Cell dialing tripped up suspect in Nailah Franklin murder: prosecutors
Call data was like a ‘trail of breadcrumbs’
The cellphones Reginald Potts dialed “like a teenage girl” eventually wound up “being an albatross around his neck,” an assistant state’s attorney said during opening statements.
Reginald Potts Jr. might not be a “dummy,” Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Fabio Valentini said.
But even though Potts was able to kill Nailah Franklin without leaving a trace of his DNA on her body or the car he used in the crime, he was clueless about the evidence he left behind with the cellphone calls he made from key locations in the 2007 murder, the prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.
The cellphones Potts dialed “like a teenage girl” eventually wound up “being an albatross around his neck,” Valentini said during opening statements at Potts’ long-awaited murder trial.
“He left a trail, like a trail of breadcrumbs everywhere he went. . . . He was ignorant of the technology behind cellphones. . . . It was his downfall.”
Potts, 39, is accused of killing Franklin in a rage after she sent disparaging emails to her friends about his character and a SunTimes article that detailed how he escaped FBI custody in 2001.
Potts and Franklin, a 28-year-old pharmaceutical rep, had dated casually, but she never saw him as “boyfriend” material, Franklin’s longtime friend Dana McClellan testified.
When they broke it off, Franklin told McClellan she was scared of Potts. Franklin was so concerned for her safety, she gave McClellan her passwords to her cellphone’s voicemail and email in case anything happened to her, said McClellan, 35.
Assistant Public Defender Michael Morrissey maintained Potts’ innocence and stressed that police targeted his client in the “firestorm of media attention” after Franklin disappeared on Sept. 18, 2007.
Detectives had “tunnel vision with one target: Reginald Potts,” Morrissey said.
The prosecution’s case is “filled with inconsistencies, unanswered questions and forced conclusions,” said Morrissey, describing Franklin as a “jealous” woman who couldn’t stand that Potts was seeing other women.
Morrissey also noted that the Cook County medical examiner’s office did not rule Franklin died of asphyxiation until five or six months after her decomposed body was found in a wooded area in Calumet City.
Prosecutors said Potts, a real estate agent, stalked Franklin’s University Village condo for three days before she was last seen on surveillance cameras leaving her building with Potts.
Her maggot-infested body was discovered on Sept. 27, 2007, near a vacant video store owned by Potts’ brother-in-law, Valentini said.
Potts had his friend pick him up in Hammond, Indiana, just a mile away from where Franklin’s Chevrolet Impala was found, Valentini said.
After disposing of her body, Potts used Franklin’s cellphone to text her friends to make it appear she was alive, Valentini said. Potts’ own cellphone was also pinging off the same cell towers as Franklin’s, Valentini said. To cover his tracks, Potts also allegedly went into Franklin’s voicemail and deleted the threatening message in which he said he could have her “erased.”
McClellan said Franklin played that sinister voicemail for her days before she went missing.
While McClellan was on the witness stand Wednesday, Assistant State’s Attorney Maria McCarthy went over pictures of Franklin’s condo, car, surveillance videos and heated email exchanges between Potts and Franklin.
Franklin called Potts “crazy, toxic and pathological” for flirting with other women and failing to tell her he had children.
Potts, in an email filled with expletives, told Franklin she “sounded bitter and desperate” for telling their mutual friends about his criminal background. The email said if she continued, he’d pass out a sex tape he allegedly made with her.