you see that?
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Yes? Yeah, The police continued to interview him. Keith says
interrogate is too harsh a word, so he used interview.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
That's our Keith. But yes, someone who's being interviewed about
a woman who was murdered and they're laughing, there's something
seriously wrong with that. That means someone is really mentally
not there. Because if you weren't guilty, wouldn't you be
concerned whether she'd broken up with you or not. You'd
have concerns. But this guy is laughing and seems to
(36:11):
think the whole thing's funny.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yeah, joke. The interview, according to Keith, was unforgettable and bizarre.
Potts was adamant that he had nothing to do with
Nayula's disappearance and said that he had nothing to do
with the murder.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Well, the detectives told them. You know, there are cameras everywhere,
including Nayuli's apartment building, so we hadn't even thought of that.
They had camera footage of him that was just clear
as day, so you could see him on the day
she disappeared, arriving with her and then leaving with her.
But even though he was confronted with this, he doubled
(36:48):
down in his denial.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
That's not me.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
He even accused the police of fabricating evidence, so of
making up the footage, which is craziness, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
So when the police asked Potts to stand in a
lineup so witnesses could identify him, he refused. Then he
asked to call his attorney, so they ended up waiting
for his attorney, and when the attorney arrived, Potts was
in the interview room, but he'd taken all his clothes off.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah. They actually asked him, why are your clothes off?
And he said because I wanted to take them off
or something weird like that. Yeah, so this guy's not
right at all. Then the police, because his lawyers there,
wanted to take him directly to the lineup, but he
refused that absolutely, so no lineup. Still, though he was
charged with capital murder, and by this time Naila had
(37:39):
been dead for three months. But as time went on,
Reginald Potts used every tactic possible to delay his trial.
He hired lawyers, then he fired those lawyers, and then
he even said that he wanted to defend himself. And
each time he made one of these changes, of course,
they had to reset everything and start over. So he's
(37:59):
costing time and money for the county and he just
does not give a shit. He's actually almost seeming to
enjoy it, is what I kind of got from it.
He just enjoyed the attention.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Well, I'm getting that vibe also, Yeah, just some of
the stuff we watched.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Yes, So three years went by with this just going
on and on, and in the fourth year after NILA's murder,
Illinois abolished capital punishment, so the death penalty was off
the table for Reginald.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Yeah, but still there were more delays. Potts tried to
launch a pr campaign with the help of his family,
and his family actually even asked the police if maybe
they were wrong about him your own family, ha.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Finally, October twenty eighth, twenty fifteen, his trial began, taking
eight years to get to this point.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Isn't that amazing that it took that long? It is
just amazing it could be delayed that long. One good thing, though,
is that he was held in jail the whole time,
so at least he wasn't out there free like a
lot of these bastards are. You see it all the time,
especially if they're well off. If you're a rich, professional
white guy, you pretty much can get out on bail.
(39:16):
It seems that way anyway. So the Cook County Assistant
state Attorneys who were prosecuting this case did see it
as a bit of a challenge. It really wasn't open
and shut. Potts was smarter than the average criminal, according
to detectives, but still not as smart as he seemed
to think he was right. He thought he was smarter
(39:36):
than everyone, and he clearly wasn't right. But the problem
was there was really no forensic evidence against him. But
friends whom Naila had played the threatening voicemails from Potts
to testified that he had said I'm going to have
you erased, I'm going to make you disappear. So that's
a clear death threat.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Sounds like a threat, And.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
There were two or three of her friends who had
heard these and they could identify it was his voice
and when it had been left on her phone, So
that was helpful.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Yeah, And the prosecutors told the jury that was exactly
what Potts had done. He had snuck into Nayila's building,
led her into the garage, strangled her, and put her
body into the trunk of her own car. Now they
knew that he had driven her out to the suburbs
to dump her body and her car because the cell
phone pings their phones. Pots Is and Nayilas were together
(40:33):
for the rest of that day and the only thing
heard from her were those odd texts that had likely
been written by Potts and actually turned out to be
written by Potts.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yes, exactly. So not that smart if you take your
phone and her phone with you to get rid of
the body. So yeah, he wasn't that.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Smart even I know that.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah. So also, you know she was found behind that
abandon in video store, and this couldn't be a coincidence either.
I think her body was found behind that abandoned video
store that was owned by Reginald Pott's brother in law,
So Potts was familiar with the location. That has to
(41:15):
be more than a coincidence.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah, I would think on the face of it, it
doesn't much matter. But if he was familiar with that
area and knew of places to dump bodies and stuff like.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
That, well circumstantial at least to me.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
It's an important fact.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, I think so. So. Potts's former friend, the alibi witness,
testified for the prosecution.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Now.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
He admitted that he had lied for Reginald Potts, but
said that he had had no idea that it was
to cover up a murder, and those nine to one
one calls with music in the background and the strange
text received by her family had all been set by Potts,
who was using her phone hours after he'd murdered her,
trying to send people off the trail.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yeah, he was. Now, his defense was to refute the
evidence and discredit the prosecution. So it had been difficult
to determine cause of death, and the defense used that
to plant doubt. They even disputed cell phone evidence. According
to the defense, the triangulation of cell phone signals was flawed.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I have seen things
where it is a little bit flawed, but this seemed
pretty overwhelming because those two phones were matched up for
a long period of time.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yeah, and that's a valid finding.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Yeah, I think so. So after two weeks of trial,
the jury began their deliberations and just two hours and
fifteen minutes later they came back with a guilty verdict
for first degree murder. So it seemed like they had
a pretty easy time finding him guilty.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Yeah, they didn't deliberate very long, did they.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
No, And of course this is a relief for her family,
but still it doesn't bring her back. And I think
people get their hopes up that they're going to get
justice and they're going to feel better, and then many
times after the trial, Yeah you've gotten justice, but it
really doesn't change your life. You still don't have Naila anymore.
Her life is still over.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah. I don't know how much better it's going to
make me feel.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, it's better than
having the murderer free, but it's really not going to
make you feel any better about the horrible loss that
you've suffered.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
So at the sentencing hearing, the prosecution had thirty five
witnesses who testified about Reginald Pott's life as a con man.
He had threatened others before, and he had actually spent
much of his adult life in prison, so a background
check on him would have told her a lot. Witness
after witness testified that Pott's mistreated women, He cheated on them,
(43:56):
he bullied them, and most startlingly, he had choked several women.
He had this history of violence, especially choking and strangling women. Now,
apparently he hadn't killed a woman before, but he had
killed Naila, and if he'd gotten away with it, I
feel pretty sure he would have done it again.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Yeah, he would have.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
So Potts had tricked Naila and when she'd figured him out,
he had become violent. So at his sentencing hearing, he
cried and denied everything to the judge, and he said
over and over, I'm not a monster.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Yeah. Now the judge called pots a cold, calculating, conniving
coward of a con man. How's that for some alliterations?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
A lot of seas.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
He was sentenced to life without parole.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
So from what the judge said, you can see that
his crying and his arguing had no effect whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Got him nowhere.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Keith at this point talks about why the case was
unforgettable to him, and that's I like this series of
Dateline unforgettable because you get to see the correspondent, whether
it be Keith or Andrea or Josh or Dennis. Dennis.
I always forget Dennis. I know, poor Dennis, the forgotten correspondent,
So I guess Dennis is not so unforgettable. But no
(45:19):
matter who it is, it's really interesting to hear why
this case was unforgettable for them. And I really hope
that it was the correspondent who got to pick out
these cases and it wasn't just something made up, because
to me, Keith seems really genuine about this. He says,
this is something he couldn't get out of his mind.
He says it wasn't the strange interview with police, but
(45:42):
it's actually the young woman he never met that he
will never forget, Naila. He thinks about her loving family
and how they coped with her loss, and in his
interviews with them, he actually felt like he knew Nayila
or little Moot as her family called her. So I
can imagine just doing the podcast you get feelings for
(46:03):
these people.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Oh, definitely your.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Heart breaks, and if you're going out and interviewing all
the family members like Keith does or you know any
of them do I could see that it would leave
an impression on you, and some would more than others, certainly,
So that's why it's really a great way to replay datelines.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Yeah, it works well.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, So the episode ends with her sister talking about
the loss, and they play video of Naila, this happy
young woman, and she was beautiful and it's a horrible loss,
and that Pots is a real fuckhead.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
That sums it up quite nice.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
That's my summary. But I enjoy these unforgettables and I
think we'll do another one again.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
Soon once in a while.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
It's a good kind of change of pace type of thing.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Yeah, and I like to do a little extra for
our premium members because you know, they do a lot
for us, they do. And what else do we have
coming up up for a premium episode in February? As
long as I have you here, maybe you can give
our listeners a little sneak peek.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Well, in February, we're going to talk about a police
chief who is killed by a person unprovoked attack. It's
going to be interesting, all right.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Well, I look forward to that, and I look forward
to seeing all of you at the Quiet End soon.
Thank you so much for your support, and thank you
for listening, and we'll see you soon at the quiet end.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Come one down, there's plenty of beer left.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Absolutely bye, bye.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Bye guys. A
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