Cold Case Files - REOPENED: The Paper Route

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

A newspaper carrier is found murdered execution style, and the investigator on the case has known the victim for over 30 years. Determined to find his friend's killer, the investigator will search for more than a decade before finally bringing the killer to justice. Check out these great deals from our sponsors! Clare: Go to Clare.com/coldcase for 10% off your order! Vegamour: Go to Vegamour.com/coldcase and use code "coldcase" to save 20% on your first order! Progressive: Quote at Progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive!

Hey, Cold Case fans, we have something special for you. We're bringing you double the episodes every week. We know you dedicated fans need your fix in between new episodes. So every Thursday, we are back bringing some of our best episodes from previous seasons. Let us know which classic episodes you'd like to hear again in the comments. And don't worry, we'll see you back here every Tuesday for all new episodes of Cold Case Files 2. Now, on to the episode. This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Use your best judgment.

In 1988, Bertha Neiman was 63 years old. She lived near Hilton Head Island off the coast of South Carolina. She worked as a rural newspaper carrier for almost 15 years. She would drive across the state line and into Georgia to pick up the papers. After loading all the papers into her van, she drove from Savannah back towards Hilton Head, stopping frequently to drop off bundles of newspapers to distribution centers. The papers would then be separated and given to the local carriers. Bertha grew up in Michigan. In 1943, when she was 16, Bertha married Klesson Neiman. The couple had their first child in 1946, a daughter named Audrey Ann. Sadly, she died seven years later,

a victim of leukemia. Bertha had three more children, twins, Donna and Daryl, and a few years later, a son named Lonnie. The family moved to South Carolina in 1965. Bertha's mother joined them a short time later. In 1975, at the age of 50, Klessa Neiman died from a sudden illness.

Bertha got a job delivering newspapers. She also enjoyed spending time with her mother, children, and grandchildren. Bertha's mother passed away in 1980 at the age of 92. It seems Bertha was no stranger to death. On March 15, 1988, Bertha, accompanied by her two puppies, left their home in the early morning hours to pick up the newspapers. At around 3 a.m., Bertha pulled into a truck stop and ordered a cup of coffee. She walked out the door into the dark parking lot and was never seen alive again. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files.

Bertha was extremely consistent, so when she was late for her final delivery, her boss, Joe Pitts, started to worry. We had radios in our trucks and telephones, and if she needed to call us, we usually expected that, and we couldn't find her. Joe knew Bertha's delivery route and was able to track her van down. It was abandoned in a parking lot on the other side of Hilton Head Island. She had two little puppies and they were still in the van. It was just like the van had been stopped there and it was quite unusual that she would leave those dogs.

Joe called the police with his concerns about Bertha. But before the police were able to respond, they got another call, reporting that a body was found behind a local church. This is Captain David Randall. I was met out at the road or in the driveway by Sergeant Cassidy. And at that time, he told me, he says, David, I want to prepare you for something that you're fixing to see because you are very close friends with this victim. Of course, I inquired who it was, and he told me it was Bertha Neiman.

Captain Randall had known Bertha for almost 30 years before she was killed. Her body was found face down under a tree. She'd been shot three times, two times in her head and once in her neck. The two emergency calls were connected, and Captain Randall realized that Bertha's van had been abandoned just a few miles from where she was found. You know, at this point in the investigation, we're trying to figure out how Bertha's van got to where it was. And we were pretty much sure that the person or persons responsible for her death were most likely the ones that put the van there. The van didn't show any signs that there was a struggle. There was even some money lying on the dashboard, indicating that robbery had not been a motive.

During the autopsy, the coroner discovered Bertha, who was a widow without a boyfriend, had semen inside of her. So most likely, the person or persons that had murdered her had most likely sexually assaulted her. The investigators didn't have any leads or suspects, but the family wanted answers. This is Lonnie Neiman, Bertha's youngest son. I can't really say how well their investigation was going. The feedback we were getting was not very good. I mean, we weren't apprised of everything that was going on.

The family hoped that since Captain Randall was a family friend, that he could at least give them some hint as to how the investigation was progressing. This is Donna Creel, Bertha's daughter. They can't tell you what you really want to know. And that's what was hard, because David Randall was a friend of ours when we first moved to Hilton Head. And I just felt like, you know, being a personal friend that he would have really said more, but he kept it on the professional level. Captain Randall was direct with the family about the separate roles that he

played, one as a friend and the other as a police officer. They had numerous questions, and I had to be very firm and frank with them that we were at a point that I was, today I was the cop, tomorrow I'll be the friend. I'm Lola. And I'm Megan. And we're the hosts of Trust Me,

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Rantle began his investigation by creating a list of people who lived in the area with a history of violence. There were six names on the list. One of the people was known simply as A.J. Old A.J. and I go a long way back. A.J. had a prior history of violence, violence toward older ladies, and robbing older ladies. A.J. told Randall that he was home on the night that Bertha had been killed,

and a friend had stopped by A.J.'s house in the early morning hours. The friend was a convicted rapist named Ekren Frazier. He says that around 4.30 in the morning, Ekren had come to his house, and Ekron had admitted that he had killed a lady. A.J. claimed that Frazier had told him where the murder weapon had been dumped, Jarvis Creek, less than half a mile from where Bertha's body had been found. Captain Randall searched the area, but wasn't able to find the gun,

so he decided to go talk with Frazier. He was cool, calm, and collected. If you had the facts on him, and if you thought that you were good, he was just a little bit better. Frazier told Randall that he'd been at a club the night Bertha was shot. He claimed he went straight home afterwards. Captain Randall didn't have any evidence to disprove Frazier's story. There was also no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene. With no evidence and no leads, Bertha's case took a backseat to other active investigations.

And in time, it went cold. Eleven years after Bertha Neiman was killed, the lead investigator, David Randall, continued to work for the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office. Over time, he had been promoted to a supervisory position. One morning in the spring of 1999, a young lieutenant approached Captain Randall with a question. Bob Bromage came to me. He's always called me Soup. He said, Soup, we need to talk about these cold cases.

I said, which one do we want to start with? And I think you know which one I told him. Randall gave Lieutenant Bob Bromage Bertha Neiman's file, hoping the lieutenant would be able to find a lead. Here's Lieutenant Bromage. And it meant something for this one to be looked into. There was somewhere to go with it. So a lot of cases, there's not a lot of head start, you might say.

The head start Bromage was talking about was a semen sample recovered from Bertha Neiman's body. The state crime lab was only able to create a partial profile. The sample had degraded over time, meaning they could exclude suspects but not make a conclusive match. He was able to give me an idea that, hey, if you get a suspect, we can exclude him,

but we can't say beyond any doubt that it was him. Bromwich believed the partial sample was an opportunity and not a setback. He put together a list of men to be excluded, hoping to narrow the suspect pool. After reviewing the case file, Lt. Bromage put Ekron Frazier first on the list. A witness had told Captain Randall that Frazier had confessed. Bromage didn't have a difficult time locating Frazier. He was in a South Carolina prison and had been for 11 years.

The prison personnel searched Frazier's cell before Bromage arrived. The lieutenant had requested it. And in searching under the bed, the contraband officer pulled out a piece of cardboard, which I then looked at and had the name Bertha on it. And it also had a location of Spanish Wells, which is the vicinity of where her body was found, and she was murdered and had the years 88-89. The piece of cardboard also had a few other women's names on it, along with street names and dates. The list was suspicious to say the least, and possibly implicated Frazier in not only Bertha's murder, but in the murder of other women as well. Lieutenant Bromage asked Frazier for a DNA sample. I told him I'd like a

saliva sample for DNA or a blood sample that a medical person would extract from, and he said he would not give me that sample. So that made me very suspicious of him at that point. Bromage filed a motion to compel the DNA sample from Frazier. The sample was sent to the crime lab and compared by Dr. Amick. Dr. Amick examined it and called me within actually about

36 hours and said it did not match him at that point, which put a new twist on things, you might say. Ekren Frazier was excluded from being the person who had left their DNA on Bertha. Lieutenant Bromwich was left wondering what had happened. That's exactly what I thought. Am I missing something here?

Am I missing another subject? Could this have been one or more persons? And at that point, I consulted with a colleague of mine, David Caldwell, who was a captain at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. In investigations, as in a lot of instances in life, two heads are regularly better than one. Caldwell believed the DNA results were likely caused by one of two scenarios. First, Frazier had an accomplice who had raped Bertha, or secondly, the presence of semen was

entirely unrelated to the murder. The semen could have been the result of consensual sex. Even though most people that knew Ms. Neiman's would say that she didn't have a boyfriend, not everybody talks about their boyfriend or girlfriend, and so in my mind it was a possibility that that was the case. Bromwich's investigation had become even more complicated, leaving him wondering, was Bertha raped? Why wouldn't Frazier provide his DNA? And what was the motive? Well, I was like, okay, where do I go from here? Maybe it wasn't a sexual assault, but it's the same type of predator. What's the motive here? Why kill her? Well,

somebody she probably knows, somebody she's probably seen in the area. In November of 1999, Eckron Frazier was released from prison. But a month later, he found himself in trouble again. He was caught on video during an armed robbery and faced 30 years in prison. Frazier decided to attempt a deal with Bromage in exchange for information about Bertha's murder. He wants a deal for the armed robbery, of course. He's thinking, okay, well, first I've got to make it credible enough so the police believe my story, but then get myself out of it at the last minute before anything really bad happens to Bertha Neiman. Frazier's story was that he and a friend had seen Bertha's van

in a parking lot. His friend jumped into the van and started to hit Bertha, while Frazier was the lookout. Frazier said his friend drove off in the van with Bertha still inside. At that point, Akron takes himself out of it, saying he didn't go. And the other subject brought the woman behind the church and murdered her. Lieutenant Bromage told Frazier he would check out his story and also asked him to submit to a polygraph. Frazier agreed to the test, and it was administered by Sergeant Matt Averill. Before you were 26 years of age, did you ever commit a serious crime and not get caught? No.

Of the 20 to 30 questions Frazier was asked during the test, only three of them were related to Bertha. Here is Sergeant Avril. The first question that he was hitting on, the first relevant question was, did you shoot Bertha Neiman? Second question was, in 1988, did you shoot Bertha Neiman? And the third question was, were you there when Bertha Neiman was shot?

By hitting on, Sergeant Avril means that Frazier's breathing, sweating impulse had increased, which could happen not only when a person is being deceptive, but also if they're scared or anxious. An increase in everything. I mean, he reacted pretty hard in all three components that we measure. And to get the kind of reactions that I mean, he reacted pretty hard in all three components that we measured. And to get the kind of reactions that I interpreted, I was pretty convinced that he was there and was more than likely the shooter. Because the sergeant believed that Frazier had murdered Bertha, but also knew that the polygraph information couldn't be used as evidence,

he worked with Bromage on a plan. Here's Lieutenant Bromage again. Our strategy was, one, to get a confession from him. Two, if we can't get a confession, let's get a little bit more detail out of the crime scene. Let's try to trip him over his own words and knowing he's lying, it's hard to remember a lie verbatim. The investigators interrogated Frazier again, during which Frazier shared information about Bertha's dogs that he wouldn't have known if he hadn't been in the van. He also mentioned that there was two dogs in the van,

and that's something he had never mentioned before. And I think we posed the question something like, you had mentioned she had some animals in the van. Yes, she had two dogs. So that walked him further into being involved directly with the crime. Bromage believed that there was enough evidence to try a suspect for Bertha Neiman's murder. In the year 2000, Eckron Frazier pled guilty to manslaughter and received a sentence of 25 years, less than what he would have received for the armed robbery.

As Eckron began his sentence, his DNA was taken and entered into the database. Lonnie Neiman was asked if Frazier's sentence brought him any comfort. Realize she's not going to drive with the driveway. Realize you can't call her. But the emotional void that is left is just really hard to fill. You're used to your mama being there, and when she's not, and she's taken from you, like my mother was taken, it just makes it harder to fill in. At the time of the trial, Lieutenant Bromage was happy with the conviction, but also frustrated by the question that remained unanswered. Nobody knows where that semen came from at this point. That is still being

explored to this day and if I get information or find information that'll lead us in that direction I certainly would like to at least put a name on that and why it's there. In April of 2019 as the end of Frazier's sentence was approaching, the Hilton Hedge Sheriff Department ordered a new DNA test to be performed, as technology had drastically advanced since the original test. On April 12, 2019, it was determined that the semen found in Bertha Neiman's body was a match to Ekron Frazier, who is now 55 and nearing the end of his sentence for manslaughter.

Frazier is still incarcerated in South Carolina and scheduled to be released on March 10, 2021. Because of the DNA evidence, he won't go home when he's released. Instead, he'll start the trial process over with a bail hearing. And if he's convicted, face another sentence of up to 30 years for the sexual assault of Bertha Nieman. There's one question I hope that can now be answered with more advanced DNA technology. Who were the other women on the cardboard list found in Fraser's cell?

And more importantly, are they okay? Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our associate producer is Julie McGruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis.

You can find me, at Brooke Giddings on Twitter, and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group, Podcasts for Justice. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash realcrime.