True Crime Campfire - Unfaithful: The Murder of Samira Frasch

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

There is freedom in being a narcissist. If you don’t see anyone else in the world as fully real and important, you can do whatever you want, follow your every urge and impulse. And if someone happens to get hurt along the way, well, you probably barely even noticed. A lot of the criminals in our cases fit this mould, grandiose types swinging through the lives of those around them like a flaming wrecking ball. If you’re the only person in the world who matters, it’s easy to lie and cheat and steal. And kill. Join us for the story of a hedonistic doctor and his glamorous model wife, whose opulent life and power-couple marriage spiraled down into chaos, lies and murder. Sources:Investigation Discovery's "Diabolical," episode "Mistress Roulette"Oxygen's "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered," episode "At the Bottom of the Pool"Tallahassee.com: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2015/02/21/frasch-murder-investigation-reveals-couples-torrid-existence/23792489/https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2014/04/11/frasch-got-1-million-plus/7582855/WTXL News: https://www.wtxl.com/frasch/day-two-of-adam-frasch-trial/article_09c900e2-e248-11e6-89c2-67bd6a5372fb.html https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2017/01/25/jurors-see-possible-murder-weapon-frasch-case/97031238/Tallahassee.com: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2017/01/26/defense-medical-expert-says-samira-frach-died-after-husband-left/97079960/ https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2017/01/23/jury-selection-underway-frasch-murder-trial/96941344/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. There's freedom in being a narcissist. If you don't see anyone else in the world as fully real and important, you can do whatever you want. follow your every urge and impulse. And if someone happens to get hurt along the way, well, you probably barely even noticed.

A lot of the criminals in our cases fit this mold, grandiose types swinging through the lives of those around them like a flaming wrecking ball. If you're the only person in the world who matters, it's easy to lie and cheat and steal and kill. This is Unfaithful, the murder of Samara Frosh. So, campers, for this one, we're in good old Florida again. Tallahassee, specifically, the Shishi-Gated Community of Golden Eagle. The morning of February 22, 2014. Gerald Gardner, a handyman and Gardner, arrived with his teenage son to do some work for a couple of his regular clients. Dr. Adam Frush and his wife Samara.

When he went around the back of the house to get started on his work, something struck Gerald as off right away. Samarra's little white Bichon-Free's dog, Bella, was running around in a panic. She wasn't normally allowed out on her own. As he was trying to calm the dog down, Gerald looked over and saw a pair of fancy gem-studded flip-flops in the shallow end of the pool.

One of them was wedged underneath the water hose. Gerald scanned the rest of the pool, and in the deep end he made an awful discovery and ran to call 911. Ma'am, can I get an officer out here at Golden Eagle? It's a lady laying in the pool. She's dead. Okay, the dispatcher said, is she awake? No, ma'am, Gerald said. She's dead. Of this, he was 100% sure.

38-year-old Samara Frosh lay still on her back at the bottom of the pool, wearing nothing but an open leopard print robe. She was obviously gone. It looked like she'd been there for after. hours. Gerald told the dispatcher he didn't know where Samara's two little girls were. He couldn't get into the house, but he didn't see them anywhere. The dispatcher tried to get Gerald to pull Samara out of the pool, but he didn't budge. The last thing he needed was to get his DNA or fingerprints on the body. He was sure she was gone, he told the operator, y'all just need to get here.

At first glance, there was no reason to suspect foul play. People do have accidents around swimming pools, after all, especially when they're trying to catch a little dog who just escaped out the back door, as Bella had a habit of doing. But when the medical examiners got a good look at her, they'd find evidence of blunt force trauma to her head. And the sandal caught in the hose made them suspicious, too. The shoes had ankle straps, so how'd they just come off? To investigators, it looked like someone had tried to stage the scene to make it seem like Samurai'd caught her foot and fallen by accident. Examiner's would later find pool-wise. in her lungs, and injuries on both sides of her skull, which you're probably not going to get

from a fall into a pool. No. Samara Frosh had been hit in the head, knocked out, and then placed into the pool. Her unconscious body still tried to draw air into her lungs, and she drowned. This was a murder, with careful staging to try and cover it up. It was, in fact, the first murder ever in Golden Eagle, a luxurious neighborhood built around a golf course. And it's wrong and dumb and infuriating, but the fact is that in most of the country, if a rich person in a wealthy neighborhood is killed, police are going to be a lot more invested in solving the crime as fast as they can. They needed to get as clear a picture as they could of the lives of Samara Frosh and her podiatrist's husband, Adam. Samara was wife number three for the 46-year-old Adam Frosh. When he met her back in 2006, on a trip to Paris, he was still married to his second wife, Tracy.

Some sources say they were about to separate, some just say they were still married, period. I don't know which is true, but I know it didn't stop him from turning on the charm with Samara. God knows how many women before her. That was the kind of guy Adam was. When he saw something he wanted, he went after it, with little, if any, thought to how his actions might hurt anybody else. And he had plenty of money to enjoy himself with. He was a podiatrist, one of the richest in the country, which, damn, I didn't know you could clean up that much from working on feet. Like, why didn't somebody tell me, right?

Adam gambled and partied and wanted everybody to know what a gargantuan pile of cash he was sitting on. He collected designer sunglasses and had a huge garage filled with almost a hundred luxury cars. A hundred cars. It's just insane. Now, I might just be a lowly, humble podcaster, but I think that might be too many cars. I feel like it's too many cars. Yeah. To the people working at his clinic, it seemed like Dr. Frasch was always in a new car. One day, a Maserati, the next to Ferrari. He even owned a range rover limo, which has got to be the most ridiculous car I've ever heard of, but whatever makes you happy, man. Cars and feet. And ladies. He was clever and funny and real charming with his patients, and he was a skilled doctor at the cutting edge of new technology. But, you know, even very good podiatrists usually aren't in the income bracket where they need an airplane hanger to store all their Ferraris.

Adam Frosch liked to push the boundaries in both his personal and professional lives. For example, in 2012, he got over a million dollars in Medicare payments, mostly for treating diabetic foot ulcers with an advanced technique called dermographed. Now, usually patients get around eight dermat treatments total, but something fishy was going on in Dr. Fras's office. Based on his billing, his patients were getting more than one treatment a day, every day, for a whole year. Hmm. You can probably guess what's happening here, but just in case, here's a hint. It rhymes with FedacareMod. Oy. Yeah, this is not a man who thinks the rules apply to him. The rules of medical billing, the rules of good taste, as you'll see in a few minutes, and the rules of commitment in relationships. So it probably won't surprise you to hear that the guy. I had trouble keeping it in his pants.

Mm-hmm. Some people have a very specific physical type, and that was most definitely true for Adam Frosh. Unfortunately, for the sake of their marriage, his blonde wife, Tracy, wasn't it. What Dr. Frosh really liked was young, tall, black women. Mostly, he'd pick them up at strip clubs where they worked and hook up with them in hotel rooms. Afterwards, he'd take care of them with cash or gifts. If they hit it off, he'd continue taking care of them. so basically sex work that occasionally morphed into a sugar daddy relationship.

And the doctor's wandering eye wasn't a secret, at least to the people he worked with. His former office manager told investigation discovery that when she first started working for Farash, his medical assistant whispered to her, you better watch him. The missing stare again. Do you all know the missing stare theory? That every community has people that everybody tells you to watch out for. Like, oh, that art teacher at the high school, do not let your daughter around him. Or that manager at Piggly Wiggly will try and hit on you if you let him get you alone.

Yeah. They're like a missing stair in a staircase. Watch out or you're going to get hurt. And instead of taking the time to fix the stair, we tend to just warn people about it. Yeah. In 2006, Adam Frosh was looking for something new. So he booked a vacation to Paris, just for himself, not for Tracy in their young daughter. No, of course not. No. Tracy had at least some clue about what Adam had been up to,

and she was furious. He was going to Paris during fashion week when half the planet's models and wannabe models would be there. She didn't have any doubt that Adam was going over there to try and get laid. She was right, of course. Out on the prowl in Paris, Adam struck gold when he hit it off with Samara Mbodezofi, a glamorous model from Madagascar working in France. Samara was one of those people who turned heads whenever she walked into a room, always dressed to kill, perfectly made up, and dripping with jewelry. She was open and friendly with a megawatt smile, someone who rolled a natural 18 in charisma. It's obvious why Adam was into her, but on the surface at least, it was less clear what she saw

in him. But Adam really could be charming, and getting women who were too good for him into bed was pretty much his life's work. And of course, he had buckets of money, which was a factor for Samara who'd grown up poor in Madagascar. She might be working as a model now, but unless you make it to the top tier, that's a career that often pays more in glamour than an actual hard cash. Adam Frasch stayed in Paris for a month, showering Samara with gifts. Not long after he came back to Florida, he flew her over and put her up in a hotel. Despite still being married to Tracy, he introduced Samara to his buddies and brag to everybody about his new model girlfriend. He wanted to make this a permanent situation,

get Samura an apartment, and have her be his full-time mistress. But Sam didn't bite on that idea, and before long she flew back to Paris. She didn't want to be the other woman, TM. She made it clear to Adam that if he wanted that much of her, he was going to have to make it official. She wanted to be Mrs. Frosh or no deal. Still, they kept a long distance of fare burning for three years. During that time, after endless cheating and two cases of domestic battery, Tracy had walked out on Adam, and their relationship from here on was pretty much just divorce and custody hearings. Adam, by the way, was so convinced of his own brilliance that he represented himself during his divorce, which went about as well as you'd expect, and resulted in the judge openly questioning

his grasp on reality, which I feel like this tells us everything we need to know about this guy, to be honest. Like, every time I've ever seen somebody represent themselves in court, it's been an absolute hilarious shit show. And they've all been narcissists from hell. Especially when the judge is like, bro, are you okay? I know. I have to say, I've never seen that outside of this case. Like, you good, man? Like, do we need to get you some help? Okay. So, Adam, by being a steaming turd of a human being, you've now got the house all to yourself. Maybe you can bring your long-term mistress over and make another attempt at an actual, you know, full-fledged human relationship. Or, and hear me out, you could just start diddling your daughter's young nanny. Condoms be down. Which one do you think

our boy is going to pick? Yeah. The nanny was a young woman named Martha Moore. Dr. Frosh liked to introduce her to people as the babysitter. I'm guessing because he was, was the kind of skisball that thought that sounded hot. Like, hey, I'm banging the babysitter. It also robs her of a lot of agency. Like, she's not a capable adult woman with a full-time job. She's just the babysitter. Gross.

Yeah. And Adam Frasch apparently missed a few pages on human reproduction during his medical degree because he was shocked. Shocked, I tell you, to find out that lots of unprotected sex with his girlfriend could, you know, get her pregnant. I guess they don't cover that shit in podiatrist. preschool for some reason. So, Adam got Martha an apartment, gave her regular money, and did his best to keep her and her pregnancy a secret from the entire rest of his life. Not only would this new

wrinkle probably not look great for his custody hearings, he still had his sights set on Samara. Already having a girlfriend and a new family wouldn't do him any favors there, to say the least. And Samara knew how to bait a hook. Adam told a friend that Samara gave him the best sex he'd ever had, and had told him he could have that every day of his life if he married her. If you like it, you got to put a ring on it. In November of 2009, they tied the knot in Vegas, but Adam Frash was not the type of guy to be open and honest with his new wife, or with his girlfriend either. Samara didn't know about Martha, and Martha didn't know about Samara. And it certainly couldn't have been easy for Sam, who didn't speak much English at first, to be dropped into this entirely new life in an

entirely new country. Adam tried to make her feel at home via the only human interaction he was comfortable with, buying her or anything she wanted. And Samara liked to spend money, as much as her new hubs did, and soon she'd redecorated her new home how she liked it. And I got to say Samara's taste, whew, let's say it's just not mine, and we'll leave it at that. It's none of my business anyway, but if it was gold or leopard print or ancient Egyptian inspired, she wanted it and lots of it. If you had like a spare taxidermied ocelot, you could sell her, she'd be all over that. I mean, the pictures, there's something else.

Opulent, I guess is the word that comes to mind. Like gold, everything. Their huge house was soon crammed full of so much furniture, you would struggle to walk through it. The closets were full of fancy clothes and shoes, and all this wild spending might seem excessive until you remember that Adam Frosh owned 80 to 100 sports. cars. These people were sitting on a pile of money like a dragon on a big pile of gold. They could burn it in the fireplace if they got a little chilly. Good old Medicare fraud, right? Allegedly. Allegedly. Six months after they got married, Samara was pregnant, but Adam was around less and less,

spending more time with his girlfriend Martha and their new baby girl. He was engaged with the kid's life. He had two families now, each secret from the other. I'm guessing this massive of deception tickled the same part of him that had always gotten off on screwing around behind his wife's back. Oh yeah. There's definitely a certain personality type that thrives on this kind of thing, this kind of deception. Just the danger of getting caught and the whole smug satisfaction of getting away with it. It's entitlement, I think. But like many narcissists, Adam Frosh didn't really grasp that the people in his life were real people in their own right. He probably liked to think of them as toys who would stay on the shelf where he put them. But real people aren't so easy

to control or predict. About 3 a.m. one morning, not long after Sam found out she was pregnant, Adam's phone started blowing up on the nightstand, waking him and Samara up. Adam answered, it was Martha. Their little girl was sick and needed Adam to come over and help. At first, Samara thought the call was from Adam's mom. But then his side of the conversation made it clear that it wasn't. So she grabbed the phone and said, Why are you calling my husband at 3 o'clock in the morning? Martha said, who is this? Sam answered, this is Dr. Frosh's wife.

Oh, my God. Martha had no idea Adam was married until that sentence. Stunned, she spilled all the beans to Samara, that she and Adam had been seeing each other for the whole of Samara's marriage and just had a kid together. Oh, Lord. After the call ended, Sam and Adam went. back to sleep. I'm just kidding. They had a massive fight and Sam stormed out of the house.

Adam wanted her back for a couple of reasons. Sure, he might have followed his dick around like it had him on the leash, but he was also as cold-blooded as a snake. He'd just been through one expensive divorce and another would hit him where it hurt the most. Not his heart, of course, his bank account. So after a few days, he tracked Samara down and begged her to take him back. Martha meant nothing to him, he insisted. That kid wasn't even his. Sammer was an emotional wreck, not only because of Adam's cheating, but also because she just miscarried her baby.

When Adam showed up and started feeding her cliche lines about his affair, she just lost it and started smacking him, which is obviously not okay, no matter how much of a prick he is. Don't hit people, folks. Get your revenge in divorce court. Right. He called the police to have her arrested and only dropped the charges when she begged him to. He promised his affair with Martha was over, and as a sign of devotion to, Samara, he went out and got a tattoo of her face right over his heart.

Jesus. And apparently, Adam did break off the affair with Martha, but, I mean, this was the father of her child. She wasn't just going to disappear. She came to see him at his clinic, and after some screaming and yelling in a conference room, she got him to sign an agreement for a paternity test, which, of course, showed that Adam was the father. And Martha got around $1,300 a month in child support. Okay, so having just put an image of her face over his heart, I assume Adam was ready to settle down and devote all of himself to Samura, right?

Bitch, please. He wasn't getting the same thrill anymore from Martha, I assumed, since he'd been found out, so he started messing around with strippers. One of them, Erica, became his semi-serious sidepiece. Sam had other things on her mind. In 2011, she and Adam had their first daughter. call her Naila, even though that's not her real name. And Samura had the idea of making this the fanciest and most famous baby on planet Earth. These were flamboyant folks. Samora had big dreams. She really admired Kim Kardashian, how she'd built a business empire from her sort of famous for no reason beginnings. Samara thought she could do the same thing, make her baby famous, and then start a

high-end clothing line for babies. She had designer clothes and blankets shipped from France and hired a videographer to follow her and the baby around to try and make little Naila a YouTube sensation. The baby's first birthday party was an extravagant blowout that any Hollywood Nepo baby would envy, featuring a literal red carpet, belly dancers, and oiled up half-naked dudes in Egyptian cosplay carrying the oblivious little kid in on a sedan chair. It is something else. I've seen footage of it. Samara also hired filmmakers to shoot some music videos of herself singing, which, to be honest, are kind of high on the cringometer, but, you know, as rich people hobbies go, that's pretty harmless.

Adam wasn't super keen on all this fuss and attention, though, and especially not on the cost, which, remember, this is a guy who has 80-plus sports cars in his garage, like, hypocrite much? You're married, dude, it's her money, too. Before you go after Samara for trying to vanity publish a music carrier, how about you tell her you've just started paying for a condo close to your office for your new girlfriend, Erica, and that she just gave her an $80,000 rangerover. Yeah, didn't think so.

The relationship between Samora and Adam was getting worse and worse. Her videographer told Investigation Discovery, when she was on camera, she was perfectly fine. Turn the camera off. If Adam was around, they would fight. Soon, when Samara would get upset with him, Adam wouldn't even respond. He'd just get this creepy little smile on his face and say nothing. yeah samara kept threatening to divorce him when she was mad at him and adam would smooth things over by spending lots of money on her and then in 2012 something shook samara up real bad as she and adam were leaving one night to go out to dinner a woman leapt out of the bushes outside their house and started slashing at samara with a knife cutting up her arms adam got between them and intervened and the woman just ran off and just what the hell had happened here and who the woman was we don't know

for sure. If it was one of Adam's girlfriends, he wasn't telling. But it's really not the kind of attack that happens randomly, though, like especially in a fancy gated community like Golden Eagle. I mean, not never, but not much. Not in that kind of neighborhood. Regardless of who it attacked her and why, Samara was understandably scared, and she rarely left the house after that, which that just breaks my heart. Like, especially since she was such a flamboyant person and such a social person, and this scared her enough that she just went to ground. Adam, however, didn't seem to be bothered. His model wife and exotic dancer girlfriend weren't enough,

so he added yet another mistress to his midlife crisis merry-go-round, a woman named Chiquita. So by 2013, Adam and Samara had had another little girl. We'll call her Sarah. He was still playing house with Martha Moore and their baby, and he had two mistresses, Erica and Chiquita. where do these cheaters find the time and energy my god i feel like i'm killing it if i can like do the laundry and put the laundry away on the same day this dude has four relationships

and a medical career going maybe you get like a day planner and selfish dick university that shows you how to create more than 24 hours in a day i mean SDU has some really storied alumni so i assume it's the education they get true maybe he figured out how to shift into a time wormhole or something, just so he could fuck around on his wife more. Like, that would be enough motivation for Adam to, like, figure that out, I'm sure. But in dividing up his time and attention, he wasn't giving enough to Samara, who finally had enough of him and filed for divorce. Now, whether Adam did something to piss off Shakita, or this was just her play all along,

we don't know. But at some point, she discreetly shot a sex tape of herself and Adam, then called up Samara and offered to sell it to her for ammunition for the divorce and custody proceedings. Samara had already been digging up the dirt on Adam, getting the names and numbers of Adam's girlfriends from his phone and calling them all up, or in the case of Erica, texting her husband and letting him know what was going on. Oh, messy. At the preliminary divorce hearing, Samara was granted custody of their two girls and the house in Golden Eagle,

as well as alimony and child support. Adam, of course, didn't take this well. given who he was, the fact that Samara wasn't under his control anymore probably stung just as much as the bite she was taken out of his income. Their relationship got even worse. Sam had hired a personal assistant to help her around the house and with the kids. In early 2014, they were in the car together when Adam called Samara and their conversation immediately became an argument.

Sam turned on the speaker on the phone and her assistant heard Adam say, I will kill you. Sam got so scared that she'd just park her Hummer right out on the front lawn so she and the girls could run as fast as possible for the door. Her divorce attorney, who'd been practicing for 40 years, said he was so worried about what Adam might do that he started carrying a gun for the first time in his life. Wow.

The night before Samara's body was found, security footage from the gate at Golden Eagle showed Adam's car tailing Samara's white Hummer. He got out and tried to talk to her, then tried to open the door to her car. which she slammed closed. Then she backed the Hummer right into the front of his car and drove off. Most people would take that as a hint, but Adam just got in his car and followed her.

At 8 a.m. the next day, the day Samara would be found dead in her pool, Adam left Golden Eagle with the two little girls to drive to their beach house in Panama City. It was three hours later that handyman Gerald Gardner and his son arrived to work at the house and found Samara's body. Gerald didn't have much doubt about what had happened to Samara.

As he led a deputy around the side of the house, Gerald told him, he killed her. He did it. When police searched the home, they found no evidence of theft or a break-in. In a house with that much valuable stuff laying around, that was a pretty clear indicator that robbery wasn't the motive. They also didn't find Samara's cell phone, which was strange. Gerald told the police that there should have been two young girls in the house. He also told them that Samara was married to Dr. Adam Frosh, but they were estranged lately, going through a divorce.

So investigators needed to find Dr. Frosh and the children immediately. By 4 p.m., they had, and Adam was arrested in Panama City on child custody charges. He had no right to be taking Little Naila and Sarah anywhere. When police arrested him, the kids were secured in the back of his SUV, and he was getting ready to hit the road. He claimed he'd just learned that something was up. back home in Tallahassee and was planning on going back there. Police thought he was about to flee with his daughters. At the Panama City Police Station, Adam was informed that his wife had been found dead in her pool.

He seemed shaken and up, I guess, or maybe just nervous. According to Adam, even as they moved forward with the divorce proceedings, he and Samara were in the process of reconciling, which is obvious. I mean, you could see the interactions we told you about, you know, trying to force your way into your wife's car, telling her you're going to kill her, bringing sex tapes into court to use his ammo in a custody case. If that ain't a love language, I don't know what is. It's like the worst man you know goes, my love language is toxicity. And it's just this. Or maybe, Adam Frosh is just a giant pusboil of deception who sits on a throne of lies. And I assume herpes. I don't know. You decide.

Samara didn't need Adam for any material reason now. She had the house, she had custody, she had guaranteed money. If Adam had been some great guy, maybe you could see them reconciling. But he wasn't. He was an asshole who'd screwed around on her the whole time they were together. Yeah, a couple hours on a dating app and Samara could have had ten guys better than him lined up. His story was deeply dubious and got more so when he told the detectives that he, He and Samora had popped a bottle of champagne, then had sex in the living room.

He fell asleep, and Samara stayed up and kept drinking. The next day, according to Adam, he found two empty bottles of champagne that Sam had drunk by herself. She was hung over and exhausted and told Adam to take the girls out so she could sleep in. So he packed up the car to take them down to the beach house. So in Adam's version, Samara was alive when he and the girls left at 8 a.m. She called him when he was on the way to Panama City, he said, and she'd been fine then. But there was a problem with that.

Around 7.30, a neighbor outside doing yard work had noticed a man, probably Adam, walking around the froshes pool going, oh, fuck, oh my God! Which makes a lot more sense if he's freaking out about his wife lying dead in the pool than it does if she's sleeping one off upstairs. Soon after he'd left Golden Eagle, Adam called up Martha Moore out of the blue and said he wanted to come over and check on her car. This was weird, and in retrospect, it looks an awful lot like Adam was trying to make sure somebody saw him in person early in the morning. Little alibi visit, you know.

But Martha happened to be driving down to South Florida to see her family at the time. She thought Adam sounded weirdly calm on the phone compared to how he usually sounded. She told her mom he was having a really good day. Adam had a theory that he shared with detectives. Maybe Gerald, the handyman, had gotten into an altercation with Samara and he'd killed her. You know, right in front of his 14-year-old son who'd come along to work with him, like you do. Investigators already knew from the Golden Eagle security cameras that Gerald had arrived just minutes before he'd called 911. Adam's theory was absurd. Gerald was in the clear.

Adam probably accused him out of sheer pettiness, because according to Adam, Samara liked to flirt with Gerald just for a little revenge. Most likely, though, Adam just interpreted regular human interaction as flirting, because that's the kind of douche-nauzle. he was. I mean, why even talk to a woman if you're not trying to get in her pants? Adam certainly was not in the clear. He had a scratch under his eye he said one of his young daughters had given him. Detectives at the scene said that when they'd found her, Samara had bloodstains on her fingertips. They'd later find Adam's DNA under her fingernails. At one point in his interview with police, Adam put his face in his hands and wept for a few minutes. But as one of the detectives later wrote in her report, when he pulled his hands from

his face, he had no tears for all the crying he was doing. Should have snuck a little slice of jalapeno in your pocket, man. Could have mustered up a few real tears. Also, not in the clear, at least initially, were the various girlfriends Adam was taken care of with his bank account. If Samara's divorce was finalized and she got at least half of everything, Adam owned, which seemed a pretty likely outcome, Dr. Frosh's money faucet was going to to be shut off in no uncertain terms. But as detectives tracked down and interviewed Adam's women, they found they all had solid alibis. Investigators needed a break, and they got one, when technicians pointed them towards the location of Samara's missing cell phone. They found it

in the diaper bag Adam had taken with him to Panama City. Well played, man. Adam said he'd taken the phone by mistake, but cell phone records showed that at a time when both phones were traveling along the highway with Adam toward Panama City, there was a call from Samara's phone to Adam's phone. Adam had called himself from Samara's phone to make it seem like she was alive and well at a time when he was miles and miles away from her and would be gone all day. Now, can anybody think of a reason why an innocent man would do that? Because I can't. And then there was his story about Samara neck and back two bottles of champagne the night before she died. That's a not inconsiderable amount of booze, but the medical examiner found no evidence of alcohol in her system.

None. Adam had lied. He was arrested but bailed out, for a little while at least. Federal officers investigating him for Medicare fraud, raided his office and found pistols in a filing cabinet. Filed under P, I assume. Do you think all the fraud paperwork was under F? Yeah.

Yeah. He strikes me as someone that would organize that way. Like still organize your illegal activities, you know? This was a big no-no for somebody out on bail. So Adam had to sit his ass in jail until trial. His two daughters with Samara went to live with his family up in Nebraska. While he was sitting in a six-by-eight box, the investigation to Samara's death continued.

A close investigation of items in the Frosh's house found Samara's DNA on the face of a golf club. This could be what the killer used to knock her out. Then the scene had been staged, with one of Samara's sandals shoved under a hose to make it look like she'd tripped and died in a tragic accident. Remember, she had injuries on both sides of her skull, which is pretty hard to do in a fall. The investigator's theory was that, far from having champagne-fueled reconciliation sex, Adam and Samara had gotten into a furious argument, during which he struck her at least twice in the head knocking her out. She would have been badly hurt, but there is still a chance to save her. Instead, in an act which took this killing far, far away from a crime of passion,

Adam lifted her helpless body and dumped it into the pool so she would drown. And in a story that will sound familiar to regular TCC listeners, while he was sitting in jail, Adam fessed up to his cellmate Dale. And the cellmate told on his ass. He said he hit her, and he hit her in the head with a club, and he tried to make it look like a murder by somebody. else. Dale said at trial. He said, I didn't mean to kill her, but it happened. So he threw her in the pool and ran. Okay. People. You know the drill. First, do not commit crimes. Don't do it. Okay.

Right. Yeah, don't do that. But if you do commit crimes and end up in a cell, please remember, your cellmate is not your new best friend, even if you get matching Xacto knife tattoos. And the story gets worse. According to Dale, Adam wanted him to break into the house and steal every golf club he could find and throw them in a lake somewhere. For God's sake. Like, did he think that the police didn't take the golf club? I know. It's, it's, uh, he's beyond bad at this. Did he think he was like, no, this golf club didn't belong to me.

It was a stranger's golf club. Like, they already cataloged the house, you dumb fuck. God. The case against Adam Frosh was mostly circumstantial. Even Samara's DNA on the golf club didn't provide an evidentiary slam dunk. She and that golf club had been in the same house for years, after all. There was plenty of room for a defense attorney to try and squeeze in some reasonable doubt on that score. And prison snitch testimony always has obvious problems.

But as we've said before, a circumstantial case does not mean a weak case. In fact, you can often describe them as common sense cases. Adam Frosh was in the middle of a contentious and extremely costly divorce with his wife. You try to think of reasons why he would lie about what had happened on the last night of her life and why he would fake a phone call to her on his way to Panama City. If he was innocent, if he had no idea that Samara was dead, there's no reason, no reason at all. In a circumstantial case, you have to put the events together in a way that makes sense. In Samara Frosh's death, the only one that fits is Adam Frosh murdering his wife.

On January 26, 2017, after a speedy four-day trial, and after just an hour and a half of deliberation, the jury found Adam Frosh guilty of first-degree murder. You can see video of Adam hearing the verdict online and Simpsons fans. You know when Ralph Wiggum tries to date Lisa and she breaks his heart? It's just like that. You can actually pinpoint the moment when his heart rips in half. Or maybe it's his ego. Either way, it's really satisfying. Now, Adam has his supporters. There's even a change.org petition to get him out of prison.

Some people argue that Gerald the Handyman should have been looked at more closely as a suspect, that he did have just enough time to commit the murder. It doesn't take long to hit somebody in the head, after all, but I have a problem with that theory for many reasons, but one in particular, other than the fact that his frickin' kid was there and that he had no motive whatsoever. Gerald was adamant that he didn't want to take Samara's body out of the pool because he was afraid he'd get his DNA on her and end up accused of the murder, which I think is a reasonable fear. Now, think about it. If you were guilty, wouldn't you want to pull the body out of the pool? Like, wouldn't you want to get your DNA on it like that and have a perfect excuse for it being there? If Gerald was the killer, he made a seriously dumb move by refusing to do what that dispatcher was suggesting and pull her out.

And for God's sakes, who kills somebody in front of their 14-year-old, like two minutes after he arrives at the house? Like, it would have had to kick off immediately. It just makes no sense, and it doesn't match up with Samara's time of death, and on and on and on. Some people argue that Samara could be kind of abrasive, and a lot of people were jealous of her, and it could have been one of them. But again, who? Why? What's their motive? So, yeah, it's a no for me, dog. As far as I'm concerned, Hare Frosh is right where he belongs. I hope their daughters can find a way to heal from this.

It's such a shame to me that they won't ever get a chance to know their mom, who I'm sure loved them with all her heart. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Tammy, Donna, Sarah, Claudia, Susanna, Darya,

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