Camilla Frazier

A Texan rancher mysteriously disappears. His wallet still at the house, his keys are there, his truck's still there. Did he intentionally leave to get away from something or is there something more important? Until the case is turned on its head. Somebody had them when they were asked for ransom. We never in our wildest dreams felt like this could possibly be an abduction. And a grisly discovery breaks the case wide open. There was rumors on the investigation that it'd been cut up by the butcher. Right away I noticed what I recognized to be a human skull. When evidence points to his inner circle, police home in on an unlikely criminal. They moved in, they didn't have a job, had no place to go. He's fed up with all of the trouble that comes along with this lifestyle. She was going to lose everything and have nothing. That's the whole piece that set this dynamite into motion. I think this is even harder than any top of TV script I could have written. The small town of Dalhart is in the West Texas Panhandle about 80 miles north of Amarillo. Dalhart's a really tight-knit community. They always look out for each other. It's a real big agriculture place. The big thing is the XIT rodeo that comes around every year. Everybody really looks forward to it. But on July 14th, 2017, one of the residents of this idyllic countryside town has gone missing. One of our patrol officers had a call to the police department on reference to missing person. When he got there, he met with Jamie Frazier and Kamey Frazier. The Frazier sisters have deep roots in the community and the local rodeo circuit. Jamie tells police that when she came to the family ranch to tend to her horse on July 11th, she noticed that their 65-year-old father, Joel Frazier, was nowhere to be found. Jamie was not living in Dalhart at the time, but she spoke to her dad on a regular basis. He lives there with his daughter, Kamey, and her husband, Corey Tidrow, and then they have a son. I live there as well. Jamie comes back to the house on the twelfth, but she doesn't see her father anywhere. The 13th, she comes back to feed the horse of same scenario. Joel's truck's there. Joel's not there. Two days later, nobody seen him. When Jamie checked the house on the 14th, another red flag stood out. She located Joel's hat boots on his wallet. It was very rare for Joel to leave the house without his wallet. When Jamie questioned her sister, Kamey had no inkling of Joel's whereabouts. After Joel's wife had passed away, Kamey lived there for several years with Joel and her husband, Corey. Kamey said Joel was an alcoholic. Would go for days at a time on a drinking binge. That's what she was alluding to. He was on the bender. He was out drinking. She just leave her dad. It was off on a gallop any weekend with a girlfriend somewhere. To Kamey, that was his normal one. There was no reason really to be concerned at that time. Kamey's like, "I don't know where he's at." And so, Jamie started getting suspicious. Hey, something's not right here. Dad wouldn't just leave. I'm going to call the police. Police tried to pinpoint a timeline of Joel's disappearance. Kamey reported the last time she saw her dad was 12 and that he wasn't feeling well and she made him a milkshake. According to Kamey, she would make him milkshake because evidently he wasn't eating very well and she taken care of her dad. After his wife passed away, Joel got to drink and pretty heavy and stuff and his health was declining. Kamey says she assumed Joel was feeling better the next morning because when she went to check on him, he was gone. Talking to Kamey, she said that it was not abnormal for her dad to just up and leave for several days of the time and not contact. Jamie doesn't agree with Kamey. She remains convinced something has happened to their father. His wallet is still at the house. His keys are there. His truck is still there. The medication, overnight bag is still there. If you're going somewhere, you take that stuff with you. With Jamie's dire concerns and Kamey's dismissal, officers assess every possibility. There are some red flags whenever, you know, there's two separate stories from the reporting parties. One of them was very concerned. On the other one just believed it was him. Being out on one of his normal, we can getaways, unfortunately. There's a lot of parameters that have to be met and show that, you know, Mr. Persons in danger before we can move forward. We had to see what's going on with this person. Did they intentionally leave to get away from something or is there something more important? Joel Frazier was born December 18, 1951 and seemed destined for the life of a cowboy. He and his brother both grew up on the family ranch. Joel grew up here in the panel and part of New Mexico. He's been here pretty much all of his life. They owned a ranch because they had them and they grew up on the ranch, just outside of Delaware. They really didn't do anything ordinary than what a farmer ranch kid would do growing up. Their dad kept them busy as a cowboy raising cattle and, you know, doing a lot of farming. And then they went into their adult life. In 1978, Joel started a family of his own with a successful young woman named Donna Petty. But Joel meets Donna in his 20s. Donna's in real estate, so if she's kind of got her career going, that would have been very intriguing for a man from small town Dalhart. And so they fall in love, they get married and end up inheriting the ranch. Less than a year after they got married, Joel and Donna welcomed their daughter Kami into the world. Joel delighted in raising her in the cowboy lifestyle. In these small towns where we have these huge rodeos, most dads who are into the rodeo scene that have little girls, their little girls are going to grow up learning the whole rodeo scene and it's huge bonding for a dad and a daughter. Kami, she wanted to be the rodeo queen. The rodeo queen is like the homecoming queen of the rodeo. You have to be good at all of the different events in the rodeo, the mutton bust and the rope and the riding. When she won the rodeo queen, Dalhart X-I-T rodeo, he was so proud of Kami. And I think for Kami, it was just the spotlight. She wanted to be the center of the kitchen. When Kami was 13, Joel and Donna added a second daughter to the family, Jamie. She proved to be just as dedicated to the rodeo as her sister. When Jamie got up at high school, she got the opportunity to run for rodeo queen. Jamie was definitely a better hand on the horse and she was just better at roping and you tell that Joel was a proud man, that he was very proud of Jamie. I think, you know, there's a lot of jealousy there because Jamie broke with her dad a lot and Kami didn't fall through like Jamie did. Kami was a little proud for her, but it took the spotlight off her. As Kami and Jamie got older, they moved out and started lives of their own. Kami married Corey Tidrell and the couple had a son while Jamie moved to nearby Canyon, Texas. Through it all, the frasers remained close net. They at one time had pawn shop here, they had belonged to Joel and Donna and the girls actually run it. And they were pretty popular people in town. Donna was a backbone of that family, 100%. And I think that's where, you know, Kami and Jamie both kind of get a little bit of their tenacity from. She didn't last long. It was pretty quick death. I know Joel was a different person. He felt like he lost a whole world. It was at this time that Cami and Cory come back and move back in with her father. You know, her father was alone now. She was worried about him. I do think it was a camper, you know, and I think it probably helped Joel to have her there. Even though he was surrounded by loved ones, 63-year-old Joel continued to struggle with the loss of his wife. After Donna passed away, you could tell he was going downhill. I think his answer was drinking, drinking and roping. I always see what it'd done more roping than less drinking. Now, Joel's disappearance has left Delhart police trying to determine if it constitutes an emergency. Cami said that it was not abnormal for her dad to just up and leave for, you know, several days of the time and not contact. It's not that anyone should be concerned about that time because he always comes back. Jamie thought, yes, dad's gone on benders before, but his truck's here, his wallet's here. Something's not right about this. When officers take a closer look at Joel's wallet, Jamie points out something strange. The only thing that was not in the wall that was his debit card. It was believed that Joel just left and of course took his debit card just to fund his trip. Joel's truck was still at the house, so they believed he might have been picked up by somebody. After speaking with Joel Fraser's daughters, Delhart police ramp up their efforts and conduct a search of the area, looking for any clues connected to the rancher's disappearance. We were told by several Joel's friends that he would go for, you know, two, three days out of town, but normally everybody was at poor reach him by phone, so it was out of character for Joel, not to be reachable. There's a local prison in Delhart that has some tracking dogs, so they thought, hey, let's call the prison, let's get the tracking dogs at us. Let's see if we can track them. We took the dogs at the house and we started a dog track to see if there was any sign that Joel had walked away from the property. And after several hours of doing a track, the dogs never left the property and kept coming back to the driveway. Did he get in a car and leave? Or did he never leave? Coming up, Joel's loved ones receive a heart-stopping message. She had received text messages for that, alluded to the fact that they had Joel, they wanted money for Joel's safe return. It has been three days since Joel Frazier was last seen. To ascertain if Joel could have taken off on his own, detectives check his bank accounts for clues. If Joel's out there driving around in somebody's car or with somebody, that's important information. And you could gather that information from the use of this debit card. There was no activity on his debit card, there was no activity on his bank account, and so they were kind of at a loss for where he may be. News spreads fast in a small town, so before the end of the day, many of the locals have joined in the search. Myself and Jamie, we started the search party for Joel. And we looked, and we looked, and we looked. We wanted to find him, and we wanted to find him alive. Everybody looked at it as Joel was missing. It was a big deal for the community. After two days with no leads, police expand their manhunt into neighboring states. We were able to get him in and in as a missing person in the national database, as well as putting out a silver alert for his descriptors. Getting those alerts out nationally helped get everybody paying attention on looking for him. Though Cammy is unconcerned over her father's whereabouts, Joel's other daughter Jamie enlists the aid of social media. Jamie had taken the upon herself to create missing person posters that she posted all over the internet. Jamie was upset, her dad's missing, and she's trying to do everything she can to find him. Jamie's efforts soon result in a response from the public, but it's the last thing anyone was expecting. It's really after the social media post went out, Jamie received a message that somebody had Joel when they were asked for ransom. Jamie had received text messages that alluded to the fact that they had Joel, and they wanted money for Joel's safe return. We never in our wildest dreams felt like this could possibly be an abduction or a kidnapping. At this point, the Howard Police Department doesn't have the resources out of complete this investigation thoroughly, so we look for help from the outside, and we contacted the text arrangers and the FBI to come in and provide extra manpower. Investigators have Jamie contact the alleged kidnappers to negotiate Joel's safe return. We began looking into asking for proof alive, and anything that would prove that Joel was in fact with these people. They said that they would provide that proof, but she needed to pay them $1,000. This time, detectives are able to use the exchange to trace the sender's phone number. What we figured out was the number actually tracked back to overseas, and then furthermore, we found that that particular number was tracked to a batch of numbers that had been used in other scams. A lot of these times, the scammers will see missing person reports on social media. If you see this person contact such, such, such number, and they try to take advantage of that. It was determined that one of these scammers had seen Joel's missing person poster, and they believe that it would be an easy target for some quick cash. I can't believe somebody would do that to her, you know. James Saul heart broke over the whole situation. It basically wasted our time when we could have been focused on another avenue trying to find Joel, so we start working on our case again. Police canvass all of Joel's regular haunts, hoping one of his friends might have seen something suspicious in the days leading up to his disappearance. His friend, Chris, divulges a shocking story from July 11th. The day Joel was last seen. He said there was an altercation between Kami and Joel, happened at the rodeo arena. There was a big blow up, a big fight. There was some words spoken like, "I don't want to see you again." Seven days have passed since Joel Frazier was reported missing on July 14th, 2017. But detectives have just found a witness who may have some key insight. Well, I know the last knot that I've seen, Joel, we've been out at the Exciteer Angels. And we have what was all a practice knot when we were practicing our team opening, and Joel was opening a little bit that knot. Witnesses say Joel brought Kami's son to the arena with him, but when he left, he seemed to forget the child. I guess about 8, 30 or 9 o'clock, Joel had decided to go to the house and he had actually left the grandson there. I seen him driving out the gate. It was probably 30 minutes later. His daughter showed up. Kami was very upset about Joel for getting her son there at the event. I rode over and talked to her a little bit. She was mad because he drove off left the boy there. She said, you know, I'm so ready to get rid of him. Investigators are curious to know what Kami meant. They asked me what I thought, and I thought, you know, I just thought she was talking about putting them in a home or something. According to Joel's friends, his relationship with Kami had deteriorated in recent months, and the main issue seemed to be her husband, Corey. He's kind of hard to explain. You can tell when somebody's really shifty, they both work two pieces and a pod, and they fad off of each other. - Kami's story, surprisingly, is one that is pretty common. In this area, methamphetamine is the drug. And if you get mixed up with that, unfortunately, it's hard to get out. Your life starts going downhill. Somebody who's on top of the world, a rodeo queen, the apple of her father's eye, but it just takes at one person that introduces that one little thing into your life that changes your life forever. And Kami's case, that was met in Cory. - When you see her, when she's 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, she's pretty and she's got to get smog. And then you see what years of hard living in methamphetamine have done to somebody, aside from what it does to their life. - Those close to the family tell police, they believe Kami and Cory returned to the ranch with their eight-year-old son, not to care for Joel, but to take advantage of him. - They'd moved in because they were doing no. They didn't have a job, had no place to go. So Joel opened his house up to him, give him a place to live. Joel had mentioned that they were trying to cook math at the house when he wasn't putting up with it no more. - He's fed up with all of the trouble that comes along with this lifestyle that Kami's been living. And he's about ready to kick bolts her and her husband out of the house. - To investigators, the revelation puts Kami's statements in a different light. - Kami just didn't seem too concerned. I think she played it off that this was normal. It's no big deal. And now it's concerning to me as an investigator, why don't we have lack of emotion for your dad that you live with that you're taking care of. And now he's missing and it's no big deal. Why is one sister desperately looking for him in the other night? - We're starting to believe Kami knows one that she's telling us at this time and that she's maybe hiding something. So it was determined that we would do a search warrant on the house. - On July 20th, 2017, nine days after Joel's disappearance, police execute a search warrant on the Frazier home. - Whilst curing the residents to begin a search warrant, I went and spoke to a Kami and Corey and I was able to collect their cell phones until then we would be escorting them out. - Inside the house, we'd located what I knew to be a homemade ice cream maker in the sink, a container for that with a liquid that appeared to be a melted ice cream. - We were able to find remnants of the milkshake that Kami had made for Joel over a week earlier. So we took samples of that. - And then we found a purse. Going through that purse, you could tell that based on IDs and so forth, it was gonna be Kami Tidros. And that purse was two items that were interesting. One was a bottle of off-brand sleep aid, but when you opened it up, it was nothing but white powder. Not knowing exactly what it was, we went ahead and seized that. - Investigators also find something even more suspicious. - When that purse was an unsigned last-willing testament for Joel Frazier that had been sent from his attorney, dated back in April of 2017. It wasn't signed. And as you look through the wheel, he had changed the previous wheel to take Kami from being the main beneficiary, to change it to Jamie being the main beneficiary and kind of cutting Kami out if you will of everything in the event Joel died. Finding the wheel was a huge thing. Kami's using his assets, using his money, and then ultimately she gets a letter, she says, "Oh wait a minute, I'm losing everything." - Coming up. A suspect is cornered. - Okay, so what are you telling me then? - I guess I'm probably going to need a lawyer. - And investigators begin to fear the worst. - My gut feeling was, you know, ultimately that Joel was probably dead. (upbeat music) - While conducting a search warrant on the Frazier home, investigators have just discovered an unsigned wheel removing Kami as Joel's beneficiary. - When talking to Joel's attorney, the one who drafted the wheel for him, he talks about how in March of 2017, into April of 2017, Joel came to him and said that he wanted a changes wheel. - Joel's attorney stated that he had just revised Joel's will and sent a copy to the house and that he never received a signed copy in return. And this happened just before Joel was reported missing. - Since Kami still lived on the property, if the wheel came in the mail, it's very possible that Kami might have opened the mail and saw that she was no longer in the wheel and she's gotten very upset. - Now I have a reason why Kami's a red flag. There is a motive now about why. - Analysis of the ice cream and the powdery substance found in Kami's purse provides another clue. - To us into the emerald crime lab, they do drug analysis and part of that is they can tell substances and that's who gave us the reading back that it was dip and hydramine. Dip and hydramine is the ingredient for Benadriel, a sleep in medicine. Kami, every evening, would make Joel a milkshake. He wouldn't expect to find ice cream with sleep medicine in it. That coupled with the loose powder dip and hydramine, it all made a lot of sense. - After concluding their search, investigators confront Kami with the evidence. - Kami, when she met with me at the police department the day after the initial search warrant, she was cordial. But she refused to speak to it, so she wanted an attorney. - I honestly don't have much more to say. - I guess I probably would need a lawyer. - My gut feeling was ultimately that Joel was probably dip, but we needed to find the body to help us with the investigation. Police obviously have gotten all this evidence pointing directly towards Kami. However, Joel's still missing, so there's no body. It's very hard to charge anybody with a murder when there's no body. - Kami is released for the time being, but police keep a watchful eye on her movements. Police interview Corey over the phone, but he takes the same stance as his wife. - This investigation went over several months, and I know for me, I want things to happen quickly. And it taught me a lot about patients. - As the investigation continues through the summer, police begin hearing consistent rumors from associates of the frasers. Rumors swirl in these small towns, especially the longer someone's missing and that gives more time for rumors to kind of flare up and names get thrown out. - There was rumors in the investigation that Joel had been disposed of. He had been cut up by the butcher. And when they say butcher, we learned that they were alluding to Benjamin Buck. Benjamin Buck's family owned the Dow Heart processing plant, which is essentially a butcher shop. - If you had a cow and you wanted a butcher, that's where you took it. They cut it up in a nice little stakes for you. - Ben Buck is an own associate of Cammy and Corey. And not in a good way. There's some Matthews going on, maybe even Matthews sells. - If someone wanted to get rid of a body, Buck might be the person to talk to. But with only rumors, investigators know they need more. - After we began looking into Ben Buck, we received an anonymous tip that Joel's body would possibly be located at the processing plant across the street where Ben Buck resides. - The tipster says that if police searched the meat processing plant near Joel's house, they would find his remains. - When we interviewed him, he said that he had heard the rumors. So he had snuck over there one night. This individual basically had snuck over onto the property and looked in this incinerator. They took a video and sent it to me and said, this is where Joel is. - Four months after the disappearance of Joel Frazier, Police. It's act on a tip that his body might be hidden in a nearby incinerator. I think he had been told that's where Joel is by someone he wanted to see for himself. Not only did they take a video but they shown a flashlight in there and they could see Joel's body in there. The building turns out to be owned by the family of Benjamin Buck. Ben spoke to Ben Buck's mother Amy Buck and received verbal consent to search the premises. Amy Buck, the owner of the process and plant, led us to where the incinerator was and inside that barn were both Benjamin Buck and his brother Casey Buck. They were salting animal hides which is the process they do to preserve the hides of these animals at Butchery. The Buck's tell investigators that the processing plants incinerator has been inoperable for some time but they're more than happy to let them look inside. Amy had her two boys Ben Buck and Casey Buck show us how to open the incinerator and I remember sitting there watching they were extremely nervous. They came in and they left and we opened it up right away I noticed what I recognized to be a human skull and as I'm looking closer I see what looks like okay I know that to be a human hand in my heart I knew I mean without a doubt that was Joel Frazier I was looking at. Once we locate the body in the incinerator and I start looking at it a little more closely I'm able to see the what turned out to be a dental implant with the initial J Frazier. Following the discovery police take Benjamin Buck in for questioning. Over the course of his interrogation they tried to get him to confirm his involvement in Joel's disappearance. Were you around and came in for that week and after Joel left him? Well, not really, I mean I enjoyed we were down on one day in like sickle, my dad's gone on my phone. Okay we're ready to go. I don't know. For the majority of that seven-hour interview pressing into him he just wasn't wanting to give it up but once I got the right button pushed and got through to him it's almost as if a rock got lift off of him. When there be a reason why for multiple people they have heard this statement come out as your mouth. Well if Corey asked me to help him get rid of the body I would do it because that's what friends do. I know you're in nobody's body and yet here we are in the body sitting at your mom and dad's place. I don't know why I'm here, how he had to go kid, now there's no way out. Benjamin finally tells police that on July 12th he received a phone call from Kami Frazier's husband Corey. Corey told him I need you to bring some string, a sheet and a wheelbarrow to Joel's house. When I asked him what he thought that was for he indicated right away he knew Joel was dead. They had prior conversations of wanting to kill Joel and how they were going to do that. When he gets into the house he sees who he recognized to be Joel sitting in a brown or in the living room appears to be dead. You have to walk away where you two four wait till his house broke when the club was breathing to the car later. Well do you tell that Joel, do you move that up? Kami's in there trying to clean up. He sees some blood on the ceiling, he sees some blood on the chair around Joel. Ben says Kami and Corey told him they decided to drug Joel to make it easier to kill him. Kami had made the milkshake for Joel and put a medicine in it in order to get him to go to sleep. He was checked on several times to see if the medicine had taken effect. Personally, Joel was shot with a 22 in his head when they found out that that did not kill Joel. They went and retrieved a larger caliber hanging on a 45 and shot him with that also in the head. Ben told me that Corey had a shoulder holster with what it looked like a silver or a chrome plated 45 and Kami had a pistol on her hip. After they finished cleaning up the crime scene, Benjamin says he agreed to help them dispose of the body. You brought a wheelbarrow, you brought a twine and you brought a sheet about your own admission by your own confession. So you saw them use the twine to wrap around the body. At which point Corey can be wheeled that body and the wheelbarrow down the street because it was only a block away to the processing plant. In the middle of the night, Corey dumps the body from the wheelbarrow into the skidsteer and he drives the skidsteer over to this incinerator at the back of the property. They open up the incinerator and they dump Joel's body with the skidsteer into that incinerator. But it's not been functional for quite a while. So Benjamin obtains a propane tank with a wand that's attached to it. Now this would be something that you would utilize to light and burn off weeds. Kami lit it for Corey and Corey stuck that into the port hole up against the body of Joel and left it going because as long as you've got that lit and fuel, in this case propane feeding into it, it's going to run. They leave thinking that that's going to burn that body and dispose of that evidence and they'll be home free. But Benjamin says things obviously didn't turn out according to plan. It got super hot in the incinerator, which is supposed to do, but didn't get hot enough to burn the human body. And so what it did is mummified him and preserved him. In their attempt to destroy the body, they preserved it. Benjamin is arrested and police use his confession to obtain warrants for Kami and Corey as well. We arrested Kami and Corey at the gas station. They're there, feeling up and so we feel like they're fixing to run. Do you give me permission to search your car? No. I've spoken with a lawyer and no, I don't give you a portion of anything on the phone. There was no doubt in my mind that there were the two murders of Joel Frazier and from there it just became how do we prove it? After a four month investigation, Kami Frazier and her husband, Corey Tidrill, are charged with the murder of Joel Frazier. Their co-conspirator, Benjamin Bup, agrees to testify against the couple in exchange for reduced charges. Ben ends up taking a plea deal. He is charged with tampering with evidence. Let's be honest about it. Benjamin Bup, what the most upstanding person, he has a history, he's a criminal. But that doesn't mean he can't tell the truth. And there's 100% belief in my mind that in that confession I got from him, I'll say it was mostly true. However, prosecutors don't have to rely solely on Bucks testimony. The most important reason evidence was Joel's body and the autopsy report, by the confirmed that medication was used for them to put Joel to sleep and the entry and exit points of the rounds fired into Joel's skull. It appeared that both shots came from behind. One of them being in the smaller caliber, 22 and the other one being a larger caliber, 45. Once we were able to get the toxicology results back on his tissue samples and found that there was a large amount of dip and hydramine in his system, it all made perfect sense of what we were looking at. Corey is tried first in October 2019, more than two years after Joel Frazier's death. He's found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Cammy's trial begins two months later and a key part of her defense strategy is to shift blame onto her newly convicted husband. I never put a gun in Cammy's hand. That doesn't necessarily make her blameless, obviously she didn't have to be the one that shoots to be guilty and murder if you participate in it. You're trying to get Cammy as far away from the actual killing as possible as far as culpability wise, you know, with some hope that maybe the jury would see her as somebody that was connected but not criminally so. According to the prosecution, Cammy was no innocent bystander. They argue, she was the only one with a strong root. reason to kill her father. - I think the motive for this killing was the fact that Joel took Kimmy out of the will and left Jamie in the will. And so I think that's the whole piece that set this dynamite into motion, the explosion, if you will. - I think when Kimmy found out that Joel was trying to get her and Cory out of the house and that she'd been right out of the will, I was a breaking point for Kimmy. - She was going to lose everything and Jamie was going to end up with everything, you know? And I think that's where she did it. With her being on the drugs and stuff, I think that she'd just snap literally, you know? And did the unthinkable. I mean, how can you kill your father and put him in a senator? - In the end, Kimmy ends up being found guilty of first degree murder and receives a life sentence. - There's no doubt in my mind and dealing with both Kimmy and Cory that they're evil people. They have zero compassion for human life. And I think life in prison for both of them was a fitting disposition. - The story is just really sad, you know? You've got Jamie. She lost her mother and now she's lost her father. And the person who's her sister is the one who's responsible for it. How do you get past that? - I think Jordan wanna be remembered just as a good old boy, just an okay old boy, you know? He loved his family, he loved his wife, he loved his daughters. Jordan definitely didn't deserve to die the way he died. He didn't deserve that at all. You have a father that's willing to give you the world, but yeah, you're willing to take his life, you know? What a shame. (upbeat music)