Inset: Bradley Frye (Pottawatomie County Jail). Background: The street in Pottawatomie County where Frye killed his wife (Google Maps).
A 32-year-old man in Oklahoma will spend the rest of his days behind bars for killing his wife, shooting her in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun while the two were arguing, then staging the scene to make it look like she took her own life. Pottawatomie County District Judge John G. Canavan on Wednesday ordered Bradley Frye to serve life in a state correctional facility for the 2024 slaying of Sara Frye, court records show.
Canavan handed down the sentence after Frye pleaded guilty in May to one count of second-degree murder.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Frye on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, rushed to his neighbor”s house shortly after 9:30 p.m. and said his wife had shot herself at their home in the 400 block of E. Beech Street in Tecumseh, a suburb of Oklahoma City.
“When the officers arrived, the scene looked like everything other than suicide,” Tecumseh police Chief JR Kidney told local NBC affiliate KFOR.
For starters, it appeared as if there had been a struggle at the home, cops said. A kitchen table was split in half as if someone had thrown it. There were also other broken items strewed around the house, a probable cause affidavit said.
Bradley Frye had also concocted at least two stories about how his wife ended up dead. First, he said he walked into a room to see his wife pull the shotgun trigger. However, as investigators were going to test him for gunshot residue on his hands, he changed his story, claiming he and his wife were fighting over the shotgun when it went off, killing her.
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“Immediately our officers notified our investigator who came to the scene and agreed that this did not look like a suicide,” Kidney told KFOR.
As emergency medical personnel were performing life-saving aid on his wife, Bradley Frye was outside frantically pleading with officers, Oklahoma City CBS affiliate KWTV reported.
“I got to go in there, bro!” he was reportedly heard saying. “I got to go in there! It’s my wife! She’s laying in there man!”
Cops recovered her journal, which said she was planning on leaving her husband because he was “treating her poorly,” per the affidavit.
Detectives also spoke with Sara Frye’s father, who described the marital problems between her and Bradley Frye.
The couple’s relationship had gotten bad enough that the Frye children were removed from the home for their safety, the affidavit said. Sara Frye’s father said he planned to stay at the house that night to diffuse the situation. However, later in the evening, he said he felt his son-in-law had cooled down enough that he could leave to buy flea medicine for the dog and Taco Bell. Unfortunately, when he returned home a little while later, he saw the area swarming with law enforcement responding to the shooting.
Investigators also noted that the gun was found behind Sara Frye’s body and her husband had packed the wound on her face with petroleum jelly. Investigators took him to the police station, where he declined to make a statement and asked for a lawyer.
KFOR’s video from the crime scene shows the home had a sign with a picture of a gun that said “WARNING Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.”
Police said Bradley Frye was drinking on the night he killed his wife and neighbors heard the couple fighting just minutes before the shooting.
