Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 39 - Separation Anxiety - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next he made lots of money and liked to show it off wasn't a phase with him
that's how he lived he was known to gamble sometimes too much he had had some gambling debts
he had some problems with the irs when he ends up dead his two ex-wives and a girlfriend are
all suspects but someone was sloppy you can plan and plan and plan but you'll never plan for
everything around 2002 the real estate market in the dallas-fort worth area of texas was
booming and david nixon made a fortune he had a very big personality he was always smiling he was always
happy he liked nice things nice clothes nice cars nice women nixon primarily sold real
estate in grapevine texas just outside dallas fort worth well grapevine it's a very vibrant city very suburban
there is some money here but the main focus is the lake people want to live by it and and have very
nice homes around it but david's idyllic life started to unravel one sunday night when his
ex-wife walked into police headquarters to report him missing she said he didn't
show up for a dinner meeting with their 10 year old son that evening which was very unusual she said he
wasn't returning telephone calls either david nixon was a great father who kept in contact with his son even though
he was divorced from his wife and would constantly keep in contact with him i can't really put my finger on anything
i just have a gut feeling that there's something about this one that you know there's more to it than
just the typical missing person just a few hours later a motorist 10 miles away spotted a fire in the parking lot of an
abandoned building when he got closer he was horrified to see what looked like a human body the upper portion
of the body was engulfed in flames an accelerant was believed to have been used like
gasoline the victim wrapped in a blue tarp and the blanket was clearly a large white male with
brown hair dental records confirmed it was david nixon looked like at some point someone may have tried to
stuff the body down the drainage ditch the body wouldn't fit if david's body had had actually gone
all the way down into that eight-foot drain pipe he might have never been found friends and family were shocked by his
murder it's such a cruel way to die [Music] to light someone on fire [Music] there was no blood or any sign of a
struggle which meant david had likely been killed elsewhere but it was clear that where the body was
found was not the primary scene that this was a dumping site and that the body had been set on
fire to destroy potential evidence and david's body had been wrapped in a blanket
a possible clue to the murder site there was a group of filamentous wires meaning very fine wires
from the charred remnants of the blanket your typical blanket does not include metal
fibers unless it's a heat generating blanket such as an electric blanket a fractured rib alerted the medical
examiner to a bullet pathway that led from david's left side through his heart cause of death
was a single gunshot it was a small caliber handgun they couldn't determine you know what
caliber because we never found the bullet to investigators it seemed strange that
david's ex-wife reported him missing just three hours before his body was found and police soon learned
she had a possible motive a half million dollar motive at david nixon's autopsy the medical
examiner discovered that david had been shot with a small caliber bullet and tests showed his body had been
soaked with gasoline before the fire despite the damage the medical examiner was able to analyze
undamaged tissue to estimate when david was shot i was able to estimate that at room
temperature the body was probably deceased for 36 to 48 hours prior to the body being discovered since
david's body was discovered sunday night past midnight he was probably killed either late thursday night or early
friday morning david's murder bore striking similarities to another unsolved murder
that occurred just four months earlier literally happened across the street the victim
a 22 year old prostitute named janet dolan was killed with a single gunshot before her body was transported doused
with gasoline and set on fire it would appear to be more like uh an execution or a message style murder when
you have somebody shot and wrapped up and burned but while the similarities between the cases were
striking so were the differences well first of all we had a female versus a male victim
david nixon was wealthy had no criminal history and was not the type to put himself in
harm's way janet dolan was just the opposite she probably put herself in some very
strange situations with people she did not know and janet's murder seemed to be a crime
of opportunity not something that had been planned police concluded it was possible but
highly unlikely the cases were connected but investigators got a break when they
discovered forensic evidence at david nixon's crime scene there were tire impressions found
within 10 feet of david's body obviously we believe was the vehicle that transported him there
the tracks were from a dual axle vehicle meaning it was a truck with two sets of
tires on the back and one set on the front there's two sets of tires two sets of
different tires the front and rear those had dramatically different tire tread impressions but who
wanted david nixon dead the thing that i've seen when you're dealing with murder cases is there
there's generally two reasons people kill love and money david's ex-wife donna had both of these
motives there were problems in in david and donna's relationship obviously he left her for a young flight
attendant which of course hurt her deeply donna would also benefit from david's half
million dollar insurance policy until their young son came of age in crime investigating
one of the cardinal rules is follow the money and of course the ex-wife had just been named a
beneficiary of an insurance policy and the first thing police were going to do under those circumstances was take a
good long hard look at her but donna was cooperating fully with the investigation
and was an unlikely killer she also had an alibi for thursday night and friday morning
the estimated time of death as the investigation went along it was clear that the evidence did not point into in
the direction of donna david's second ex-wife also had an alibi for the time of david's murder
an alibi confirmed by numerous witnesses next investigators questioned david's current
girlfriend 32 year old tracy frame tracy said she last saw david on thursday and she assumed he
was headed to las vegas where he liked to gamble he didn't hear from any thursday night
didn't talk to him nothing saturday hadn't talked to him since he had to not talk to anybody
it was discovered that he had had some gambling debts and he had some problems with the
irs tracy consented to a search of the house she shared with david we searched the home with luminol
we did a search with cadaver dogs they found no evidence of blood and the cadaver dogs didn't find anything either
but investigators did find one possible clue as they searched the house they found
electric blanket controls but they didn't find an electric blanket which was kind of odd because they found
david wrapped in an electric blanket a day later police found david's white lexus
abandoned in a supermarket parking lot within walking distance of their house there was no blood or sign of violence
in the car but something immediately caught investigators attention one of the first things investigators
notice is that the seat is pushed up toward the steering wheel which would indicate that a much smaller person had
been in it last and not a big man like david nixon investigators hope the store's security
cameras might shed some light on who left david's car in the lot [Music] when police interviewed david nixon's
live-in girlfriend tracy frame she claimed david was headed to las vegas on the night he
disappeared tracy also revealed she didn't have an alibi for the night david was murdered
she said she was at home alone we as a family didn't really know much of anything he didn't bring her up
um i never spoke to her on the phone she was a mystery to all of us really a background check revealed the two had
an interesting past the couple met at a lake party shortly after david's second wife left him
tracy was a successful accountant with no children shortly after they got together david
bought two matching cars a black lexus for tracy a white one for him and because he owed back taxes
to the irs david decided to place his house in tracy's name a decision he came to regret
david wanted to regain control of the house and tracy wanted to make sure that that she kept the house in her name but
there was one seemingly insurmountable hurdle to her being a suspect in looking at her investigators had to
decide how she could have moved the body after all she was although she was a trim and strong young
woman she was almost half the weight of david and moving him would have been no easy task
then tracy's neighbors told police they saw a large rental truck parked at their
house during the weekend david went missing [Music] i mean he even um a moving van like a u-haul
ride yeah we took we were getting a truck to move um a um some large stuff the uh cool stuff
pool chairs that the uh dumpster wouldn't take and they said that uh you'll have to
move it but we don't have a vehicle so david's done in the lawn next police analyzed the security video
of the supermarket parking lot where they found david's car at 1 34 a.m just 37 minutes before
david's burning body was found a woman got out of david's white lexus walked to a black lexus and drove away
you kind of look and go you know that that looks like tracy especially when she got in the black car
thinking man four hours earlier the black lexus drove into the lot the same woman got out
walked across the lot to a rental truck and drove away tape showed that the previous afternoon
this same woman had parked the rental truck in the lot then left on foot with a large black dog
tracy had a large black dog it does seem to be highly coincidental that the same person that you're looking at
would also have a black lexus a white lexus access to a penske truck and to walk a
dog similar to the one that tracy frame had because the camera was so far away there
was no way to positively identify the woman if this was tracy frame they'd need some way to prove it
i don't know thank you [Music] police had surveillance tape showing an unidentified woman parking
two different cars in a shopping center parking lot next to a large rental truck
the two cars matched the make and model of those owned by david nixon and his girlfriend tracy
frame police also had surveillance video of the same woman walking into the store on the night
david's body was discovered wasn't able to really pick her up throughout the store but
could pick her up at the at the register again the woman purchased garbage bags and
two bottles of muriatic acid although muriatic acid is sold in small amounts to private individuals mostly
it's used as a solvent or cleaner and heavy industry that's when investigators noticed something important
in order to save 34 cents on her purchase the woman used her discount card and store records showed the name on the
card was none other than tracy frame after the purchase she drove away in the rental van
the rental agency told investigators they had rented that same truck to three other people in the days
after tracy returned it investigators found no blood or any trace of acid inside the
truck but the tire impressions were potential evidence my job was to see if there was any
relation between the tires that were photographed of the moving vehicle and what was left at the scene by laying
the test impressions over the evidence photos analysts were able to compare all six tires on the van to those found at
the scene i was able to document that six different tires that had two different types of tire
tread impressions two different sets of class characteristics were represented very neatly on the
scene this meant it was virtually certain tracy's moving van left these tire tracks
but one question remained a lot of folks have asked the question you know how does a woman tracy size move a guy
that large the answer a hand truck came with the moving vehicle [Music] she merely has to place the hand truck
on the bed beside him and roll him over on top of it and strap him to it once he is strapped to that hand truck
then it's just a matter of pulling the hand truck around investigators believe tracy knew david
was planning to leave her and she wanted to keep the house that was still in her name late thursday night
as he slept she shot him with an unregistered handgun friends said he kept in the house
she wrapped the body and blankets from the bed the next day friday she drove david's
car to the rental agency where she rented a moving van she waited until nightfall and used a
hand truck to get david's body into the van [Music] then she drove 14 miles to the isolated
parking lot where she tried to dispose of the body in a large drain [Music] but it was too big it wouldn't fit
[Music] she panicked and left leaving the tire impressions worried that she'd have to explain why the
moving van was parked at her house for an extended period she parked it at the supermarket and
walked home with her dog [Music] on sunday night she returned to the supermarket
bought trash bags and muriatic acid and identified herself by using her discount card
to save 34 cents that night she cleaned the truck doused david's body with gasoline set it
on fire then exchanged vehicles again and returned home once in custody tracy was found to have linear bruises
on her thighs at exactly the height the hand truck would have hit her body police also found evidence that tracy
purchased a new mattress for her bedroom and had the old one removed we don't know where the new mattress came from
i would think that that mattress was probably taken in to one of these illegal dumping sites as
opposed to you know obviously being put in a in a dumpster somewhere police believe that money was the motive
tracy was complaining about david one time her friend carol she said well why don't you just leave
him and she said well without him i'd be living in an apartment and driving a honda
in march of 2005 a jury took just four hours to convict tracy frame of first degree murder she was sentenced to 40
years in prison she'll be eligible for parole after 20. police were looking at the totality of
the coincidences the black lexus the white lexus the penske truck the woman walking the dog
and at the same time her personal shopper's car being used to buy some muriatic acid it was just too
much for police not to determine that she was probably the one the fact that she ran that card over and
saved uh i don't know what was it 34 cents something like that um nice science was this case
pure and simple i mean there was there's really nothing else that's what sealed it for you can plan
and plan and plan but you'll never plan for [Music] everything

Tracey Frame, 35, was convicted of killing David Nixon in April 2002 after he planned to end their relationship.

#Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

David Nixon was murdered; his girlfriend Tracy Frame was convicted after evidence linked her to the crime.

Key points

David Nixon's Mysterious Disappearance. David Nixon, a successful real estate agent, goes missing, leading to a shocking discovery.
The Gruesome Discovery. A motorist discovers a burning body believed to be David Nixon's, igniting a murder investigation.
The Investigation Unfolds. As police investigate, they uncover motives and alibis that complicate the case.
Tracy Frame's Alibi. David's girlfriend, Tracy, claims she was home alone during his disappearance, raising suspicions.
The Conviction. Tracy Frame is convicted of first-degree murder after a series of coincidences lead to her.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

David's idyllic life started to unravel one Sunday night.

1:17WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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