Ohio Woman Stages Fake Home Invasion to Murder Boyfriend

- Home is where you're supposed to feel safe. - Not my mom, where's your emergency? I think someone's in the apartment. - But that's not always up to you. - There's stuff everywhere, and I can't find my boyfriend. - Especially when you let someone new, darken your doorstep. - Oh no. - I'll be somewhere. - I'll be there. (crashing) (crashing) (crashing) (crashing) - That'll do his death. - It's a family out here. - Why me? - I will have my attorney call you. (crashing) - When 35-year-old Deborah Frazier can't get in touch with her boyfriend for more than 12 hours, she knows something isn't right. - The couple is on again, off again, but they've been living together for a while. 66-year-old grandfather and woodworker, Thomas Woodell, is typically responsive. He never makes Frazier wait for a text or call. But the last few days have been anything, but typical. On August 10th, 2023, after nearly an entire day without contact, Frazier heads back to Woodell's apartment. What she finds inside is almost unbelievable. - I walked in, I saw the clean lady. She was just wrapping up. - Okay. - And I walked to the door, and I noticed it was unlocked. I just figured Tom had forgot to lock it at some point. And that's when I noticed that the whole apartment was tossed upside down. The light in the bedroom was on. And I decided to call 911, because I was worried that someone had tried to rob us. - It came from when you would fit in the apartment. It was unlocked, and there's stuff everywhere. - As she walks toward the master bedroom, two masked men suddenly appear and walk toward her. There was two guys that came out. - Can you describe the suspects to me? - The one I got a good look at. He had a black ski mask on. I could tell through the eyeball. It was white. And he had a macio dream hoodie. - Okay. - And jeans from what I could tell. The other guy didn't get a good look at. He wore a mask too, and he pushed past me before the first guy shot me. - Okay, then. Are you inside the apartment? - Oh, no. I see someone. - What did they say? Did they say anything? - They did say anything. I think they were just trying to get out of there. I just tried to keep the gun away from me. - How did you do that? - I grabbed a hold of it, and I was trying to point it away from me, because I didn't want to get shot, Frazier is already on the phone with the 9-1-1 dispatcher when the gun goes off. - Oh, you let's have an active conversation. - Okay. - Police arrived to find Frazier in the entryway of the apartment. She's bleeding from a gunshot wound to the leg. On the ground beside her officer see a 22-caliber handgun. That just blew a bullet through Frazier's body. While Frazier is transferred to a nearby hospital for surgery, Muskegon County police enter the home only to find that the intruders have already left. - Where they went to, after they bolted out the door, I don't know where they went to, because at that point I was shot, and I was in pain. - Where did they come out of? - In the bedroom, they saw the masked men emerge. Police do find one person, 66-year-old Thomas Widel. By the looks of it, Widel has been dead for a number of hours. His body is wrapped inside a comforter and multiple trash bags, whoever put him there used duct tape to secure the wrap. Investigators also find two velcro straps they believe the killer used to drag Widel's dead body into the bedroom. Something else they notice. Nothing seems to be missing. Widel's valuables are all where they belong, including his firearms. There's no evidence of drug use or any other obvious reason for a home invasion. Which leads investigators to believe there was no robbery at all. If that's the case, Widel's killer is likely to be someone he knew. Investigators meet Frazier at the hospital to see who she believes might have had motive to break into their home. And she might have an idea. Frazier implicates someone who was previously very close to her 66-year-old boyfriend, another woman, his wife. He's still type. We married. What kind of issues was he having with her? She was just very, what's the word? She had a lot anger management issues. And she was cheating on him so they ended up separating. Do you think she would be the type of person to do something like this? I don't know. I mean, you're saying it's two guys. What do you think they were doing? What do you think they were up to? It's hard to tell. Honestly, I don't know. Investigators are starting to question Frazier's story and her involvement. Especially when they look at security camera footage from neighboring apartments and see that many people came and went in the 24 hours leading up to the murder. But no one matches Frazier's description of the, quote, intruders. Police only become more suspicious when they learn Frazier stayed with a friend the night before the alleged break-in. A friend she calls Johnny. I just thought you'd go take a walk. I thought I'd ask Tom if you mind. But I just hung out with a friend for a while. Maybe spend the night. Then I got a hold of my friend, Johnny. Check. And, um, ask him if he wanted to hang out. Frazier says she left home at around 4 p.m. on Wednesday, August 9th, the day before the shooting. She went for a walk on a nearby trail until about 430 when she called Johnny. Then she says Johnny picked her up in his white Prius and they went back to his house. Why didn't you want to go back to the apartment? I just figured a night away was, you know, because I like to play video games and Tom doesn't. So I like to play video games with Johnny. So when you left on Wednesday at around 4 p.m. to take a walk, did you ever go back to the apartment until you got shot? I popped in briefly to get my backpack. No, I didn't. I was the apartment when you went back to get you a backpack. Everything was fine. There was nothing out of place. Frazier still hadn't returned home by morning. Instead, she went on another walk. This time with Johnny at Black Hand Gorge in Muskingum County about a 20-minute drive from Waddell's apartment. Frazier claimed she tried to get in touch with Waddell that morning, but he wasn't responding. I had tried to contact Tom. I texted him. I called him. And I never heard back, which was weird. And so, Johnny and I took a walk at Black Hand Gorge. According to Frazier's timeline, it was nearing 1.30 p.m. when Johnny dropped her off at Waddell's apartment. Johnny knew Waddell lived there with Frazier, but he didn't know they were together. Just like Waddell never knew that Johnny was also in a relationship with Frazier. After speaking with Johnny, police learned that Frazier had told him that she worked as a live-in nurse. And that Waddell was her patient. Debra Frazier has been living a double life and hiding it from everyone for a decade. Suddenly, Frazier goes from survivor to suspect. What do you think happened, Tom? I honestly don't know. Did you walk in the back bedroom? No, they came out before I could even make it back to their wife. Okay. Well, Tom was shot and killed. Sorry, you can take a minute. No. And all topsy report finds that Thomas Waddell died from a gunshot wound to the head. The murder weapon is determined to be a 22-calibre pistol, the same gun that was found beside Frazier when police responded to her 9-1-1 call. Waddell had been dead for hours before Frazier ever placed the call. It's believed that he was killed within four hours of 9 p.m. on August 9th when Frazier claims she was with Johnny. So what is a boy, I'll say? What's Johnny's say? Is his story going to match up? Because it should, that's not very dangerous. Johnny backs up Frazier's story that they were together the night of August 9th, but it didn't happen the way Frazier claims it did. Johnny picked Frazier up to go for a ride. When she got in the car, Frazier appeared upset and allegedly told Johnny she didn't want to talk. But you have more knowledge than what you're saying there was no him invasion robbery, okay? There was absolutely none, so you've already locked yourself into the biggest lie, here's your chance to unwind it and tell the truth. So that we can look into it, was there something going on between you and him, me and listen, we know stuff is out to window, like we already know, we're past that point. This is called damage control. Police are almost positive, they're sitting down with a killer, and as it turns out, this isn't the first time someone Frazier lived with has turned up dead. In a search of Woodell's home, forensic analyst find fingerprints belonging to a man named David Eugene Grantham. A quick search traces Grantham to a Florida residence. Grantham fits the description of the intruders, and he has a record of theft and receiving stolen property. But when police attempt to speak with him, they hit another dead end. That's because in February 2021, Grantham was found dead in his home by his roommate, Deborah Frazier. Listen, you know when you call 911 or you record the calls, you're the only person in that apartment. The audio gets enhanced, we can tell if people are rubbing out and struggling, we look at cameras in the neighborhood, there's nothing. Your story is so far bogus. If something happened in that apartment, you need to tell us now, because the only thing you're doing is making yourself look like a monster by not telling the truth. The evidence shows that Frazier was involved in Woodell's death. But what would have been her motive? Johnny tells police that a few weeks back, Frazier asked him to call Woodell, pretending to be a fraud investigator from PNC Bank, where Woodell and Frazier had a joint bank account. Frazier also had a fake email account that she used to send herself messages posing as a PNC representative. The emails discussed a case of fraud in which Woodell was the victim. Researchers can see that Woodell and Frazier's joint account had been drawn down to only $2,000. Investigators wonder if Frazier might have misused the funds and didn't want Woodell to find out? Would you have an issue if we looked inside of your family? And it's hard, I can tell you, we did a search warrant on your family. Why are you searching? How long does gunshot residue stay on my hands? Yesterday morning at 8 in the morning, Debbie searched records. How long does GSR stay on skin? Yesterday morning at 8.16 in the morning, I'm telling you, we already know the answers to the questions we're asking you. For four days, leading up to Woodell's death, Frazier made several suspicious internet searches from her cell phone, investigators have records of everything. I didn't do it. I did it then. I love Tom. If you didn't shoot him, who did, because you know? I don't know. How do I get GSR on my hands? You know this. So you can kill the man you love or have knowledge of that and set there and look at me, dead in the eyes and say, I don't know. That's pretty cool. So did you get rid of his phone? Did you throw it out in the go-orch? No. The patient records tracked Frazier, Johnny and Woodell's phones from Woodell's apartment north into Blackhand Gorge. Frazier and Johnny's phones both continued to ping in multiple spots throughout the county that night and into the morning. Woodell's phone never moved. Here's the fact of the matter. There's nobody that runs out of that apartment. All right, we know that. The gun was used to kill him, OK? And the gun that you shot yourself in the leg with. Trace information on the murder weapon comes back to Thomas Woodell. Debra Frazier killed him in his own home with his own gun. This must've been something you've been planning. This must've been something that you did with a little bit of thinking to try to get out of this mess. You thought about it. What's he done to piss you off so bad that you wanted to kill him? I never thought about killing him. OK. But the fact of the matter is the evidence will show that you did. DNA testing ultimately shows that Frazier's DNA and her DNA alone is found on the duct tape and trash bags that concealed Woodell's body as well as on those Velcro straps used to drag his body across the apartment. All right. His hair is in the duct tape, OK? From where he was wrapped up. Did you put the bag over his face because you could look at him anymore and see what you done? I didn't cover him up. OK. I thought that killers before I talked straight up, people that shot several people. They at least had balls to own it. You don't. You don't. In March of 2023, Debra Frazier pleads guilty to the charges of murder with a firearm specification, tampering with evidence, and gross abuse of a corpse. Frazier is sentenced to 15 years for the murder of Thomas Woodell to be served consecutively with eight additional years for the abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. Her earliest parole eligibility date is August 7, 2046, two days shy of exactly 23 years after she murdered Thomas Woodell. For long crime investigates, I'm Kristen Thorn.