00:00:03
[theme music] The neighborhood this
homicide occurred in is one of the few
gated communities
00:00:42
we have in Tallahassee. It still is one of the
nicer neighborhoods in town. Very little crime.
00:00:50
The gates obviously
assist with that. Had a roaming security
patrol for years. Beyond the fact that Golden
Eagle is a gated community,
00:01:01
it's also on the edge of town. It's in a very safe
part of the community. It is not a place where you
have frequent calls for service
00:01:09
from the police department. It's definitely one of the
more affluent areas in town.
00:01:15
It's just a tight-knit
little community. And, you know, a
lot of people know each other and their
neighbors know each other
00:01:21
and look out for each
other in that area. JENNIFER PORTMAN: All of the
homes out in Golden Eagle
00:01:27
are large homes. You know, you might call
them like mini-McMansions, some of them.
00:01:37
Adam Frasch is a podiatrist. He runs a successful
podiatry practice in Thomasville, Georgia,
which is about 30 miles north.
00:01:44
You know, Tallahassee is very
close to the Georgia line. He's doing very well
in that practice.
00:01:50
Samira is a former model. She is very glamorous. She drives around
town in a big Hummer.
00:01:57
They're affluent and
kind of showy people, I think you might say. You would know that they are
doing well for themselves.
00:02:06
[somber music] The Frasch family
had a handyman, kind of maintained their house.
00:02:21
He was supposed to be picked
up by Mrs. Frasch that day, but he hadn't heard from her.
00:02:25
And she hadn't shown
up, which was unusual. JASON NEWLIN: He's at the gate. He couldn't get in.
00:02:29
That was odd for him. Once he got in the gate,
he goes to the residence. And the two of them knocked
on the door, got no answer.
00:02:38
He can't get in
the front door. He can't get Mrs. Frasch
to answer the phone. He knows there's another
way into the house,
00:02:43
so he goes around the back. He opens the pool screen
door, and that's when he sees miss Frasch in the pool.
00:02:48
[ominous music] He immediately knew
that she was dead. He panics, does the
right thing, he calls 911.
00:02:58
And 911 suggested
that he might do something to pull
her out of the pool or attempt to resuscitate her.
00:03:06
His answer is, no, there's
no way I'm getting her. You can tell she's deceased. I don't want my DNA
anywhere near this scene.
00:03:12
I'm not touching this. [ominous music] So first responders
came to the scene immediately upon
getting the 911 call.
00:03:24
They jumped in the pool. They pulled out Mrs. Frasch and
attempted to resuscitate her
00:03:28
unsuccessfully. They were not able
to get a pulse, and she was pronounced dead. And once the scene
was controlled,
00:03:35
they would have notified the
detectives unit who would come out to begin the investigation.
00:03:45
Firefighters had removed
her by the time law enforcement arrived on scene. It looks like a two-storey
house because the roof
00:03:50
is extremely tall. However, it's just a
single-storey residence. When you walk in,
the screened-in porch
00:03:56
is behind the residence. The pool is obviously
within the porch. So there was a hose
across the pool deck,
00:04:06
a flip-flop tucked
under the hose, a second flip-flop on the first
step of the pool, and then Mrs.
00:04:12
Frasch's body in the deep end. It was well-known
that she could not swim. She was kind of
afraid of the pool.
00:04:19
This pool was in
a kind of a lanai and enclosed kind of
a screened-in pool in their backyard.
00:04:26
There was a dog running
around the pool that was loose, but it was still contained
within the residence.
00:04:32
It was not
implausible to think that maybe it was an accident. She didn't swim. There was this dog
running around.
00:04:38
There's a hose that she
could have tripped over. It was put out early on,
could she have been drinking?
00:04:44
Was there some sort
of an accident? Did she like the pool? Absolutely not. Did she swim?
00:04:51
She didn't know how to swim. So this did not
make sense at all. The way that the
scene was set up
00:04:59
to make it look like she
fell in the pool immediately raised the suspicions
of the officers.
00:05:05
And law enforcement
immediately thought, that just looks a
little too perfect for her to have actually
tripped over the hose
00:05:11
and fell in the pool. So it was immediately
treated as more than just as suspicious incident.
00:05:17
I think it was immediately
treated as a homicide until it could be
proven otherwise.
00:05:22
[ominous music] In all homicide cases, you
start really close to home. The concentric circle,
you start close,
00:05:34
and then you get bigger
and bigger and bigger. The deceased had
been found in the pool.
00:05:40
We did not have
a cause of death. We did not-- there was
a lot that wasn't known.
00:05:44
So that first day when her
body was discovered, what was really concerning
the law enforcement was,
00:05:52
where are the children? What happened that day was this
mad search for the children
00:05:59
and for Adam Frasch. JASON NEWLIN: We knew
the victim Samira Frasch was French,
from Madagascar,
00:06:07
of African and French descent. She had a family over there. So Samira was
raised in Africa.
00:06:13
And it seems like, according
of a few conversations she shared with me, she had
a very challenging childhood.
00:06:21
It was extremely challenging. Samira came from a relatively
impoverished background.
00:06:30
I understand that she didn't
have a strong family system. Her mom was really
her only close family
00:06:39
member, and that
that relationship was somewhat estranged. From Africa, she went to Paris
and pursue a modeling career.
00:06:51
And she was actually
extremely successful. I think she saw him as
somebody who could offer
00:06:58
her opportunities to pursue
her goals of becoming a model, an actress, and a singer.
00:07:04
She was extremely beautiful. She was so
enthusiastic, so happy. Never mentioned
anything negative.
00:07:10
She seemed so happy. It was kind of like a Julia
Roberts and Richard Gere, you know, "Pretty
Woman" situation when
00:07:21
he started to shower her with a
lot of gifts, expensive gifts-- from Chanel bags and
shoes and clothing.
00:07:31
He wowed her and he made her
believe that she was going to give her an incredible
life in America,
00:07:37
and she believed him. He had two houses
in Tallahassee within 5 miles of each other.
00:07:44
He had a third house
in Thomasville. He had another house
in Panama City. He had businesses that he owned.
00:07:51
He had 81 cars
registered to him. I can imagine her being
thrilled at the prospect
00:07:59
of moving here and
having this attentive, enthusiastic, wealthy partner
to begin a new life with.
00:08:08
She met Adam Frasch during
Fashion Week in Paris in 2009. It was sort of love
at first sight.
00:08:16
They became inseparable. They had this
whirlwind courtship. They married in Las Vegas.
00:08:22
He was promising her, you
know, a really incredible life. And we established Samira
and Adam's relationship
00:08:30
history of domestic violence. And it was more recent. I mean, within weeks,
there was domestic violence
00:08:36
incidents there. Late 2013 into 2014,
divorce paperwork was filed. Adam was just losing the battle.
00:08:45
Mrs. Frasch had sole
custody of the children. [ominous music] Within the first 24
hours, the priorities
00:08:56
were to locate the children. So law enforcement was
going up on phones, meaning tracking the
location of cell phones
00:09:03
that may be in Mr.
Frasch's possession to try to determine his location. So an exigent phone order was
done on Adam Frasch's phone.
00:09:12
We locate him in Panama City,
Florida, with the two children. He's found within hours.
00:09:17
The Sheriff's deputies
showed up there that afternoon. He was putting the children
into the car seats,
00:09:23
looking like he was
going to go somewhere. And that is when
he was arrested. [siren wailing]
00:09:31
We then begin to get some
information about the couple and their history. It didn't take very long
to realize that we were
00:09:39
looking at a couple that was
really in a lot of conflict at the time. Domestic incident
started to occur.
00:09:47
Their relationship
was falling apart. She continued to catch
him with other females.
00:09:52
She would go through
his phones and there was always somebody else on there. She had hired a
private investigator
00:10:00
to follow him around. The evidence was
plentiful for a divorce. He left his phone,
you know, on the desk.
00:10:10
And then message would
pop up here and there, and she would look
at those messages.
00:10:17
Obviously, she took
the phone number, and then she contacted
this woman, you know.
00:10:21
And sure enough, she found out
that he was having an affair with all these strippers.
00:10:28
So when she started to find
out, she was heartbroken. The court had
ruled that he was
00:10:37
not supposed to have
the children, you know, without permission. So he was, in fact,
initially arrested
00:10:43
for violation of the order
involving the children. So kids are safe,
he is in our custody,
00:10:51
now we have to figure
out what happened. Initially, Mr. Frasch
was questioned regarding
00:10:57
the interference
with child custody, basically kidnapping
the children. And that's where he kind
of lays out his story.
00:11:07
Mr. Frasch would claim that
they had had a romantic evening together the night before and
had been sexually intimate,
00:11:14
and that she had
become quite drunk. And that's why he was giving
her some time that morning
00:11:19
to recuperate from being
intoxicated and just going to take the kids to
Panama City to give her a break.
00:11:26
Even though, according to the
terms of the protection order, he was not to have
the children that way.
00:11:32
But he said that they
had been getting along and he had taken the children. He does tell us that he and
Samira were trying to make up
00:11:40
and things were getting better. They spent the night together. And they were on their way back.
00:11:45
They were going
to make this work. He has told she has passed away. And he's told there's an
incident with his wife.
00:11:53
And he goes, oh, my gosh,
I hope she didn't trip over that hose in the pool. I bet she was chasing
the dog around the pool
00:12:01
and tripped over the hose
and fell in the pool. The sandal supposedly
fell off her foot.
00:12:05
Well, when you look
at these sandals, it's a single wrap around a toe. That doesn't just
easily come off.
00:12:13
You don't just trip over it. One of the detectives, he goes,
Adam, you've sat here for hours
00:12:19
and told us this
story about you're making passionate love with
your wife, you've got your kids,
00:12:25
you're back together, and you
haven't shed a single tear. Explain that. He doesn't have
an answer to that.
00:12:37
So we dig deeper. Adam was certainly
a millionaire. He was a very, very
successful doctor.
00:12:51
So Mr. Frasch was
a guy who enjoyed cars, women, trips, gambling. He wore flashy clothing.
00:12:58
He had something like 80 cars
registered to him at the time that this murder happened.
00:13:03
They had multiple homes. They traveled a lot. So there was a lot of sort
of flashy lifestyle going on.
00:13:13
He liked to go to strip clubs. He loved going to Vegas. He indulged in these
kind of behaviors.
00:13:20
I mean, he lived fast, and it
was a problem that plagued him in his relationships,
you know, throughout
00:13:27
his various marriages. I mean, yeah, he had women and
he had lots of expensive toys.
00:13:36
I don't know of anything
they wouldn't try to purchase, at least. I mean, you know, the
cars in the driveway
00:13:42
were Maseratis, Hummers. He had boats. He had at least two
boats in Panama City.
00:13:52
Mr. Frasch had multiple
girlfriends during the time that they were together. He impregnated another
woman during the time
00:13:57
that they were together, so
that was certainly a big issue. We went to Panama City
to interview the people
00:14:04
where he had his boat stored. He had one that was being worked
on and one that was functional.
00:14:09
The one that was
being worked on became relevant later in
the investigation was a go-fast boat.
00:14:15
The dockworkers at the Marina
referred to him as the legend because, you know, he always
have a different female.
00:14:25
Mr. Frasch's
relationships all tended to be one direction, right? He paid for his relationships.
00:14:32
He lavished gifts
on Mrs. Frasch. That's how he secured
her to become his wife. He promised her the moon.
00:14:39
He promised her this career
with singing and acting and modeling was going
to all come true,
00:14:43
and they were going to
have this fabulous home and family and everything. And I think his relationships
with his friends
00:14:49
were the same way. He bought and paid
for his friends, and his friends were
along for the ride
00:14:53
because they liked to go
out on the fancy boats and ride in the fancy cars and
wine and dine with fancy women,
00:14:58
you know. I think Mr. Frasch didn't have
a lot of genuine relationships in his life.
00:15:03
It was an illusion, right? It was all just sort of a
fraud with this money, which
00:15:08
was the product of a fraud. During the
investigation, we did learn that the Feds
were investigating Adam
00:15:14
for a large Medicaid fraud. It was like really
excessive overbilling to the tune of
millions of dollars.
00:15:22
His podiatry
practice in Thomasville was the subject of a Federal
investigation that he was--
00:15:30
that there was fraud
involved with Medicare and that he was bilking the
system and overcharging.
00:15:37
He would bill
Medicaid as if he was seeing his senior
citizen patients twice a day,
00:15:45
every day of the year. And it was millions. I want to say $14 or
$15 million in fraud.
00:15:54
His practice was a solo
practice for podiatry. And he had an office in
Thomasville, Georgia, which
00:16:02
is a very small town near here. So it tracks that he was
stealing a lot of money
00:16:08
because you would not expect
him to be able to afford the lifestyle that he was
enjoying on the salary
00:16:15
or income of a podiatrist. They had that
investigation going on. And it was just--
we were worried
00:16:23
we were going to lose him. We were worried he was going
to get out of the country
00:16:27
before we were able to establish
probable cause on our case. It was a lot of pressure.
00:16:30
The interference with
child custody charge was primarily
designed to hold him, to buy us some time to
try to get the results
00:16:38
from the medical
examiner, find out if we, in fact, had a homicide. Because the fear
was if he got out,
00:16:43
that he had the
resources to flee and potentially not be
able to be recovered once
00:16:48
we developed enough evidence
to charge him with the murder. Typically, an
autopsy is conducted
00:16:55
within 24 hours of the death,
and that was the case here. We were hoping the autopsy
would reveal a time of death.
00:17:03
Because the time of death was
very important in this case to establish that she had to die
while she was with Mr. Frasch,
00:17:11
prior to him departing with
the children that morning. Unfortunately, because of the
temperature of the water being
00:17:16
quite cold, that interferes
with the decomposition process that would give clues as to how
long she had been in the water.
00:17:24
We were frustrated when
we were unable to obtain the time of death. That would have been
the most obvious
00:17:30
piece of evidence to
definitively prove Mr. Frasch was the suspect. Another potential problem
we had in the case
00:17:37
was there was some unknown
DNA that was on the robe that Mrs. Frasch was wearing
in the pool at the scene.
00:17:44
We collected as many
buccal swabs, DNA swabs as we could from everybody,
and compared
00:17:50
it to unknown DNA in the robe. Compared it to
Adams, compared it to Samira's, compared it to
firefighters, police officers.
00:17:57
We tested that DNA against
every known person that would have had contact with
her that we could think of,
00:18:04
every potential other
suspect that there could be. And we were not ever able to
identify the owner of that DNA.
00:18:15
However, the autopsy
revealed several damning pieces of evidence. Dr. Flannagan
observed large swelling
00:18:22
and bruising on the
side of Samira's face. The injuries to both
sides of Mrs. Frasch's head,
00:18:29
indicating that she
did suffer a blow to the head that, in
the expert's opinion,
00:18:34
resulted in her falling
and receiving a second blow to the head on some
hard, flat surface,
00:18:39
possibly the pool deck or a
marble flooring inside the home. So that was a really
important piece of information
00:18:46
in refuting the possibility
of her having fallen and hit her head and
drowned in the pool,
00:18:51
because she's not going
to hit her head twice on both sides on the way in. Secondly, there was DNA evidence
under Mrs. Frasch's fingernails.
00:19:00
And there was also her
toxicology results. Although the scene
had been staged well
00:19:05
for that with champagne
bottles around, there was no champagne
at all in her system.
00:19:11
Zero alcohol, zero nothing. I mean, it was zeros
across the board. Let's take it one step further.
00:19:18
And we tested other
fluids, the vitriol fluid, which is, like, in your eyes. And apparently,
it's the last place
00:19:26
that if alcohol was in the
body, this is the last place you would find it. Zeros, no alcohol.
00:19:32
Definitely no alcohol
within the last 24 hours. In trying to determine
the cause of death,
00:19:37
there was a frothy liquid. Frothy-- no, fluid
in her lungs, which is indicative of
inhalation of the water.
00:19:46
So, the cause of death was
actually listed as blunt force trauma and drowning. There was a possibility that had
she not been placed in the pool,
00:19:56
she could have
survived the trauma. There were officers calling
through all the paperwork,
00:20:05
learning what was happening
between the two of them leading up to this incident.
00:20:09
It was clear that it was
very contentious and very ugly and a lot of he said, she said.
00:20:15
So the volatility that was
present in the relationship, you could see in
these court documents
00:20:20
that we're playing out. We found a history
that suggested that this was something that
was ongoing and was escalating.
00:20:27
Mr. Frasch wanted to
control Mrs. Frasch and she was pushing back. They were having
each other arrested,
00:20:34
calling the law on
each other, making accusations against
each other, which the other claimed were false.
00:20:40
And there was a
power struggle going on regarding the
children, the money, the marital home, et cetera.
00:20:50
Law enforcement
reports that suggest that they had kind
of a push and pull relationship over the
years, and that Samira
00:21:00
could have a sharp tongue. Others stated that their
relationship was volatile. Adam actually was the
victim first in all of this.
00:21:13
Adam had Samira arrested
for domestic violence, received an injunction against
her and custody of the children.
00:21:20
An abusive husband will
try to beat his victim to the courthouse to file
an injunction to prevent her
00:21:30
from doing the same
thing, to control her, to control their resources. So, you know, can you
imagine Samira's surprise,
00:21:38
you know, not knowing anything
about the legal system in the United States. And suddenly, she's slapped
with this injunction, where
00:21:46
she's suddenly homeless, her
children have disappeared, she has no resources,
and likely very little
00:21:55
understanding of
just what happened. Samira so courageously began
by fighting back against Adam.
00:22:04
She had reached out to get
her own lawyer to fight back for custody of her daughters.
00:22:10
Initially, Mr. Frasch
had all the control because he was from here. He was familiar with
the legal system here.
00:22:17
And she was someone
who had no control. She didn't speak the language. She didn't have any friends.
00:22:22
She didn't have any connections. She wasn't familiar with the
system or how to manipulate it.
00:22:26
So I think that how he
controlled her was, everything is mine, nothing is yours.
00:22:32
If you leave,
you'll have nothing. You will never see
your kids again. You won't have all
these gifts and things.
00:22:38
You won't have a home. You won't have anywhere to go. You don't have any support.
00:22:41
And so the tables
really turned once she began to make those
connections and learn
00:22:46
how to navigate the system. And I don't think that
was an acceptable result for Mr. Frasch.
00:22:52
[ominous music] I think the trouble definitely
began to emerge around the time that the children were born.
00:23:04
When a new baby comes
into a relationship where these dynamics of power
and control are emerging,
00:23:10
her attention now is divided. He may see the child
and the mom in some kind of an alliance
against him, or they
00:23:21
can challenge his authority. A partner who is on the road
towards exerting greater control
00:23:29
and dominance in
the relationship can be escalated or
accelerated by the presence
00:23:33
of a baby in the household. As is customary in domestic
violence relationships, there's a honeymoon phase--
00:23:41
so there's abuse, and then
there's a makeup period. Take me back, please forgive me,
let me lavish you with gifts,
00:23:49
let me make it up to you,
it'll never happen again. So that was true in this
case, maybe even more so
00:23:56
because of the resources
available to ply her with all of these types
of gifts and travel
00:24:03
and things that would basically
give her hope that things were going to change or improve.
00:24:09
[ominous music] We go back to the residence
and go through everything and photograph it.
00:24:20
We sprayed a chemical, it's blue
star, that tries to illuminate blood on the patio.
00:24:26
There was a small
area that illuminated. We did swab it. We submitted it for analysis.
00:24:32
It came back negative,
but that could very easily be explained with
the bleach bottle in the pool.
00:24:37
But it did illuminate as if
there was blood on the patio. Not a lot of evidence
was truly collected.
00:24:42
I mean, her articles
were collected, the clothing items
were collected, but photographs was the biggest
evidence we had at the time.
00:24:52
The other thing you
have to understand is the interior of this
residence is a mess.
00:24:57
It is so full. I don't know if these
two went by a store without buying anything.
00:25:03
I mean, they had-- it was just clutter. Clutter, clutter, clutter. Living room, dining room,
family room, bedroom.
00:25:12
The decor in the
Frasch home was kind of astounding in its lavishness. It was all black
lacquer and gold gild,
00:25:24
and there was just a lot of it. I think there are some
people who use their wealth
00:25:29
to try to acquire more
and more and more things, and it's a bottomless pit. And he's a great
example of that.
00:25:37
If you look inside any of
their homes, it was just stuff. You know, nice stuff,
expensive stuff,
00:25:43
but nobody really
needs that much stuff. I said, there's no way she could
be killed in there because you
00:25:48
couldn't swing a
dead cat in there without knocking
over 10 gold statues. Everything was large.
00:25:55
I mean, let's just
say it was extreme. As an example, he
had a painting of, like, imagine King
Henry VIII poised
00:26:08
at his throne in his
living room or dining room. And the face on the
king was his own.
00:26:16
Nothing that stood
out as a murder weapon or what could have
caused any of this.
00:26:24
It was just-- it
was just clutter. Their house had cameras-- camera in the pool,
camera everywhere.
00:26:35
The DVR was not plugged in
the date of the homicide, or we could have seen
everything that happened.
00:26:41
As their relationship
is falling apart, Samira hires a
private investigator. Days prior to this
homicide, he took
00:26:53
the DVR from their
house to extract information to review it. To show up and do the first
search of the residence
00:27:02
and see cameras everywhere and
then realize the DVR is gone was beyond frustrating.
00:27:09
Hoping it would be tapped
into a Wi-Fi or anything. We were hoping neighbors,
we were hoping anybody.
00:27:18
Nobody had any video
in the neighborhood. The only video we had
from the neighborhood
00:27:24
was the gate entrance. And we learned that they
were together in the hours leading up to the murder.
00:27:31
We do have evidence they drove
to Thomasville, to Panama City, and back to Tallahassee the
day before she was killed.
00:27:40
We did get information that
she was making him take her to all of his houses so
she could see if there
00:27:45
was other women's clothes. Three days before
her death, Samira asked me to go to
her house because she
00:27:53
wanted to show me something that
somebody sent her in the mail. It was kind of an SD card
with some footage in it.
00:28:00
It was wild intimacy between
Adam Frasch and the stripper. And she was beside herself.
00:28:09
Let me tell you, she
was so heartbroken. She was very upset when
she learned about the fact
00:28:16
that he was having
affairs with other women. And, in fact, in
one case, you know,
00:28:22
she thought that he had fathered
a child with another woman. This was all incredibly
upsetting to her.
00:28:28
Samira came to know
about Adam's infidelities. And it's a humiliation
that her feelings
00:28:37
and perspectives
and self-respect were not important to him. I told her, you are in
love with the few two,
00:29:15
three years he gave
you at the beginning. You're not enough with this guy. He's a monster.
00:29:21
I said, listen to me, I
had a similar situation with a friend of mine in LA. And I'm telling you, this
guy has the same pattern.
00:29:31
He's going to try to kill you. Get out. Don't care about the money. Don't care about anything.
00:29:37
We help you get out. And three days
later, she was dead. They were seen on
a surveillance camera
00:29:50
shortly before the murder
at a car repair place parking lot on surveillance in
what appeared to be an argument.
00:30:06
They're in separate cars, but
they're getting out of the cars and you can see them sort
of engaged in an interaction
00:30:11
that appears to be unfriendly. Frasch comes through
the gate, and then you see her husband
get in his vehicle
00:30:17
and follow her through the gate. That's the last time Mrs.
Frasch was seen alive.
00:30:23
The Sheriff's office
sat down and reviewed every camera from the three
gates, entering and exiting,
00:30:33
for two days-- two full days. We can see Adam leave the
neighborhood at 7:59, 7:58,
00:30:43
like 8:00 o'clock on the dot. We see it. He's in the same clothes that
he wore the night before.
00:30:47
On the morning
of the 22nd, Mr. Frasch is seen
loading his children into the couple's black SUV
and leaving the neighborhood
00:30:57
with the children. That's early in the
morning, earlier than Mr. Frasch typically
would be up and moving.
00:31:03
And it would be
very unusual for him to do anything with the
children without her ever.
00:31:08
One, because he was legally
prohibited from doing so at that time, but also just
it wasn't his practice to do
00:31:14
things with the children alone. So there were a lot of
things about that conduct
00:31:17
that were odd. Phone records were improving. They were getting better. We were able to use the records
of Adam's phone to track
00:31:29
Adam throughout that day. You could follow it
down the interstate. And we see that his cell
phone travels to a bank,
00:31:36
and we're able to get the
surveillance from the bank. Adam withdraws $5,000 in cash.
00:31:42
Still wearing the same
clothes, and his kids are in their pajamas. Everybody we talked to says
they're not going to run out
00:31:50
of the house in their pajamas. They were dressed to the
nines everywhere they went.
00:31:55
So it was really unusual for
them to be out with their dad at that hour dressed that way.
00:32:00
Everything about the scene that
morning was really unusual. Cellebrite
extraction tells us,
00:32:07
there is a phone in the diaper
bag traveling with the kids to Panama City. Adam is calling this phone,
asking Samira how's she doing--
00:32:18
just checking on you. Haven't heard from you. Why aren't you
answering the phone?
00:32:21
He has the phone with him. It's not with Samira. His wife is dead in the pool. So we talked to
many different kinds
00:32:36
of witnesses that started to
paint a picture of Mr. Frasch. We were able to establish
several different girlfriends
00:32:44
that Mr. Frasch was having at or
around the time of the murder. So maybe not all ongoing, but
certainly in the recent past.
00:32:53
And part of our
motivation for doing that, identifying those
women, was to rule them
00:32:58
out as the potential killer. And the other thing
we were trying to do with them is to establish
that Mr. Frasch, when he left
00:33:06
the residence, did try to
take the children to one of these other women's houses.
00:33:11
Which would be inconsistent with
what he was claiming, which is, I was just taking
the girls for the day
00:33:15
to give Mrs. Frasch a break. Adam is in custody pending
the child custody hearings.
00:33:24
While Adam is in
jail, he befriends Dale Folsom, another inmate,
and they discuss their cases.
00:33:34
Adam apparently started asking,
inquiring about prison life and what's it like and
how do you survive.
00:33:40
And this guy's like,
wow, what did you do? What are you in here for? This was a guy
that Mr. Frasch was
00:33:46
housed with in the
Leon County Jail, who was about to be released. We get these kinds
of calls all the time.
00:33:53
This is not new jailhouse
snitches are a dime a dozen. I don't like relying on them.
00:33:58
I don't like my cases
relying on them. But you can't turn
them down either. Jailhouse informants
are always suspicious.
00:34:06
The juries don't like them. And their testimony
is frequently not used, unless it
can be corroborated
00:34:12
with some outside evidence. What I generally
do is I go kind of feel the water real quick.
00:34:19
I'll go out and talk to them
and say, what do you have? He starts telling me things
that I knew were factual,
00:34:26
that were not public knowledge. Well, through
their relationship, they start talking
about the case.
00:34:33
They start talking about books. "The Scarpetta Factor" was
a book about a homicide,
00:34:38
where the subject was the
victim was thrown in the pool and the pool cleaned the scene.
00:34:42
And Adam is telling him, this is
what I did, put her in the pool because it would clean it.
00:34:48
And then he talks about
the confrontation. Adam told Dale
Folsom, you know, she confronted me about a female.
00:34:58
We got in a fight, I knocked
her out and I panicked. I pushed her in the pool. A jailhouse snitch
informant informed us
00:35:07
that he had been
asked by Mr. Frasch to travel to the
marital residence and tamper with this evidence.
00:35:14
We kept having to
go back and forth to interview this guy to
corroborate, all right,
00:35:18
what more has he told you? He told me he was going
to flee the country. He told me he had a go-fast
boat in Panama City.
00:35:25
We go to Panama City. Sure enough, he's got to
go-fast boat in Panama City. It was in the shop.
00:35:30
It was in the shop. Confirmed it was in the shop. He took the cash out because
he was going to flee.
00:35:38
He took the cash out. Just little things that he had
that there was only one person
00:35:47
he got it from. He didn't get it from us
because we didn't know it. It wasn't in a report because
we didn't put it in a report.
00:35:52
He had been
asked by Mr. Frasch to look for a golf club,
or a set of golf clubs,
00:35:58
at the couple's residence. So I guess the
suggestion is, this golf club might be involved
in the murder,
00:36:03
potentially the murder weapon. Adam says, I want
you to do me a favor. I want you to get rid
of the golf clubs.
00:36:09
I want them thrown away-- river, lake, ditch-- somewhere
they'll never be found again.
00:36:15
I don't want these
golf clubs found. By the time this search
warrant was executed,
00:36:19
this house has been emptied. There is nothing left. The cars are gone. Golf clubs are gone.
00:36:28
Everything in the
garage is gone. All the curtains and the
blinds and everything that
00:36:33
was hung on the walls are gone. The photos are gone. This is a bare bones
structure of a house.
00:36:38
Walk into the master
bedroom and there is a golf club leaning in the
corner, just sitting there.
00:36:45
It's a golf club. And I literally laugh. I'm like, OK, we've been set up. This is a good joke.
00:36:53
Got us. There's a golf club
in the house, wow. When that golf
club was processed,
00:36:58
it did have the presence of Mrs.
Frasch's DNA on the club face consistent with that potentially
being the murder weapon.
00:37:05
However, the medical
examiner did not think it was consistent
with the weapon that could have been used.
00:37:11
So we had a discrepancy
in what could potentially have been the murder weapon. The medical examiner
felt strongly
00:37:18
that it was more-- the injuries
were more consistent with her having been hit with his fist,
and then falling and hitting
00:37:24
a flat, hard surface. I still think that it
could have been this club. Or at a minimum, this
club was used to push
00:37:32
her right on out into the pool. Who knows? But her DNA was found
on that golf club.
00:37:37
[ominous music] There's two ways you can
get a murder charge-- one, you can do it by
probable cause affidavit,
00:37:52
or you can get an
indictment by a grand jury. The decision to take this
case to the grand jury
00:37:57
was made because we needed other
people to hear what we have and see if they could see
through the same problems we
00:38:07
saw. When we ended up taking
the case to the grand jury for the murder
charge, Mr. Frasch
00:38:14
elected to appear
on his own behalf and testify to the grand jury. In 25 years of doing
this, I can tell you
00:38:21
that that is the only
criminal defendant that has ever come to testify
at grand jury on his own behalf.
00:38:28
And I think that shows
a level of arrogance. He felt that he could
come into that courtroom
00:38:34
and convince those grand jurors
that he had nothing to do with this and absolve himself.
00:38:40
Mr. Frasch's decision to testify
at the grand jury proceeding, it didn't go very well.
00:38:45
The grand jurors
did not believe him. This was given to
21 people, and said, here, you guys tell us if
we have enough to charge him
00:38:54
or not. They decided we did. From that point, he was
in custody for another, maybe a year until we
tried the case in 2017.
00:39:04
[ominous music] It took about three years
to get Mr. Frasch to trial on this murder case.
00:39:18
I felt extremely confident
that I had the right guy, but extremely nervous
that I might lose him.
00:39:25
I can tell you she
was alive at 11:00. I can tell you he
was driving out of the neighborhood at 8:00 AM.
00:39:30
But what happened between when
she came in that gate, what, 11:00 at night and
he's leaving the gate
00:39:35
at 8:00 o'clock in the morning. We just have to try to prove
now to another set of jurors
00:39:39
that Adam Frasch had murdered
his wife, Samira Frasch. The strategy at trial
is to present the case
00:39:46
in a way that is
digestible and makes the most sense to the jurors. So I try to tell a story.
00:39:52
I start with the
scene typically, and then build out from there. What evidence was
gleaned from the scene?
00:39:57
What evidence was
gleaned from the body? Tracking the phones,
and then what evidence
00:40:03
did that lead us
to-- so witnesses, people he was talking to. And sort of start
to follow the story
00:40:09
as it developed during
the investigation itself. The history of the relationship
fell into trial strategy
00:40:17
as something that came to light
after the discovery of the body. So you have this
shocking discovery,
00:40:23
these dramatic events, this 911
call, and this beautiful woman who's been murdered.
00:40:29
And who would do such a thing? So then you sort of
develop the motive through showing everything
that was happening
00:40:35
in the relationship
between these two in the days and months
leading up to the killing.
00:40:40
The problem with his
defense is he kept trying to come up with another person. I mean, he blamed everybody.
00:40:50
It was somebody else. So I monitored a
lot of jail calls, listen to this case preparing.
00:40:56
And he had more theories
that you could imagine. But it was a, somebody
else did it, it wasn't me.
00:41:02
But nobody else had a reason. Nobody else was there. You were the last
person to see her alive.
00:41:08
I struggled with what
to do with that golf club, and ultimately just decided
I would give it to the jury,
00:41:14
not oversell it, and
let them make a decision about the relevance of any. But I think the most
compelling evidence
00:41:23
in the case for the jurors
was probably the testimony of the medical examiner
that was really compelling
00:41:29
and the testimony about the DNA. When you pair that, it's
like the victim is telling
00:41:36
us the story of what happened. His DNA is under my fingernails. And look at the
scratch on his face.
00:41:41
And he's lying about it,
saying that the baby did it. His own words being
refuted by the evidence
00:41:49
is really compelling,
I think, for a juror. Mrs. Frasch had a
voice from the grave,
00:41:54
both with the evidence
that was collected from her body, the court
records, and the efforts
00:41:59
that she had made to try to
document what was happening to her, the abuse that
she was suffering,
00:42:04
and the power dynamic
that she was caught up in. We put it to the
jurors that Samira
00:42:10
was winning the legal battles. She was winning in court. He was unraveling
pretty quick, too.
00:42:19
She got the house. She got the kids. She was going to get a
lot of money out of this.
00:42:26
Where was he going to land? What was he going to do? I mean, there's no telling
what more she had on him.
00:42:31
What was he afraid
of coming out? I don't know. But, yeah, he was
losing the battle.
00:42:41
So the trial
took about a week. When we got to
closing arguments, my job there is to
make the jury care.
00:42:50
Remind them what this is about. Tell the story of how everything
led up to this moment,
00:42:56
where this guy made the
decision to kill his wife. And to remind them what the
biggest pieces of evidence are,
00:43:02
but also to push back
against whatever the defenses that are being raised. I think money was an issue.
00:43:09
There was a lot of money
involved in the case. But I think it was all
about the power and control.
00:43:17
So what happened that
night, I'm sure she threatened him to divorce. And I told her,
please don't confront.
00:43:24
Don't confront him. Don't confront Adam. Because who knows
what can happen? He got caught again.
00:43:31
I think she confronted
him with it. I think a fight ensued. I would even go as far
as to say she probably
00:43:40
was aggressive towards him. I think he hit her, panicked-- what do I do? Put her in the pool.
00:43:50
Pack the kids up, gotta go. And I truly think
that's the case. We closed, gave
closing arguments.
00:43:59
We all left to go eat lunch. And we weren't
far down the road, we got a call to come back.
00:44:06
That they'd reached a verdict. [ominous music] After deliberating, the jury
came back with a guilty verdict.
00:44:17
In Florida, there's only one
sentence for first degree murder, and that is
mandatory life in prison,
00:44:22
so that is what Mr.
Frasch's sentence was. Adam's decisions, the ripple
effect are far and wide.
00:44:35
Adam had six kids in total. All six lost their dad for life. He's in prison. Those two girls lost their mom.
00:44:44
The kids are doing well and
actually living a normal life. Samira, who was so
cheerful and so happy
00:44:54
and so giving and so special. To have this human being, this
wonderful human being removed
00:45:03
from this Earth in a way,
way too early, you know. it was not her time, you know.
00:45:09
It was way too early. I felt very guilty because
I had another friend who lived the same situation,
and I felt like I
00:45:23
should have been stronger. I should have said, no, get
out of here, like, right now.
00:45:28
I felt extremely guilty. I think Mr. Frasch was
incredibly surprised that he was
00:45:35
undone by his wife,
who he thought he had ultimate control over. And maybe just the
chef's kiss on it
00:45:44
that it was a female
prosecutor that put him away. [theme music]