Trial

What kind of relationship did they have?

“Everything I can tell, it was pretty violent… physical abuse, verbal abuse, mental for sure.”

Jason Newlin, State Attorney Investigator 

Everything got twisted right from Day One.

It was true that Dr. Frasch and his wife had a history of violence. But it was Samira who was the assailant. Because of a bipolar disorder, on occasion Samira would get violent, full of rage and out-of-control. Ninety-five percent of the time, the Fraschs were fine but these domestic incidents were used to support that they had a tumultuous relationship without ever mentioning that it was Samira who instigated them and Dr. Frasch who endured them. 

Dr. Frasch challenges anyone - friend, family or foe - to name one time he was violent toward Samira. In fact, anyone who knew the family would have had to say that when Samira threatened him, her husband replied with patience and love. But no character witnesses were called on to oppose the picture of violence created by the media and by the State Attorney Investigator.

Instead, at the trial, a young man, Steven Wilson, testified that he was Samira’s personal assistant in the last weeks of her life and that he had overheard a conversation between Samira and a man she referred to as her husband and that the male voice had threatened to kill her. 

His testimony is fiction. Unlike what he told the court, there were no phone calls between him and Samira’s two phones. He said one of his responsibilities was to look after the children but Dr. Frasch points out that Samira would have never let a young man babysit their young girls, particularly one with no CPR certification or proficiency in swimming in a house that had a pool. And in the last weeks of her life, Samira was spending time with her husband, not at home with Steven Wilson, which can be proved by family videos. In fact, when the call he ‘overheard’ was supposed to have taken place, Samira and Dr. Frasch were on vacation in Las Vegas, documented and proven.

A lot was made of the idea that the Fraschs were going through a divorce and that Samira had been awarded the house and the children. Dr. Frasch points out that they had only been apart for 2 months. Eight months earlier she had been arrested for domestic violence and aggravated assault with great bodily harm against Dr. Frasch. At that time, Dr. Frasch had had complete custody of the children.

Samira and her lawyers chose to handle it by filing for divorce which led to the charges for domestic violence being dropped and an end to supervised visitation of their daughters. The Fraschs reconciled two months after Samira’s arrest and were living together again. Samira had dropped the divorce proceedings. 

Georgia Cappleman, Assistant State Attorney, created a fictitious picture of Samira when she talked to the press, of a woman who was alone in the country, unable to understand the legal system, with no knowledge of how to get a lawyer. At the time of the trial, she was saying Dr. Frasch’s motive for killing his wife was because Samira now had the upper hand and was in possession of the house and had full custody of the children.

There is no excuse for this kind of shabby assumption. It was Georgia Cappleman who had had Samira’s criminal charges dropped. Samira was given full visitation rights only and was allowed to use only one of the couple’s four houses, the one in Golden Eagle where she died. Her husband still had legal custody of their daughters and access to all of their properties and possessions. Cappleman twisted the facts to make it seem as if this was a step-up for Samira to have the Golden Eagle home. In fact, it was a step down to be restricted to it. 

At the time, Dr. Frasch insisted that the condition of their reconciliation be that Samira get back on her medication and resume psychiatric counselling and treatment, which Samira accepted. The couple also went to Dr. Frasch’s psychologist, Dr. Vincent Dix, for marriage counselling in the weeks before her death. At the time of her death, she had an appointment to see a psychiatrist and was going to get a new prescription, one adjusted according to her behaviour and with less side effects. 

Despite all this, on the day of Samira’s murder, Dr. Frasch was treated like the prime suspect. He was in Panama City Beach with the girls when a call came from a friend back in Tallahassee that something had happened to Samira. He immediately started packing up the SUV and had gotten the children into their car seats when officers from the Bay Country Sheriff’s office arrived to “secure” him. After Samira was found dead in the pool, a child alert had been put out for the Frasch girls. A warrant had been issued for Adam’s arrest for no other reason than that he was Samira’s husband.

Many dubious things were either put forward or left out at the trial to convince the jury that Dr. Frasch had killed his wife. 

Samira’s hands had been bagged by investigators to preserve evidence but it was just lightly passed over whether or not her hands and feet had any pruning that would have suggested she had been in the pool awhile. (The shorter her length of time in the pool, the easier it would be to demonstrate that Dr. Frasch had not killed her. First-responders arrived just after 11am, over three hours after it could be proven by video surveillance and phone records that Dr. Frasch had left the gated community at 8am and driven to Panama City Beach without returning.)

Dr Jonathan Arden, physician, forensic pathologist and expert witness called by the defense, said that the lack of pruning on the fingers and toes was significant because such wrinkling is easily seen within 30 minutes to an hour. In his deposition, it was his expert opinion that Mrs. Frasch’s injuries looked more like an accident than a case of domestic murder. He had never seen a domestic murder with limited injuries although he had seen it with a botched home invasion with robbery and an altercation. 

One thing that did get mentioned about one of Samira’s hands was that there was blood under a fingernail. Detective John Kellerman of the Leon County Sheriff’s office with the Crime Scene Unit was called to the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital to take photos of the deceased and testified that there were small bloodstains on the fingertips and ring finger of her right hand. What wasn’t said was that the redness under her fingernails did not come back as Dr. Frasch’s blood.  It may have been dried haemorrhage from the accu chek blood sugar test and or even just finger nail polish.

Left out altogether was that DNA had been found on Samira’s robe and sandal that belonged to no one in her household and none of the first-responders. 

It was emphasized that there was a bottle of cleaning fluid in the pool skimmer and that there was some supposed trace amounts of dried blood at the edge of the pool in two spots. The suggestion was that Dr. Frasch had murdered his wife, put her into the pool and then cleaned up the deck. However, Samira’s injuries would not have bled and it was never proven that it even was blood on the deck that was found by investigators.

If Dr. Frasch’s freedom hadn’t been on the line the next witness for the prosecution’s testimony would have been comical. Dale Folsom, with 40-plus criminal convictions had the nickname in prison, Fish, because he was known to be a snitch. 

He started by saying that he and the Doc had shared a cell and that in that time, the Doc had told him the story of how he had killed his wife. It had started with Samira kicking her husband in the back because of something she had found on the laptop. Of course, no bruise was found on Dr. Frasch’s back when he was photographed at the Bay County Sheriff’s office. He had responded, Folsom said, by hitting her in the head with a golf club. Then he had thrown her into the tub, no, wait, the pool. And then taken off to Panama City with the girls. 

Why had he thrown her into the pool?

To cover his tracks was Folsom’s opinion. He expanded his story. Samira had been knocked unconscious by the golf club and left to lie on the ground. This had happened in the master bedroom, which contradicted later testimony by the medical examiner that Samira’s injuries were not consistent with a golf club and that she had fallen to a hard surface like the pool deck, not to a carpeted one.

Folsam relayed that the Doc had told him that a person could be comatose to such a degree that you couldn’t tell whether they were alive or not. (This should concern all thinking people that if Folsom is to be believed, a medical doctor trained in the US can’t tell the difference between a person who is alive or dead.)  Folsom’s testimony continued to contradict the medical examiner’s when he said that coming back and finding her dead, the Doc had tossed his wife’s body into the pool to cover up his tracks. The medical examiner said that Samira was still alive when she went into the pool and that her death had been by drowning, not from the head injuries. Both the medical examiner and an expert brought in by the defense did not think that Mrs. Frasch’s head wounds would have been enough to kill her. 

What is true about Folsom’s statement? Dr. Frasch said that the only thing he told Folsom was that he played golf. 

Part of Folsom’s testimony was that the Doc had been planning his getaway in a Donzi that he had in Panama City. When investigators finally tracked down Dr. Frasch’s boat in Panama City, it was a Fountain. Folsom then said that Doc had corrected it later and said he had a Fountain, not a Donzi, in Panama City.

Conveniently, none of the ‘interviews’ with Folsom were recorded for the jury, and any other interested parties, to review.

When asked by the prosecution why he had told police about Dr. Frasch’s ‘confession,’ Folsom replied that it was “the right thing to do.” One might pause to wonder why after over 40 criminal convictions Folsom chose that particular time to do the right thing and whether he continued to do the right thing afterward. Or he might have just done the “right thing” because it came out in court that his ‘cooperation’ with law enforcement officials had been the factor in his early release from prison. Even Folsom admitted when cross-examined that most people would do anything to stay out of jail. 

Folsom insisted, “I just did what any citizen should have done.” Bravo model citizen. Incidentally, Folsom did end up back in jail after all of this. And he snitched on someone else.

Folsom’s testimony was followed later in the day by State Investigator Jason Newlin’s testimony. Arriving like a magician with his props, Newlin brought the golf club that supposedly killed Mrs. Frasch. The story of how it had come to be in the hands of law enforcement was as entertaining as a magic show.

After Folsom had told them about the golf club, a year after Mrs. Frasch’s death, investigators had returned to the Golden Eagle residence where she had been killed. We had previously seen photos of a house overflowing with “clutter.”  Now Newlin admitted the house had been cleared out. Conveniently, however, the golf club described by Folsom was leaning against a wall in the master bedroom, the only item left there. Newlin even remarked that there were slight cobwebs on it, admitting that we couldn’t actually see them in the photo showed to the jury.

Newlin was also the investigator who ‘interviewed’ Folsom. Cappleman asked him, “Inspector Newlin, why does law enforcement keep going back to using Mr. Folsom?”

“He’s proven reliable numerous times.”  Newlin tugged his ear. 

Some in the courtroom might have been dazzled by the fact that this magical golf club had Samira’s DNA on it. But as it turned out, it was Samira’s golf club and the DNA was just what you would expect if someone pulled their own golf club out of the bag. There was no blood or hair. 

Later in an interview, Cappleman didn’t let it deter her that the medical examiner had said a golf club probably wasn’t the weapon used because the pattern of injury Mrs. Frasch had was more diffuse and the golf club force would be in one area. You would expect laceration of the skin or depressed skull fracture in that area if it had been a golf club.

“Can you say it was definitely not?” asked Cappleman

“I can’t absolutely exclude it totally but I don’t see any features that suggest it was a golf club.”

That was good enough for Cappleman who in a later interview with the media said that the golf club had never been ruled out entirely.

Neither science nor the two medical examiners were on Cappleman’s side. Samira’s time of death was never exactly pinpointed but it was most likely less than 30 minutes and definitely not the hours that the prosecution needed to make Dr. Frasch the viable suspect.

Cappleman pushed the point that the toxicology report had shown that Samira’s blood, vitreous and urine had no alcohol when Dr. Frasch reported that his wife had been drinking. In his interrogation, he had told detectives she had been drinking  throughout the day up until the early hours of the morning. He had remarked that he had seen two empty champagne bottles on the counter in the morning. In court it was reported as if Dr. Frasch had said she consumed two bottles of champagne from about midnight to 4am.

The alcohol (or lack of it) in Mrs. Frasch was a complete red herring. In no way did it factor into whether or not Dr. Frasch had killed his wife.  

Gardner, the odd jobs man who had ‘found’ Mrs. Frasch’s body in the swimming pool had been the prosecutions’ first witness and perhaps they were hoping that the jury wouldn’t notice that his story didn’t meld with the evidence that came out later during the four-day trial. His whole reaction to ‘finding’ Mrs. Frasch had been odd. He had insisted from the start that it was a crime scene not an accidental drowning which to a person arriving on the scene and seeing a body at the bottom of the deep end would be an unlikely reaction. Mrs. Frasch’s wounds weren’t pronounced enough to be noticed under those conditions and there had never been any bleeding out as a result of her injuries.  Furthermore, he told the jury he was there to finish off pressure-washing the house, something Dr. Frasch said was not one of his jobs.

Talking about the day before Samira was killed, Cappleman asked him, “Did you also do odd jobs like pressure-washing?”

“Yeah.” His eyes shifted in the direction of Dr. Frasch, the one person in the room who would know it wasn’t true.

“And during the six or seven hours you were there, was Mrs. Frasch there the whole time?”

“Yes’m”

“And the children?”

“Yes’m”

In the portion of the interrogation played for the jury, any astute person would have noticed that Samira’s last full day was spent out with her husband, not at home with Gardner. The last 24 hours that the Frasch family spent together had been easily verified by law enforcement officials because they had kept appointments and been out in public places where there had been security cameras. 

But even more damning to Gardner’s testimony is Cappleman herself. In her closing arguments she contradicts his statement when she remarks on how the Frasch family spent their last day together driving from Tallahassee to Thomasville and then back down to Panama City.

Right after his father, Gardner’s son took the stand. Being a minor, only those in the courtroom could see his face but anyone watching the live stream wouldn’t have missed the pounding chest of the young man who was seen on camera accompanying his father through the gate of the Golden Eagle subdivision on the day of Mrs. Frasch’s death. He testified that he often helped Mrs. Frasch. Dr. Frasch says he has never met the young man or seen him before that day in court. He supported his father’s statement that they had ‘found’ the body and then called 911 from the top of the driveway.

A far more credible witness at the trial was Matthew Christiansen, a neighbour in the Golden Eagle community who was out for a walk with his daughter, Lauren, on the day that Mrs. Frasch died. They passed the Frasch home at the same time as Dr. Frasch was seen on Bank of America security footage 3 hours away in Panama City - and saw an African American woman, tall, thin, with long dark hair, in the driveway. She put something in one of the vehicles and then returned to the house. Half an hour later, she would be dead.

Mr. Christiansen's straightforward testimony was torn apart by the prosecution. In his initial interview with police he had said the lady was wearing red pants. At the trial, Sgt. Anthony Geraldi with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office told the jury that he had gone through all the photos taken the day the house was searched and there were no red pants in any of them.

The defense asked him if there were any laundry room photos. He didn’t know. The defense showed him a photo of a piece of clothing on the floor by the bassinet, something red with white trim. The white trim was significant because in his first interview, Mr. Christiansen had said that the lady had been wearing a white shirt and red pants  and in his second interview, Mr. Christiansen had said it might have been white pants. 

Mr. Christiansen had also said in his initial interview that it had been a black SUV, but he couldn’t be certain of anything because there was always a kaleidoscope of colors on the driveway due to all the cars. The prosecution made a big deal out of the fact that Mrs. Frasch drove a white Hummer, not a black SUV. The defense responded by pointing out that the white vehicle had a black back, a black interior (the door had been open) and a black tire on the back. Mr. Christiansen had said that he hadn’t stared at the woman, only glanced at her. And he was a little uncertain as to which side of the vehicle she had put something into. He had based his initial statement on thinking that the vehicle had been backed into the driveway as that was the usual way for the vehicles on the the driveway to be. In the trial, he admitted that the vehicle may have been facing forward. He had only looked at the situation for five seconds. 

But one thing he was certain of was the range of time and the day. It didn’t come out in the trial but being a careful man, he had even reviewed his own phone records and talked to a neighbour they had met that day out on their walk to make sure he was getting it right. In fact, police confirmed with the neighbour that it was the same day and the same time. Mr. Christiansen's evidence alone could have exonerated Dr. Frasch but he was treated as an unreliable witness for not having a picture-perfect memory even though he was 100% certain that he had seen a model-looking African American woman on the driveway sometime between 10:15 and 10:45 on the day when Dr. Frasch was verifiably in Panama City at the same time. 

The truth didn’t triumph that day. Instead, the jury chose to believe the people who had perjured themselves - Folsom who said that the Doc had ‘confessed’ to him; Gerald Gardner who said he was there that day to pressure-wash the house; Gerald Gardner’s son who said he frequently came to help his dad out at the Frasch home. 

The evidence from the medical examiner strongly suggested that Samira was struck in the head with a blunt object and then fell to the hard concrete of the pool deck. The force of the blow and the subsequent damage to the side of her head that hit the deck would have most likely left her unconscious. 

Samira’s death by the poolside was more logically caused by someone like Gardner than by her husband in their carpeted bedroom. Gardner even admits he went to the pool area after going to the front door. And a neighbour confirms that he heard Gardner say “Oh shit, oh my God,” although the prosecution treated this as his response to ‘finding’ Samira. 

One thing is certain, the nervous, young man who testified right after his dad and was only on the stand for a few minutes knows it was a lie that they were there that day to “help Mrs. Frasch.” And if he lied about being a regular visitor to the home then there’s only one reason for it, that he’s covering for his father. There’d be no other reason to perjure himself.

Furthermore, Dr. Jonathan Arden, who testified on behalf of the defense said the death of Samira Frasch did not appear anything like a domestic homicide. He clarified this by saying in all his 30+ years as NYC's head medical examiner he had never seen a domestic murder with just 1 or 2 minor injuries. They always had emotional rage with multiple brutal injuries, wounds, stabbings, or gunshots. 

This overview of the trial does not document all the falsehoods that plagued Dr. Adam Frasch’s case. This blog will chronicle how Dr. Frasch can prove that the prosecutor and her witnesses and expert lied a total of 947 times and will expose a travesty of corruption and abuse of the legal system. He can prove he told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help his God, his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.