First Love, Then Murder

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I've never spoken publicly before about any of this. I've never really fully healed from any of what happened.
It's like waking up every morning and having the same phone call. 911, what is the address? That's your emergency.
911 call came in October 2, 2017. It was called in as a welfare check.
Something happened at my ex-husband's house over the evening, and my two children came to my house this morning. OK, and what did they tell you exactly? Their dad's gone.
Their older sister's gone. Where are we, officer? Set the scene for us.
This is Benson Street. And for me, this is just another welfare check.
But we don't know what we're walking into. What is your ex-husband's name? Aaron Fryer.
I learned that he was a good guy. He was a good dad.
What is your daughter's name? My oldest daughter's name is Ellen Fryer. How old is she? She's 15.
Ellie was in a marching band. Very bright, very intelligent.
With the older daughter missing, it was very suspicious. We didn't really know how suspicious it was until we saw what we saw when we got here.
Not for police! Not yourself to your enemy. We clear the house, and in the living room, based on the blood splatter, there was a serious assault, probable murder that occurred.
So time was of the essence in this case. Absolutely.
Time is always of the essence, you know. The only information I had was from the patrol officers and what Sierra was able to tell us on scene.
I remember waking up in the middle of night. We know at around 530 that Sierra heard the glass breaking.
I just started listening. Just listening to try and understand what was happening.
I was certain she had heard the assault, but she hadn't realized that. Thank God she didn't walk out and interrupt this thing.
I was very terrified. Based on what she had seen at the house, she knew somebody wasn't OK.
She went over to the couch. She felt something wet, and when she pulled her hand up, it was covered in blood.
I just was in, like, a state of shock. Sierra could not locate her father, Aaron, and her teenage sister, Ellie.
We treated it as a missing person, serious assault

until we know otherwise.

Everyone was out looking.

There was also a potential that this was what we could refer to as a no-body homicide.

And those cases are always tough to work.

As of right now in my family, there are two family members missing.

It's still like an open wound every day.

Natalie Morales reports. First love, then murder.
The quiet city of Medford, Oregon, was shaken by Maggie Fryer's desperate 911 call in the early morning hours of October 2nd, 2017. I don't know where my ex-husband or my oldest daughter is.
I understand that. Something happened at the house.
Something happened over there. Maggie Fryer's ex-husband, Aaron Fryer, and their 15-year-old daughter, Ellen, nicknamed Ellie, were missing.
My concern is for the both of them. We don't know where they are.
You can only imagine all the things that were running around in my mind. I didn't know who was dead and who was alive.
When Medford police officer Logan Boyd arrived at Aaron's house, he found that gruesome scene. There's blood everywhere.
Blood spattered walls, shattered glass, and a trail of blood to nowhere. It starts from there and kind of goes all the way out in the dirt.
It goes out towards the carport. Yeah.
That's not good. This led investigators to notice what also was missing, Aaron Fryer's car, seen here on a neighbor's security camera, leaving the Fryer home around 5.30 that morning.
We're kind of dealing with what I would describe as like a two-headed monster. An all hands on deck call went out to every Medford police detective, including Detective Bill Ford.
We didn't know at that particular time whether this was a missing person case or a kidnapping. We just didn't know.
Detective Shannon Reynolds, Bill Ford's colleague and wife of 20 years, had a different take. In my mind, I automatically assumed that the 15-year-old daughter was the victim of a homicide.
So a case like this, where did this one sort of fit in? Probably one of the most interesting, heinous crimes I've seen in my career. Investigators hoped Ellie's younger sister, 11-year-old Sierra, might shed light on the unknown.
Detective Reynolds, who specializes in crimes against children, was tasked with interviewing her. Sierra wasn't, like, outright crying, but you could tell she was worried.
Who was she worried about? Her dad and Ellie. I try not to really think about that time a lot.
Sierra, 18 years old at the time of this exclusive interview, still finds it difficult to speak about the day her father and sister vanished. I was, you know, just a child, and, um, sorry.
The second of three girls,

Sierra says she loved being in the middle. I get to be an older sister and a younger sister,

so I get like the best of both worlds. I like the connection and the bonds that we have.

Sierra says her older sister, Ellie, loved music and could play many instruments.

A skill Ellie seemed to have picked up from their father.

One time, he tried to teach me how to play the drums,

but I wasn't very good at it, so.

In 2016, Sierra's parents, Maggie and Aaron,

ended their marriage. Sierra says the divorce took a toll on her and her sisters.
It affected us a lot. It was actually not a very great experience for everyone involved.
Sierra says that when her parents separated, her dad moved into that small two-bedroom house. Maggie and Aaron shared custody,

and the girls would stay with their dad every other weekend. In September 2017,

Sierra decided to live with her dad full-time. I want to be around him and fill my life with him.

Then, around 5.30 a.m. on October 2nd, 2017, the Fryer family was forever broken.
Sierra was asleep in the bedroom she shared with her younger sister. I woke up and it was just pitch black.
I remember waking up to like a dinging noise over and over and over again. And I heard glass shatter and I heard the fight that occurred.
The sound was coming from the living room. So then what does she hear? Because she really is sort of an ear witness to all that happened.
She heard her dad yell the F word. She heard dragging.
She heard things being moved.

After that, it was completely silent. Did she have any idea what was going on at the time? No.
She was frightened enough to stay in her room until she felt like it was okay to come out. When Sierra finally did come out, she found that horrific scene.
It had to be so scary, though. So scary.
Sierra told Detective Reynolds that before leaving her room,

she had seen something out of her bedroom window. She could see people walking back and forth.
Sierra saw two young men outside of her dad's house. One was a person Sierra didn't know.
The second was someone Sierra immediately recognized. It was Gavin McFarlane.
He was Ellen's boyfriend at the time. This was her big love.
According to her, he was a great guy, but according to my parents, he was not a great guy. Sierra insinuated this was a little bit of a forbidden love.
Dad had forbade Ellie from seeing Gavin. This was the break investigators had been hoping for.
Once we have a name, Gavin McFarlane, now we got a picture.

Now we know who we're looking for.

The search for Aaron and Ellie Fryer, and now Gavin McFarlane was on.

We probably had 70, 75 people out on the streets of Medford.

Ellie and Aaron's phones were found in the house. Investigators now began tracking Gavin's phone.

We started getting cell phone tower hits up in the East Medford area. Patrol officers

immediately headed in that direction. A patrol sergeant locates the car.
That was huge. As the officers approached Aaron Fryer's vehicle, they realized that something wasn't right.
We could see there was blood on the outside of the bumper that had been dripping down. When this trunk is opened up, there is large amounts of blood.
I mean, it is soaked

into the carpet. But no Aaron and no Ellie.
But the car was still warm, so the police knew they

were close. We had tons of people up there driving around looking for them.
And then just an hour

later, investigators couldn't believe who they found next. I'm no tech genius, but I knew if I wanted my business to crush it, I needed a website now.
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That's H-A-R-I-M-A-R-I.com. Their dad's gone.
Their older sister's gone. Then just four hours after that 911 call reporting her missing, Medford police found Ellie Fryer.
She was alive, seemingly unharmed, and had been walking down a busy street with Gavin McFarlane. They're walking down the sidewalk.
In plain sight? Plain sight. So now we know Ellie's safe.
Which made two things clear. Aaron Fryer was the victim.
And based on all that blood in his car and at the house, time was quickly running out to find him.

We had Aaron out there either seriously injured or deceased.

Walking along with Gavin and Ellie was someone investigators hadn't been looking for.

Do you have ID with your name on there?

No, I don't.

I hardly ever carry my ID around.

Okay.

He turned out to be Russell Jones. Thanks.
Have to be Russell Jones, a friend of Gavin's. Russell had apparently made an impression on Sierra Friar, says Detective Shannon Reynolds.
He matched the description of that second young man she saw at her father's house that morning. So she got a really good look at this person.
Investigators now had a witness placing Gavin and Russell at the crime scene. Detective Ford says he wasn't sure what to make of Ellie being found with them.
That doesn't mean that Ellie's involved in something. But Ford says that she, Gavin or Russell might hold the key to finding Aaron.

Ellie, Gavin, and Russell are separated, detained, and transported to the Medford Police Department for questioning.

Hi. Hello.

Detective Stephanie Jackson was tasked with getting Ellie Fryer's account of the previous 24 hours. So what have you been up to today? I haven't been home, and now I'm really concerned about what's been going on.
Where were you? Out. Ellie was saying everything had seemed normal when she left her father's house for a long walk and you were walking down the street it sounds like today who were you with i was with my friends according to ellie she had run into those friends gavin and russell only by chance not long before being spotted by police and so everybody is really concerned because we actually don't know where your dad is right now.

It's really disturbing to hear.

Maybe he was looking for me.

We are very worried about your dad.

So am I.

Ellie was saying she had no idea where her father was

or what happened at the house.

So where did all the blood come from in your house? I don't know. Around that time, Detective Ford was preparing to interrogate the other two detainees.
Strategically, he decided to let Gavin wait in a holding cell and began interviewing Russell. Spin around in your chair there in the basement so I could talk to you.
He's a talker, very, very talkative. So I kind of knew he would have a hard time keeping his mouth shut.
Yeah, I have nothing to hide. Russell was ready to talk, but he wanted something first, a cigarette.
I talk better when I have a cigarette. Detective Ford took him outside.
Just kind of smoking and joking is what we call it. The camera didn't record audio, but Detective Ford says Russell began telling him that he and Gavin had gone over to the fryer house early that morning.
He told us that he was trying to help get Ellie out of a bad situation. That bad situation, according to Russell, was Aaron Friar.
And the first thing that he tells us is he's not a good person. Aaron Friar is not a good person? Correct.
He didn't elaborate further about Aaron, but Russell was claiming he and Gavin were only there to secretly move Ellie out.

So the next thing I tell him is,

look, Russell, we got detectives out there right now pulling video from every house,

the alleys, so if this ain't the truth, you need to be truthful with me right now. And he looks me square in the eyes and he says,

well, 95% of it's the truth and 5% of it's a lie.

So I'm thinking automatically, well, what's the lie here?

Detective Ford decided it was time for a new tactic

and tried appealing to Russell's conscience.

I look at him and I'm like, you know, Russell,

I don't want a child to find Aaron out there somewhere, come across something like that. I said, can you take us to Aaron? He didn't beat an eye.
He's just like, yeah, I'll take you to him. The veteran detective wasted no time.
We load Russell up, he's actually sitting in the seat

that you're sitting in now.

Okay.

We got him handcuffed in front.

He's basically telling us, okay, turn right, turn left.

They were ascending a rural mountain pass

20 miles outside town.

And all of a sudden, Russell says,

stop, stop right here

Where did you stop your farm back there? Probably right where that rock is. Do you see the body right away? You could see the tarp.
You couldn't see any portion of the body. Right here in this green tarp.
Detectives descended the wooded ravine and pulled back that tarp,

revealing that just six hours after that 911 call, they had found Aaron Fryer.

It was obvious that he was deceased.

When you found out your husband was dead, what did you think?

Uh, uh... I was completely shocked.
I didn't know what to think. Maggie says the police hadn't yet told her Ellie was in their custody being questioned or even that she had been found.
I was very worried about the fate of my daughter. I had no idea if my daughter was even alive too.
Maggie then faced the unimaginable task of sharing the news of Aaron's death with their two younger daughters. The reality was almost too much for then 11-year-old Sierra.
I just really didn't want to believe it for a really long time. While investigators began processing the scene, Detective Ford drove Russell Jones back to police headquarters.
He says Russell was claiming that all he had done was help dispose of Aaron's remains. He's like, I'm not going to be a witness against Gavin.
Russell was saying Gavin was Aaron's killer, but that Gavin had been provoked.

His story was that Aaron had a rifle and was pointed at Gavin. So making it seem like a

self-defense because if he had a gun pointed at him. Exactly.
You can sit in that chair over there.

Back at the station, Detective Ford returned Russell to the interrogation room

while detectives gathered for a briefing.

You're listening in on my conversations, aren't you?

That's when Russell began taunting them through the camera.

I can still twist your little mind.

Don't piss me off.

This, I imagine, got everybody to stop what they were doing and gather around the monitor and watch this. That's what you do.
So, we can play it the easy way or the hard way. He would go into these rants and making demands and stuff.
Gavin and Ellie are to be released to me. And Russell was claiming he still hadn't been totally truthful.
And Mr. Ford, you want the whole story? Because I did miss a few parts.
For her part, Ellie was now saying Russell was the one responsible. I believe that Russell was the one that killed my father.
All right. With the conflicting claims, Detective Ford decided it was finally time to interview Gavin McFarlane.
I know I'm into your show, Lauren. Well, we need to figure out what happened.
Gavin started by saying how volatile Aaron Fryer could be.

He's threatened my life.

He's lying.

No, stay away from my daughter.

I'm going to kill you.

One month earlier, Gavin had called the police, claiming Aaron had shown up at his house,

banging on his door, threatening to kill him.

I don't know what caused him to not like me anymore. Detectives discovered at least one reason, Gavin's age.
He was 19 years old, dating 15-year-old Ellie. And making things worse, Gavin was now claiming Ellie was going to have his baby.
You told you admitting to having a sexual relationship with a minor, itself a crime, he was accusing Aaron of being the one who had been abusive to Ellie. The anger had just been building up because of the things Ellie's been telling me.
I'm trying to protect Ellie. Okay.

My boss will try it. The anger had just been building up because of the things Ellie had been telling me.
Mm-hmm. I'm trying to protect Ellie.

Okay.

My possible child.

Gavin was claiming he and Russell had gone to the house that morning.

But unlike what Russell said, that Aaron had not confronted him with the gun.

Instead, Gavin was saying Aaron had been in the living room, asleep on the couch,

and that Gavin had crept in, armed with a baseball bat.

Then Gavin made a startling admission.

I just acted on instinct.

Okay, tell him what happened.

I just swung the bat downwards. It was dark.
I couldn't see.

How many times do you think you hit him?

Like five or six, maybe. Five or six times? Yeah.
The physical evidence would back up Gavin's story. Aaron had died from blunt force trauma to his head, and a bat was recovered from a tree branch above where his remains had been found.
So this is a aluminum bat. Discoloration, you can see it's red here.
This is all blood. Testing would confirm the blood was Aaron's.
And he demonstrated for us in the interview room how hard he swung it down on Aaron's head. I went over the shoulder the first time, and then I started going up above my head.
I mean, there were five distinct blows to his head. Explaining that dinging sound Sierra Fryer had heard.
I fractured his skull, caved his skull into his brain. I'm really sorry.
An investigator soon found evidence that Aaron's murder had been meticulously plotted for weeks. They discovered notes, some in Russell's handwriting, at Gavin's house.
We found several murder plans, and they actually had Plan A, plan B. There were multiple plans, and I think ultimately they come up with the bath.
And based on what you could see from the planning, who's the mastermind of all of this? Ellie, believe it or not. Detective Ford says he believes it was Ellie who wanted Aaron murdered,

pointing to messages Ford says she sent to Gavin.

In one, she says,

we need to make sure he's dead by the time we leave his house.

And in another, she asked,

you want to kill him now, don't you?

And then you can kill him in less than a minute, right? She's pushing it all. She wants to be with Gavin.
She wants to be out from underneath the authority of her father. Ellie wanted me to kill him, but I didn't want to.
Detective Ford says Ellie might have made up those abuse allegations, possibly as a way to motivate Gavin to kill her father. She is very manipulative.
For me watching that entire interview, she lied. Are you Ellie? No.
And lied. How old are you? 18.
Then lied. How did Gavin get in the house this morning? He wasn't in the house.
After several hours, Ellie did eventually admit some of her role, even saying that she had handed Gavin the murder weapon. And what do you say to Gavin? I said, I'm ready when you are.

Okay, and what did you mean by that?

When you do this, we're in it together.

What did you mean when you said, when you do this?

Kill my dad.

With evidence, they all conspired to kill Aaron.

Gavin, Russell, and Ellie were charged with his murder.

From the day after she was arrested, there was this narrative and her side was never told.

Until now.

The story that the state has, Why is it the right one? You know the feeling of getting a new pair of shoes and then suddenly your feet are in a battle during the break-in period? Especially with flip-flops. That can be boring and cheap and even wear out after one season.
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Hey, it's Morgan Absher. And I'm Kaelin Moore.
And we're the hosts of the Crime House original podcast, Clues. Every Wednesday, we sneak past the crime scene tape and open a new case file for some of the most gripping true crime cases.
While Kaylin pieces together the timelines and breaks down the hard facts of these cases, I'll be diving into the theories and pulling at the threads that may or may not add up. From serial killers to shocking murders, Clues dives into all the forensic details and brilliant sleuthing that went into the world's most infamous cases.
These clues shine a light on stories that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard. So join us as we open a case and uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak, and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations.
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Discounts and coverage selections not available in all states or situations. My daughter left to go stay at my ex-husband's house for the weekend and never came home.

I imagine that moment haunts you still.

Of course it does. My child never came home.

After hours of worry, Maggie Fryer was finally told her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, had been located. I got a phone call from a police officer that they found her.
But worry morphed into anger when she was then told Ellie had been arrested for her father's murder. Go ahead and take a seat.
And I said, so you've had my daughter in your custody? Interrogating her and you never once called me to let me know so I could maybe get her some representation. Aliza Kaplan eventually became one of Ellie's attorneys.
She says the narrative about Ellie Fryer has been wrong from the very beginning.

In this case, she was made out to be the mastermind or something, you know. She planned all of this when she was 15 years old and they were 19 and 22.

She was the manipulator.

She was the manipulator, right?

And that this was all because of her relationship with an older man.

But Kaplan says this crime actually happened because of the alleged abuse Ellie suffered at the hands of her father, Aaron. She was sexually abused, emotionally abused, and physically abused.
Abuse that Ellie described in her police interrogation. He used to be a good father, but he started getting abusive

about three years ago.

I picked out a bunch of things, but...

Reading from the case file,

Kaplan recounted several allegations

of molestation and abuse.

Warning, the following may be disturbing to hear.

Her father would grab at her breasts.

He told her to give in to him.

He would masturbate on top of her when he thought she was sleeping.

He pushed her downstairs, called her whore, idiot, stupid, slut-shamed her.

And then when he would get drunk, it would all get worse.

As the police report shows, three of Ellie's friends told investigators that Ellie said her dad abuses her.

Ellie shared that her dad was rough on her and emotionally and physically abused her. And Ellie said her dad mentally and verbally abused her.
But Ellie admits she never told her friends about the sexual molestation. And neither Ellie nor her friends told the police about any kind of abuse before her father's murder.
And as far as allegations of abuse, was there any evidence whatsoever that your detectives could find to back up what Ellen Fryer was saying happened to her? No, there was not. Detective Ford says with Aaron's death, the possibility of proving abuse may have died with him.
We can't go to Aaron and ask Aaron, were you abusing your daughter?

We may never know the truth. If she told her mom, did she tell her mom ahead of time?

Have you thought about having a conversation with your mom about that?

No.

I'm horrified to even talk about it. Who have you talked to about your dad masturbating? Ellie told Detective Jackson that the first time she had told Gavin

was two days before he bludgeoned her father to death. Because I know this is hard to talk about.
I know. Why me? Why did he do it to me? I have no idea what he said to my sisters.
I see a teenager who would do anything to survive and to protect her sisters. Detective Shannon Reynolds says 11-year-old Sierra was asked if there were any problems at home.
She actually only had good things to say about her father. When Detective Reynolds interviewed the youngest Friar daughter, she recalled the last conversation she had with Ellie, minutes after their father's murder.
She had said that Ellie had woken her up, and she said she was leaving, and that she was leaving because mom and dad were abusive. Before Reynolds could say anything, the eight-year-old gave her opinion on the matter.
And she told me my mom and dad were not abusive. Both of Ellie's sisters told Reynolds that what Ellie had called abuse was actually their parents disciplining her for sneaking around with Gavin.
Because they took her electronics away and they yelled at her. What do you say to that? Yeah.
Well, they were younger, right? This is actually very common in families where there's abuse, that there's one child who takes on the majority of it and want to protect the others in the family. You know, you describe her as this protective older sister, but yet she left them there at the house.
How is that protecting them? Yeah, and I think, you know, those are things that Ellen will live with for the rest of her life. And she clearly understands how much damage she has caused her sister.
Detective Ford says that with no evidence to back up Ellie's abuse claims, he remains suspicious that she may have made it all up to manipulate Gavin. Seed here with Ellie on a store security camera hours after the murder.
And it turns out Ellie was never pregnant. I think you got to look at it two ways.
Maybe she thought she was pregnant or maybe she's using that to influence Gavin to kill her dad. Ellie's legal team says Ellie did think she was pregnant, which is why she bought a pregnancy test while at the store.
Investigators say it's clear Ellie Fryer has an issue with the truth. She lied during that interview for no reason.
Kaplan says much has been made of the many lies Ellie told during her police interrogation. As a parent, we all know that our kids sometimes do that.
But Kaplan says the real focus should be on the hours and hours and hours Ellie spent in that interview room. I have a right turn in silence.
She asked to not talk. She said, I want to remain silent, right? She was there for 10 hours straight.
But with your wishing to remain silent, it's really difficult to kind of get to the bottom of all of that. Then let's talk.
A minor without a guardian or attorney. Is it normal to keep a 15-year-old in an interrogation room for 10 hours like that? Yeah.
I mean, there's no law against it. So we gave her breaks.
I found blankets. There was times where she laid on the floor and slept.
Kaplan says that although it may have been legal in Oregon, it wasn't right. And look, police have their jobs to do.
I get it. I just think the rules are really different when you have a kid.
And in that, she looks like a kid. She's acting like a kid.
She's in fear like a kid would be. A kid who Kaplan says was taken advantage of by someone who was a kid.
She's in fear like a kid would be. A kid who Kaplan says was taken advantage of by someone she calls another abuser, 19-year-old Gavin McFarlane.
A grown man reaching over to a 15-year-old girl who was so vulnerable, no matter what her text messages said, no matter what her involvement was, I don't even understand how you don't look at that as him being the controller. Detective Reynolds says she saw some of that controlling behavior on display in letters Gavin wrote to Ellie after they were arrested.

He was saying that she needed to be sure to say that her dad was abusing her.

And he was telling her, we're going to take this to a jury and we're going to win the jury over.

And the way to do that is to cry.

Make sure you cry. I'm sorry.
I've given everything I can, and when this goes to court, I would like to be tried as an adult.

But there would be no trial.

In January of 2019, a little more than a year after her father's death,

Ellie Fryer took a plea deal.

How did you feel about that decision?

I didn't like it because I'm pretty sure that she did it because she was scared.

I don't think she wanted to go to court.

Ellie Fryer pleaded guilty to an adult charge of conspiring to murder her father, Aaron.

I'm a first-life decision, and I'm sorry for all the pain that I've caused to others. The deal was brokered by a different defense attorney.

According to court documents, that attorney wrote that Ellie Fryer's co-defendants,

Gavin McFarlane and Russell Jones, were going to be testifying against her

and say that she was the mastermind behind all of this.

It was her idea from the beginning.

Ellie's text messages would have been used against her at trial too. Elisa Kaplan began working on Ellie Fryer's behalf in 2024.
I run the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic. We are looking at Ellen's case, mostly because we believe that she has an excessive sentence.
And what is her sentence? 25 years. McFarlane and Jones also took plea deals, with Gavin McFarlane pleading guilty to murder and murder conspiracy charges.
He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Russell Jones entered a no-contest plea to conspiracy to commit murder.
He was sentenced to 15 years. Kaplan is fighting to reduce Ellie Fryer's sentence.
She says Ellie

should not have been sentenced to 10 more years than Jones for the same crime. She was 15.
He was

22. And her sentence is so much bigger than his.
The idea that Ellen is the master manipulator, I mean, she's a 15-year-old. I mean, don't they bear more responsibility because they're the adults? I don't, I wouldn't agree with that.
Ellie is absolutely just as responsible as Gavin, except Gavin was the one that took and held the bat in his hands. Detective Shannon Reynolds isn't as certain as her husband about Ellie Fryer's role.
I go back and forth. The mastermind of it, I initially thought, was Ellie.
Then reading the letters from Gavin that he wrote to Ellie, telling her what she needed to say, then I started

to think maybe Gavin was the mastermind of all of this. I go back and forth.
Ford says regardless of who crafted the plan, all three are responsible in the eyes of the law. Because without her, this wouldn't have happened.
Without Gavin, this wouldn't happen. I doubt without Russell it could could have happened.
I want to be very clear. She was involved.
She participated. She was a co-conspirator.
No doubt, right? She takes full accountability for her role in this crime. Ellie Fryer, now 23, has been serving her sentence in a juvenile detention center.
In December of 2026, she'll be moved to an adult prison.

And she recently earned two master's degrees,

one in psychology and another in justice studies.

Which, by the way, is not that easy to do when you're in prison.

She's really incredible.

I'm very proud of her.

I've always been proud of her.

After what she went through. Aaron's dead.
Who's going to speak out for Aaron? Sierra Fryer will. My dad was a kind

man who loved me and my sisters and always tried to fill my life with joy. He was a great father to me.
He goes with me wherever I go. Sierra has joined the National Guard, something she says her father always wanted for her.
It's mind-blowing that that little girl I interviewed is now a grown-up. The fact that she's joining the National Guard lets me know she didn't let this, you know, derail her life.
A life Sierra has had to live without her father, whose memory has been marred by those abuse allegations. A 48 Hours producer asks Sierra about them.
Ellie claims that your father abused her. What do you have to say to that? I don't really want to talk about that just because I have my own feelings about it.
Sierra is just as guarded when it comes to her thoughts about her sister Ellie, though the two have maintained a relationship over the years. It's very hard to explain because a lot of people wouldn't understand.

I've got my own feelings about her. But Sierra's feelings about her father are very clear.
I love him and I'm so sorry for everything that happened. I have faith and I have hope

that one day we'll meet again. Ellie Fryer will be eligible for parole in 2032.
She will be 30 years old. Join me Tuesday for Postmortem from 48 Hours,

where we'll dive even deeper into today's episode

and answer your questions about the case.