Woman Reaches “Breaking Point” and Kills Dad with Her Husband, Puts Body in Incinerator

A dispute over money turned into a horrifying murder in 2017.

A concerned daughter called dispatchers in Dalhart, Texas to report her 65-year-old father missing on July 13, 2017. Jamie Frazier, 24, told police she last spoke to her father, Joel, on the phone on July 11, and when she reached her family home at 5 p.m. that night, her father had disappeared.

“Joel never left the house without his hat,” Larry Thomas, friend of the Frazier family, said on Snapped, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen. “Jamie was the first one to pick up on that. Right away.”

Joel’s truck and wallet were still home, as well as his medication. Although his other daughter, Camilla Frazier-Tidrow, her husband, Kory, and her 11-year-old son all lived in the home as well, none of them knew where he was. As Jamie hung missing person posters and created social media posts to ask the public to search for her father, Camilla, who went by Camie, brushed her father’s disappearance off as a drinking binge, puzzling law enforcement.

“Why is one sister desperately looking for him and the other not?” Chanze Fowler, the Hartley County Sheriff, asked on Snapped.

Friends and family told police that Joel Frazier’s relationship with his daughter deteriorated after she and her family moved back into his home.

“They moved in because they were doing dope,” said Chris Goodson, Joel’s friend, on Snapped. “They didn’t have jobs. Had no place to go. So, Joel opened his house up to them. Gave them a place to live. Joel had mentioned they were trying to cook meth at the house, and he wasn’t putting up with it anymore.”

Camilla Frazier. Photo: Oxygen

Other friends said Joel did not get along with Camie’s husband, Kory, and blamed him for her drug use.

“Camie’s story surprisingly is one that is pretty common in this area,” Brooke Self, a former reporter for ABC-7, said on Snapped. “Somebody who’s on top of the world, a rodeo queen, the apple of her father’s eye, but it just takes that one person that introduces that one little thing into your life that changes your life forever. In Camie’s case, that was meth and Kory.”

It was when police searched the Frazier home that they came upon a motive for Camie to want her father gone. Police discovered an unsigned last will and testament for Joel Frazier in Camie’s purse.

“It wasn’t signed. And as you look through the will, he had changed the previous will to take Camie from being the main beneficiary, to change it to Jamie being the main beneficiary, and kind of cutting Camie out, if you will, of everything, in the event Joel died,” said Scott Swick, Texas Ranger, on Snapped.

Joel Frazier’s attorney told officers in March 2017, his client came to him and wanted his will changed.

“He had just revised Joel’s will and sent a copy to the house, and that he never received a signed copy in return, and this happened just before Joel was reported missing,” James Webb, former Dalhart Police Detective Sergeant, said on Snapped.

Police discovered a second key piece of evidence in Camilla Frazier-Tidrow’s purse: a bottle containing a ground up white substance, that a lab revealed was diphenhydramine, the main ingredient in Benadryl. They also tested the remains of a milkshake in the home, which contained diphenhydramine.

“Camie, every evening, would make Joel a milkshake,” Swick said. “He wouldn’t expect to find ice cream with sleep medicine in it. That, coupled with the loose powder diphenhydramine, it all made a lot of sense.”

Meanwhile, rumors swirled in the small Texas town that Joel Frazier had been chopped up at a meat processing plant. Four months after Joel went missing, an anonymous tipster told police they’d seen Joel’s body in the incinerator at the plant, causing officers to investigate.

“Right away I noticed what I recognized to be a human skull,” Swick said. “And as I’m looking closer, I see what looks like, ‘OK, I know that to be a human hand.’ In my heart I knew, without a doubt, that was Joel Frazier I was looking at.”

Benjamin Buck, who was a friend of Camie and Kory, worked at the plant.  When police questioned Benjamin Buck, he confessed on July 12, he got a call from Kory Tidrow to bring a sheet and wheelbarrow to Joel’s house.

“He indicated right away he knew Joel was dead,” Swick said. “They’d had prior conversations of wanting to kill Joel and how they were going to do that.”

Buck claimed when he arrived at the Frazier home, Joel was already dead.

“Camie’s in there trying to clean up,” Swick said. “He sees some blood on the ceiling. He sees some blood on the chair, around Joel.”

Buck also laid out what happened for officers. He alleged Camilla made a milkshake for her father laced with sleeping drugs to make him easier to kill, then she and her husband shot him in the head when he was asleep. When that failed to kill him, Buck claimed they shot him again with a larger caliber handgun. Then, they wrapped the body in a sheet, took it to the plant, and used a propane tank to burn the body in the incinerator, since the incinerator wasn’t working.

“They leave thinking that that’s going to burn that body and dispose of the evidence and they’ll be home free,” Swick said.

But the fire didn’t burn hot enough and didn’t burn the body.

“In their attempt to destroy the body, they preserved it,” Fowler said.

The autopsy report backed up Buck’s version of events.

“She was going to lose everything, and Jamie was going to end up with everything … and with her being on the drugs and stuff, I think she just snapped, literally,” Goodson said. “Did the unthinkable. I mean, how can you kill your father and put him in an incinerator?”

Buck was charged with tampering with evidence and was sentenced to five years in prison. Kory Tidrow and Camilla Frazier-Tidrow were both found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

“They’re evil people. They have zero compassion for human life,” Swick said.

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