Predator insists he must be locked up
A Spokane man says he needs to remain in custody because he can’t control his desire to molest boys and fears he may kill someone.
Court documents show that Richard D. Frye, 47, told corrections officials he feared he might become a killer like John Wayne Gacy, who raped and murdered 33 men and boys in the 1970s and buried 28 of them in the basement of his Chicago home.
Frye joined Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Karol last week in recommending that he be locked up indefinitely as a “sexually violent predator,” and Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza obliged.
“He demanded it,” said Frye’s court-appointed attorney, Tim Trageser.
Trageser said he counseled Frye to resist, but “I have to respect his position when he says, ‘I don’t want to offend again.’ He was really sincere. He said, ‘I don’t want to hurt any more kids.’ “
Karol estimated that 40 percent of alleged sexual predators agree to commitment because of an incentive the Attorney General’s Office offers, based on the possibility of successful treatment. But, Trageser said, “What is rare is that Frye was stepping up and saying, ‘I need to be in there.’ Most guys fight to get out of there, not to get in there.”
In fact, while Frye was embracing commitment, alleged sexual predator James M. White, 54, of Spokane, was putting up a vigorous fight in a different courtroom. White’s trial is still in progress.
Frye completed his latest prison term in April but remained in custody while state officials moved to have him committed to the Department of Social and Health Services’ treatment program for sexual predators. The civil procedure is similar to the one used to force people into state mental hospitals.
Under control of state
People who are declared sexual predators remain under state control until they can convince a judge they are no longer dangerous, which rarely happens. They can, however, petition annually for a “least restrictive alternative” that might free them from incarceration in the Special Commitment Center at McNeil Island.
The center is separate from the state prison also on McNeil Island, between Tacoma and Olympia. In addition to the prisonlike Special Commitment Center, the Department of Social and Health Services operates two “secure community transition facilities,” on McNeil Island and in Seattle.
State law spells out five requirements for sending sex offenders to the Special Commitment Center, including psychological evidence of mental abnormalities likely to lead to sex crimes. Karol bolstered her case against Frye with a 30-page report by Dr. Amy Phenix, a Cambria, Calif., psychologist who found, among other things, that Frye is a pedophile.
Trouble started early
Phenix’s report offers the following insights into Frye’s life:
Frye had a troubled childhood in which he was physically and – starting at age 8 – sexually abused. Frye reportedly would “act out” by placing dead mice in his dresser drawers, smearing feces on the walls of his home and torturing animals.
He claimed to have had sex with various male relatives, friends and neighbors from the time he was 8 years old. But Phenix’s report also notes that Frye has made a number of contradictory statements over the years. He has claimed to want treatment while refusing to participate, has said he wants to stop offending while contending there is no harm in men having sex with teenage boys.
Frye attended North Central and Newport high schools.
At 15, he stole a car and was sent to the J-Bar-D Boy’s Ranch near Newport, Wash. There, while he was 17 or 18, he claimed to have had sex with three or four boys between the ages of 14 and 16.
Frye’s first conviction in a sex crime was in 1979, at age 20, when he molested a 14-year-old Spokane newspaper delivery boy. Charged with indecent liberties, Frye pleaded guilty to simple assault.
In 1979, Frye also married, thinking it might end his interest in men. It didn’t. His wife left him after four months and got an annulment. Frye then joined the Navy.
A court-martial convicted Frye of sodomy and attempted sodomy for raping a 19-year-old sailor at knifepoint in 1982 when he returned to his ship after a night of drinking onshore in the Philippines.
By that time, Frye had added frequent LSD use to his heavy drinking and marijuana smoking.
After a sentence of hard labor and a bad-conduct discharge, he returned to Spokane and met a woman in 1983 whom he later married.
A month after establishing that relationship, however, Frye lured a 16-year-old boy to a park and tried to rape him at gunpoint. When the boy wrestled the gun away and tried to shoot him with it – unsuccessfully because it turned out to be a pellet gun – Frye begged the boy for sex.
Frye pleaded guilty to second-degree assault in a plea bargain that required him to seek voluntary treatment at Eastern State Hospital after serving three months in jail. He said he was surprised when he was released without bail while waiting for admission to the mental hospital’s sex-offender treatment program.
Four months later, in December 1983, Frye told a probation officer he feared he might become another John Wayne Gacy.
Frye told Eastern State Hospital and state Department of Corrections psychologists he’d had fantasized about sexually assaulting women as well as boys, but he preferred boys. His ideal sex partner would be an attractive 15- to 16-year-old boy who was “looking for a father figure in his life.”
Asked about pornography, Frye reportedly said, “Love it.” He said he hadn’t viewed child pornography, but, “if I knew where to get it, I would have some of that.”
Frye’s probation was later revoked when he failed to complete sex-offender treatment at Eastern State Hospital, and he was sent to prison.
His wife had monthly conjugal visits with him in prison, but “broke off” their relationship just before his release in 1993.
In July 1997, Frye pleaded no contest to a first-degree child rape involving an 11-year-old boy who was staying overnight in a Spokane home where Frye was living with a girlfriend. He completed an eight-year sentence for that crime in April.