(CHICAGO) When Andre Wright didn’t hear from his new girlfriend for several hours on a fall day eight years ago, he called her and left a voicemail.
He didn’t get a call back on Sept 18, 2007. Instead he got a “cryptic” text from Nailah Franklin’s number: “At a dinner. Call you back.”
Wright testified Thursday that the next day while at work in Milwaukee, he sent Franklin an email asking her, “Are you alive?”
She wasn’t, according to Cook County prosecutors.
They said Franklin, a 28-year-old pharmaceutical rep, was killed by her ex-boyfriend, Reginald Potts Jr., who was enraged that she told their mutual friends about his criminal past, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
Potts was last seen with Franklin on Sept. 18, 2007, entering her condo building’s garage at 1525 S. Sangamon. Nine days later, her decomposed body was discovered in Calumet City.
Franklin was trying to break off her relationship with Potts around the time she met Wright in July 2007, according to court testimony.
Franklin and Wright, a lawyer, met at an art show in Chicago. Soon they were hanging out with each other, watching the “Pirates of the Caribbean,” attending a wedding together, and playing competitive games of Scrabble, Wright said with a smile.
The couple would email and call each other so often, Franklin called Wright the morning of the day she disappeared to ask why he didn’t call or text her, Wright said.
As the day went on, Wright thought it was unusual that Franklin didn’t contact him to let him know how she was doing.
Prosecutors have said that the text Wright received the night of Sept. 18 was actually Potts trying to make it appear as if it were Franklin.
Potts also allegedly impersonated Franklin in a text to her supervisor who testified that he had called her about a field ride he had scheduled with her that week.
Also Thursday, Franklin’s next-door neighbor, Sterling Gunn, said he saw Potts lurking in their building’s garage that Sept 16. Another neighbor, former CTA spokeswoman Sheila Gregory, said she saw Potts in the condo the next day.
Linda Hudson, a security officer who worked at the adjoining building of the complex, also saw Potts pacing back and forth and at the bottom of the stairwell of Franklin’s building on Sept. 17, 2007.
Hudson said she and her colleague called police after Potts lied about being a resident. He said he was smoking and identified himself as “Johnson,” Hudson testified.
Franklin’s co-worker and friend Tiffani Miley also took the stand Thursday and described how Potts flirted with her at a gathering while he was seeing Franklin.
Miley said in the summer of 2007, she also saw Potts at a party on a boat with another woman but didn’t make a big deal about it since Franklin never saw Potts as a “long-term” boyfriend.
Days before Franklin went missing, Miley said Franklin had her listen to a threatening message in which Potts told her he’d “erase her ass” and make her “disappear.”
Potts’ trial is expected to resume Friday before Judge Thomas Gainer Jr.
