The Disappearance of Jamie Fraley

A vanished woman, and a dead man in a trunk

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***WARNING: This is a story about a mystery, possibly involving a violent crime. It includes some disturbing details. Reader discretion is advised.

The weather in Gastonia, North Carolina was quite pleasant, with temperatures in the high fifties and mostly clear skies. Jamie Fraley called her mother on the phone just after midnight. It was April 8 or 9, 2008 (the exact date varies among the sources). She complained that she felt ill; her stomach ached so badly she said she wanted to go to the hospital. Already, she had made two trips there over the past day or so, but this time she seemed more inclined only to tell her mother about her stomach pain rather than actually go again. After complaining for some time, she finally said she wouldn’t go because she needed to visit the Social Security Administration for an appointment in the morning. At the end of their brief conversation, they said “I love you” to each other and then ended the call. Jamie never spoke to her mother again. Two hours later, Jamie called and talked with a friend on the phone. Apparently she had changed her mind, deciding to go to the hospital after all. She advised the friend that she had already secured a ride, though she did not identify who was going to drive her. During the conversation, Jamie suddenly said “He’s here,” mumbled something about a “truck,” and quickly concluded the call.

Jamie never checked into the local hospital that night. The next day, she was supposed to report to the Social Security office but never did. Jamie suffered from bipolar disorder and anxiety, so she had a healthcare provider who frequently came to her apartment, sometimes to drive her around to run errands. During the day on or around April 9, the provider arrived at her apartment as she often did. Despite knocking on the door for a bit, she received no response. Looking through the window, the apartment appeared empty. The provider tried calling Jamie’s phone, but no one answered there either. She then called Kim, Jamie’s mother, and asked if she knew where Jamie was. Kim did not, so she called the police and asked them to conduct a welfare check at the apartment. Police arrived shortly thereafter, but found no evidence of a break-in or any other kind of foul play. The door was locked and no one responded to their knocking or shouting “This is the police.” Having found nothing amiss from the outside, unable to see anything wrong through the windows, and having no legal reason or authority to forcibly enter, the police ultimately left.

With nothing learned from the police, Kim and two other family members went to Jamie’s apartment and let themselves in with a key Kim possessed. Jamie’s wallet, purse, keys, and ID sat on a table. The only thing missing seemed to be her phone. Aligned with Jamie’s complaints the night before, they found indications that she had vomited in a few places. Another discovery struck them as odd, however. They found that the shoelaces were gone from one of her shoes left behind in the apartment. This thoroughly alarmed them, perhaps because of the strangeness of the circumstances, so they reported Jamie missing to the police. While they waited on any news from the police, Kim repeatedly called Jamie’s phone to no avail. At some point the next day, however, someone finally answered. A man told Kim he worked for a cable company and while repairing lines he found the phone on the ground at the intersection of New Hope Road and Hudson Boulevard. This put the phone about a mile and a half from Jamie’s apartment. Police later confirmed the calls to her mother and friend, and there were only a few other calls in the call logs on the same night. Nonetheless, they stated that these other calls did not provide them any additional leads. They have not commented about any other evidence they may have uncovered from the phone.

While police do not know—or haven’t said—who “he” was that picked Jaime up that night, they do know it was definitely not her fiancé, Ricky Simonds Jr. In most cases when a person—especially a woman—goes missing, police always look at the significant other (husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc.) as the prime suspect. For nearly a year before and up to the time of her disappearance, Simonds Jr. sat in a state prison, convicted in 2007 on felony larceny charges. He was not scheduled for release for another almost three weeks. So, he was out as a suspect.

Jamie had a close relationship with her fiancé’s father, Ricky Simonds Sr. He lived in the same apartment complex as Jamie, working as a maintenance man there. Simonds Sr. previously shared his apartment with a woman named Kim Sprenger, but by the time of Jamie’s disappearance they had split up. Sprenger and Jamie had maintained a friendly relationship after Sprenger moved out. The day before Jamie went missing, Sprenger stopped by her apartment and took a script to a pharmacy for her. According to her statement to police, that was the final time she saw Jamie.

As far as anyone knows, Simonds Sr. was one of the last people to see Jamie. This is because most people believe Simonds Sr. was the “he” Jamie spoke about on the call to her friend. The “truck” she mentioned could have referred to his white work van. Police have not confirmed or denied this, perhaps because no evidence directly supports or contradicts the supposition. Regardless, Simonds Sr. had a long criminal record that included fraud, larceny, and drug charges. More frighteningly, police arrested him for first degree murder in 1986 for strangling his then-girlfriend, Donna Miller. He seems to have taken a plea deal on a manslaughter charge, and was released in 1992 on good behavior. Throughout his life, Simonds had a drug problem. Jamie had professed a desire to her friends to try and help him get clean.

Police acknowledged that Simonds Sr. drove Jamie to the hospital in at least one of her previous trips to the hospital, earlier on the day that she called her mother. Some friends of Jamie told police they believed Simonds was “obsessed” with her, and flirted with her incessantly. They further explained that Jamie expressed no reciprocal interest. Simonds’ own son, Jamie’s fiancé, told the Gaston Gazette that he believed his father had something to do with her disappearance. “Of course I did. He was one of the last people seen with her. I didn't have no choice but to think that.” Throughout the investigation, police always felt something was ‘off’ about Simonds Sr. Investigators described him as “cold” and “manipulative,” and not particularly forthcoming when questioned. Sometime later, police discovered a trash bag they connected to him. He admitted it was his, claiming he had set it on the ground while repairing a flat tire and simply forgot to retrieve it before he drove away. The location of the bag raised some eyebrows. It was on the side of a rather desolate road on which Simonds had no good excuse to travel; he did not provide the police any reason for being in the area; and the location was somewhat between Jamie’s apartment and the location where her phone was found.

When Jamie’s fiancé left prison about three weeks after her disappearance, his father called and asked to meet him at a Lowe's Home Improvement store. Simonds Jr. described their meeting this way:

He called and told me he knew where Jamie was at. I got down there and saw he was lying. He said something about having seen (Jamie) in Kim Sprenger's car.

Junior characterized the whole discussion as not making any sense. But then, things got even weirder, and creepier.

On June 8, 2008, Simonds Sr. was found dead in the trunk of a car. The week prior to the discovery of his body, his ex-girlfriend Kim Sprenger sought and received a restraining order against him from a court. Remember that by then, the two had been broken up for some months and no longer lived together. Since Jamie’s disappearance, police would watch Simonds from time to time because they believed he knew something about what happened to her and maybe he would give something away. His activities unfortunately did not reveal anything about Jamie’s whereabouts, but did raise some red flags related to Sprenger. These red flags were the reason Sprenger got a restraining order. Police told her that based on their observations of Simonds, they thought he might be stalking her. One Sunday morning, while driving her car, Kim noticed a foul smell. Over the next day or so, the odor grew worse, so she finally popped the trunk which is where the smell seemed to emanate from. Lying inside was the very dead body of her ex-boyfriend, Ricky Simonds Sr. The report on his death explained that (paraphrased):

Simonds had been dead for two days. He died from hyperthermia (heat stroke). Alcohol and illegal substances were detected in his system. Simonds, under the influence, apparently decided to lock himself in Sprenger's trunk. He never used the emergency latch inside the trunk to release himself, either because he panicked and was unable to find it, or was incapacitated by drugs.

Simonds Sr.’s death struck a blow to Jamie’s family. Kim, her mother, had always believed he “was hiding something and we couldn’t never get that out of him.” She told the media that she cried upon hearing of his death because “I knew any questions we had for him, any information we could've got out of him, was gone.” So, how did he end up in his ex-girlfriend’s trunk? Police found several items belonging to Sprenger around his body, including a spare set of her keys that she had reported stolen the week before. Investigators also found a knife on his person. From this they deduced that Simonds had planned to ambush Sprenger, possibly to kill her. Some of his friends purportedly told police that he confessed to them that he planned to give Sprenger "the surprise of her life." Simonds Jr. said of the incident, “First my fiancé goes missing, then my dad climbs in a trunk and dies? Does that make sense to anybody?”

Jon Perry and Chrissy Stockton posit reasonably similar theories that seem to make sense given the available evidence. Because Simonds Sr. lived so close to Jamie, they believe he simply walked up to her apartment. When Jamie told her friend on the phone “he’s here,” she meant standing at her door, not sitting in his vehicle. The offhand comment about a “truck” may have simply meant that she would go to the hospital with Simonds in his truck (van). They then suggest that Simonds attacked her right there in the apartment. In her sickness, and because of her tiny size (she was only 4’8” (142 cm) and 90 pounds (40.8 kg)), they argue that subduing her would not have required much or any struggle. For this reason, police did not find any such evidence. Moreover, if Simonds killed her in the apartment, that would explain why her family found her keys and other items there. In his first murder, he strangled Donna Miller to death. Strangulation typically leaves little in the way of fluids or other biological evidence, except maybe some small amount of spittle or bloody sputum. It would not be difficult for Simonds to clean up, and Jamie’s vomit in the apartment might have contributed to the police missing any strangulation evidence that remained. The missing shoelace may have been the murder weapon (used like a garrote), or a means to secure her limbs while carrying her lifeless body outside to the van.

Simonds’ behavior throughout the investigation raised suspicions. He dodged answers to questions by police and family, and he expressed little emotion despite his apparent friendship with Jamie. Police have never revealed what they found in the trash bag, or where precisely they found it, but just north and south of the area where Jamie and Simonds lived contained heavily forested parks and wilderness areas. It is unclear if or how extensively those areas were searched. Divers did thoroughly search a lake located just a hundred or so meters from Jamie’s apartment, as well as a large forest area surrounding it, but found nothing. Simonds’ past and especially his present certainly make him the prime suspect. Normal, non-murderous people tend not to die in the trunk of their ex-girlfriend’s car armed with a knife.

Unfortunately, Simonds’ death seems to have stalled the investigation. No evidence of Jamie’s whereabouts or body have ever been found. It seems that she is probably dead, but what happened to her, and where her body lies now, likely died with Ricky Simonds Sr.

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I am a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Certified Crime Analyst, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Financial Crimes Investigator with a Juris Doctor and a Master’s degree in history. I spent 10 years working in the New York State Division of Criminal Justice as Senior Analyst and Investigator. I was a firefighter before I joined law enforcement. Today I work both in the United States and Nepal, and I currently run a non-profit that uses mobile applications and other technologies to create Early Alert Systems for natural disasters for people living in remote or poor areas. In addition, I teach Tibetan history and culture, and courses on the environmental issues of the Himalayas both in Nepal and on the Tibetan plateau. For detailed analyses on law and politics involving the United States, head over to my Medium page.