Suspect Charged in Nailah Franklin Murder Case

The Nailah Franklin case has been solved. One of the men mentioned early on in the investigation has been charged with her murder.

By Angela Rozas and Kayce Ataiyero | Tribune staff reporters
December 8, 2007

(CHICAGO)- A Chicago man with a history of arrests for threatening violence against women was charged late Friday in the September slaying of Nailah Franklin, a pharmaceutical representative whose missing persons' case and murder stirred the city, officials said.

Reginald Potts Jr., 30, who had briefly dated Franklin, is scheduled for a bond hearing Monday in Cook County Jail, where he's been held since last month on charges unrelated to Franklin's slaying, according to John Gorman, a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office.

Police sources said Potts had been a suspect in Franklin's slaying since her nude body was discovered in a densely wooded area on Sept. 27.

Potts was in County Jail serving a 100-day sentence he received after pleading guilty to violating an order of protection involving another woman. He subsequently was charged with aggravated battery for striking a sheriff's deputy and ordered held without bail.

Franklin's sisters had taken her case to the streets and the airwaves after they reported their sister missing Sept. 19. They established a $10,000 reward and distributed fliers featuring a smiling Franklin. Friends and family talked of Franklin's star-like quality, and her outgoing nature.

Relatives reported her missing after family members and a boss tried to call her on her cell phone, but instead received unusual text messages that she was having dinner and would call them back.

In the weeks and months after Franklin's body was found, Potts, who said he works in real estate and investment funds, made bizarre public pleas online and to the media protesting his innocence, though police never named him a suspect. He was also arrested several times in the past three months for violating orders of protection, allegedly threatening a gas station attendant and allegedly striking officers who tried to arrest him.

With more than 20 arrests in four counties and eight convictions spanning more than a decade, Potts had a history of threatening violence, especially against women.

In a previously unpublished interview with the Tribune last month, Potts denied that he had anything to do with Franklin's slaying. A week before Franklin disappeared, she had complained to police that Potts was making threats against her. She filed a police report, but did not file for an order of protection, as others involved with Potts had done in the past.


"What would be the motive for me to do anything to her?" Potts said in the interview. "It's an unfortunate situation, but it doesn't mean I should be run through the ringer. I had nothing to do with it."

He said he had met Franklin in the spring of 2006, and the two dated off and on. He said he regretted the last e-mail exchange he had with her, in which he cursed at her. He also said he believed that police and the public were harassing him even though he had provided phone records, key entry information from his apartment and other evidence that showed he was in the city and had gone to several clubs the night Franklin was reported missing.

He said he voluntarily gave statements to the police, supplied DNA samples and fingerprints, and told police where he was the night before Franklin was reported missing. He could not recall where that was in an interview with a reporter.

Potts' most serious conviction came in 2002 for threatening to kill a Highland Park police detective and his family, court documents showed. The detective had been investigating Potts' possible involvement in a car theft ring.

More threats would allegedly follow against ex-girlfriends and his children's mothers.

But Potts had never followed through on his most serious threats—to kill those who were close to him or those who got in his way.

Potts had pleaded guilty in 1997 to possession of stolen cars and was sentenced to 7 years in prison. By 1999, he was out of prison and got arrested on minor charges in Carbondale, where he briefly attended Southern Illinois University.

While in custody on the Highland Park threat charge in June 2001, Potts was brought to the Dirksen Federal Building, handcuffed to a bench, and left alone. The handcuffs were loose, and Potts escaped. Two weeks later, the FBI tracked him down on the South Side and took him back into custody at the Lake County Jail.

Potts was sentenced to 3 years in prison for intimidation and sent to Big Muddy Correctional Center in Downstate Ina, where in 2003, he was charged and later pleaded guilty to hitting a corrections officer in the eye. While in custody in 2004, he allegedly called his ex-girlfriend's family in Aurora from jail numerous times using three-way calling and threatened them, according to a police report filed by the woman's brother-in-law.

"I know where you live," he allegedly told the man, who didn't want to press charges, but said he wanted police to record the information "in case something more serious happened," according to the report.

Despite his criminal record, Potts seemed to be successful in attracting women. He fathered children with two women, including a woman he married and later divorced, according to court documents.

His former wife in Naperville filed two orders of protection against him, and he faces misdemeanor charges of domestic violence against her.

Police said Potts forcibly wrenched the cell phone from the hand of his former wife to prevent her from calling authorities. According to an affidavit the woman filed in her request for an emergency order of protection, Potts showed up at the open backdoor of her Naperville home on the evening of May 27, angry that she had not let their daughters, ages 5 and 1, go somewhere with his mother.

"I went to open my cell phone to call police and at that point he came in the house and started to scream at my face telling me that he wasn't going to play these games with me," the woman wrote in her complaint.

The first order of protection his former wife requested against Potts was filed Nov. 9, 2006, after he allegedly showed up at her Naperville home uninvited and beat and kicked on the door, demanding to be let in to see his children. The woman said she was frightened because she had not given him her new address. She said he had hit her in the past and that she required treatment at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Potts at one point owned Amaya Investment Group LLC, but he said in November that the company was dissolved. He told a judge in June that he was indigent, unemployed, and had no home and no car. But he told a reporter in November that he was working successfully in real estate investments and hedge funds.

In September, he was found in contempt of court for failing to pay child support to his former wife. The same month, another woman, who is also the mother of another of his children, tried twice to file an order of protection against him in Maywood, telling police he shoved her and then later fired "shots" near the bedroom window where she and their child sleep, according to records.

He then allegedly called the woman's mother, saying, "Next time, they won't miss," according to her complaint. The court agreed to an order of protection on Sept. 18, the same day authorities say Franklin disappeared.

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