Every Town - Brooksville, Kentucky: The Unsolved Mystery of Erica Fraysure’s 1997 Disappearance

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

Go to https://deadboltmysterysociety.com/ and use the promo code: deadbolt20 for 20% OFF your first order!Scary Mysteries Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiE86yS_VM7qjiICqRPmwLQ?view_as=subscriberContact US: [e-mail], Kentucky: The Unsolved Mystery of Erica Fraysure’s 1997 DisappearanceBrooksville is the county seat of Kentucky’s Bracken County which was settled before 1800 by William and Joel Woodward; thus, it was originally known as Woodward’s Crossroads. However, due to its more central location, it formally became a county seat on February 16, 1839 courtesy of the legislation sponsored by Senator David Brooks. Thus, Woodward’s Crossroads was renamed Brooksville in his honor. The small town could perhaps be described as plain, sleepy and uneventful as it was devoid of headline-grabbing mysteries, controversies and repugnant crimes. Which makes it an ideal place to live in and raise a family, if I may say. Life in Brooksville remained that way for almost 2 centuries – not until teenage girl Erica Fraysure disappeared with nary an evidence in 1997. It shook Brooksville to its core, and changed the dynamics of the people’s lives in this small Kentucky town. What’s more demoralizing is that Erica’s case remains unsolved, and is still being investigated not as a crime, but as a mysterious case of a missing person. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine, because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything in between. With over 20 million downloads, Morning Cup of Murder has something for every true crime lover. One listener describes the show as a small package with a powerful punch of crime.

Another writes that the show is an absolute delight in the morning. Support yourself a piping hot cup of murder every single morning with Morning Cup of Murder. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of the Everytown podcast is being sponsored by our friends over at the Deadbolt Mystery Society who have an awesome monthly subscription box service that if you guys are fans of true crime and unsolved mysteries, you really need to check out. Each box contains its own mystery where you do things like hunt down a killer, solve a kidnapping, or stop a madman before it's too late.

Recently, I've been solving the Pretender Box, which send you to a horror author's house that sits, on an isolated lake. It gets pretty intense and you receive a ton of evidence. And the coolest part is there are also QR codes throughout the contents that show you videos, photos, and other evidence. So you get truly immersed in this box trying to figure out who the pretender is before they strike again.

Crate Joy is over 260 reviews by people just like you that have joined the Deadbolt Mystery Society and they average 4.9 out of five stars which Deadbolt totally deserve. Go to deadbolt mystery society.com today and use the code Deadbolt 20 to get 20% off any subscription or single box right now. Again, that's 20% off when you use the promo code Deadbolt 20. Come join the Deadbolt Mystery Society today. Every town has a dark side. The following is a story from one of them, but there's still many more to uncover.

In this episode, we had to Brooksville, Kentucky. And we dive deep into the unsolved mystery of Erica Fraser's disappearance. Brooksville, Kentucky is in Bracken County, and it was settled before 1800 by William and Joel Woodward. Thus, it was originally known as Woodward's Crossroads. However, due to its more central location, it formally became a county seat on February 16, 1839, courtesy of the legislation sponsored by Senator David Brooks. Thus, Woodward's Crossroads was renamed Brooksville in his honor. The small town could perhaps be described as plain, sleepy, and uneventful,

as it was devoid of headline-grabbing mysteries, controversies, and repugnant crimes, which makes it an ideal place to live in and raise a family. Life in Brooksville remained that way for almost two centuries. That is, until a teenage girl named Erica Frazier disappeared with a little. almost no shred of evidence back in 1997. It shook Brooksville to its core and changed the dynamics of the people's lives in this small Kentucky town forever. I'm Andrew Fitzgerald and this is every town.

Disappearances and even deaths of people that have turned into unfinished puzzles for many years are a dime a dozen in America. But when Erica Frazier vanished, it became sort of a first of its kind, shocking event in Brooksville, Kentucky. In this episode, I will present the details about her disappearance, the people involved and suspected of allegedly committing the crime, the efforts exerted by Brooksville authorities and residents, and finding answers to baffling questions,

and the tremendous impact of Erica's unfortunate fate to this small community. In 1997, then 17-year-old Erica was a senior public high school student at Bracken County High School, located in Brooksville, although she actually resided in Germantown, which is just eight minutes away. Like most teenagers eager to achieve their goals in life, Erica dreamed of going to Northern Kentucky University after completing her high school education and planned of pursuing an accounting degree. In preparation for that, Erica worked part-time at Carrotto's pizza restaurant in Augusta,

just nine and a half miles away from Brooksville. In fact, a few weeks before she went missing, Erica requested more hours so she could save more money. As a student, she was described by her 12th grade English teacher, Caroline Miller, as beautiful, fun, and witty, traits that made her light up in otherwise dull class. The teenager was confident of herself. It was not a social butterfly who thrived on being the center of attention. Erica's easy-going manner had one of her many friends, both male and female, making her well-liked in school. Mrs. Miller didn't consider Erica as one of her most studious pupils, nor was she active in school activities,

but the teacher admired her for being independent. And just like any typical teen her age, Erica also loved going to parties, hanging out with friends and driving around town on weekend nights. In a close-knit town with a population of less than 680 back then, Brooksville residents expectedly knew everyone's business and what everyone was doing. And the town's folk had noticed that Erica kept the company of what was called a rough crowd. It was one of those nights spent cruising around town with her friends that sealed the fate of Erica, as well as changed the circumstances in Brooksville. October 21, 1997.

Reality TV, celeb, Kim Kardashian turned 17 years old on that day. America listened to a maid Elton John's Something, the way you look tonight, the country's number one song. And in the little town of Brooksville, Erica Frazier looked ready to have some fun that Tuesday night. She left home to go uptown, something teens in small towns normally do at that time. Clad in a purple sweater, a pair of Levi's jeans, white kids, sneakers. Erica completed her get-up with a Winnie the Pooh wristwatch and four gold rings on her right hand, one of which had a sapphire and diamond heart. Driving her 1988, four-door, black, Pontiac

Bonneville, Erica spent the night socializing with her group. As Erica's best friend Amanda recalled, back then to hang out with your friends on a Friday or Saturday night, you got in your parents' car, or your own car if you were lucky enough, and you went to Brooksville and you cruised town. Erica and her friends just combed the streets of Brooksville, contrary to some speculations that she parted that night, when in fact the party happened on October 22nd. But on that ominous October 21st night,

Erica didn't come home to her parents, Daniel and Maggie Doherty. The pretty team with light brown hair and blue eyes was last seen between 9 and 10 that evening at Video and Tan in Brooksville, a video rental business. Then she drove away and headed home to Germantown, but obviously something went awry for Erica because she never reached her home's doorstep. It was a red flag that made her family frantic, so Erica's mom called the police to report that her daughter hadn't come home. Maggie also asked Erica's friends who initially assumed their pal was just out acting as a willful teenager. Erica's best friend Amanda even said that she probably went and got drunk and she fell asleep at somebody's house and they'll find her.

But when Wednesday morning dawned and they still didn't receive any word from Erica, the news reached Bracken County High School principal Mark Crane. He then made a school-wide appeal to students telling that, him to share information and hints about Erica's whereabouts the previous night. Then, 24 hours after she went missing, authorities received a call from some kids saying they found Erica's car. Leading the investigation back then was State Police Detective Bob Scott, who later became Bracken County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy.

He and fellow authorities went to check on Erica's car one mile away from the video rental shop, abandoned between two bales of hay in a field on Franks Lane just outside Brooksville. Found intact inside the car where Erica's handbag, wallet, checkbook, and even some money, but there was no hint at all of the senior high school student. During a search weeks later,

her keys were found 100 yards away. However, there wasn't enough evidence to help investigators piece together what happened that night. As Scott said, there was nothing in the car that would lead anyone to believe there was foul play involved. We weren't even able to find fingerprints. There were no foreign hairs, nothing in the purse.

Naturally, what happened to Erica became a topic of conversation in the school and throughout Bracken County. The question on the lips of everyone was, where was Erica? Detective Scott was determined to find the answer to the question, saying, The community won't rest until Erica is found. Days following her inexplicable disappearance, Detective Scott chased tips and rumors and checked out alibis of people he investigated, including students at the Bracken County High School. In the first days after Erica's disappearance, her schoolmates talked with police and teachers passing on any information they could think of. Determined to know anything and everything regardless of the significance, Detective Scott met with the junior and senior high school girls.

and asked them to write down anything about Erica, including rumors, incidents, names of anyone they remember her mentioning, or even talking to. Amanda shared that they spend every day together laughing, chatting, and passing notes in class. They even had a locker that they shared together at school. But on the day Erica vanished, on October 21st, the two friends had had an argument. Thus, Amanda wasn't cruising with Erica around,

Brooksville that ill-fated night. Amanda said, I just remember feeling sorry for myself that first day, because I was alone. It turns out I was alone for the rest of the senior year. Bracken County High School had been actively cooperating with authorities and in keeping Erica's case on the top of everyone's mind. How could the school community forget Erica when posters bearing her face and newspaper for clippings about her disappearance were posted on the doors and hallways. Students wrote poems about Erica's plight and gave out hand-painted buttons to the townsfolk.

And to symbolize their ardent hope of finding Erica, faculty and students wore small white ribbons on their ties, lapels, sweaters, or pinned them on their lockers. They're trying to think of anything they could do to help solve Erica's case because most of them truly believed somebody in. in Bracken County knew something. Something happened to her. We want to find her, and we don't want it to happen again, Mrs. Miller said. The rest of the Brooksville community did their part two. They pinned white ribbons on their shirt or adorn them on their doors.

Their cars, shop windows, and bulletin boards also carried the missing girl poster with Erica's smiling face on it. Prayers for her were also offered every Sunday during Mass. State police detective Scott had flown over Bracken County Fields time and time again in a helicopter looking for some signs of the missing teen, but the aerial searches did not yield new information. The weeks of frustrating searches led to rampant speculation, zeroing in on Erica's association with the so-called rough group, but wild rumors such as an alien abduction also circulated. People were grasping for answers. As the lead investigator who analyzed the leads and information gathered, Detective Scott believed that Erica did not flee on her own volition.

The 17-year-old did not have any records of running away. She was a good student, and she had friends, but not a steady boyfriend. Most of all, there wasn't any indication of trouble with Erica at home, school, or work. Despite sustained news reports and a... $7,000 reward for finding her, Erica's case seemed to be headed nowhere. Family and friends, of course, kept believing that there was hope somehow, somewhere. The media inevitably caught wind of Erica Frazier's disappearance without a trace. Then, almost a month after the incident, an interview of Shane Simcox on WCPO TV news on November 19, 1997,

provided some of the most valuable information so far in the investigation. The 21-year-old Simcox was a Brooksville man who worked at a Bracken County hog farm and lived with his grandfather. He was among the group that Erica was friendly with, and the last person seen with Erica in her car that police knew of. In that interview, Shane labeled himself as a prime suspect in Erica's disappearance, but Detective Scott said it was Shane who considered himself. as such, and not the police.

A vital revelation during the interview was Shane's confirmation that he was with Erica that October 21st night, and they drove around Brooksville a little bit. He narrated that since he had no car, Erica drove to his house and picked him up. When they got tired of driving around, Erica decided to head home, but she dropped Shane first at his house around 9 o'clock. The man claimed it was the last time he had seen Erika and denied any involvement in his friend's disappearance. It was his statement, well, Erica was missing, not dead,

that fully caught the attention of the police. Detective Scott tried to interview Shane as well, but the latter evoked his right to counsel, so a full interview didn't materialize. When Scott wanted Shane to take a lie detector test, the suspect refused, even if it would mean clearing his name. Shane's reason? He didn't like the way he had been treated by the police,

to which Detective Scott says he has no idea what he was particularly referring to. Unlike the eight other suspects in Erica's case who dared to undergo a polygraph test, Shane was the only one who declined. Moreover, the parents of Erica didn't know Shane at all. Mom Maggie couldn't remember Erica even mentioning Shane to her, much more meeting him, while Dad Daniel was aware that Shane was considered, a suspect who refused a lie detector exam, yet he didn't want to accuse him of anything without

solid basis. So who really was Shane Simcox? Well, let me shed some light about his previous encounters with the law, which may give credence to his inclusion as a suspect. As a student at the Brackett County High School, Shane displayed a disturbing behavior when he threatened one of his teachers and her daughter. I just told her I was going to to kill her basically, Shane said during the TV interview, claiming that his statement was a prank. As a consequence, though, he was expelled from school. On July 4th, 1995, Shane and two other people committed a robbery at the Brooksville Fuel Stop. They broke in at 3.30 in the morning, took some money and checks, kept inside a lockbox, and exited through the front door.

Court records show Shane pleaded guilty to third-degree burglary in December that year, served jail time for three months and was still on probation for five years when the disappearance of Erica happened. But Shane seemed unmindful of his predicament because on December 14th that same year, he faced charges for third-degree criminal trespassing at the Madison Street phone company in Brooksville. However, that charge was later dismissed. His suspected involvement in Erica's disappearance could have gotten him into scraps with a law again, but just like with the other suspects, there was no hard and convincing evidence that would merit filing charges against him. The farm where he worked was also a search to no end,

but the efforts were fruitless. Since his TV interview, Shane has not spoken about Erica's case and moved around a lot, so his current whereabouts are unknown. In 1998, another name cropped up as a highly possible person who knew what had happened to Erica, Chris Micey. reportedly a friend of the missing girl. On September 24th, Erica's mom appeared on the nationally televised talk show, The Montel Williams Show, with psychic Sylvia Brown from New York. Since no suspect had been charged yet, perhaps it was a mother's desperate measure to uncover the truth about her daughter's misfortune.

Sylvia assured the tormented mother that Erica's body could be found at the bottom left side a lake. Furthermore, she said that a man strangled the teenage girl because she refused his advances. When asked who knew about Erica's disappearance, Sylvia said, Chris, although it was bleeped out on national TV, but her lip movement was apparently easy to decipher. This led to another wild goose chase by the law enforcers as they dredged a five-acre rural Kentucky Lake located less than two miles from where Erica's car was found. Around 20 volunteers and divers from Campbell and Harrison County searched the entire lake from 10 in the morning until that evening, but they were unsuccessful.

At least two other searches of the lake's perimeter and the surrounding terrain have been conducted since then. Sadly, there was no trace of Erica being carried or dragged into the lake. then Brooksville was shocked by the news that Chris Minor shot his 24-year-old girlfriend, Carmen Moorhead, and then took his own life the day after the Montel Williams Show aired. However, Chris had been ruled out as a suspect in the disappearance of Erica shortly before he killed himself due to a credible alibi. A decade later, Kentucky State Police Detective, Chris Gisgowak clarified that Chris

Carmen's case was a domestic issue and wasn't related to Erica's disappearance. It was just a coincidence that he did it the day after the show aired. The FBI had drawn up a profile of the kind of person capable of making a girl disappear, like what happened to Erica. This person is a sociopath who may have had a history of animal abuse, strained family ties, and may have been jailed. He tends to keep to himself so much that he has few friends to confide in. He's capable of killing someone and disposing of the body without ever feeling the

need to share nor brag about the information to anyone. It's also believed the person was from the community, familiar with the area and may still maintain a local address while moving around a lot in Brooksville's surrounding communities and cities. As Erica's case has dragged on for years, authorities have not been able to pin down a possible culprit. Neither have they produced a most plausible explanation why Erica just vanished out of the blue. Sadly, the case even outlived Erica's parents. They died waiting for closure. Maggie succumbed to cancer in 2011, and Daniel joined his wife five years later.

Erica's disappearance may not be well known to people outside Kentucky, but it has changed the rhythm of life in the tiny town of Brooksville for the past two decades. Amanda, who described Erica as a diamond of a friend, decided not to study graphic arts at the local university after Erica went missing. She was afraid to go away, and instead went to a Brooksville community college. Teenagers, even today, seldom stayed on the streets at night,

and the cruising that went around town slowed down. Moms have become helicopter parents, that is, they hover over their children's every move, to ensure their safety. Amanda, now a mother herself, doesn't even let her children walk to the mailbox out of fear. Erica's case still burdened some of the investigators who worked on it, especially Bob Scott.

Everyone always had a case. The case they couldn't solve, and this is mine. This is my case, it still haunts me, he once said. So what could bring Brooksville communities some peace? Only when they find out what really happened to Erica and the criminal is known and punished. It's the only closure that Brooksville has been waiting for for more than two decades.

So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Please subscribe and let us know if you have any stories that you'd like us to cover. And for more creepy stories, make sure to check out our other podcast and YouTube channel called Scary Mysteries. Tune in next week for another episode filled with scary, strange and mysterious stories about every town out there.

And who knows, maybe your town will be next.