Testimony begins in the Winfield “Catfish” murder case.

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Opening statements and testimony began Wednesday after a jury was seated in the Renard Winfield Jr. murder case for the killing of Tommy Curry. Curry was killed in 2021. Winfield is accused of “catfishing” Curry by posing as a woman on a dating website and arranging a date after weeks of online conversations. Prosecutors say Winfield wanted to kill Curry because he believed he was responsible for shooting him in the leg during an earlier fight. No one has been charged in connection with this shooting.

After opening statements, Shanel Franklin, who lived with Curry for 10 years and raised four children with the victim, told jurors how she spent a day trying to find Curry before learning from someone in another state that he had been killed was. She said it was afterward that police reached her for an interview. While answering questions from prosecutors, Franklin recalled the last day she saw Curry alive. “We got up around 7:30 in the morning, took the kids to school and he dropped me off at work,” Franklin said.

She said he picked her up in the afternoon and they had dinner and she fell asleep. When she woke up, Curry was gone and wasn’t answering the phone. It was the last time she saw him alive.

Prosecutors later played the first 911 tapes the night Curry was killed, which also included reports of shots fired in the area.