Smoke and Mirrors

0:01She had missed a meeting and then not to hear from her. This isn't right. It would have been impossible to get up every day knowing that she was gone. I had to believe you would find her alive. Text her. She always got right back. I've seen her step out the shower to answer her phone. Then one day, she didn't. Immediately, my spidey senses were high. Where was Naila? I send her an email, all caps, are you alive? There was no sign of her and such a confusing trail of clues. Even the calls to 911 were silent. No voice, no struggles could be heard. That's going to be kind of eerie. Yes, it is. In my heart, I knew she's not coming back.

0:51One of the suspects had an alibi until a camera caught him in a lie. He lived a life of a lot of smoke and mirrors. And the strangest clue of all there in an empty parking lot. Six perfectly stacked cardboard boxes. Why were they there? What was in them? It was right adjacent to a lagoon. Whoa. I watch enough Dateline to know that's probably not a good sign. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Smoke and Mirrors.

1:29It wasn't like this, you have to understand. It wasn't gray. It wasn't cold. No flecks of snow to drift and catch the bitter breeze. No. No, it was hot, and it was late after midnight, September 27, 2007. Pretty secluded area next to a forest preserve. So it was. And it was clear and dark and still and vacant. Here where the deep wood fought back against the decaying suburban sprawl. And then, nothing was clear at all. I remember crying this violent cry. You're experiencing everything, but it's not true. You're just waiting to wake up. It just feels like you're in, literally like in a nightmare.

2:14Yes, still does.

2:21The name you'll want to remember is Naila. The meaning was one who succeeds. This is Naila's mother, Maria. I wanted her to be successful, and she was. She lived her name. Quite true, as frankly have the rest of them in this big family. This is Leah, the firstborn. We might need a graph or a chart because it's kind of involved. Full siblings, half siblings, quarter siblings once removed, that sort of thing. Very blended. We share one parent, so technically half siblings, but that word is kind of offensive to me because to me it implies that it's something less, and I've never felt that way. I've never used that word.

3:05We're just siblings. One big, close, happy family. So said John, the youngest. It's simple for us because, you know, we grew up together from the time we were young. So for us, it's like we're one big family. Not one, but two Ashleys. She's Ashley with the E, and the other one's Ashley with the Y. That's this one. And imagine this. I think this is kind of unusual, kind of rare. Yes. That everybody gets along. Yeah, everybody gets along. It's a good thing. Although when we were kids, it was a lot more crazy to other people. And in the middle of this big family was Naila. Happy birthday, husband.

3:45I love you. Little moot, they used to call her. Because once she decided something, all arguments against were moot. She was very sure of herself from really the earliest time. Yes, Naila Franklin was going somewhere. She was like my hero. I looked up to her. She always just accepted you for who you were. It's almost like she glowed when she walked into a room. After college, Naila came home to Chicago and began building a career eventually in pharmaceutical sales. At 28, she owned a condo in the heart of the city. I think everything she wanted to be, she was. Just as a theme, fabulous, was the aspiration, and I think she definitely meant that mark.

4:28But always, number one really, she stayed in touch. Never failed. Call her, she'd call back right away. Text her, she'd reply instantly. Always. She managed to water all of her relationships. She spent time with everyone. Friends, family. That's a pretty special skill. Yeah, to manage that in your career. There were men. Of course there were. though she was, shall we say, discerning. The young men she dated were of a caliber that, you know, we expected of her. What sort of guys did she like? Successful, nice, respectable men. Professional men. She was dating a plastic surgeon guy and this guy and that guy.

5:16She took up briefly with a dashing investor who drove a white Bentley. And then in July 2007, Naila attended an art gallery opening, and he came. This lawyer from Milwaukee, Andre Wright. She had a big, beautiful smile. She was a very pretty woman, very warm personality. And we just kind of walked around the space looking at different pieces, talking about my interests, what I was looking for in a piece of art. Obviously, I tried to engage her. Suddenly, this is a different search than it was. I mean, the artwork became of little interest to me at that point. Just like that, it was all over for both of them.

5:58You know, I don't want to go all Hallmark card on you or anything like that. But, I mean, this was clearly a kind of a transcendental moment or something. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Ayla's family loved Andre. What family wouldn't? She brought him to my child's first birthday party. He brought my baby a gift. I was like, who does that? Because he's a nice, quality person. They liked you. I think so, yeah. Due to her influence. You started planning on moving in together, right? On being together. We did. And that was happening pretty fast. It felt good, though. I mean, it just felt natural. It was long distance.

6:39He in Milwaukee, she in Chicago. They stayed connected by phone and email and text all day long. I would call her every morning. And no one seemed to notice any dark force, any unseen thing festering in the heat of that hot late summer. Didn't feel the warning. Didn't know who said what to whom. It was September 18th, a Tuesday. And that Tuesday morning, I thought I had called her on my way to work, but I was interrupted. And she called me and said, hey, what happened to my call? And I said, oh, I thought I had. So we spoke for a bit, exchanged emails later, and then just kind of went about the day.

7:22Evening came. He, in the flush of love, called again. No answer. Left her a message saying I was heading home and got a text message back from her phone saying she was at a dinner and would reach out later. Wait a minute. You'd been calling her every day, talking all the time. Yeah. And she said, I'm at dinner, I'll call you later. But she didn't. Then, 9 p.m., one of the Ashleys called Naila. Naila, who always picked up the phone for a sister. I got a text message that said something along the lines that I'm at dinner and I'll call you in a few. Did that sound like her? No, it wasn't like her to not answer the phone.

8:07I've seen her, like, step out the shower to answer her phone. I send her an email, all caps, are you alive? One of those half-ingest, half-worried things you say, without knowing what a good question it was. Not only was Naila increasingly hard to reach, even worse, she hadn't shown up for work that day. When we return... Immediately, my spidey senses were high. And one more ominous sign. Three calls to 911 from her cell phone. No voice, no struggles could be heard. Light music in the background. It's going to be kind of eerie to hear that, huh? Yes, it is.

9:04September 19, 2007, dawned in Chicago like any other late summer day. Hot, humid, windy. The usual. Except for one thing. Naila Franklin, ambitious, dependable, and always on her phone, was suddenly radio silent, even with her new love, Andre. I called her that morning, emailed her, called her again early afternoon. And that's when he sent her that all-caps email, Are you alive? And you probably didn't mean it the way it really was. No. It's like to say to someone, Are you there? At the end of the workday, big sister Leah did get a call. Not from Naila, but from Naila's boss. He said she had missed a meeting.

9:50Immediately, my spidey senses were high. So, of course, I tried to call her, didn't get hurt. So Leah called Naila's friends and her other siblings. Had anyone heard from Naila? I didn't speak with her that day. I didn't speak with her the day before. And I said, no, I haven't. I actually haven't. I've been really busy, and I haven't talked to her. A cold fear took hold of Leah. She called the Chicago PD, filed a missing persons report. And then she drove over to Naila's condo, knocked on the door. No answer. she got a key. She went in. You see her eggs and coffee that she had just left there, just out.

10:26Something's wrong. Just like, you know what? This isn't right. And then Leah got professional. She knew how. She's a public relations executive, and she called every media contact she had. You kind of went wide on this thing. Your PR impulse really kicked in. Yes. Leah's experience told her not to hope too much for media help for one very unfortunate reason. Quite frankly, I don't know of a lot of women of color or people of color who get the same attention by the public in general. You know, there's that old saw in the media business and in fact there's some truth to it. No, yeah, I think it's not just a saw.

11:08Yeah, the good-looking young blonde goes missing and the whole world wants to know about it and stay talking about it for years. Black woman's not quite the same deal. No, and there is reality to that. It troubles the mind that when people of color go missing, or if it doesn't fit the narrative of gun violence or gang violence or something like that, then somehow it's not real. So Leah knew, but Leah was not to be denied. She decided they were damn well going to cover it. Well, they were. And maybe this was because of Leah's media savvy. The next morning, Naila's picture was all over the news.

11:51Flyers with her picture are taped to traffic posts and handed out to people passing by. We were in the streets and putting any place we could, downtown, suburbs. They phoned and texted and emailed their friends, but no one reported seeing Naila. No one. Naila's sister kept replaying their last conversation. She called me and she said, I've got something to tell you. And before she could tell me, she got a call on the other line. And she clicked over and she said she'll call me back. She didn't call you? She didn't call me back. Awful, but a person's mind can churn up in the dark. As day one became two, and then day three.

12:38I kept calling her and kept calling her. I just kept thinking, she's going to answer, she's going to answer, she's going to answer. There's no handbook for this, so you wake up and you think it's a bad dream. And nope, it's still real. The case of the missing pharmaceutical representative landed on the desks of Sergeant Mia Oliore and Detective Greg Jacobson, who, right away, scanned Naila's phone records and found something alarming. Just after 10 p.m., the night Naila vanished, her cell phone made three calls to 911. Chicago marches back. No voice, no struggles could be heard, no background noise with the exception of some light music in the background.

13:25That's going to be kind of eerie to hear that, huh? Yes, it is. Is the person physically unable to complete the conversation and just able to dial a 911? So the investigator set about talking to just about everybody Naila knew. There was interviews completed through doctors she had visited to try to retrace her steps and people she had encountered. A lot of people were talking. Of course, anyone that we knew had a relationship with her. Maybe the SPR campaign helped because... We had some anonymous tips, people saying that they saw her at this location. But not a single one of them led to Naila.

14:04By now, the detectives believed they were dealing with a serious crime. And yet... She's missing. Technically, there hasn't been a crime committed. That makes it somewhat awkward when you're looking into it. But anyone that we knew that had contact with her, the boyfriend that she was in Wisconsin with the weekend before she went missing, they were all interviewed. That boyfriend from Wisconsin, Andre, had come to Chicago, was helping with the search, and soon was, perhaps, the subject of it. They came to you. They did. The perfect boyfriend, now, to police, a perfectly obvious person of interest.

14:42Coming up, a discovery in an empty parking lot. It was in a pretty secluded area, right adjacent to a lagoon. Whoa. I watch enough Dateline to know that's probably not a good sign. A strange sight to be sure. But what, if anything, did it have to do with Naila when Dateline continues?

15:16And there's this big search. Yes. How overwhelming was that? You don't realize how the world seems so big when you're looking for someone. Imagine, all of Chicago and Naila could be anywhere. Tied up in some basement, in the trunk of a car. But worse. Then, middle of the night, 20 miles south of town in a place called Calumet City, a local cop was on routine patrol checking out a golf course parking lot. His name is Calvin Lucius. So as I got to this area right here, I noticed right in front of me six perfectly stacked cardboard boxes, you know, shipping boxes. Sitting right there on the parking lot.

16:02Sitting right on the curb. So it stood out. So I'm looking like something's not right here. Inside the boxes, pills, hundreds of them. I was thinking, okay, this might be something big as far as, you know, some type of narcotics and drug-related case. Except, look more like samples, something a pharmaceutical rep would have been handing out free to doctors. What were they? Just different type of medicines. I can't even pronounce the names. What were they doing here? On the label, the address to a storage locker. And a name, Naila. And pretty soon... The FBI and Chicago police, everybody was out here looking.

16:45Including Detective Greg Jacobson. It was in a pretty secluded area next to a forest preserve, which was right adjacent to a lagoon. Whoa. I watch enough Dateline to know that's probably not a good sign. Was Nihila down there in that murky water? We had light trucks out there. They drudged the lagoon. Back and forth they went, scoured every inch of the pond and the thick woods behind it, and found one weird thing. There was some jewelry that was on some of the bushes. Pearls and such just hanging there. The cops checked with their friends. Looked like Naila's, they said. Except Naila wasn't here.

17:29But remember Sister Leah's PR campaign? Not far away from there, next town over. The person saw a newscast and they were like, that car's been on my block for a couple days. And thank God they saw that, and thank God they cared enough to call it in. That call came from here, Hammond, Indiana, just down the road from Calumet three days after Naila vanished. A black Chevy Impala. We rushed out there to see it. It was hers. You open that trunk, the last thing you want to think is that there's something in that trunk. Unfortunately, there wasn't. You obviously do a workup on the vehicle. Did you find any prints, any DNA, anything useful at all?

18:13I think our evidence technicians that processed it described it as it was wiped clean. Including in the trunk? Yes. Yes. Believing somehow she might find her sister, the younger Ashley drove out there. The car was parked in front of an abandoned house. And I went and I banged on the door, looked through the windows, I screamed her name. I didn't want to leave. I had to be taken from that area. Of course, the cops canvassed the neighbors. And what do you know? They had seen a male mulling around the vehicle and then enter another vehicle and leave. And that was a few days prior to us actually locating the vehicle.

18:54Did they give you a good description? A male African-American, thin build. That description might have fit a lot of people in Naila's life. Like, for example, her new boyfriend, Andre Wright. Police had questioned him right away, of course, about their relationship and where he was when she disappeared. And they asked about when the last time I saw her was, last time we spoke. Or could that man mulling around the car have been someone else, like that previous boyfriend, the investor? His name was Reginald Potts. But before the cops could find him, he stepped up and called them. He wanted to know why the Chicago police wanted to talk with him.

19:34He agreed to stop by headquarters for a talk. He gives us a lot of information. He'd met her a year earlier, he told them, by pure chance, really, on the street in the ritzy Gold Coast. She was sophisticated, so was he. They dated briefly, realized it wasn't for life. Though a girl could do worse, what with his white Bentley and duplex overlooking the lake. He lives in a very large apartment complex, a high-rise. Nice place. Beautiful. It's in an upscale area in the city. It's where you want to live. Wow. Reginald told them everything he did the day Naido vanished. Everywhere he went, very detailed.

20:14The day's events, early evening shopping with friends at Target, bar hopping later with not one but two girlfriends, separately of course. And after that, an intimate plan with a third girlfriend. They make arrangements to meet at Reginald's apartment around midnight on the 18th. This guy gets around. If you got a Bentley, your options are open, right? I guess so. As investigators headed off to check Reginald Potts' alibi, down in Calumet City, Officer Calvin Lucius was again cruising vacant parking lots, this time a mile or so from where he found those boxes, when a partner noticed something.

20:54He saw a pair of earbuds hanging from the tree. Bright little baubles showed up in the dark. What else was in that abandoned place? at the edge of the midnight woods. Coming up, it's now a different type of investigation, and detectives take a closer look at a man from Naila's past. She sensed there was something off about him.

21:31It's a grassroots effort by family and friends. For all the frantic activity, the phone calls, the flyers, the organized looking about, it was a rare quiet time nine days in when Naila Franklin's sister felt it. We had a prayer service at our church. In my heart, I knew. I was like, you know what, she's not coming back. And that very night, in the 3 a.m. hush of Calumet City, night patrol officer Calvin Lucius felt his way past the glittering earbuds his partner saw hanging from a tree to the inky black fringe of forest at the back of a long-abandoned parking lot behind a derelict video store.

22:14I probably got like maybe right around in this area and just looked over and the body was there. What was that moment like? Shock. You don't know if it's her or not, but you have an idea because it's a female body. They had to resort to dental records to confirm it was Naila. I think this type of death, it doesn't just kill that person. It kills a lot in the family. It's the absence of a piece of you because that person's not here. I can't describe it. It's like, you know it's happening, but it just doesn't feel real. It just feels like you're in, literally like in a nightmare. An autopsy confirmed.

22:57The death was by asphyxiation. So now it was homicide. But who was the killer? Not Andre. Confirmed he was in Milwaukee when Naila vanished. Everything with him checked out. As for being questioned... Are you upset by it? Not at all, no. They should have done that. That was part of doing their job. So what about that investor, Reginald Potts, the one who'd been so helpful? Well, this was curious. When the detectives went to visit his high-rise apartment, they couldn't help but notice. The exterior to one of the doors was extremely damaged, like it had been forced open. Huh. That's weird. Maybe not so weird, there was an explanation.

23:43Reginald Potts was recently visited by members of the Cook County Sheriff's Department in an attempt to evict Reginald Potts. Of course, this was 2007. Lots of people were falling behind on their mortgages. But by the look of it, Reginald's problems ran deeper than that. He was constantly in default. Fifteen pairs of Gucci shoes and not a bed to sleep on. Not a bed to sleep on? A mattress. No furniture. Not a pot or pan in the kitchen, but yet what he believed were important items to surround himself with. Cars, clothing, high-end restaurants, they're for show. The Bentley, it turned out, belonged to somebody else.

24:30And Reginald juggled girlfriends and hookups and an ex-wife who was raising one of his children and an ex-girlfriend with whom he'd had another. It didn't take Naila long to figure it out, or so her friends told the police. She sensed there was something off about him, and that's probably where she decided to, you know, look a little deeper. So she ended it. And as she did, she warned whomever she could about Reginald, even one of his other girlfriends. Watch out for this guy. He's bad news, and he's cheating on you. Yeah, they were in communication about Reginald. Naila told Andre that when Reginald found out, he wasn't happy.

25:12He got wind of that and reached out to Naila in a threatening manner. Sent her nasty emails and voicemails. Did she worry about that a lot? She didn't exhibit any worries to me about it. But she must have been worried. Detectives found a report that Naila had called a non-emergency police phone number, asked about filing an order of protection against a threatening ex-boyfriend. She mentioned Mr. Potts. So yes, Reginald Potts was a murder suspect. But he wasn't exactly hiding from the police. Remember, he'd given them a very detailed alibi to check out. He's pretty specific on where he's at. And as the weeks went by, he seemed quite eager to help.

26:02And he continuously called me on my cell phone. Really? Yes. Called you to tell you what? Try to direct an investigation. Why haven't we talked to Hugh Eccles and Castor Eccles? His friends, the Eccles, were with him much of the day, he said. They were at a Target store, shopping. And sure enough, Mr. Eccles confirmed his account. there they are on surveillance cameras at the Target store, which would seem to exclude Potts as a suspect. If he was shopping, he wasn't kidnapping and killing Naila. But this was curious. For some reason, Reginald did not show up on camera. So if you're ever going to commit a crime, do not do it at Target, because they're going to have everything down to your sign, your transaction on the keypad.

26:49Very clear. Meaning, either he managed somehow to avoid every camera in the store, or his friend lied for him. So they hauled Reginald's buddy down to the station, and after a few go-rounds, he admitted not only that Reginald wasn't at the target, but... He did receive a phone call from Reginald Potts and then traveled to Hammond in order to pick him up because he needed a ride. Hammond, Indiana, the town where Naila's car was found. On the 6th of December 2007, Reginald Potts was arrested for the murder of Naila Franklin. But Reginald, quite vehemently, denied killing her. This is the evidence, okay?

27:34We can put you in the fabrication. Fabrication? Yes, said Reginald. He was being framed. Coming up, a suspect bears all. Why are you taking the clothes off? Inside. What's that? Inside. Okay. But would he reveal the truth when Dateline continues?