Former NBA player Eddy Curry opened up about the murder of his girlfriend and daughter in a long personal essay shared by The Player's Tribune.

The 37-year-old, who was a star center in the NBA for years, spoke about the moment he found out his 24-year-old girlfriend Nova Henry and 10-month-old daughter Ava were killed in January 2009.

During a game with the New York Knicks, a team official told him to go to the locker room where one of his friends desperately told him to call his assistant.

"When my guy picks up, I ask what’s going on, and there’s about a one or two-second pause. Then it’s…'Bro, Nova is dead, bro. They killed her.' You hear words like that and…I’m telling you it’s the furthest thing from funny," Curry wrote.

He added that his friend said, “I’m here on the scene now. There’s blood everywhere, bro. I think the baby may be dead, too.”

Henry and Ava were killed by her ex-boyfriend and lawyer Frederick Goings, according to the Chicago Tribune. Curry had been dating Henry off and on for a number of years and had two children with her, all while he was married to another woman.

"On the day Nova was murdered — shot down in cold blood back home in Chicago — one of the many people who didn’t know about her was my wife, Patrice. Patrice also didn’t know about the children I’d had with Nova — my 10-month-old daughter, Ava, and her 3-year-old brother, Noah. I kept it a secret. All of it. For years," Curry wrote.

"So as I’m on the phone learning that my infant daughter and her mother had just been murdered…I’m also coming to grips with the fact that my marriage of nearly four years would almost certainly be over. There would be no more covering anything up," he added.

Once he was able to get himself together, he wanted to know what happened to his 3-year-old son, Noah. The police found the young boy covered in blood while lying next to his dead mother.

Curry admitted that he was a "terrible" husband and he still felt immense guilt for not being able to protect his daughter and Henry, who had repeatedly told him that Goings was dangerous.

This all happened at a tumultuous point in his life. He was struggling as a player on the Knicks and was having massive financial problems due to his agent who used his name and clout to take out dozens of onerous loans that bankrupted Curry.

Curry wrote at length about how ill-prepared he was for the NBA and how he had been repeatedly robbed by friends and family. He included one harrowing story of a friend including himself in Curry's will and another about a former driver who sued him for sexual harassment but later admitted he just needed money.

The one person, however, who always stood by him was his wife Patrice who helped him arrange Henry's funeral and raise Noah.

Noah now lives with Curry's six other children and Patrice.

"He’s 14 now, and even though he is not her son by blood, and he arrived in her life in what was probably the most difficult way imaginable, she loves that boy with all her heart. You cannot tell Patrice that Noah is not her son. She would sacrifice everything for him without thinking twice. It’s not even a question. And he knows it. He feels that love," he wrote.

Goings was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in 2013.

Player's-Tribune

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