Disappearance of Jamie Fraley

Jamie Fraley was born on March 5, 1986, a native of Gaston County, she had struggled with anxiety and bipolar disorder throughout her early life. By the late 2000s, Fraley had responded well to prescription medications for those conditions and was attending Gaston College on a part-time basis. According to her family, she was planning on a career as a substance-abuse counselor. In 2006 she had begun dating Ricky Simonds Jr. Her family said she was very much in love with him, and eventually the two became engaged. However, Simonds had a criminal history, and after several earlier arrests for petty crimes, in early 2007 he was sentenced to 15 months in state prison for theft. Fraley continued to visit and interact with him while he was incarcerated. ==Disappearance==

On April 7, 2008, Fraley came down with a stomach virus. It was severe enough that she twice sought treatment at a local hospital that day. As she had no driver's license, she relied on a social services worker, and friends and family to take her to and from the hospital. Fraley never checked into the hospital the third time. Since that phone call, there has been no evidence of her presence anywhere. ==Investigation==

After Fraley missed an important appointment the next day, her family went to her apartment on Lowell-Bethesda Road to see if she was alright. They did not find her there. The door was locked; inside they found her wallet, purse, keys, and identification, but not her cell phone. Nothing else was missing. There were no signs of a struggle, so they concluded she had left willingly, wherever she had gone. Unable to locate her, they called police and reported her missing. Gaston County police launched a major investigation, putting all its investigators on the case, with three of them devoted to it full-time, and requesting assistance from both the state's Bureau of Investigation and the FBI. "I have never seen a missing person case worked this thoroughly", said Christie Rhoney, the chief detective. Simonds Sr. lived in the same complex as Fraley, just two doors away, 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. He refused to take a lie detector test. Ricky Sr., she claimed, "was hiding something and we couldn't never get that out of him". Ricky Simonds Jr., by then released from prison, also said he believed his father, whom he described as being more of a friend, was aware of what had happened to Fraley, but generally found the unusual chain of circumstances overwhelming. "[F]irst 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. Prosecutors immediately dismissed Case's confession as unlikely regarding Fraley, since he was incarcerated at the time she disappeared (although he was released a few weeks later) and he only provided details of the case that had already been made public. They also discounted his marginally probable confession regarding the later murder of the other local woman, though he had been free at the time the later homicide occurred. ==See also==