UPDATE ALERT: Patrol officers have discovered an unclothed woman’s body behind several vacant businesses near the Wentworth Woods Forest Preserve at River Oaks
Drive and Gold Coast Lane [MAP/SAT] Thursday morning.
Investigators from the Chicago Police Department, the Calumet City Police Department and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office are on the scene. The identity of the body has not been released by authorities. There has been a retraction of a report by media that an uncle spoke to the media and said that the body is Nailah’s.
The family of missing Chicago woman Nailah Franklin, 28, a pharmaceutical sales representative for Eli Lilly, has offered a $10,000 reward for information about her disappearance.
Chicago police interviewed a man last week but have not named him a suspect. About one week before disappearing, Nailah Franklin filed a police report about threatening phone calls she said she received from the man, who has a criminal background, which includes a 2001 escape from a federal courthouse and two orders of protection against him by his ex-wife and a girlfriend.
The police record stated that Nailah reported the following telephone messages from the man she one dated:
“Basically, I could do harm to you. You haven’t seen that side, of me but I do have a bad side and I could do harm to you.”
Family and friends of Nailah Franklin have launched a Website seeking help in her disappearance and put up posters in a Chicago neighborhood:
Nailah Franklin, 28 years old, is 5-feet 2-inches, 115 pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair is missing just over one week. Her car is a 2005 black Chevy four-door Impala, Illinois license plate 1957855.
File photo: 2000-2005 Chevy Impala — similar to Nailah’s company car make and model.
The car of Nailah Franklin was found in Hammond, Indiana Friday. Police are searching a lagoon area on the River Oaks Golf Course in Calumet City, Illinois as part of the investigation. The Calumet City Fire Department requested a Diver’s Box Alarm at the River Oaks Golf Course at 159th Street and Park [MAP/SAT] just after 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning (September 22, 2007). Some of Franklin’s personal belongings were found near the golf course.
Nailah Franklin lives in the 1500 block of South Sangamon Street [MAP/SAT] in University Village near the University of Illinois at Chicago. She also works in the Chicago area as pharmacy sales rep for Eli Lilly. Her territory is based in Oak Park and the south side of Chicago.
Franklin’s current boyfriend, Andre Wright, from Milwaukee is the last person known to have heard from Nailah Franklin via a text message that stated she was at dinner at about 4 or 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2007. No information has been released to confirm that the text messages actually came from Nailah. Since that contact, she has not returned phone calls, emails or text messages from an out-of-town guest she was expecting Wednesday (September 19, 2007), nor has she communicated with any family or friends since Tuesday. Nailah Franklin also failed to show up for an important Eli Lilly pharmaceutical meeting with her boss at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Nailah Franklin’s family has also set up a command center at a gymnasium at 700 W. Maxwell, as a headquarters for flyer distribution [MAP/SAT].
If you have any information about the case, the Chicago Police Department asks that you call (312) 746-9259.
More info:
myspace.com/missnailah (set to private 9/21/07,
then public again 9/22/07).
*Elapsed time missing based on SEP 18 2007 4:00PM CDT
“Nailah Franklin” Newsfeed