I had asked Doc, for the sake of the blog, to share with me the story of the last 24 hours of his and Samira’s life together. It had started with Samira realizing she was missing a purse—and other valuables, including jewelry. It had set them off on an over 200 mile journey from property to property, including Doc’s office, a home in Thomasville, another house they owned in Tallahassee, and down to Panama City Beach where they had a beach home. Being Friday evening, Doc had wanted to stay in Panama City Beach for the weekend, but Samira had insisted that the family return to Tallahassee that night. With equal insistence, she had asked Doc to take Hyrah and Skynnah early the next morning to give her a momma’s day off.
In retrospect, it seems obvious that she was planning on confronting Gardner about her missing items. The general public never found out that the odd jobs man had any reason for killing Samira, which was why they and the jury likely overlooked all his contradictory statements to the police and on the witness stand. But, in fact, the relationship between Samira and Gardner was far more complex than him just scrubbing down her bathrooms.
Back in September, about six months before her death in February 2014, Samira had lost custody of her children due to a violent attack on Doc that had been witnessed by a friend who called the police. Later, in December, there had been another hearing, this time an emergency one convened when Doc was out of town at a medical conference in San Diego. Gardner testified on Samira’s behalf saying that she was a good mom and he had never seen her violent or out-of-control. It was not true. He had often seen Samira enraged, and there had been times when it had even been directed at him.
But the garnering of witnesses willing to perjure themselves paid off in the short-term and Doc returned from out west to find Samira with temporary custody of the children and back in the marital home—with Doc forced to retreat to the beach home. Although the couple ended up reconciling by Christmas, there were still a lot of residual issues. The people who had testified on Samira’s behalf, knowing she was off her medication and at times unfit to be a responsible parent, now wanted some kind of financial compensation, including Gardner.
In that last day of her life, Samira had come to realize that if Gardner wasn’t going to be able to get any direct financial compensation from her, he was going to start stealing from her.
As Doc and I continued to put together all the facts to tell the story the public hadn’t heard, we started a Facebook page. Within days it got shut down. Someone reported to Facebook that I wasn’t Adam Frasch. Without some kind of identification, such as his driver’s licence, I couldn’t prove that I was working on his behalf. So I started another page in my own name, as a business, and called it Free Doc Frasch.
The new year brought new horrors. Samira’s mother in Madagascar wanted Doc and Samira’s daughters, Hyrah and Skynnah, with her.
This grandmother, who had not been a part of the lives of the girls before Samira’s death, now wanted her granddaughters, along with the life insurance money that was paid out to the primary beneficiary, Doc. The grandmother was represented by a Tallahassee lawyer, James Waczewski, who argued that the money should have gone to the secondary-beneficiary, Hyrah, under the Slayer Statute that says a murderer can’t financially benefit from his crime.
The insurance company, however, had done their own investigation long before the criminal trial and had concluded that Doc couldn’t have been the one to murder his wife. At 9:32 AM, on his way to Panama City Beach the morning she died, Samira's secondary phone had pinged off a tower in Tallahassee and Doc’s phone had picked it up around the Chattahoochee/Marianna area where it had pinged off a tower long enough to register as a missed call.
Samira’s mother also wanted the financial support to continue. Samira had apparently been sending money back to Madagascar for some of her family.
Doc was issued a summons. In his reply he pointed out what a travesty of justice this would be if Samira’s mother were to ever have custody of the children. Samira had not allowed their children to have contact with their grandmother due to the childhood abuse she had suffered back in Madagascar.
Nonetheless, Samira’s mother’s lawyer managed to get court-appointed Skype conversations between the parties. The grandmother only spoke Malagasy and even with an interpreter, Doc told me it was hard for the girls to find anything in common with the elderly lady who had not been a part of their lives. He wrote to the court:
Samira confided in me and many others listed previously in this response that she did not want the girls to ever be around her mother, Mrs. Zafy. 2012 was the first time in 5 years she went back to Madagascar when her father was sick and right before he died. Upon her return she told me and all the other previously mentioned individuals she did not care to ever return to Madagascar. She said she only maintained a semi-cordial relationship with her mother for her dad's sake and now that he was deceased she no longer cared to talk to or see her mother again.
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