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Believe is false. and i believe it is invalid. and i believe that a court of appeals will overturn that. but for now this court has to honor what they said and impose a sentence. but i tell you, your honor, i am not the person that miss mccarthy has tried to paint in this courtroom. i m not a monster. i m not a monster. we waited to see if the judge would buy reginald s story or the prosecutor s. and here it was. you are a cold, calculating, conniving coward of a con man who must be punished. and indeed he was. life without parole. take him away. so that was justice. the most nailah s family could hope for. terribly important. and strangely empty. it s still not done. she s still not back. you still can t talk with her. no. they try to remember nailah not as a murder victim ....
Someone, are you there? big sister leah did get a call. not from the nailah, but from nailah s boss. he said she had missed a meeting. immediately my spidey senses were high. so of course, i tried to call her. didn t get her. so leah called her friends and other siblings. had anyone heard from nailah? i didn t speak with her that day, didn t speak with her the day before. i said no, i actually haven t. i ve been really busy and i haven t talked to her. nicole feared. she called the chicago p. d., filed a missing person s report and then she drove over to nailah s condo, knocked on the door. no answer. she got a key. she went in. you see her eggs and coffee she had just left there just out. something 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 ....
Belonged to somebody else. and 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. didn t take nailah 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. nailah told andre that when reginald found out, he wasn t happy. he got wind of that and reached out to nailah in a threatening manner. ....
In chicago like any other late summer day. hot, humid, windy. the usual. except for one thing. nailah franklin, ambitious, dependable, and always on her phone, was suddenly radio silent. even with her new love, andre. i called her that morning. e-mailed her. called her again. early afternoon. and that s when he sent her that all caps e-mail. are you alive? and you probably didn t mean it the way it really was. no, it s like you say to someone, are you there? big sister leah did get a call. not from the nailah, but from nailah s boss. he said she had missed a meeting. immediately my spidey senses were high. so of course, i tried to call her. didn t get her. so leah called her friends and other siblings. had anyone heard from nailah? i didn t speak with her that ....
all of that was too prejudicial to present at trial but now absolutely relevant. and he took her in back by the elevator and i heard slap. this guy has been an absolute menace his entire adult life. do you see mr. potts in court today? and when a woman stood up to him, witness after witness testified that reginald betrayed them, bullied them and much worse. he choked her, choked her out and threw her on the bed. this guy not only had a propensity for violence against women but he had a propensity specifically to choke and strangle them. he s a sociopath. he lies as easily as he breathes about anything. no matter how stupid. if he tells you what time it is, look at your watch. that bad, huh? yes. guy s a monster. a monster who, however briefly, fooled even the sophisticated, successful nailah, to her mother s eternal sorrow. you don t know who you re letting into your life. they don t always come looking like a monster. there s a kind of ceremony ....