In the early hours of April 8, 2008, Jamie Fraley told a friend that she was going to the hospital for the third time in 24 hours because of stomach flu.
When the friend asked who was taking her to the hospital, Fraley said it was another friend.
However, she didn’t give any specific details about the friend taking her to the hospital.
She hasn’t been seen since that day.
Her cellphone was found a few days later, but it didn’t offer any clues about where she might be.
Investigators first thought she might have been harmed by someone.
As a result, they began to closely investigate Ricky Simonds Sr., the father of her fiancé.
He lived in the same apartment complex and he was identified as a person of interest during the investigation.
He had driven Fraley to the hospital earlier that day during one of her visits.
He also had a criminal record, which included a prison sentence for manslaughter after strangling a girlfriend in the 1980s.
However, the investigation came to an end two months later when Simonds was found dead in the trunk of a former girlfriend's car.
No one has been arrested or charged in connection with her disappearance, and the case remains a mystery to this day.
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| Jamie Fraley |
Background
Jamie Fraley was from Gastonia, North Carolina, United States, and was born on March 5, 1986.
She had struggled with anxiety and bipolar disorder throughout her early life.
By the late 2000s, Fraley was doing well with prescription medications for her conditions.
She was also attending Gaston College part-time during her treatment.
Her family said she was planning to pursue a career as a substance-abuse counselor.
In 2006, she began dating Ricky Simonds Jr.
Her family said she was very much in love with him, and eventually, they became engaged.
However, Simonds had a criminal history, including several earlier arrests for petty crimes.
In early 2007, he was sentenced to 15 months in state prison for theft.
While he was in prison, Fraley continued to visit and interact with him.
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| Jamie Fraley |
Disappearance
On April 7, 2008, Fraley was down with stomach flu.
Her condition was very serious that she went to the hospital twice that day.
Since she didn’t have a driver’s license, she relied on friends and family to take her to and from the hospital.
After returning from the first trip, one of Fraley's friends visited her and picked up her dog, which Fraley had been sitting for.
The friend then went out and helped Fraley drop off her drug prescription at a local drugstore.
She went back later and met Fraley still at home.
Ricky Simonds Sr., her fiancé’s father who lived in the same apartment complex and did maintenance work there, drove her to the hospital the second time.
Another neighbor drove her back.
Around 12 a.m., Fraley noticed her condition was getting serious and needed to go back to the hospital.
She called her mother to let her know.
At 1:30 a.m. on April 8, she called a friend in Albemarle and mentioned she was going back to the hospital.
The call was cut off when Fraley apparently saw her ride arrive.
She had referred to the person who came to pick her as "he" during the call.
Fraley never checked into the hospital the third time.
Since that phone call, there has been no sign of her anywhere.
Investigation
After Fraley missed an important appointment the next day, her family went to her apartment on Lowell-Bethesda Road to check on her.
They did not find her there and the door was locked.
Inside, they found her wallet, purse, keys, and identification, but her cell phone was missing.
Nothing else was missing.
There were no signs of a struggle, so they concluded she had left willingly, wherever she went.
When they couldn’t locate her, they called the police and reported her missing.
Gaston County police launched a major investigation, assigning all their investigators to the case.
Two days after Fraley's disappearance, utility workers found her phone at an intersection about a mile (1.6 km) from her apartment.
By the time the phone was given to the police, too many people had handled it.
As a result of this, no usable evidence, like fingerprints, could be gathered from the exterior.
The police searched the phone's call records and found that several calls had been made at 4:30 a.m.
However, these calls were from the list of numbers Fraley had dialed earlier and were not related to her disappearance.
A call was made to the phone at 5 a.m., but it was not possible to determine who made it.
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| Ricky Simonds Sr. |
Ricky Simonds Sr.
Ricky Simonds Jr., Fraley's fiancé, was still in prison at the time of her disappearance, so investigators ruled him out as a suspect.
They quickly shifted their focus back to his father, Ricky Simonds Sr.
He also had a criminal record, including six years in prison for manslaughter in the 1980s after strangling a girlfriend to death.
Simonds Sr. lived just two doors away from Fraley in the same complex and did maintenance work there.
He had driven her to the hospital the second time on the day she disappeared, making him one of the last people to see her that day.
Reportedly he was obsessed with Fraley and he refused to take a lie detector test during the investigation.
Two months after Fraley disappeared, the investigation into Simonds ended with his death.
The cause of death was ruled to be accidental heat stroke.
In the days before his death, temperatures in the area had been unusually high.
After completing their investigation into Simonds' death, detectives told the media that he had been considered a person of interest in Fraley's disappearance, which remained an open case.
Both the Fraley and Simonds families believed Ricky Sr. had taken valuable information about what happened to Fraley to his grave.
Ricky Simonds Jr., who had been released from prison by then, also said he believed his father knew what had happened to Fraley.
However, he said he found the strange series of events overwhelming.
"First my fiancé goes missing, then my dad climbs in a trunk and dies? Does that make sense to anybody?" he asked a local TV station.
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| Jamie Fraley's mother |
2015 possible confession
Jerry Case, a man serving federal prison time for kidnapping, made a possible confession about Fraley's disappearance.
In 2015, he wrote a letter to the Gazette, admitting that he had killed Fraley and another local woman.
He wrote, "I guess you could say this is confessions number two and three."
Prosecutors quickly dismissed Case's confession about Fraley, as he was in prison when she disappeared.
Although he was released a few weeks after Fraley's disappearance, he only provided details about the case that were already public.
Fraley is still missing, and her case remains an unsolved mystery.
If you have any information about her disappearance, please contact local authorities.
[Source]
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