Media sensation... and distortions

The media loved the story of Adam and Samira Frasch. They were a fascinating couple with a luxurious lifestyle and two beautiful babies, one of them already a social media star. The truth of how Dr. Frasch had met his French model wife and the life that they shared would have been enough of a story but the media chose to fall back on clichés that turned Dr. Frasch into a womanizing gambler and his wife into a terrified, hunted woman. 

At the centre of the lies were Assistant State Attorney, Georgia Cappleman, and State Attorney Investigator, Jason Newlin. The misconceptions put forward by the media could almost all be directly or indirectly linked back to this tag team that decided at some point that it was going to be Dr. Adam Frasch who would be prosecuted for Samira’s death regardless of whether or not he had an unbreakable alibi.

Dr. Frasch’s alibi alone should have exonerated him. Neighbour Matthew Christiansen came forward and said that he had seen a tall, thin, African American woman with long dark hair come out of the Frasch house, put something in a vehicle and go back inside. He was out walking with his daughter, Lauren, and they had passed the home somewhere between 10:25 and 10:45. At the same time, Bank of America security footage in Panama City Beach, 3 hours away, showed Dr. Frasch doing his banking with his children. 

Rather than accept this simple eyewitness account that Samira was still alive hours after her husband left that morning, State Investigator Jason Newlin decided it had to be one of Dr. Frasch’s girlfriends. Or mistresses, as the media turned them into. Dr. Frasch had dated three women during a time in the marriage when Samira was filing for divorce. Defamatory shows like Diabolical: Mistress Roulette created a picture of a married man juggling three mistresses while still living with his wife. Furthermore, it altered Mr. Christiansen’s testimony and showed an African American woman lingering outside the Frasch home, watching it. Not exiting from the door, putting something in the car and returning inside.

In American Monster: Once a Princess, we learned that investigators went through hours of surveillance footage from the gated community in the hope of finding an African American woman driving in or out in the vehicle seen by Mr. Christiansen. There was no one, leaving the inescapable conclusion that it had simply been Samira in her own driveway about half an hour before being murdered. 

Another character assassination by the media was creating the myth that Dr. Frasch had a taste for strippers. They had simply been women introduced to him by a friend and he hadn’t met them in a strip club. It was, in fact, State Investigator Newlin who travelled as far south as Miami, stopping in strip clubs to talk to tall, African American women, asking them if they had ever been to Tallahassee. He admitted this with a rueful grin. It turned out to be a fruitless search. None of the women he talked to had been anywhere near the Frasch home that day. 

Furthermore, Georgia Cappleman manipulated the media by lying and saying there was an "unidentified neighbor" that saw Dr. Frasch in the neighborhood and at the house at 10:30 am that morning all the while not mentioning that he could be proven to be in Panama City Beach at that exact time and at the same time as  Mr. Christiansen and his daughter saw Samira alive.

About Mr. Christiansen, Newlin told Crime Watch Daily: The Doctor’s Wife that, “He is adamant he sees a black female alive in this driveway. There’s never been anybody at this house before, this house with all the cars. And I just think the neighbours got the wrong day.”  The viewers were not told that Mr. Christiansen came forward on the day of Samira’s death. 

It got worse in the trial. Cappleman relied on creating a story of domestic abuse to get her conviction. There was no merit to it. Dr. Frasch had no history of abusing his wife or any other woman. Samira had been convicted of attacking him, a story told elsewhere at this blog. In her closing arguments, Cappleman said  “The evidence in this case has shown that Samira Frasch was brutally beaten and then callously tossed into the pool.”

Despite that the medical examiner had said nothing about the victim being brutally beaten - she had been struck once and then fallen to a hard surface - the media ran with this idea and continued to allow Cappleman to promote it despite that it contradicted the medical evidence.  In Dateline NBC's At the Bottom of the Pool, which included footage of the trial, Cappleman said that the blunt force trauma would have most likely killed her. “He basically killed her twice,” she said. What they didn’t include was the part of the trial where the medical examiner was asked about the injuries Samira suffered before being put in the pool. She said it was unlikely that that alone would have killed her. 

A newspaper from Dr. Frasch’s home state of Nebraska informed its readers that former Northeast Nebraskan, Adam Frasch, had brutally beaten his estranged wife and then killed her by pushing her unconscious body into their swimming pool. 

The Tallahassee Democrat told its readers that a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of Samira Frasch’s estate asserted she was thrown into the cold pool after being beaten in the face in an effort to conceal the time she died. Samira, in fact, had suffered injuries to the sides of her head that were not discernible to first responder eyes. But all these assertions after his trial created the picture that the man in prison was a callous wife beater. 

In her mission to turn Dr. Frasch into a domestic abuser, Cappleman put forward the idea that the couple were in the middle of a vitriolic divorce and that Samira had gained the upper hand because she was on the verge of being awarded the marital home and full custody of the children. The media just chose to go with Cappleman’s version without checking their facts. 

Six months prior to her death, it was Samira who had been arrested on charges of domestic violence. At that time, it was her husband who had full custody of the children and Samira had only supervised visitation. And at the time of her death, the couple were in the process of reconciling, not divorcing. It was Dr. Frasch who was in the process of having a restraining order against Samira and a no contact order lifted, as well as getting back her joint custody of the children. Samira never applied for a restraining order against him or for sole custody of the children.

In fact, Georgia Cappleman had been the one to have Samira’s aggravated assault charges dropped as well as the harmful intent to children by seeing her repeated outbursts. 

The couple spent the last 2 weeks of Samira’s life travelling, taking family vacations. They had spent the day before together, on the road, with stops at restaurants. Although the media shared footage from the vacations, they gave no context for it but relied on so-called friends to fill in the details of their lives. In Crime Watch Daily’s The Doctor’s Wife, so-called best friend, Jackie Watson, spoke authoritatively about Samira. At first they seemed like “the perfect couple.” Later, however, “he was hunting her, night and day he was hunting her.” It seemed off just by watching the rest of the documentary which showed us that Samira needed her husband to help her pick up her Hummer at the garage, just 12-hours before her death. Women don’t typically ask their stalkers for help picking up their vehicles.  

When Dr. Frasch was shown leaving the gated community at 8 am the next morning, Jackie Watson spoke with conviction on Dateline NBC’s At the Bottom of the Pool when she said “I know she would never give the kids. This is for sure.” 

Who was Jackie Watson? Was the really Samira’s best friend? No. She was someone Samira hadn’t talked to for over 2 years. Jackie Watson had tried to sell a water filtration system to the Frasch family that they had declined to buy. There were a lot of ‘experts’ on the Frasch family at around the time of the trial. 

Not surprisingly, the media loved baby Hyrah Frasch who Samira had turned into a social media star. Her glamorous outfits designed by Samira turned heads in major American cities and online. When Dr. Frasch and his daughters headed out that day with the girls still in their pyjamas, the media, fuelled by Cappleman, told viewers that that was suspicious. It simply wouldn’t have happened, one interviewer announced. Samira would have never let her celebrity children leave the house like that. 

And Cappleman went even further saying it was, “really unusual that he would depart with those kids at 8 am after getting in at midnight the night before and to load up and pack up with the kids for the first time ever off on a trip somewhere and his wife happens to be discovered dead a few hours later…” She ignored that her own office had handled the charges against Samira that had given Samira’s husband full custody of his children. Dr. Frasch had most certainly taken many trips alone with his children as any authentic family friend could have told the media. 

Instead, Dateline NBC told us, “So the doctor fled away with the kids…” as a clip of his car accelerating out of the gated community played. Even the most innocent acts can make a man look guilty. Even the simple act of letting his wife have a sleep in and leaving his kids in their pyjamas. 

Wild speculation was the norm for the stories about the Frasch family.

The truth inevitably leaked out, though, in some portions. Dateline NBC brought up an earlier issue in Dr. Frasch’s life, an accusation of Medicare fraud. Cappleman told viewers that in order to make that much money you would have to see 2 patients simultaneously 24/7 for the amount of billing. However, the documentary admitted that the Feds had investigated but hadn’t pressed charges. Yet, Cappleman’s uninformed opinion was allowed to air alongside this exoneration. 

When it came to the murder itself, Dateline NBC had to admit, “No rigor mortis, no livor mortis, no wrinkling of the skin. It all pointed to the same thing.” That Dr. Frasch was innocent because he had left three hours earlier. Especially when combined with the expert opinion of forensic pathologist Dr. Jonathan Arden who said, “In my opinion she was dead for a relatively short time before she was discovered and removed from the water.”

Dr. Frasch’s trial was live-streamed and is still on YouTube. Any thinking person can watch it and consider the contradictions and outright lies that have been laid out in the Trial page of this blog. 

The media’s story should have been about the failure of the American jury system, not a rehashing of the prosecution’s biased and inflammatory closing arguments.