First Love, Then Murder | Post Mortem | Forensic Files

Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host Anne Marie Green, and today I'm sitting down with CBS News correspondent
Natalie Morales to discuss the murder of Aaron Fryer. Now, in the early morning hours of October 2nd, 2017,
Aaron's ex-wife Maggie called 911 to report that both Aaron and their 15-year-old daughter Ellen named Ellie
were missing. Police arrived at Aaron's home, and what they found there was shocking.
Blood-soaked sofa, blood spatter, shattered glass. Within hours, though, police found Ellie, and they found her
alive and seemingly unharmed. She was walking on the street with her boyfriend Gavin McFarland and his friend Russell
Jones, but Aaron Fryer was still missing. Natalie, thanks for joining us to talk
about this case. Hello again, Anne Marie. Good to be with you. And a reminder to our listeners, uh like
I tell you every week, if you haven't actually listened to this episode yet, you can find it in your podcast feed.
It's right above this one, so go back and listen to the hour, and then come on back and we can start talking about it.
So, I mean, this really is one of those cases where a lot happened in a very short period of
time. Police, they find Ellie, Gavin, and Russell walking on the street not too long after they discovered this
bloody scene. They take them all into the Medford Police Department in Oregon. They separate them, and they're hoping
that they can give them some information about where Aaron is. Detective Bill Ford
sits down with Russell. And as he describes him, he's a chatty Cathy, as they say. He takes him out for
Do you say A and joke? That's what they call it? Yeah, you know, I guess Russell, he's a
smoker and Russell asked for a cigarette and he's like, "Perfect opportunity. Let's take him outside and we'll go
smoke and joke." And that's how they got Russell to talk and really start to spill the beans.
Right. And sort of in no time, he offers to tell him where Aaron is, where his body is. You went out there. How
difficult would it have been to find that area without Russell's help? It was a good 20
miles or about 30 minutes drive from the Medford Police Department headquarters.
So, it was a difficult area to get to because it was sort of a hilly remote wooded area.
But, it it wasn't really, you know, something that they thought out. Investigators said they drove around for
quite some time trying to figure out what to do. They had the, you know, Aaron's body in the back of the car
wrapped up in tarp. But, finally they they figured it out. Detective Ford, he says, "Russell led him right there." And
then he said, "Okay, stop." He's like, "Okay, he's right down there over the ravine." And sure enough, the police
looked down, they see a tarp wrapped up. And and once they knew they had a body,
once they knew they had located Aaron Friar, um they were able to take that picture of that crime scene and they
showed Gavin, "Look, we know, you know, where Aaron is now. We have a crime scene set up. We're getting a lot of
information. Russell is telling us his story. What's your story?" So, the investigation moved pretty quickly. And
and after that, they were all pointing the finger at each other and blaming one another.
And when you see Gavin in that interrogation room, I mean, he looks remorseful. But, then we find
out that like there's this whole plan that they talk I mean, they didn't just talk about it. They wrote down plans and
alternate plans. All these notes. Yeah, apparently they had, according to the police, different plans that they
had written out. In fact, Russell seemed to be sort of the secretary of the group
writing down and taking the notes of the plans. Ellie did though, you know, in her handwriting, there's a note where
she draws out the exact It's a very small house where Aaron Frier lived and Aaron was on the couch when he was
killed with a baseball bat. Um so, Ellie had drawn the inside of the house including where the motion detectors
were so that they knew where to go once you know, Russell and Gavin were going to execute this plan. And there had been
other plans too though. There was a plan uh apparently to chloroform Ellie's sisters but also chloroform Aaron and
then they were going to take him in in the car in his car and make it look like he crashed and had a car accident. And
in fact, when they were going through with with their planning, apparently um there was a whole plan in motion the
night before Aaron Frier was actually killed where Gavin and Russell attempted to break into the house and unbeknownst
to them, um Aaron's girlfriend was sleeping at the house on the time and when they
tried to break in, the girlfriend disrupted uh what was their plan to then kill Aaron. And um investigators said there
was even a plan at one point they had talked about killing um uh Russell's dad and they wanted the
social security benefits and that morning after they killed Aaron Frier, one of the things that police were able
to glean from from Russell and Gavin and Ellie was that they had gone to a social
security office and the idea was Russell was going to have Gavin become his rep payee so that he could then start
getting the benefits signed over to him. And uh once they get to the social security
office, they realized this ain't going to work and and And security office was closed. Uh it was early in the morning,
so they couldn't even do anything with that. So, as you could see, the they were kind of bumbling when it came down
to what they were going to do after they got away with murder. And you said police spoke to Russell's
dad? Police spoke to Russell's dad and and he said he wasn't concerned. He didn't
think that Russell was actually ever going to try to kill him. So, um you know, he didn't feel like it was
too much of a threat to him. Oh, okay. But I still think it's quite concerning that that would even be a
topic of conversation. I do find it interesting that they they clearly talked about it
often enough. But then they go with this messy choice, you know, to to hit this man in his sleep over and
over again. There's blood everywhere, which means there's evidence everywhere. Do we have any idea how long they had
been planning this? It appears they had planned probably for about 3 weeks or so beforehand, given,
you know, the nature of the notes and the text exchanges back and forth between Ellie and Gavin. But we know
that a few days before, based on Ellie's texts, that she had told Gavin that her
father had sexually molested her. Now, you know, whether or not there's truth to that, we'll never know because Aaron
isn't here to give his side of the story. You know, abuse claims are always very nuanced, but the police detectives,
you know, they did look into that. They they couldn't corroborate Ellie's stories of abuse. Her sisters were
interviewed. They said their dad was a good guy. They didn't, you know, see any evidence or had never experienced any
abuse, they said themselves. So, you know, it's hard to corroborate that. But the question was, was
Ellie telling him that to give him the motive to go through with their plan? So, this was, you know, the portion of
the hour that I found myself really wrestling with because this business of corroborating
her allegations of abuse it's so difficult cuz we know that abuse victims don't always talk. They're
scared to talk. We also know that they could be groomed and so you know it's it's not like the victim of like a
mugging on the street. It's it's a different kind of crime victim and so I found myself you know torn listening to
this. We want to believe the abuse victim as well and you know police when when they
interrogated Ellie she did say she was being abused. However, when they went about going through with their
investigation um she had Ellie had told apparently three friends that she was being abused but
she never mentioned being sexually abused. So it's a very hard claim to to corroborate. That said you know
she's a 15-year-old girl. We don't know what her father was or wasn't doing but um you know her sisters
did say that that Ellie's abuse claim they thought came from the fact that Aaron Fryer had made it forbid it was
forbidden that um Gavin and Ellie could be together and so Ellie was taking that as you know
punishment and saying she was being abused. That's what her sister said. And so while we're talking about about
this um there's also the business of whether or not Gavin was also motivated by thinking that maybe he was going to
be a father. Right and in his interrogation with with Detective Ford he says you know and I
was protecting my unborn child. You know he really believed because Ellie told him that she might she thought she was
pregnant. Now, there was surveillance footage of them going into a store right after they had murdered Aaron Fryer and
she did buy a pregnancy kit at that time. So, um you know, we we don't know what what
she really thought at the time if she really thought she was pregnant or not though. You know, again, police thinking
that she was using everything she could um according to police to try to manipulate the situation. They view her
as the mastermind of the plot. Welcome back. Natalie, we have to talk a little bit
more about Russell. I mean, not only did he basically give up all the goods at the beginning of his own interrogation,
but then police leave him in the room by himself. He knows he's being recorded. He starts saying all this odd stuff. I
want to play some more edited portions that did not make it into the hour. I know the cops twist into a little
pathetic rule game. And actually, sometimes I like to think that I invented the rulebook.
Now, I'm not exactly bragging, but uh cops like to twist evidence. I use reverse psychology,
which makes me be able to make you think it's not Devin, but in fact, your own kid by reverse psychology,
making you look like the lunatic. So, we can play it the easy way or the hard way.
So, I'm curious about what investigators, you know, made of this. Did they think he was this was him or
he's putting on a character or he's using reverse psychology? Like what What do you make of this?
you can only imagine, you know, that the detectives told me that they were all outside in sort of a conference room
area and the minute he, you know, Russell starts talking to the camera and putting on what they called like a show.
They all stopped and were watching and it was like a monologue to the camera and um so it was very bizarre behavior.
That video actually got released on YouTube and had had gone viral at, you know, after the fact. But that said,
Russell had given them so much information at that point and you could see he is a talker and he likes to
tell people what he knows and so he was really helpful to the police early on in
their investigation and allowed them then to use what he was telling them to go back to Gavin and to go back to Ellie
to get their sides of the story as well on on, you know, what happened that morning and in the aftermath after they
had killed Aaron Fryer. I I couldn't figure out if if this was an act he was putting on or if he he
really is this kind of character. It almost seemed like it was like the Joker out of, you know, the Batman movie
or something. Just the way he was talking. Absolutely. Absolutely. But while he's
kind of, you know, doing this one-man show in the interrogation room by himself, Ellie is
also being questioned. Um she's being interviewed by Detective Stephanie Jackson. But this interrogation goes on
for quite a long time. It's 10 hours long. Ellie's mother, Maggie, says that no one told her that her child was in
custody. Um I was surprised that this was permitted. I always was under the impression that
an adult that was in some way representing the minor needs to be there. Whether it's a parent or even
somebody from the court, I don't know. But I guess this was okay. Yes, in in the state of Oregon, it is
legal to interview a minor like that. Police the fact that they didn't let her mom
know that she was okay, Maggie Fryer was very upset about that. I mean, she said, you know, at the at the point when
she made the 911 call to first alert police to the situation, she reported Ellie and Aaron as missing. And so, as
the day went on, she told us that nobody ever called to tell her that we at least
have Ellie in custody. And Alisa Kaplan, who is Ellie's defense attorney now, believes it was excessive that they
allowed this interrogation to go on for 10 hours. You see Ellie a couple of times saying she's tired, she's yawning,
she wants to lay down. They in fact bring her blanket and they put it on the floor. Kaplan points out that this is a
15-year-old who at one point even says, "I don't want to talk." But then the police managed to get her to keep
talking. So, Kaplan says, you know, there are some there's some issues with the way she was
interrogated that this is just a child and, you know, she should have been given a little more time and
perhaps had a representative or an attorney present when she was questioned. But then I also thought like the officer
that is questioning her, she's a woman and I I was actually kind of watching her approach and I thought,
"Geez, this is this is a really good approach." She's trained to talk to children. I
should point that out. Stephanie Jackson has all, you know, the the the right credentials to be doing that kind of
questioning. The other thing we should point out, Stephanie Jackson recognized early on that Ellie was lying through a
lot of the interrogation. Ellie from the start when they asked her, "What's your
name? Is your name Ellie Friar?" She was like, "No." She said she was older than
she actually was. She was said she was 18. So, she did lie a couple of times. So,
that didn't help her situation. Cuz that does come up in the hour like several times like people repeating over
and over again, but she lied so much she lied so and I started to wonder if I was
missing things that were there things that she lied about that she really didn't even need to lie about.
Well, you know, in the beginning she pretended she had no idea what had happened and said she was just walking
around with her friends and pretended she was concerned about her father. So, she denied a lot in the beginning and
she was lying from the start according to the police. So, Alisa Kaplan says though you can
explain those lies away because here is a 15-year-old girl looking across at the
desk at a police officer which could be very intimidating and this is a girl Kaplan says who was scared she had been
caught. Mhm. Well, ultimately all three are charged with Aaron's murder and they took plea deals. Gavin
McFarland pleaded 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 and Ellie Friar
pleaded guilty to an adult charge of conspiring to murder her father. She received a 25 year sentence. In a way I
was sort of surprised that they all took plea deals. I mean, usually when you're
facing charges with such serious consequences, you know, people fight. I think they knew though at this point
they really didn't have a fighting chance because it was obvious that they had all at some
point accepted responsibility and told police their roles in what happened and took the plea deal.
Well, you mentioned in the hour that Ellie has completed two master's degrees while she's been serving her sentence in
a juvenile detention center. She's going to be eligible for parole in 2032. What is her relationship like with the
rest of her family at this point? Well, with her mother Maggie Friar, Maggie says they have a good
relationship that they talk regularly and Maggie is is an advocate for for Ellie. She
believes Ellie was a victim in all of this and really believed that Ellie was abused. Her sister Sierra, she didn't
want to tell us too much. Now, whether or not she believes Ellie's abuse claims, she said she preferred not to
talk about that as well, but she said, "My dad was a good dad and she loved him very much and thought he was a great
father to her." And she and Ellie are communicating. They talk to each other. They've been together. There are
pictures of them together. So, she told us it's sort of a complicated relationship, but she still, it seems,
loves her sister and chooses to have a relationship with her. I guess, you know, family is family
sometimes and you know, she talked about how she loved being the middle sister. So, I can understand that
you can dislike what someone's done, but still love them. This is one of those stories that I
think for many people there will still be a lot of questions, you know, whether or not these, you know, Ellie was was
too young to be interrogated, whether or not they believe her. I think so. It's a thought-provoking
hour and you know, we of course present all the evidence that we we could present on both sides and
you know, it's just heartbreaking. It seems like Ellie given her situation in life, her parents were split up. You
know, that destroyed her. We know that because her sister said it the whole family dynamic changed. That said, she
was very involved in planning if not according to police, possibly the mastermind of this whole operation to
begin with. But Gavin and Russell were you know, 19 and 22. They were young men who perhaps took advantage of a
15-year-old as Aliza Kaplan points out and maybe they were manipulating Ellie. So it'll leave you thinking.
Indeed. Um, well Natalie, I got to thank you again for joining us for postmortem.
My pleasure to be with you again. And if you like this series postmortem, please rate and review 48 hours on Apple
podcast and follow 48 hours wherever you get your podcast and you can also listen
ad-free with a 48 hours plus subscription on Apple podcast. Thanks again for listening.

Watch "First Love, Then Murder" and then catch up with host Anne-Marie Green and CBS News correspondent Natalie Morales on "Post Mortem" as they discuss the case of Aaron Friar, who was murdered by Gavin MacFarlane, the boyfriend of Aaron's 15-year-old daughter, Ellie. They examine why police believed Ellie was the mastermind behind her father's killing, the handwritten murder plots they found in Gavin's house, and the video of Gavin's friend, Russell, who was taunting police through cameras in the interrogation room.

Crime. Social justice. Impact. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses Aaron Fryer's murder, the roles of Ellie, Gavin, and Russell, and the complexities of their case.

Key points

The Shocking Discovery. Police find a bloody scene at Aaron Fryer's home, leading to a frantic search.
Ellie's Mysterious Disappearance. Ellie is found alive shortly after her father goes missing, raising questions.
The Interrogation of Ellie. Ellie's lengthy interrogation raises concerns about her treatment as a minor.
Plea Deals Accepted. All three suspects take plea deals, surprising given the severity of the charges.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

We want to believe the abuse victim as well.

On the challenges of corroborating abuse claims.

8:17WatchApr 24, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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