THE TRIAL OF GEORGE FRESE
By Casey Grove

As jurors for the Frese trial were being selected in Fairbanks, Judge Niesje Steinkruger decided that the trial should be moved from Fairbanks to Anchorage because publicity might influence jurors.

It was the first time that a case had been moved to Anchorage in 25 years.

The trial against George Frese began in Feb. 1999 in Anchorage. Jury selection lasted only two days, a contrast with the false start in Fairbanks, where jury selection took four days and revealed that about half of the potential jurors had significant prior knowledge of the case.

An Uncertain Beginning

State prosecutor Jeff O’Bryant began with an explanation of the seven counts against Frese that included the murder, sexual assault and robbery of John Hartman, and the assault and robbery of Franklin Dayton. O’Bryant described how the prosecution’s case would reconstruct the night through various accounts of witnesses.

“No physical evidence actually ties any of the defendants to the crimes,” observed reporter Larry Campbell, who helped cover the trial from Anchorage for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Campbell also credited Arlo Olson, an acquaintance of the defendants who claimed to have seen them assault Dayton, with some of the most powerful testimony early in the trial.

Linking Two Crimes
Olson described his evening of celebration at a wedding reception at the Eagles Hall, a meeting place for the Fraternal Order of Eagles. It was from the front steps—a distance he estimated at about 100 yards, that he said he saw Dayton getting kicked and punched by the group of four that included Frese. (Others later gauged the distance between the two locations at 150 to 175 yards.)

“They said, ‘Gimme your money, you bitch,’ and then got in the car,” Olson said in court. Later, in front of a bar on Second Avenue, Olson heard Frese complaining about a foot he had hurt in a fight.

During cross-examination by the defense, Olson admitted to having had quite a bit to drink that night. He said he had smoked marijuana that evening and couldn’t remember how many drinks he had.

Some parts of his testimony were in conflict with the testimony of Franklin Dayton himself. Olson testified that he saw the victim on his back during the assault, but Dayton said that he couldn’t see the attackers’ faces because he was held on his stomach during the robbery.

A women’s shelter resident, Melanie Durham, heard the fatal assault on Hartman. Durham had been smoking on the roof of a nearby women’s shelter when she heard the sounds of a beating and someone calling out for help. Another voice that she said sounded like an older Alaska Native male spoke angrily.

Durham and a shelter attendant walked to the door to listen for more sounds, but it was quiet and they returned inside. When she saw the police investigation at the street corner, she told them what she had heard.

At the Hospital

Further testimony revealed how police were led to George Frese.

At the emergency room, medical examiner Diane Hall noticed that Hartman had bruising and tears indicating anal assault. She also saw bruises on Hartman’s face that she thought looked like boot tread, and by coincidence, she was also one of the nurses who tended to George Frese’s hurt foot.

Hall told Detective Aaron Ring she was suspicious there might be a connection between Hartman’s assault and Frese’s hurt foot.

“He told me he thought he broke his foot kicking someone downtown in a fight,” said Ring in court. [see the Frese interview in Did They Confess?]

Lt. Dave Kendrick compared Frese’s shoe to the bruises on Hartman’s face. Witnesses told the jury that they saw a match.

Alaska Deputy Medical Examiner Franc Fallico agreed with this comparison, the state’s only piece of physical evidence.

Prosecutor Jeff O’Bryant showed the jury an overhead display of the boot print with different parts of the boot tread on separate transparencies laid over a photograph of the left side of Hartman’s face as he lay unconscious in the hospital bed.

Defense attorney Bob Downes said the left boot had been used for the comparison at the hospital, but the right boot had been entered as evidence in the trial. Downes asked witnesses how many boots in Fairbanks could have the same sole pattern.

John Cayton, chief criminologist of the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department crime laboratory, disagreed with the validity of the boot-to-face comparison. He said that the scale of the boot overlays and the photograph of the face did not match up.

Closing the First Case

During closing arguments, prosecutor O’Bryant reminded the jury of the incriminating statements made by Frese after being picked up the morning of the murder. Frese asked officers what would happen to him if Hartman died. “Why in the world would he be worried about that unless he knew what he had done?” asked O’Bryant.

Bob Downes argued that this semi-confession was the only evidence that the state had.

The jury found Frese guilty on five of the seven counts after a short deliberation totaling about two days. In February of 2000, George Frese was sentenced to serve 60 years with 20 years suspended.

Based in part on Fairbanks Daily News-Miner coverage of the Hartman case as it unfolded.

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