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Fred Tokars: Bad on Bad
74 Plays3 months ago
An amibittous young lawyer is drawn to the money and power to be had by legally representing drug lords and their criminal enterprises. Then he kills his wife who is the mother of his young children because he suspects she understands who and what he really is.
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Transcript
Introduction and Focus on Family Murders
00:00:01
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Hello, listeners. You're listening to Hearth, Home, and Homicide, a family production about family murders. Caroline and I each narrate, commit. We've got opinions about our story, about our killer, the family. Andy is our producer. He keeps us in line.
Who is Fred Tokars?
00:00:22
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So one of the main things we're after is just to remember, there are victims and family murder and generational trauma, those things are real.
00:00:34
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And they never go away. So hello, Caroline.
00:00:39
Caroline
Hello! hello
00:00:41
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And yeah today we're gonna be talking about what I call bad on bad. There's nothing good about this man, Fred Tokars. Some of you may have heard of him.
00:00:54
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He's just a shit show and we're gonna get into it. He's a prominent Atlanta, Georgia defense attorney, Fred Tookars is, and he killed his wife in a murder for hire that took place in front of his children by design.
00:01:15
Caroline
Mmhmm.
00:01:15
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He did that on purpose. When the killer said, you know, in front of your kids, his response to that was, oh, they'll get over it.
00:01:21
Caroline
Oh.
00:01:24
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
They're just kids. I mean, that how ignorant can you be? on top of being a killer. So we already know that today's family murderer doesn't care about his wife. He doesn't care about his children. He doesn't care about the extended families that will forever live in the pain and sorrow because of his selfishness.
00:01:46
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
But how did this happen to this family? That's our question. Many families have a bit of a black sheep in its sphere, the one that likes to fish and not feed the kids. I mean, that's bad enough. But for most family problems, there is a solution. I mean, sometimes it's divorce. Sometimes it's just acceptance. Okay, you can go fish, but you know I can feed the kids, but you need to believe the one that takes out the garbage. So ah there are solutions to problems.
00:02:16
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
that don't involve murder. A murder like this one is very different given the level of callousness and betrayal, even though everyone in the family is very bright, very well-educated, and even privileged. So what why would murder be ever a solution? So let's get into it.
Sarah Tokars' Background and Meeting Fred
00:02:42
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I'm gonna say that everything good about this story begins with Sarah.
00:02:47
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Sarah M. Rusko was born in New York in 1953. She had six sisters altogether and she was right in the middle. She was number, what would that be?
00:02:57
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She was number so three or four.
00:02:59
Caroline
three or four.
00:03:01
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah, she's right in the middle. I can't count and I can't divide, but her father, her father was a prominent physician. She married young and she got divorced later with no children.
00:03:13
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So not too much damage there. Just, you know, okay, this isn't working. And, you know, when you're young, ah you know, if you, if you're young and, oh yeah, 53.
00:03:21
Caroline
that's pretty common actually, but I don't know what what year is it? Is it the 60s? 53.
00:03:27
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Oh, now if, it if she were, so what would that be?
00:03:27
Caroline
so
00:03:29
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Like early seventies, maybe.
00:03:32
Caroline
So I mean, that there were still probably states where you couldn't get a divorce, right? I mean, I remember I only know what I know of the history of the world through certain movies, right?
00:03:36
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Maybe, yeah.
00:03:42
Caroline
As far as social customs.
00:03:42
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah, right.
00:03:44
Caroline
But divorce was a very taboo thing in the United States for a very long time.
00:03:44
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yes.
00:03:47
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Oh, long time, long time. Now it's, it might be too customary. But anyway, Sarah's father was a prominent physician, and as I said, and she married young, divorced, had no children. She was living with her sister in Atlanta after the end of this first marriage. And at age 31, she had already taught school in Florida where her parents live.
00:04:14
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And um then she went to her sister's house and she was getting into the marketing profession. And one of her clients was ah a famous club owner. And we're going that plays a role in this whole story as it develops. One day she was watching television and she saw a guy she went to high school with in New York.
00:04:40
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Now remember, she's in Atlanta. She sees this guy, Fred Tokars, whose father also happened to be a physician, and they knew each other in school. Fred was all grown up now, a local Atlanta attorney, rising in prominence. So he was handsome, and she was admiring the way he was helping the local DA's office bring a drug lord to justice.
00:05:04
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
so Boldly, she called him up. She told him she thought he was doing a great job. By the way, do you want to go out for dinner?
Marriage and Unraveling of Fred's True Nature
00:05:14
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And ah did he remember her from high school?
00:05:14
Caroline
who
00:05:18
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, of course I do, said Fred. Of course I do.
00:05:21
Caroline
Well, and for the younger kids, that's how it was done. That was the only way you were meeting people going on dates doing stuff. It was this organic sort of bold move.
00:05:31
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
yeah
00:05:31
Caroline
You know, reach out to say, hey, but, you know, by the way, I'll be eating at this time if you want to join me. You know, that kind of thing. This is very cool.
00:05:39
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Uh-huh. Caroline, you sound like you've done that before. So anyway, Sarah...
00:05:45
Caroline
Well, i was I was dating in a transitional period. It was going digital, so... Luckily, I caught it before it went fully digital, because I don't know that I would enjoy that, but I don't know.
00:05:55
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, you know, I hate to say this, but 90% of the murders that I see on TV that aren't very interesting because they keep happening every day,
00:06:07
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
are women who find love on the internet and they don't do the research that they're supposed to do, even though there are tools out there.
00:06:09
Caroline
Yeah. I know.
00:06:14
Caroline
I know.
00:06:16
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And it's so frustrating to know that these wonderful women are getting caught up in love as like, this is going to be the way it's going to be from now on.
00:06:23
Caroline
Right.
00:06:27
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And now I know this person's everything just because we've had sex. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:06:32
Caroline
Right. Yeah, it's difficult.
00:06:34
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
It's very scary. It's scary. So they went on a date, they hit it off to Sarah, the familiarity of the lean, determined man, brought back memories of her wonderful childhood, a sheltered, warm, peaceful and predictable life where her father, a doctor, he was also a surgeon, had been a man everyone could depend on in the community.
00:06:59
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
her mother was the heart of their caring family of all these girls. And I think there were seven of them. So maybe that's why I want to call her number four. I said she had six, but it was actually seven and she was, she had six siblings, but she was number four right in the middle, right in the middle.
00:07:10
Caroline
Oh, seven and she was... Okay, that makes more sense.
00:07:19
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So at 31, she and Fred were married. Now, you know, Sarah kind of wanted to have another really cool wedding, but she, he didn't want that.
00:07:30
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So they just had a low key, you know, thing in the judges' chambers. And Caroline, as you know, your dad and I got married in the judges' chambers. Then two days later, we came back and we had a little soiree with some of our friends.
00:07:43
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
That was our second marriage.
00:07:43
Caroline
Yes. That's what I, I love the two stories of your two marriage.
00:07:45
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So
00:07:47
Caroline
Cause it's more than just swore away. Like you went, like you worked at a wedding place or something. And so you were able to do this sort of quasi wedding in a store.
00:07:56
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
yeah Yeah, I have two, I have two wedding certificates. So therefore if I ever murdered anyone, I didn't do it.
00:07:59
Caroline
That's great.
00:08:03
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
That was the person two days later that you're thinking of.
00:08:05
Caroline
That's right.
00:08:06
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yes, yes. So Sarah was divorced and had already had the fairy tale of a wedding. So she said, okay, first major compromise. She and Fred were eager to start their life together.
00:08:19
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You know, they were happy together. They were in lust as well as love. So love and trust was in her heart. Things worked out for a while. Her sister Chrissy would later say, and I'm going to quote her, she said, Fred was just the kind of man that we all thought.
00:08:38
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
This is the kind of man we should marry. You know, he fit the he fit the he was the round peg in the round hole and
00:08:42
Caroline
Yeah.
00:08:46
Caroline
Well, and like Sarah described him, I think that a lot I don't know that every woman does that. But I think a lot of women who have great relationships with their parents or their father in particular, and they just really admired that setup, they go looking for it.
00:09:01
Caroline
That is what they go looking for.
00:09:02
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Of course, yes.
00:09:03
Caroline
And so when they see it, and they don't see any signs that that's a facade, that's they're going for it, you know,
00:09:09
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah, and you know, the back in my day, when I was thinking about what would it be like to be married, um I was thinking about father knows best. I want Fred McMurray as my father of my children.
00:09:20
Caroline
Oh, so funny.
00:09:23
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And I was looking for kind of an ideal parent.
00:09:28
Caroline
Yeah.
00:09:28
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And that was my mold. And boy, did I get lucky. So I'm not dead. So we know that.
00:09:37
Caroline
ah Yeah.
00:09:38
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So she was given in to him. They had this ah marriage. and And she really did ah feel protected and wanted to have children.
00:09:49
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And she wanted to create that
Fred's Criminal Path and Marriage Strains
00:09:51
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
ideal loving experience that you were talking about that she had as a child.
00:09:55
Caroline
Yep.
00:09:56
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And her now husband was going to be distinguished. He was already distinguishing himself. He was going to be respected. He was already respected for the local press to put him on, you know, with this big gang of of drug dealers.
00:10:06
Caroline
yeah
00:10:12
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So a year later, they had a son named Ricky. Now, Sarah wanted to quit working once Ricky came along and she had made her a name for herself promoting local and top tier nightclubs.
00:10:25
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
that catered to famous local people and out-of-towners. So, you know, famous ah athletes would go where she was working as the marketer. She brought in a lot of wealthy clients.
00:10:38
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Fred was not for her not working. He wanted the money. And this was Sarah's first shock.
00:10:46
Caroline
Hmm.
00:10:47
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
What? You want me to work even though I just had a baby?
00:10:52
Caroline
Yeah.
00:10:53
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She's probably thinking to herself, why didn't I talk to him about this ahead of time?
00:10:55
Caroline
Hmm.
00:10:57
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Fred was already almost never home. She wanted to be able to mother her baby Ricky. So they compromised and she kept working from home from the nightclubs that she was working for.
00:11:10
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
They didn't want to lose her. So she would put, yeah.
00:11:12
Caroline
I think she, this sounds so cool. Her job sounds so cool. She sounds like that the lady on Mad Men, who who in the end gets all the money and has her own firm, you know?
00:11:22
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah.
00:11:22
Caroline
This does sound cool, but that is shocking that because in all honesty, you still grapple with that today, the the older gender gender roles that don't necessarily fit in today's economy. and so But this would have been a ah as ah sort of setup where it's shocking he would not have expected her not to work after the baby was born to me.
00:11:43
Caroline
but
00:11:43
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Absolutely. So this was in the early 90s.
00:11:47
Caroline
still Yeah, you it still would have been an expectation from a a guy like that in prominence, maybe on the East Coast, right? Or the...
00:11:53
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Oh, excuse me. I mean 80s.
00:11:54
Caroline
i Oh, even more so.
00:11:54
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I mean 80s. Again with the math. I'm done with math today. So Fred had majored in accounting and worked as an accountant while studying the law.
00:12:06
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Okay. That's, that's not easy to do. So I, my hat is off to him there. He put it to good use. By the time he and Sarah married, he knew all the ins and outs of gangster accounting, so to speak, meaning he had learned from the criminals he defended.
00:12:28
Caroline
Mmm.
00:12:29
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He was working for the DA, a but he really wanted to get closer to the underworld and continue defending bad guys as much as he could as a defense attorney And he wanted to make his mark while getting a deep dive into how they made their money because he wanted that kind of money and lifestyle. After all, Fred is thinking, you know, crime pays better than a government job.
00:12:54
Caroline
No way, I feel like Fred would have, okay, so a couple things. I will say majoring in accounting while you're attending law school is hard, but it's easy for a guy who's who doesn't have any kids or isn't doing, you know, I think there were probably a lot of men and women who were single parents that did that.
00:13:10
Caroline
I just want to say that because Fred's kind of a jerk. But also, how weird because he already has prominence. I mean, if Sarah saw him as this sort of person, just like her dad, a member a prominent member of the community, like He could have done the same thing on the legal like on the legit side But it's interesting to me that it seems that he's actually got this greed deep down under the whole time It's why he doesn't want Sarah to stop working It's maybe even why he went for her because she had this marketing job with all these nightclubs He wanted to get in on that lifestyle too. You know, I just wonder if he was born greedy.
00:13:49
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He was born greedy and he may have been what is called a vulnerable narcissist where you use your vulnerabilities to manipulate other people in order to get rich or whatever it is that you want.
00:13:55
Caroline
I
00:14:03
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
If it's money, if it's sex, whatever it is that you want, control.
00:14:07
Caroline
Yeah.
00:14:07
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So it may be that he just felt like, you know, I'm not really a good person on the inside. I'm just faking it as a defense attorney for the state or or a prosecuting attorney.
00:14:18
Caroline
Yeah.
00:14:18
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I really wanna hang out with these super rich, super flawed, criminal minded individuals.
00:14:21
Caroline
Totally. hope
00:14:26
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
aye you know I do, especially knowing what happened next. So ah let's talk about Fred Tokar's seedy adult life. And Fred's father was a physician.
00:14:39
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
As I said, his mother was loving and supportive. As he grew up, he grew up without any discomfort in a family home in New York, and they had a vacation home in Canada, which is still in the Tokar family, by the way. But he was greedy from the get-go, just like you were saying, Caroline, as far as I can tell. He was, you know, he was positive, meaning he had a lust for adventure, achievement,
00:15:11
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He was greedy for life. He was greedy for achievement. But I wonder if it was just the money that was the real target behind the target. You know, like they say karate.
00:15:25
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
people who chop wood with their hands, that plank of wood, they're not targeting the wood with their hand, they're targeting the target behind the wood, and that is how they get through the wood.
00:15:37
Caroline
Yeah.
00:15:39
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I think he saw money and privilege as where he wanted to be, and this was the tunnel that was going to lead him there, this ambition he had to succeed.
00:15:42
Caroline
Yeah.
00:15:52
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And again, I think he might have been bad to the core. He did go to night school after graduating college in accounting. And he was a CPA who was earning good money in order to put himself through ninth school to the law school.
00:16:10
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So he was working nights.
00:16:10
Caroline
Yeah.
00:16:12
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I mean, he yeah had a fire. He had a fire.
00:16:14
Caroline
I was going to say, this is actually what really successful attorneys do.
00:16:15
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah.
00:16:19
Caroline
I mean, this is what successful human beings do.
00:16:19
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Absolutely.
00:16:21
Caroline
They they see you know the the stepping stone. They have their big goal, the long-term goal, the big prize. And then they have all these little stepping stones with all these other little prizes you know to help bolster them to the final um end game.
00:16:35
Caroline
But I think you're right. There's this weird, because he's doing all that. It all appears positive. It all appears typical right of a successful person. But they're knowing what we know now that you can kind of start catching these seedy underbellies of I think I just wanted to go out and be a nightclub guy. I think I just wanted to be a gangster guy. I just want to have all the money and the lights and the flashing and the party, that kind of thing.
00:17:00
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I think that when I look at him as a CPA and making money that way and getting it, I mean, that's a heavy, heavy, field and very technically precise.
00:17:10
Caroline
Yeah.
00:17:13
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So there was so and so is the law for that matter. And so there was something about him that had a grasp of the underbelly of all of these things that he was endeavoring.
00:17:15
Caroline
Yeah.
00:17:23
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And he was making good money. And I think that he then saw there was somebody making even more money than the prosecuting attorney. And that was the drug lords and the people who were laundering money and things like that.
00:17:38
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So He let everybody no including you know, his then girlfriend, Sarah, and now his wife, that he would later murder, that he was he was always aiming to be the actuary and the CPA to the ultra rich.
00:17:56
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And that that is what drew him into law school.
00:17:56
Caroline
Yeah.
00:18:00
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
ah this This whole, I mean, you know he had a vision.
How Did Fred Tokars' Ambitions Derail His Life?
00:18:04
Caroline
yeah
00:18:04
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So here we see that greed. in our story today has two faces, ambition and blind ambition.
00:18:16
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You just want what you want, what you want and you want it now and you're willing to work for it even if you have to do the dirtiest job of all murder. So I think Fred had the blind type in my opinion.
00:18:26
Caroline
Yeah.
00:18:32
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
People thought he was a good guy. But he was pure blind greed when it came to being at the top. He wanted, he was greedy for greed's sake.
00:18:44
Caroline
Right, right.
00:18:46
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And he wanted to live like the drug lords who he represented and helped shelter, hide, you know, launder their money. And he knew exactly how to do it.
00:18:58
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He was a CPA, he's a lawyer. And, um,
00:19:01
Caroline
Yeah, he got the blueprint. I mean, that is one thing that government work is aware of. I think certain branches have better checks and balances on it than others. But this is a known fact. We're dealing with the behind the curtains, the secret recipe of how this all goes down.
00:19:21
Caroline
But it's our job to protect the public interest and and prosecute it because it was illegal.
00:19:21
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Right.
00:19:26
Caroline
But I mean, there are humans in that prosecuting pool that are going to say, you know what, that side actually looks more easy to live with, right? Which is unfortunate, but it's true.
00:19:38
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, ah and you know, sometimes my I have a Cinderella mind about life. I do. I don't listen to that part of my mind, but I go there.
00:19:47
Caroline
Yeah.
00:19:47
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And when I go there on Fred Tokars, I think that he um he just wants to control everything. He wants to be the big shot. He wants to do all of those things.
00:20:00
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And he did see the prosecuting attorney role and he he saw that he had to act respectfully.
00:20:09
Caroline
Yeah.
00:20:09
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And, you know, I, in my little Cinderella mind, often think that if you're a prosecuting attorney and you're Uphilled, you know, in great esteem by your community, you've got to be good.
00:20:21
Caroline
Right. Yes. No, it's it obviously I mean, I would think the same thing. I work with lawyers, so now I think a little bit differently, but for the most part, yeah, ah that's they're meant to protect that.
00:20:32
Caroline
They are these like ethical unicorns, supposedly, right?
00:20:33
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Mm hmm.
00:20:37
Caroline
they whatever They're ne never going to do anything wrong. They're these shining beacons of truth and justice, right? All the fairy tale things, I get it, but it's not always.
00:20:48
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You know, not too many weeks ago, ah Jimmy Carter died, and he was what I would call what you just said.
00:20:48
Caroline
like
00:20:56
Caroline
Yeah, he actually was though for sure. He's my favorite.
00:21:00
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah, he was a beacon for the world.
00:21:02
Caroline
Yes.
00:21:02
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And um the way that Abraham Lincoln was a beacon for the world he lived in, and he is still someone that every everyone looks up to, even though he's long, long dead,
00:21:15
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
um Jimmy Carter, I think, will be right up there with Lincoln, not as a president, but as a human being.
00:21:20
Caroline
I hear humanitarian for sure.
00:21:24
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Oh, absolutely. So I want to do a shout out for the Atlanta Constitution and also for na newspapers dot.com. because I read a lot of articles about Fred Tokar in the Atlanta Constitution through ah my subscription to newspapers dot.com. And this is where you can get newspapers back to the, you know, 1800s on any topic. And after the murder of his wife, the Atlanta Constitution pretty much um was the go-to newspaper to find out what was happening with this guy, Fred Tokar. So the next few facts
00:22:03
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I gleaned directly from those newspapers back in the early 1990s. So here we go. So when Sweet Sarah, the school teacher marketing pro, met Fred Tokars, he was then working in the Fulton County District Attorney's office. He was tall and slender with a sensitive rather than a handsome face. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, he combed his unruly hair,
00:22:32
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
light brown hair behind his protruding ears. Sounds kind of cute. He looked a little like Clark Kent and a lock like an accountant, which he was.
00:22:44
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And um before he learned, you know, got his law degree in night school.
00:22:48
Caroline
Yeah.
00:22:50
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So the thing about Fred that wound up in every newspaper article about his clean career, if you could call him that, is that he was a habitual self-promoter.
00:22:59
Caroline
Hmm.
00:23:05
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Although he never prosecuted any cases that it involved either white-collar crime or computer fraud, he quickly proclaimed himself an expert in those fields, and he began teaching at night law schools, local colleges, and accounting, tax, and law enforcement seminars,
00:23:24
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And this I got from the assistant district attorney, John Turner, who worked with him. So he, in his own mind, he's an expert. So he says to other people, I'm an expert.
00:23:35
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And pretty soon he's making some pocket change ah selling these classes on how to be something that he has actually never been.
00:23:45
Caroline
Well, in this particular instance, I will call him a man before his time, because I believe that's what they call the gig economy now.
00:23:45
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He studied it.
00:23:53
Caroline
But but I agree.
00:23:53
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Mm-hmm.
00:23:56
Caroline
Can I just remark on what does it mean to have a sensitive rather than a handsome face? That seems a very Southern dig.
00:24:04
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah, I think that when I look at pictures of Fred Tokar, he is a slender man. He doesn't have the wide jaw, the the heavy brows, the sort of the tousled hair of a handsome man.
00:24:16
Caroline
OK.
00:24:20
Caroline
Kind of a skinny, stickly man, then.
00:24:22
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
about Think about Tom Selleck, okay. So he's not Tom Selleck.
00:24:25
Caroline
OK. Yeah, not a tough time.
00:24:27
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
If Tom Selleck, way back in the day when he was doing Hawaii Five-O, lost a ton of weight and was near death, he might look a little like Fred Tokars did on a good day.
00:24:37
Caroline
OK. OK. So more of a skinny, slender scale, like probably
Fast Fred: A False Persona
00:24:44
Caroline
protruding kind of features is what I'm
00:24:46
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, and he had he had um delicate body.
00:24:50
Caroline
Maybe.
00:24:51
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He had delicate a delicate nose, a little pointy nose and a little thin mouth.
00:24:53
Caroline
oh
00:24:57
Caroline
Interesting.
00:24:57
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And yes, he had, yes.
00:24:58
Caroline
for the It's just an interesting picture. I don't think it's too foreign for me that someone would like have read one book on this section of the law and then declare themselves an expert and have all these classes only because that is now what we do today.
00:25:15
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You fake it till you make it, right?
00:25:17
Caroline
But at this time, this would have been dangerous. And I do still think it's dangerous when you do it with tax and, you know, the law, like those are two very, like you said, they're really new. They're very particular, strict industries, right?
00:25:31
Caroline
They're very meticulous. You have to be very detail oriented. All the things. Good ethic.
00:25:35
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
There are a lot of lawyers nowadays who have podcasts, so.
00:25:39
Caroline
Yeah.
00:25:39
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You know, I mean, they they're they don't they're they're not defending the case. They're not prosecuting of the case, but they're going to tell you all about the case.
00:25:45
Caroline
No. from their, yeah, he won't really was.
00:25:47
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So I mean, you're right. He was but he was ahead of his time. So his nickname in the district attorney's office was Fast Fred. A reference Turner said, to the endless self-promotion, his eagerness to work on projects in which he took an interest, his predilection for the city's nightlife,
00:26:08
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And because when it came to women, he was always, always interested. So he was, well, they called him fra Fast Fred. So he's a delicate little ballet dancer out there conning everybody. Before his marriage, Tokars enthralled Sarah and her sister Chrissy with stories about cases on which he supposedly had worked and where in his accounts he frequently took center stage. For the sisters, Tokars was a window onto a grim and brutal world from which they had been insulated all of their lives.
00:26:52
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
but safe in their condominium, secure in their jobs, comfortably north of the city limits of Atlanta, they were fascinated rather than afraid of what Fred was talking about. By prosecuting criminals, Tokars was doing something more important than just making money, the sisters believed. He was demonstrating moral character. And that, said Chrissy, was part of his appeal and why his sister would marry such a man.
00:27:21
Caroline
I would marry such a man. I mean, that's, that is kind of a storybook version of what you're looking for.
00:27:29
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, you're looking for the real meal deal.
00:27:31
Caroline
Right.
00:27:32
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
and if you yeah I mean, trust but verify, Caroline. Trust but verify.
00:27:35
Caroline
Well, a hundred percent, you know, we're all selling a story out there. You're looking for the, you know, the like first draft in the trash first. Like you really want to see what what's really going on here.
00:27:46
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Right. Yes, yes. For Tokars, who had political aspirations and who also made no secret of his desire to become a tax attorney with a wealthy clientele, Sarah was an asset to him at the time they got married.
00:28:02
Caroline
See.
00:28:03
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Not only was she beautiful, she was personable, but she also had desirable social contacts in a business, you know, nightclubs to which he was attracted because that's where a lot of wealthy kind of shady people are showing up. What Tokars may have overlooked or simply chose to ignore was Sarah's basic nature that she was at her heart, tradition bound. She was the Catholic daughter of a surgeon and his wife
00:28:37
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
the middle child in a family of seven sisters who wanted nothing more than to duplicate her parents' marriage and recreate her childhood for her children on her own.
00:28:49
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
That breaks my heart because I can relate.
00:28:50
Caroline
Me too. Yeah.
00:28:52
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She saw and took ours a man who had similar virtues. And on the surface, they were there. They they were from the same type of family, said her sister Chrissy.
00:29:02
Caroline
yeah
00:29:04
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She just kind of assumed that they'd be the same. And in the youth-driven culture that defined the nightlife, she was promoted. Sarah was beginning to feel old. She was over 30. Remember, she was 31 when she met him. One marriage had already failed, so she's getting a little nervous. She wanted to have children, Chrissy said. That was the most important thing to her. She wanted to have children.
00:29:31
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, obviously Fred was a bad pick, but that's because he of his con man exterior. That is not her fault. I have a lot of sympathy for Sarah. There was no such thing back then of, um, you know, uh, secrets dot.com that you can pay $10 to and find out all the arrests that people have had and all the bad things they've done.
00:29:50
Caroline
Right.
00:29:55
Caroline
hundred percent Yeah, you couldn't you couldn't sort of look at his social media page and see who his friends were and what he comments on, what he likes, what he doesn't.
00:30:02
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Right, right. And there again, you know, he was not really putting out his real self. So, you know, I do not fault Sarah for falling in love with him. She married two wrong men and that must have eaten at her toward the end of her life.
00:30:18
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
But soon she knew that Fred was sleeping with multiple women and she started, you know, the the the scales are coming off of her eyes. She can see that he was shady.
00:30:28
Caroline
Mm-hmm.
00:30:30
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
and he was stingy with her. She had only a small allowance to take care of her two boys. Mike was born two years after Ricky, so she's got Ricky and Mikey. Fred had only wanted one child, and I don't even think he wanted the one. Fred wouldn't allow any money to be spent on the house or the boys. When Sarah argued with Fred, he would become physically violent with her, you know, grab her arm and cause marks on her arm that she would have to then cover up. And he scared her into submission. Sarah was smart. She knew that he had lots of money. She understood that many clients he had from the drug and nightclub world were hiding money. And Fred was helping them, not just in court, but when they got into a jam, he also hid money for them. He munder he might he laundered a lot of money in Nassau.
00:31:29
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
and in various Bahamian banks. And she kind of was picking up on this stuff.
00:31:34
Caroline
yeah
00:31:35
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She asked for a divorce and she told him she was leaving.
Sarah's Realization and the Threat of Divorce
00:31:41
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
When she did, Fred Tokar outlined for her just who he knew in the judicial world, including the family court.
00:31:51
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
he would She would never see her boys again. is what he said to her. And it wasn't a threat. It was a fact. He was very confident about that.
00:32:03
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Fred knew her heart by that point. A divorce would cost him money. She's going to want child support.
00:32:11
Caroline
Yeah.
00:32:12
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She's going to want ah alimony. And that was his true love.
00:32:18
Caroline
Yeah.
00:32:19
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You're going to want to take my money away from me. He would not stop at anything to get more and more and more and more and one more money just to squirrel it away and move up in the criminal world. And while I say that, I also know that in four years between Mikey's birth and Sarah's death, Sarah was living in a hell.
00:32:43
Caroline
It sounds awful and I feel so bad for her because... ah She is so smart and capable and she did get trapped. I mean, this is like going down a path, turning around and realize you've been, you know, like Goldilocks about it or whatever.
00:32:59
Caroline
You just, she she is trapped. And then now there's, she probably senses the dangerous element that is his clientele.
00:33:08
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Mm hmm.
00:33:08
Caroline
You know, meaning, okay, yes, he's fixed in there. Plus then he straight up threatens her. Cause he's right. From what I understand about family courts, very broken, it's been broken forever.
00:33:17
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Oh, yeah.
00:33:18
Caroline
And it isn't what the facts are, it's who you know. And so that is really scary and unfortunate. And what can anyone explain to me why people get greedy like this with money, but then they never like spend it on anything that makes sense. Like he's just hoarding it. He's not, why wouldn't you want to spend money on your house and your kids and make them look like the same lifestyle you're trying to present? It's weird.
00:33:45
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
oh Caroline, listeners, this is what I think. Wherever your fortune is, there is your heart also.
00:33:57
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And I think that's where your treasure is. Your heart will be found there also. Something like that is in ah the Bible. This is old, this is ancient.
00:34:09
Caroline
Yeah.
00:34:10
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
you're You want to know who the person is? Where are they spending their money?
00:34:16
Caroline
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
00:34:18
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So where is he spending his money? He's hiding it because he wants to be at the top.
00:34:23
Caroline
Yeah. Just wants the label doesn't even, he's not even going through the machinations of the accessories of a successful life. He's just acquiring. I don't know. Strikes me as odd.
00:34:38
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So Sarah is, ah Sarah's living in hell. She lived in a broken down house that was in a luxury neighborhood.
00:34:47
Caroline
Like what? I don't get it.
00:34:48
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
It was a great house at the beginning. Beautiful mansion type house.
00:34:50
Caroline
Right.
00:34:53
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
But he won't fix the dishwasher. He won't give her money to fix the washing machine.
00:34:59
Caroline
Right.
00:34:59
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He won't give her money to have somebody come in and fix the electric, whatever that just went on the fritz.
00:35:06
Caroline
Yeah.
00:35:06
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
she he She's living in hell. Her children were lacking. They didn't have the care that they needed. They didn't have the clothing and the sense of belonging that they needed.
00:35:21
Caroline
Shocking.
00:35:22
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She was cheated on all the time and she was threatened all the time. He wouldn't pay to even fix the patio door that one of his criminal friends broke.
00:35:37
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
When they tried to get in the house, either to steal something or to kill her, I don't know, but the patio door at the time of her, at the time of her death, was broken and he wouldn't fix it.
00:35:41
Caroline
Oh jeez!
00:35:53
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And she's there in that house by herself with those kids constantly. He wouldn't buy her a good security system. She begged him. She knew he represented drug lords and other people in the criminal underworld.
00:36:04
Caroline
Yeah.
00:36:06
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And they she also knew they were always killing each other. So Fred Tokar thought nothing of his behavior toward his own family until during an argument after ah divorce about divorce,
00:36:20
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Sarah made it clear that she was aware of his underhanded deeds. That was a mistake.
00:36:27
Caroline
yeah big mistake yeah dont
00:36:29
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She maybe didn't know all the details, but she knew who he was hanging out with and what was going on.
00:36:37
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And, you know, unfortunately she did not know how horribly dangerous Fred Tokars was. He took all that on and he continued to torment her, but it did begin to dawn on him that she knew too much. And he had to deal with her once and for all. And divorce was not in his mind.
00:37:00
Caroline
Yeah.
00:37:01
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So just a word about exactly what it was that Fred was actually doing besides helping criminals get lighter and lighter or no sentences in the court. There is a term for the person in charge of a dummy organization. This was something that I learned on my journey to understand Fred Tokars and Sarah Tokars. There's a term if you're the dummy owner of a dummy organization where you're laundering your money.
00:37:31
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
that person is called the nominee.
00:37:36
Caroline
Now, when we say dummy organization, just bring it up to current terminology, is that like a shell company?
00:37:42
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yes. Yes.
00:37:45
Caroline
Because this is also before his time.
00:37:45
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You are
00:37:46
Caroline
Let's give it up to Fred again. This happens now all the time.
00:37:48
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I don't know. that might be and might That might go way, way back. I don't know. All I know is that when you're a criminal and you're rich because you are engaging in criminal activity and you're claiming to have an income of $2,500 a year and you're not paying any taxes and you're getting a lot of government subsidies because of your low income, where are you going to put that money?
00:38:05
Caroline
Right.
00:38:12
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You cannot put it in a bank.
00:38:14
Caroline
yeah You got to put it in a smaller tank with a really drippy style faucet so that no so suspicion as to like where this money is coming from is raised.
00:38:24
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah, you you do. And you by you, I mean, don't do this, Caroline. But by...
00:38:28
Caroline
Oh, God, no. But I watch a ton of shows about this. And its it's kind of comical because it is very elaborate. There's all these shell companies. And then I realized it's entirely why the economy tanked in 2008.
00:38:37
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yes.
00:38:42
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, that's a very good point, is that it hurts real people.
00:38:46
Caroline
Oh, it hurts all the realist people.
00:38:46
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
and
00:38:48
Caroline
The people engaged in this are not real in my mind.
00:38:48
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
ah It hurts all things, yeah. it's it's It's bad, it's bad. So if you're gonna start up a dummy company called ah Lamps Incorporated America, that's your, I just made that up.
00:38:57
Caroline
yeah
00:39:01
Caroline
yeah
00:39:01
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I'm looking at my lamp. So i you're going to have that, ah have the headquarters in the Bahamas, and you're going to name Caroline Darrow,
00:39:15
Caroline
no
00:39:15
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Um, or some other Caroline or, so you know, you're going to, you're going to name it, uh, for, uh, that person is the president.
00:39:16
Caroline
Yes.
00:39:25
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So you're the nominee.
00:39:25
Caroline
Yep. I'm the nominee. I'm the one. Because if something goes down, a real name is going to need to come up for like the auditors or the you know whatever that environment is.
00:39:34
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Right.
00:39:36
Caroline
And so the nominee has to be there. Be ready.
00:39:38
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yes. So Fred was helping all his drug dealing contacts take their drug money in launderette through various nightclubs where in a back room somewhere, the drugs were being sold in large quantities. The drug money was then shipped off to fake corporations put together legally by Fred Tokars. Fred had huge paydays from all of these criminals for all of this incorporation that he was doing for them.
00:40:06
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Various people, including the people he had kill his wife, were nominees of these incorporated entities, which were actually fake ways to cover up profits from the drug trade. So this is what he was doing with his promising life.
00:40:27
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
This is the
00:40:28
Caroline
You're right, because he could have easily channeled this into a successful but like accounting firm or a law firm or both. You're right. because why would you This takes a lot of energy, a lot of smarts. It takes like literally the exact same amount to do it through the legitimate means.
00:40:46
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yes, he had blind ambition.
00:40:48
Caroline
Blind ambition.
00:40:48
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
he was an him It looked like good ambition, but it was a blind ambition, meaning it's ambition for our ambitions sake and ambition being the code word for money and the accumulation of money.
00:40:52
Caroline
Right.
00:40:57
Caroline
See? Yeah. Yes. Yeah? Yeah.
00:41:05
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
um um So Sarah wasn't stupid. She wanted to live a traditional life of love and service to family and community. But once Fred Toker told her how he would easily win full custody of Ricky and Mike because of all the people he had wrapped around his little finger at the courthouse, it was like ice water to her face. She woke up and she decided to get the goods on Fred and use that as collateral. Well, you know, you woke up, but you're not put together the way that Fred Toker says, and you're not going to understand.
00:41:43
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
the trouble that you're causing for yourself, but she was trying. She wanted her children to be cared for or get that man away from them so they wouldn't be like him.
00:41:55
Caroline
Yeah.
00:41:58
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She talked to a divorce lawyer who told her, frankly, that you know he could not promise her custody of her children no matter what information she brought forward.
00:42:09
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He tried to dissuade her, I think, from trying to quote, get the goods on thread, but she persisted. She broke into his safe and found records of all the fake corporations, all the names of the nominees, and all the money offshore.
The Murder Plot and Aftermath
00:42:28
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She showed it to her sister and her cousin. the ah Then she gave her sister, Christie, a bundle of papers.
00:42:38
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
all of these things that were coming from the safe and told her that if anything happened to me, this is this is Sarah talking, Christi, if anything happens to me, take these papers, you need to take them to the police right away.
00:42:56
Caroline
like there's oh I admire Sarah because this is the right thing to do. But I just think you did it wrong, probably because you are a good person. You don't have the mindset to try to think about what a bad person might do in all the with all these details. That attorney is a good attorney, but he should have been more forceful about the realities. Someone's going to kill you. If you are damned to do this, here's how you do it. And I would have gone and got somebody from the FBI.
00:43:24
Caroline
I would have gone and tried to dig a little deeper into the people who investigate these teams of crimes or whatever, just to say like, how stupid am I for doing this? Because here's my end game. Help me.
00:43:37
Caroline
um
00:43:37
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
She just had no clue sheep. This is, you know, criminals have their own language.
00:43:43
Caroline
I know that. Well, the it's funny because I get in this trap all the time where it's like I can't figure out what to do because I'm not a criminal mind.
00:43:51
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Right. And she, you know, she just did not speak that language.
00:43:56
Caroline
No, but she's smart to tell her sister. And she clearly has an understanding of the level of danger she's getting into when she says, hey.
00:44:03
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
If anything happens to me, it's almost like something you say when you really deep down cannot comprehend how much danger you are in.
00:44:03
Caroline
i mean Yeah.
00:44:12
Caroline
Yeah. Right.
00:44:14
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Meanwhile, Fred was absorbing what she probably knew and he very easily decided the best thing to do is kill her. One of his nominees named Eddie Lawrence agreed to kill Sarah, but he didn't want to be the gunman.
00:44:30
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
It's just not his thing. So he hired a criminal named Curtis Rohwer. Now, by criminal, this is a 20-year-old drug addict. ah Not a lot of critical thinking there. So what could possibly go wrong, Caroline? What could possibly go wrong with his plot? It is Thanksgiving 1992. And Sarah and Fred and the kids drove to Florida to Sarah's family home
00:45:02
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
in Florida starting on that Tuesday before the dinner. Now, actually, Sarah drove the kids and the dog and Fred flew himself. He always flew on a plane. He had a bad back all the time and couldn't go by car. When I read that about Fred had a bad back, I'm thinking to myself, yeah, you, sir, are a vulnerable narcissist.
00:45:30
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You have no backbone and you have no actual character.
00:45:32
Caroline
Right.
00:45:36
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
sure You have no values other than money.
00:45:37
Caroline
Right. Yeah.
00:45:42
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And that was the idea about him being a vulnerable narcissist when it hit me that he had a bad back. And he did. But as he flew and his family drove, after all Sarah's family,
00:45:52
Caroline
um
00:45:58
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
were hugging and chitty chatted and ate a traditional Thanksgiving meal that his wife would be murdered at the end of it all. He knew all of that while he was flying on the plane.
00:46:10
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He knew all of that when he was at their house. He knew when he was playing the good guy at their house, which must have looked like fake.
00:46:19
Caroline
It had to have been a little overly because I do think people like this actually their one tell that they have no control over is there they dive a little too deep into the facade persona that they're, you know, using to, you know, it's a little akin to love bombing.
00:46:20
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
ah He
00:46:35
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Uh-huh.
00:46:35
Caroline
They're a little too nice, a little too accommodating, a little too forgiving.
00:46:37
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I think the ah modern word for that, Carolina, is creepy.
00:46:41
Caroline
Well, yeah, it's gross, smarmy, the car sales mini behavior that you can spot a mile away.
00:46:42
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
It's just creepy. It's creepy.
00:46:48
Caroline
You're like, okay, well, what is it that you want?
00:46:48
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
There you go.
00:46:50
Caroline
Like, why are you acting like this? You must want something. that That's always my response, because like, no, restore your peach.
00:46:54
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So it's like that car salesman that wanted me to buy a car. and
00:46:58
Caroline
I think about that all the time.
00:46:59
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He called me a Miss Georgia Peach and I told Caroline, uh, she was like probably eight years old.
00:47:05
Caroline
I was.
00:47:06
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I said, get in the car, get in the car. We're not buying here.
00:47:08
Caroline
We did it right in front of his face!
00:47:09
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So anyway, yeah, get in the car.
00:47:10
Caroline
It was the funniest thing ever!
00:47:12
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I mean, he's like, what'd I say?
00:47:15
Caroline
Ah, no.
00:47:15
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, you know, I don't like smart me people and they're creepy. And Fred Tokars is the king of creeps. He took a plane to Alabama leaving Florida now to see a client and he left on Tuesday.
00:47:27
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Sarah and the boys drove nine hours home on Sunday, leaving her parents' house about noon. When they finally entered the garage around 9.30 p.m. that night, Curtis Rower kidnapped them. He took six-year-old Ricky out of the backseat and put him up front. He got into the backseat with a sleeping four-year-old Mikey in the car seat. He ordered Sarah into the driver's seat and made her drive to a secluded location where Curtis Rower met up with Eddie Lawrence, who remained in the shadows. Curtis Rower, still in the back seat, next to sleeping Mikey, shot Sarah in the head with a sawed-off shotgun. He got out of the car and he ran. Ricky turned off the ignition. Remember, he's in the front seat. He woke up his brother and he told him to walk.
00:48:25
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Our mom is dead and we have to go find help.
00:48:29
Caroline
Oh my god.
00:48:32
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yep.
00:48:33
Caroline
That's so scary and sad for such a small child.
00:48:37
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yes. They walked in the dark together to the nearest house where the residents rang up the police. After the murder, Fred took himself and his boys to Florida to harbor away from the press with Sarah's parents and sisters.
00:48:56
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Eventually, the boys were put in the care of Sarah's parents and sisters where they stayed until they were old enough to go into the world alone.
00:49:04
Caroline
Oh, thank God.
00:49:05
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, but, you know, they're marked for life and what we always say, it never goes away.
00:49:08
Caroline
Well, yeah, but at least I didn't. and No, but they didn't have to get subjected to any more of Fred.
00:49:11
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Family murder never goes away.
00:49:15
Caroline
I mean, is my thing, but you're right. I mean, they're.
00:49:18
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Good point, good point. Police could find no burglary evidence at the scene, at the crime scene, and their efforts turned quickly to who would hire a hit on Sarah. Someone had inside information about when Fred would not be home, when Sarah and her boys would be home. Police asked neighbors, family, friends, and they all pointed in one direction. Fred took her.
00:49:48
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Sarah had confided to a number of people about her plans to gain leverage against Fred in a divorce proceeding. And you know, that was both stupid and also smart.
00:49:59
Caroline
Yeah, it's I was thinking the same thing. I'm like, thank God she did that.
00:50:04
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yes.
00:50:04
Caroline
But it's probably because she did it even one time that Fred you know finally got wise. I don't know why he wouldn't have always thought that from the beginning. Obviously, if you're going to treat someone so poorly,
00:50:18
Caroline
they're yeah I don't know, anyway, but it is a catch-22 because I think I would shout it to the rooftops, but in shouting to the rooftops, you have to understand the kind of target you're putting on yourself directly.
00:50:30
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, the other thing about a narcissist, be they a ah killer cut type knife narcissist or a um vulnerable narcissist, you just can't imagine how other people are feeling.
00:50:48
Caroline
Yeah.
00:50:49
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Because you're and so in love with yourself, you're the center of your own universe, you have no perception of other people.
00:50:50
Caroline
Yeah.
00:50:58
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So he probably thought of her as a Barbie doll of some sort.
00:51:02
Caroline
That's a good point. Yeah.
00:51:04
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And, um you know, but she wasn't. She finally woke up, but she had no criminal skills.
00:51:10
Caroline
Yeah.
00:51:13
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So she could not see what was coming.
00:51:15
Caroline
Yeah.
00:51:16
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And it's just awful. Luckily for police, a tipster turned in Curtis and they arrested him. He eventually pled guilty by eventually, I wonder, was that what, 20 minutes?
00:51:28
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Um, I mean, he's 20 and he's a drug addict.
00:51:31
Caroline
Yeah, right.
00:51:31
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So, you know, and of course, you know, Curtis pointed to Eddie Lawrence and police determined that he had another, that they had another pending case against Eddie.
00:51:45
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So they put him in jail for that offense.
00:51:47
Caroline
Nice.
00:51:48
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
They told him he needed to talk about his role in Fred took our scheme to kill his wife. He held out until they put the Florida law about death for murder in front of him and showed him the evidence that they had, including the testimony of the shooter, Curtis Rohwer, who had taken a plea in exchange for the true testimony about Eddie Lawrence who hired him.
00:52:15
Caroline
You know, I'm not, I don't believe in the death penalty, but from the cases I've been reading lately, it is quite a nice little thing to have in your pocket when you're pushing for this conversation to continue.
00:52:15
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Seeing the...
00:52:23
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
you Yeah, yeah. um Yes, seeing the cards against him Eddie Lawrence took a plea of guilty and got life without parole instead of death. And now the hunt for Fred was underway and Fred got the word quickly due to his underworld connections. Fred Tokar went to a Florida hotel because remember he's staying, he's huddling with his in-laws after her death because he, number one, needs babysitter for his children and number two, because he's hiding from the press. So when he found out from his underworld friends that ah his arrest was imminent, he went to a Florida hotel and tried to kill himself with a drug overdose. He wrote a suicide letter. His father-in-law, a doctor, all actually a surgeon, came to the hotel room to resuscitate Fred.
00:53:21
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
That must have been hard.
00:53:23
Caroline
Yeah!
00:53:23
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I could not determine whether it was Fred who called him or the police called him. I don't know, but either way, Fred Tokar lived. His suicide note was now in the hands of the law, who obviously took his attempt at suicide for consciousness of guilt.
00:53:42
Caroline
Yeah.
00:53:44
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So his attorney knew, Fred's attorney knew that Fred was about to be arrested and and wrote a script as to what he should say in a press conference as asserting his innocence. So he knew he was going to be you know arrested and he just needed to make a statement, please actual lawyer, will you tell me what to say? So there was a script. In the middle of this scripted Fred statement,
00:54:13
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And he was following the script, saying these words, putting them together in sentences. He started crying. And he went way off script. And he said, and I'm going to quote it, I began to think of Sarah and my two boys, Rick and Mike, and I became extremely depressed, he said, choking on his own tears.
00:54:40
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I started to think of the lifestyle I was losing. Not only my wife, but my lifestyle. Blubber, blubber, blubber, blubber, not for Sarah, not for Ricky, not for Mikey, not the family.
00:54:58
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
When he thought about losing his lifestyle, that's when he starts to cry.
00:55:01
Caroline
no
00:55:05
Caroline
That's so weird. This is such a weird set of like brain synapses firing off here. I just don't get it.
00:55:15
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Well, he obviously uses his vulnerability to get what he wants. In this case, sympathy.
00:55:23
Caroline
Yeah, or like this distractionary sympathy because he obviously knows he did it.
00:55:24
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
being You, you would think. The entire nation that was following this horrible event took a collective gasp at the sheer magnitude of this man's self-centeredness.
00:55:45
Caroline
Yeah, that's crazy. It's a crazy thing to say. My lifestyle. Oof.
00:55:50
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I love it when a criminal mind is running down the street naked so you can see what they're thinking. I love it.
00:55:59
Caroline
That's a great way to say it. Yes, I love it too.
00:56:07
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He was arrested. He went to trial. He was found guilty. He was sentenced to life without parole. His mother got up on the stand and begged the jury not to put him to death.
00:56:20
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And you know how she did it? She told the jury, when I thought about Fred, my boy, ah when I thought about him being in prison all those years, all by himself, I thought I couldn't ah couldn't deal with it. But now that you're talking about killing him, I would rather that he be put in prison for the rest of his life so I could come and see him.
00:56:50
Caroline
Whoa.
00:56:51
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
That's what she said, and it did the trick, did the trick, spared in the death penalty.
00:56:52
Caroline
Interesting.
00:56:54
Caroline
oh
00:56:57
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Fred was 28 years into his life sentence, so he was 28 years sitting in a cage when he died in 2020 after contracting a fever.
00:57:09
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
When I hear that somebody died after a fever in 2020, I'm thinking, well, that's got to be COVID.
00:57:15
Caroline
Yeah. it Well, I would assume, yeah, because after 2020,
00:57:19
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
In a prison,
00:57:20
Caroline
fever I mean unless you've got like pneumonia or something but they would just say pneumonia
00:57:26
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I could find no obituary for him. No resting place like he's, but you know, but I did find a picture of a gravestone that was unattributed to where it was with Fred and his mother's name engraved
Fred Tokars' Arrest and Legacy
00:57:42
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
on it. So they're bear buried on the same plot. I think it must have been COVID that killed him, but I really don't care.
00:57:45
Caroline
huh
00:57:50
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He was already confined to a wheelchair in prison, good, due to a very serious disease that was in his back. Fred always had trouble with his back because he had no backbone, in my opinion.
00:58:04
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
No spine, no character. He says that is why he got to go fly to Florida. And he had Sarah, Ricky, and Mikey drive for 10 hours because he caught a lot of shit for that.
00:58:17
Caroline
Well, I thought it the whole time.
00:58:17
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So he's, yeah.
00:58:19
Caroline
I think this, the only other case we had was where the father was a pilot and it was just, they had been in a car accident. So that's why they fly and he drove and all this thing.
00:58:28
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah, right.
00:58:29
Caroline
But like, I think it's odd when families don't travel together, even if there's one person has a travel restriction in the other, like then somebody relent and go together, you know?
00:58:39
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Uh-huh. Yeah, she, she drove, it's a 10-hour drive.
00:58:45
Caroline
Long time.
00:58:45
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
ah She drove their van and he's up there in an airplane. Um, you know, and I'm like you. I think that you know he's just thinking about all the money he did not want to spend on his family.
00:58:58
Caroline
right yeah
00:58:59
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He won't he won't fix the front door. you know He won't fix the patio door. Why would he want to buy them airline tickets? And just like that, he said in his suicide note, this was also in his suicide note.
00:59:13
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I'm not going to read the whole note. You can find it online. But I have suffered more than you can imagine is what he said in his suicide note. The press has made my life unbearable.
00:59:26
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
The press killed me. He said this. Actually, Fred, it was the evidence of your crimes that became unbearable for you and killed you and put you in prison or whatever.
00:59:35
Caroline
Yeah.
00:59:39
Caroline
Yeah. There's like, you know, there's something I stumbled upon recently that I really liked. It's like, it's not it's not me calling the bad behavior out that's problematic. It's the bad behavior.
00:59:50
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Right. Right.
00:59:52
Caroline
So it's like, friend, it's not that everyone exposed you, it was that you were living like that.
00:59:54
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Like, yeah, yo, yeah, it's like with whistleblowers get pulverized in our society.
01:00:01
Caroline
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
01:00:04
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And, you know, it's the same thing is going on here.
01:00:08
Caroline
Totally. it's It isn't my calling it out. It is the fact that you were behaving that way. But as it a society, we struggle with that distinction.
01:00:13
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Right, right.
01:00:18
Caroline
by
01:00:19
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
You know, sadly, Ricky,
01:00:19
Caroline
and
01:00:22
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
struggled, but he is alive today and he keeps a low key. He's alive as far as I know. Mikey struggled and finally succumbed to an embolism behind the knee his knee at the age of 31 on April 3rd, 2020, right after his father died.
01:00:42
Caroline
What's an emeraldism? Is that like a c clot?
01:00:44
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Blood clot, yep.
01:00:44
Caroline
Oh.
01:00:46
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
um I've heard a lot of things. A lot of people thought he killed himself. um There was a huge and loving outpouring of positive press after what these two boys went through and what they meant to the Atlanta community.
01:01:05
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
When when little Mikey died in 2020, the Atlanta community just mourned.
01:01:08
Caroline
here
01:01:14
Caroline
Oh, of course.
01:01:15
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And there were a lot of articles about the murder that came back up. And yeah,
01:01:20
Caroline
Well, you always relive the story when it's brought back fresh.
01:01:24
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
they were mourning Mikey's death, they were mourning Sarah's death, they were mourning Ricky and the struggles that he has had in his life because of this man. And I hesitate to use that word, so I'll scratch that out and I'll say monster.
01:01:41
Caroline
Well, yeah, I'm thinking of Ricky because now he's here. I hope that he is in the hands and arms of the Atlantic community still because that sounds safe.
01:01:51
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Yeah, I mean, um or her parents' family.
01:01:56
Caroline
Yeah, I mean that, yeah, somewhere safe.
01:01:58
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
I went out on Court TV. I watched current trials on Court TV that I'm interested in, but I also went out to their archives and I found the trial.
01:02:10
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And at the trial of Fred Tokar, his brother ah had to read the suicide note out loud.
01:02:19
Caroline
Oh god.
01:02:20
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
um And everybody in the courtroom was crying. And Fred was crying for himself. His brother was crying because his brother has murdered his wife.
01:02:35
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And now we're in a trial and I'm having to testify.
01:02:35
Caroline
Yeah.
01:02:40
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And um the juris were crying, but everybody was glaring at Fred like, you you are saying you were in pain?
01:02:53
Caroline
Yeah, right, right. Ugh, it had to have been infuriating at moments, you know?
01:03:01
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
um That is the end of this story and this family that was basically annihilated, but not technically, they went on to live with enormous pain.
01:03:17
Caroline
Yeah.
01:03:18
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So many people hurt by this man because he had this greed.
01:03:21
Caroline
yeah
01:03:28
Caroline
Yeah.
01:03:29
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He did not have the greed or the hunger for a good life and service to others.
01:03:35
Caroline
Yeah.
01:03:38
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
Being a daddy, being a husband, being respected, he didn't want that.
01:03:43
Caroline
yeah
01:03:44
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
He wanted money.
01:03:48
Caroline
All to himself.
01:03:52
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
So today's episode was researched, written and narrated by Bridget and Caroline and produced by Andy. And our episodes are airing every other week. Please like us, subscribe, give us a five star review. It all helps other people find us. And we really love to have listeners. We thank you listeners. We appreciate you so much.
01:04:20
Andy, Bridget and Caroline
And one other thing, please don't forget to live and let live. Bye-bye, Caroline.
01:04:29
Caroline
Bye-bye.