Ep 59 | ANTHONY FRENZEL Transcript

EP 59 | Anthony Frenzel Part 1

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Welcome back to Voices of a Killer. This week, we're talking to Anthony Frenzel, an inmate in a maximum security prison in Potosi. Unlike many of his fellow inmates who await death row, Anthony's crime took place not in a dark alley or behind closed doors, but down a strip of country highway in broad daylight.

In 2020, Anthony unintentionally killed an oncoming driver in a car accident, a mistake he deeply regrets. Anthony's case is unique to others we've had on this podcast as, at the time of our conversation, his trial is still ongoing. With the story unresolved, many questions linger unanswered. Yet Anthony's story gives us insight into how the law punishes vehicular related deaths.

How can we fairly hold irresponsible drivers accountable? And how do individuals like Anthony often receive the short end of the legal stick? Join us for a story about beefed up charges, reckless driving, and a two year long wait for trial on this episode of Voices of a Killer.

So Anthony, where were you born and raised? No, I'm from St louis area, outside of St Louis. And how would you describe your childhood, growing up? You had an easy or a difficult time, or what? I grew up in Manhattan, I guess like your normal middle class upbringing. It was a pretty good childhood, for real. Yeah. Did you have siblings? Yeah, I got an older sister. You have a relationship with your family while you're in prison? No, there's a couple people that are still in my corner, but most of them are I don't talk to most of them.

Why? is it because of what happened that they don't talk to you? Some of it, yeah. Both my parents are dead. My stepdad's still in the car with me. My family's split up. Once I started doing dumber stuff, they didn't talk to me much and then all this happened. So, it was only... WHen you started doing what, they stopped talking to you? Dumber stuff. Like getting in trouble and... Yeah, what age did you start getting into trouble?

Well, I got a DUI, I got a couple DUIs when I was in my early 20s, and then I got a couple drug charges when I was like 23 or 24. So you say you had a pretty normal childhood, and you didn't really witness too much drugs and alcohol in your family. What made you go down that route? I started drinking a lot in high school, well, middle school really.

I just hanged out with like kind of the party crowd. And I started drinking real bad and just kept on drinking. What do you, what do you consider real bad? Well, let's see, during like high school and my earlier drinking days, I would get drunk all weekend long and started getting every night pain. And then progressed into waking up, having a couple shots, just to kill the hangover, going to work and drinking throughout the day, and just keep drinking.

I started drinking heavily probably 18, 19. Had you ever went to a rehab or anything like that? Well, I did a drug treatment in my 20s, a DOC treatment. How many DUIs or DWIs do you have total? Three of them. So, I'm sure drinking is a huge, huge problem in our country, with drinking and driving, I should say.

I can remember, I grew up in the 80s in Louisiana, and the drinking age there was still 18. And I got loved ones and family members and friends of loved ones or whatever that have gotten killed by drunk drivers. It's like cancer. Everybody knows somebody that's died for cancer. It's like everybody knows that somebody that's either gotten a DWI, gone to prison for it, or killed somebody in a wreck.

It's a really, really big deal. Every day. Some 37 people die from alcohol related car crashes in the US. The dig into the data, and you'll see that most of these drunk drivers are under 25 years of age. It's this demographic that's most likely to drive irresponsibly. Newly licensed kids are young and reckless.

They feel invincible to the world and impervious to the law. Young and reckless would also be an apt description of a 20 something Anthony Frenzel. Anthony tells me that his problematic relationship with alcohol. Began right around middle school, as he grew older, it progressed into what sounds like a dependency, with Anthony having to take drinks just to make it through the day.

This drinking habit Anthony tells me, alienated members of his family who wrote him off as a troublemaker. It also led to 3 separate DUI incidents in which cops caught Anthony drivingwhile inebriated. I wanted to hear more about these 3 DUIs. How did Anthony crack up so many in just a short space of time?

More on that after the break!

Bring me back to the first time you got your first DUI or DWI, were you drunk or on drugs or both or what? I was drunk. And how much did you drink that day? A whole bunch. It was probably like a 0,02 or 0,2. It was just really high. Just ignorantly high. Yeah, so what were you doing to get pulled over? Were you just driving erratically or what?

Yeah, I was swerving a little bit and I had, I was driving somebody home and he was acting a little out of window of the truck. So that was your first DUI, DWI, whatever you want to call it, and you probably got a misdemeanor for that. And it was probably a whole lot of trouble you had to go through to, to, to take care of that issue.

How much did that deter you from drinking and driving after that, the first time? Oh, none, almost none at all. My first DUI was over in Kansas in 2002 Model S. They really just kind of made me pay a fine out of it, didn't lose my license, didn't have to do any of that rigmarole you have to do around here.

Do you, looking back, do you wish they would have done something different to you? No, absolutely. I wish they, I wish it would have been a lot harder, because that was like the start of down the road kind of thing. So, obviously, and we'll get to this later, you're, you're in prison for drinking and driving and hurting somebody.

What should they have done to make sure that this doesn't happen again? Taking a license, you know, some, some prison time. And then we'll have some actual rehab type questions. So you think that your first time getting pulled over, you just blew up alcohol, you didn't hurt anybody, they caught you drinking and driving, you think that you and everyone else that gets caught the first time should go to prison?

At least jail time, but it's definitely something a little heavier than just what it is now. But you're saying that you got your first DWI and it wasn't enough to deter you. How soon after the first one did you get caught drinking and driving again? I didn't get caught for another The second one, how much were you drinking or doing drugs?

I drink a lot. I've been drinking all day long. Was anybody with you whenever they saw you leave to drive drinking like that? No. So you were on your own. Nobody could have said, "Hey, you shouldn't drive." Yeah, no, there was nobody around. What about the first time? You think somebody could have said, "Hey man, you're, that's not safe.

You could get in some legal trouble or hurt somebody yourself." No, absolutely. Yeah. Somebody, somebody should have said something, but ultimately you're the adult, but we do need help from time to time. So your second one, how old are you on your second one? 21? I think so 21. And you're going on your second DUI.

Where did this happen at? In Pacific. In Pacific. What were you doing that day? I just got off work and I was going, going to meet a buddy to go fishing. You got off work, so you had, you'd been drinking at work? Yeah. What kind of work did you do? I was a mechanic on a golf course. Did they know you were drinking on the job or you hid it?

No, they, I had to hide it. You had to hide it. What did you drink? To hide it like that. To be able to work little shooters, doing little fireball shooters. Nobody at work ever called you out on it, boss or nothing? No. The boss never did, but plus the other dude just drank with me while we was working. So it wasn't, yeah, like a strange thing.

Kind of like accepted a little bit. Yeah. So, whenever you left, and you'd been drinking pretty much the day, you were going to meet a friend to go fishing, did you make it to your friend or the fishing spot, or you got pulled over before then? No, I got pulled over before that. What was the reason he pulled you over?

Speeding. Speeding. And how easy was it for him to tell that you'd been drinking? I know he said I could smell it, he could smell it on me, and there was an open container in the truck. Did he make you give it to you? He said I gave it away. Yeah. Did you go through the whole sobriety thing or did he do a breathalyzer on you?

What happened? There were a couple of different stuff. I walked the line, eye test, I passed them, but then the supervisor pulled up and he had a portable breathalyzer and he said he had to have me blow it before it didn't leave. Did you do Yeah. What did you blow? 0,1 something. Wow. I think. And 0,08, 0,08 is actually the legal limit, and you actually were 0,1 something? Yeah. So that's pretty drunk. So now you're on number two, but this is actually a different state. You said your first one was in Kansas? Yeah. I'm from Shawnee County. How does Missouri recognize a second DWI when the first one was out of state? How'd that work? They saw it as my first one. Okay.

But in reality, it's actually your second. What did Missouri do to you for your first Missouri DWI? I think I got 30 days in the county jail. Then I had to do a SACOP class and some community service and pay some fines. Do you think out of any of that stuff there, was there any point in time at, at your age back then that you would have said to yourself, "I need to make some major changes or somebody is going to get hurt."

Cause I know those classes teach you like, "Hey, listen, you're, you're playing Russian roulette when you drink and drive, you're going to end up killing somebody or hurting yourself, or maybe hurting somebody really bad." So, that's why they do those to, to let you know that you could change the life, lives of others or yourself permanently.

Did anything get through to you? No. I was, I was arrogant and didn't think that I never thought I'd be, be one of the people to talk about. Why do you think you like that? I don't know. Maybe just a little bit of a God complex and thinking I was above everything and some of the people trying to tell me what was good or would happen didn't know what they were talking about.

I Classes that were right there with you or thinking the same thing? A fair number of them. What should they have done that time that you got a DWI in Missouri? Should they have put you in prison? They probably would have helped, I think, yeah. Yeah I mean that's a lot of stuff. Fines, community service, the classes you got to take, your record, you did 30 days in jail, you said you did 30 days in jail, right?

Yeah. Yeah, something like that. Nearly all U. S. states recognize the legal blood alcohol limit to be 0,8%, but the way they enforce their DUI laws can vary wildly. In some states, you'll be let off with a light fine or suspended license. In others, you're looking at jail time, even if it's your first drunk driving offense.

With three DUIs under his belt in two different states, Anthony has seen all kinds of charges. Community service, SATOP classes, jail time. He's been subjected to every possible punishment that's meant to deter people from driving irresponsibly. None of it has worked. Anthony, it seems, didn't take any of his charges very seriously.

He considered attending classes or paying off fines to be little more than an annoyance. And made no genuine effort to redress his reckless behavior. Although warned about the dangers of drunk driving, Anthony shrugged it off, somewhat detached from the risks associated with his behavior as if the classes he attended didn't apply to him.

It's this callous "don't care" attitude that Anthony now regrets. In hindsight, none of these interventions he took to heart. And as a result, things were about to get a whole lot worse. During that program. So, so you got your DWI in Missouri, you're out and you start going through the system. Did you ever drink and drive again while you were doing that?

Yeah. Fairly regularly. So now you've got your second one and nothing's changed. You're still drinking and driving. You said you did drugs. What kind of drugs are you doing? Shortly after that, my second DUI started using m**h. m**h. Okay. Where, why? Had you ever done it before or It was all, the first time was after the second DWI.

A handful maybe, maybe six, seven months after my first, or my second DUI. And that was the very, very first time you waited all the way to your, your early twenties to do m**h. How did you get introduced to that? Was it a friend, a girl, a coworker? Yeah, a a friend of mine after me and my baby mama split, I moved out with him and he, he introduced me to it.

And what did you think whenever he introduced you to it? Would you like, because all those years you'd probably be like, "I don't do that kind of stuff. I just drink." Now you have this moment to like, basically be somebody that uses m**h. What would it cause you to jump that fence? I was depressed and I was drinking a whole lot and just really didn't care too much about what was going on in my life.

Got you at a vulnerable time. So how did that make you feel doing it the first time? Did you snort it? Nah, I smoked it. How did it make you feel? Did you like it? Oh, I loved it. It killed, killed some of the, maybe sobered me up a little bit and gave me energy to work. I could work, keep working 16 hours a day and then still be up all night drinking, have energy the next day, getting high.

Just keep, keep going in that. Party and work day by day. Yeah. So from the first time you did m**h till the accident that put you in prison, how much time were we talking? Five years, four years in that, something around there. In that four or five years, did you start doing m**h pretty regularly? Yeah, at first it started off just a a little bit in the morning, just getting it through the day.

And after a few months it progressed to, yeah, like a regular usage throughout the day. Yeah. So isn't that crazy that you went so long into your adult life, a teenager, you don't mess with it. You graduate from, I assume you get done with high school, you're drinking heavily and partying and stuff. And, and then it takes you all the way to what, 21, 22, you said, till you do m**h?

Yeah. And then after that, it was almost instantly, you were just basically doing it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What kind of effects did that have on you with your job and relationships with your family and stuff? With jobs? I'd lose jobs for just stupid reasons. I'd work six months to a year for them and then I quit, quit or get fired, strained, whatever relationships I have with my family and my mother and mama and I just, I just quit caring about things.

I turned extremely selfish. Did you ever have any close calls or maybe even a hit and run during your career of drinking and driving? I had a bunch of close calls. I ended up with a few bumpers running off in the ditches or whatever. Have you ever hurt anybody on the roads and left? No, thank God. Yeah, that happens quite a bit.

Usually it's somebody in your scenario where they're drinking and they're like, "oh s**t..." here's the deal, man. I see a lot of cases. It just, it's just the way it is. It seems like in all, almost all 50 states, if you drink, you drive and you hurt or kill somebody, the odds of you getting away clean with that is very, very low.

And that's where the system is messed up because I think some scenarios, if you know somebody, you got a good lawyer, you may be able to get off a little bit lighter, but usually if someone is hurt or killed and you're driving, you're going to prison. I've seen it a lot. Despite several scares and close calls on the road, Anthony continued his habit of drinking and driving.

Not only that, he had also begun taking m**hamphetamine. Once you get hooked on it, m**h is a slippery slope, and what followed next was a long downward spiral for Anthony. Over the course of four or five years, he turned from a casual to a regular m**h user, sending shockwaves into all aspects of his life.

He battled to hold down a job, he estranged his family members, and he broke the trust of loved ones. As is a common theme on Voices of a Killer, Anthony found himself going down a violent and destructive trajectory, hurtling towards what could only end in disaster. In late November 2020, that disaster struck.

We'll find out how on the next installment of Anthony's story on Voices of a Killer.

If you want to find out what happens next, right now, you can sign up at patreon.com/voicesofakiller. There you can find bonus content, early access, ad free listening, and access to our chat community. So go to patreon.com/voicesofakiller to sign up now. Your support is what keeps us passionate about bringing these stories to you.

I want to thank Anthony for sharing his story with us today. His ability to be open and honest is what makes this podcast so special. A big shout out to Sonic Futures who handled the production, audio editing, music licensing, and promotion of this podcast if you want to hear more episodes like this one, make sure to visit our website at voicesofakiller.com. There you can find previous episodes, transcripts, and additional information about the podcast. Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback helps us improve and reach new listeners. Thank you for your support, and we can't wait to share more stories with you in the future.

Thank you for tuning in. I'm your host, Toby, and we'll see you next time on Voices of a Killer.

EP 59 | Anthony Frenzel Part 2

Welcome back to Voices of a Killer. When we last left off, Anthony had racked up three DUIs and developed a burgeoning m**h addiction. Cut to late November 2020 and this habit of reckless driving would have fatal consequences. What exactly happened on the day of Anthony's crime? We'll find out on this episode of Voices of a Killer.

So what age were you whenever you got in your, the bad wreck that put you in prison? I would've been 27 or just turned 28, I think. So around 27, 28. The day that your wreck occurred, what time of day did it happen? One or two o'clock in the afternoon, I think. Were you up from the night before or did you go to bed that night?

No, I, I had gone to bed that night. What time did you wake up that day? Probably about six to go to work. What were you doing? What kind of work were you doing? Tree work. You were working for like a, like tree trimming and stuff. Yeah, yeah, I'm a, I'm a climber. Did you drink on the job with that one too? No. You didn't? No, no, my boss would, would not allow that. What about a little bit of m**h here and there? I'd, I'd do some in the morning before I went to work, and I'd just have to either sneak in the truck on lunch break or... Did you do a little bit before that day, before you went in? Early that morning, yeah.

How did you do it? Smoke through or shot it or what? Smoked it. Whenever you went to work. How was your work that day? Well, that, that day was easy. I picked up a, a kid and then went to my boss's house. We were getting some, some maintenance done on some of the saws, and I was replacing a transmission on one of the work trucks.

So you're just doing a couple of odd things for, for the work at the beginning of the day? Yeah. And where were you headed whenever you got in this wreck? I was coming back from the park store. So you were actually still on the job, working? Yeah, yeah, I took my lunch break and ran to pick up parts for the truck.

It was on the way back from my boss's house. So you went and got some parts for the, for the job, like on your lunch break, and you're headed back. Where are you, what town are you in? I was in Robertsville or Lonedell, which is just outside Pacific. Yeah, and is it accurate, they said you were traveling on Highway HH?

Yeah. How fast were you going?

Could be a 65 miles per hour. And what's supposed to be the speed limit there? Fifty-five or sixty. So you really weren't speeding that much, if at all. Had you ever had any drinks yet that day? Nah. Not one drop? Nope. Not that day. Yeah. All the drinking that you done. This was the day that you, you didn't happen to drink, but you said you did do a little bit of m**h that morning.

Did you feel like you were pretty intoxicated or you were just high on m**h a little bit? Nah, I thought, felt, felt good. Felt, you know, keel. Yeah? Did you have any passengers with you? No. So you're driving down HH you're not really speeding and it's, is it a two lane highway? It's just one way. One way and one way or the other.

Yeah, just a little two lane back country, kinda a road. And how did you feel that day, just in general? I, I felt pretty good. I was, I was excited, it was going to be an easy day. My, my boss had just given me more responsibility at work. Feeling pretty good. Just... Yeah. In general. So whenever you're driving, do you normally wear your seatbelt? No.

You never wear it? Very rarely. And you, were you wearing it that day? No, I was not. So you're traveling up to the speeds of around 65 plus. And is it accurate, like they say, you actually crossed over the center line? Yeah. And, what, what caused you to be distracted? You said you almost dropped a, or you did drop a cigarette?

I dropped a cigarette, I was smoking. Was it already lit or you were trying to light it? It was lit. Where did you drop it? On the, over the passenger side or just beside you? Where did it fall? Just on the floorboard there in between the dash and the seats, like I was messing with the radio and dropped it right there.

Yeah. What kind of vehicle? What kind of vehicle? F 250 truck is what it is? Yeah, 2002 F 250 diesel. Which is actually a pretty big hefty sized truck. So how far do you feel like you went over to the, into the other lane? Half a vehicle or? I don't remember much. I only think. It was half, maybe half, looking at the accident report, it only looks like maybe, maybe half the truck.

Whenever you looked up from grabbing your cigarette, how far from the time, or did you get to look up and say, "oh s**t," or did it just smack it while you were looking for it? No, right after I looked up. I had a little bit of time to jerk the wheel and hit the brakes. Okay. And then we hit. Did you get to see that person's face as you like went to approach him head on?

No, not, not before the accident, but after. So you didn't really see his face. When you jerked, I guess when you jerked and you, and y'all hit each other, what is the first thing your vehicle did? Did it, did it get hit over to the other side of the embankment? Did it, what, what happened to the vehicle? After we hit,

my vehicle went down off to the right side of the road and I hit a, hit some trees off, off the side of the road. And you weren't wearing a seatbelt. Did that older 2002 Ford F 250 have an airbag? It did, but they didn't before. Wow. So you actually smacked the steering wheel? Yeah. That had to have really been painful.

What kind of injuries did you suffer from? I broke a couple bones in my hand, and I had some cuts on my face, and then just some bruising. Highway HH, where the collision took place, is not the high traffic road you might expect. It's a narrow, two lane state highway, thickly lined with trees, that twists through a rural stretch of Missouri.

All it took, going down this winding road, was one momentary lapse of attention for Anthony to lose control of his truck. As he dug around for a dropped cigarette, the pickup truck swerved out of its lane and smacked straight into an oncoming Ford Fiesta. Both vehicles ricocheted off the road and into the trees, the Fiesta into a low lying ditch.

Not wearing a seatbelt or braced by an airbag, Anthony was lucky to make it out of the crash with only some minor injuries. The small Ford Fiesta, on the other hand, was wrecked. You might notice that, as Anthony recounts the crash, his memory of that day is perfectly clear. He can recall everything. From the parts he'd collected that day for his boss to his feeling of excitement as he drove southbound. This clarity is an indication that, in spite of the m**h he took that morning, Anthony was relatively sober. The car crash might have been caused by distracted driving, but it was not the result of intoxication.

In the years before, Anthony had a well established history of drinking and driving, but for once, in a twist of fate, the one time that Anthony did not drink and drive would be the time his driving would have the deepest consequences. After the break, Anthony sees an image that will haunt him forever.

When your vehicle finally came to arrest, had anybody approached you, or did you get out already? No, no, no one approached me. I got out of the truck. Was there any other vehicles around that witnessed it? Yeah, there was, there was a car behind Daniel's car that was off in the ditch, up there on the road. So whenever you did, were you able to get out of the vehicle?

Yeah, I got out of the truck and ran up to his car. So you were actually still able to be mobile? Yeah, I was, I was a little like shell shocked. I was like dazed out. Sure, sure. So whenever you went over to his vehicle, was it turned upright or was it on its side? Was it upside down? What did it look like?

This is on all four tires. The front end was, was smashed in on the passenger side pretty bad. And was his driver's side window, was it down or up or broken? It was broken or down one of the two. Whenever you went over there, what was the condition of that driver? Well, he was laid over on the passenger seat and he wasn't moving and he wasn't all covered in blood or nothing like that.

You said he was laid over on the passenger seat? Yeah, like over the, he was sitting in, in the driver's seat, but he was like laid over onto the passenger side. At this point, whenever you're assessing this guy, was anybody else there yet? Well, the, the passenger in the Jeep that had been following him or that was behind him, they were just starting to get over to the car by then.

They were, oh, they were just getting over? Yeah. So did you have a short minute or, or maybe a half a minute with this guy alone while you assessed him and see what was wrong? Yeah, I, I, I touched him and, and checked for a pulse. Did you say anything to him and yeah. I said, "Hey man, are are you all right?

Like, oh, oh fuck, I'm sorry. Are you alright?" Did he respond? No. How did that make you feel? Not now. I'm not talking about now, but in that moment, because you probably knew that you were the one that crossed over the center line. You were the one that caused him to be in the condition that he was in. At that very moment, what did you feel like?

I got kicked in the stomach. I was, I was scared to death. So I figured I killed this dude. Did you start to worry that maybe you had m**h in your system and that would come back on you? No, that didn't even cross my mind. So, in your mind, all you did was a traffic mistake that caused a big accident, with nothing else connected to it? Nope. No, I didn't. So was the, was the was the victim, in your case, was he moaning or saying anything, or was he completely out whenever you went over there and checked his pulse? He was completely out. Did you feel the pulse?

No, I didn't. What did you do after you realized that he was actually passed? He did, he died? Try to get, get them other two people that come out of the car behind you to get, get him help. Try to get an ambulance coming. So the other people, they came and basically started assessing the situation with you?

Yeah. There was a woman, and she was a nurse, and she went over to the dude in the car, and then barely dead right after she checked him out, she came over to me and tried to get me to calm down. What did the nurse say about the victim in the case? Did she say anything like he's gone, or what did she say?

She was just worried about me. She said I don't have to worry about him. I had blood cover my face, a couple cuts on my head, and I was freaking out. Were you pretty upset out there? Yeah, I was very upset. I bet, I bet that was a really big deal, I couldn't imagine. So now, there's some other people providing assistance, and you're probably really dazed from the wreck.

Not alone the instance of somebody dying, but also the impact. How long after that, if you can remember, did either ambulance and/or police show up? I couldn't give you a time frame, but it, it wasn't very long, 10, 15 minutes probably. And did they take you to the hospital and or how did that work? Did the police automatically question you?

When the paramedics, the police got there before the paramedics and they started me asking, asking me what happened. And did you explain everything like you just explained to me? Yeah. He just basically said you made a mistake, you dropped something, you, like, a traffic violation ended up being the death of somebody, basically.

Yeah, I told them what had happened. Did they want you to go to the hospital? Did you opt out or how'd that work? No, they wanted me to get checked out. So they loaded me up in an ambulance and took me up to the hospital in St louis. Did the police accompany you? No, they sent a trooper there after I got there to question me again.

I don't know. I know they took some blood, but they had given me f****nyl in the ambulance. And so I was out of it, it comes and goes. I don't know if it was just from the f****nyl that gave me or from like the trauma. It's bits and pieces of being in a hospital. I don't remember. Bits and pieces. So they, they gave you some f****nyl, which basically made the pain go away.

It made you really woozy probably. Yeah. Anthony describes his state of shock after emerging from the wreck. The rest of that day was a blur punctuated by a few snapshots that stand out in Anthony's memory. The flash of ambulance lights, the questions asked by the state trooper. On route to Mercy hospital, the paramedics administered f****nyl, which left him dazed.

Cutting through that mental confusion was the certainty of one sobering fact. Anthony had killed the driver in the Ford Fiesta. As he later discovered, the car crash victim was actually somebody Anthony knew. Daniel French was a 30 year old local from the Pacific area, a newlywed and father to two young boys.

Daniel worked for Big Boys, a towing truck company in Missouri, and he had been on his way home from a work call when the car crash had taken place. Like Anthony, Daniel hadn't been wearing a seatbelt that day, but he didn't get the lucky break Anthony did that day. When first responders arrived at 2:36 PM, Daniel was officially declared dead.

Now the attention shifted to the survivor of the crash. Anthony faced the scrutiny of the police and the hostility of the victim's family, who sought to hold him responsible for Daniel's death. How did the law deal with Anthony Frenzel? We'll find that out on the next episode of Voices of a Killer.

A big shout out to Sonic Futures who handle the production, audio editing, music licensing, and promotion of this podcast if you want to hear more episodes like this one, make sure to visit our website at voicesofakiller.com. There you can find previous episodes, transcripts, and additional information about the podcast

lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get

Thank you for tuning in. I'm your host, Toby, and we'll see you next time on Voices of a Killer.

EP 59 | Anthony Frenzel Part 3

Welcome back to the tale of Anthony Frenzel. Last time, a moment of distraction turned to disaster. Anthony made it out of the car wreck mostly unscathed while the other driver died instantly. We pick up the story just days later as the consequences of Anthony's actions loom large on this episode of Voices of a Killer.

So whenever you've got done at the hospital, the state trooper was there to talk to you at the hospital? Yeah. Yeah. He came up to the room. How did that go? What was, did he just say, "Hey, I just wanna ask you some questions about the wreck." Did he say, "I wanna charge you with this or that?" Or what did he say?

He just wanted to ask some questions and go over like my timeline for the entire day from what I did from I think the night before, all the way up until the accident. And he probably wanted to know if you had taken any kind of prescription medication, illegal drugs, or drank. Did he ask you all those questions?

Yeah. What did you tell him? I told him no. He just, you lied to him, said you didn't do anything? Yeah. So how long after this occurred did it come out that you had m**h in your system? I don't know if it ever came out or has. It's not in any of the reports I got. Okay, so how long after this incident were you charged with, what was it, vehicular manslaughter?

They're charging me with second degree murder. On the grounds of what? They're saying that the truck I was driving was stolen. Oh, s**t. Yeah. So your crime has nothing to do with having m**h in your system and killing somebody in traffic accident? Well, I'm in for a surprise. I thought this entire thing was about you.

No wonder I can't find anything on the internet about drinking and driving. However, there really is nothing about a stolen vehicle either. So, so tell me about this stolen vehicle. Was it a stolen vehicle? I, I bought it from somebody, and it turns out it was a stolen vehicle. But I didn't know it was, it was stolen.

You didn't do the proper stuff with the title and all that? I had gotten the title for it, yeah. You did get a title? I hadn't finished paying it off. No, no, I had to bill a sale. There's no title. When did this, how long after this wreck did they charge you with second degree murder? About a year and a half.

Took them about a year and a half to graduate and come back. You were free for a year and a half with nothing? I was free. They gave me a parole violation, probation violation, and then I got out and they gave me the parole violation, but I was out for three or four months. Yeah, so hold on a second. You, you get out of the hospital and then they violate your parole, you said, or probation violation, right?

Yeah. What was the violation for? 'Cause of the wreck? I think. Yeah. A laws violation. Yeah. And then a reporting violation. So, okay. So what was the law's violation? And for the listeners that don't know, laws violation is you didn't violate your parole, you actually broke a law that applied to violating your parole.

I guess I said that right. So what was the law that you broke while you were on probation or parole driving while revoked. So you were actually driving while revoked whenever this accident happened? Yes. And they put you in prison for a few months on that violation? Yeah. And you still hadn't been charged with second degree murder yet, right?

No, not yet. They did a tentative diagnostics and they gave me a year's setback and then during that time, they charged me, the troopers came up to the prison and filed charges for the second degree murder. Wow. So you were in there for a parole violation and then while you're in there, the state trooper came and officially charged you with the crime? Yeah. How did that make you feel? Oh, I was wrecked. But I was expecting it. So I was expecting something, but not necessarily that. Well I was expecting DUI with somebody who died involving a car wreck. You had m**h in your system, but what is the... so why do you think they charge you with second degree murder?

It's hard to say. I bet it is. I think some of it's got to do with who the guy is. He had a tow company he was working for the tow company for that county. So he was well-known and

dIaled the police and everything I'm hoping that they charged high, so if they can, they'll try and take a plea deal or something lesser, or they could probably start high, and then I'll get some room to come down. Well, whenever you got charged, did you have any family or friends to call and say, "hey, I just got charged with second degree murder while I'm in prison?" Oh yeah, I've got a like my stepdad and my, a couple friends of mine. What was, and they were, they were shocked. Yeah. Their reaction was probably shocked. Have you been to trial yet? No, I'm still in the process. Wow. So you're not even actually sentenced for this second degree murder yet, you've just been charged with it.

Right? Not yet. Wow. Yeah, this is a first for Voices of a Killer because you're actually not convicted as a killer yet. You're just blamed for being one. Wow, man. You got some crazy stuff ahead of you. How are you dealing with this right now? It's a little easier now that it's been almost two years since they've charged me. In February,

it'll be two years since I got the charges from a level one institution thinking I was going to be getting out in a couple of months. That's real camp, you know, all my security on with all that. Whenever you said you went to diagnostics and usually diagnostics is where people figure out where they're going to go from there.

They basically say, okay, you got 20 years. You're going to go here. You got five years. You're going to go here. So you're at diagnostics and you went, you get charged with that and they ship you straight to Potosi, which is a level five death row camp. That's crazy, man. How are you getting along in there?

Not too bad. At first, it was way different than anything I'd ever experienced. Yeah, I'm sure. When is your court date? I go back to court in January. Anthony flips the script on our interview when he tells me his case is still unresolved. It's been nearly three years since the crash, but Anthony still has no answers.

His fate is still undetermined. Nobody really thinks about the period of time between which you're charged and sentenced with a crime. It's an afterthought, a prelude to the main event. But since the day he was charged, Anthony has been stuck in a three year long state of legal limbo. For years, he's been a pawn in the prison industrial complex, batted back and forth between institutions, and now tossed into a holding cell at a maximum security death camp.

Now, at long last, a court date has been secured, and Anthony's wait is almost over. The charges he'll be facing are particularly harsh. Typically, you'd expect to see an involuntary manslaughter charge in a case like this. That's standard recourse when something goes wrong. Somebody's been killed due to reckless driving.

The law evokes involuntary manslaughter when the driver didn't intend to kill, but is still responsible for a death because they were intoxicated, negligent, or in Anthony's case, inattentive to the road instead of manslaughter. The prosecutors are looking to nail Anthony for something bigger, second degree murder.

If found guilty, Anthony might be looking at 30 years in prison, possibly with no parole. That's a little steep, and Anthony has one theory about why. The victim. Asim, in his case, was an employee of a high profile towing company, and Anthony suspects they were able to leverage for a harsher sentence.

Whether that's true or not, prosecutors are known to pursue the harshest sentence they can, even if it's frankly unreasonable. To do that, they'll spin a narrative for the jury and paint the defendant in the worst possible light. For a regular working class guy like Anthony, he'll need to prepare well to ensure the prosecutors don't succeed.

More on that after the break. Here's the thing, man, they know what they're doing. They're charging you with this and they're gonna keep you in there forever. And the prosecutors are gonna keep putting this off. You'll do it at least three years, probably before you go to trial. But the thing is, man, you are responsible for killing somebody.

I think if anybody, and, and, and a lot of times this is what we do out when this happens, we all put ourselves in that family's shoes. And just as if you were to put yourself in that family's shoes, you'd probably want yourself dead. You know what I mean? If somebody hurt your kid or your father, your mother, you know, that's, that's very painful because of something, a mistake you made, how do you feel knowing that people probably hate you for taking their loved one's life?

It's hard, especially knowing a little bit about the dude. I had dated his sister previous to this a little bit, and I got some messages from her family while I was still out, letting me know how they felt about everything. So was it like hate mail? Oh yeah, justified and understandable. They write you these letters while you were locked up, or you said you'd gotten out a little while?

No, it was, it was before I got locked up while I was out. A week or two after the accident. They wrote they wrote you a letter to your house? No, they, they got ahold of me on Facebook. Wow. A private message? Yeah. And then three days after the accident, I met his best man at a buddy's house and talked with him.

Scary. I thought he was gonna kill me, at first, but we sat and talked and he offered me some form of comfort. He said, I understand. It was an accident, but it is, but that was a, that was a rough conversation. What do you think should happen to you because of this? Honestly, you have to, you have to take yourself out of the situation, which is nearly impossible, but what do you think should happen to you?

Definitely give me some time. I'm good for some time. I, I'm hoping not the amount Circumstances. I'm not trying to do a life sentence over this, but I'm more than willing to give them some time. What do you think the prosecutors are gonna go after you for? What do you think they're gonna try to try to do?

Because they can go pretty high, pretty murder. And also, by the way, I think it'll end up getting reduced, but that's how they play their game. They start really high and then before you know it, you're gonna get something lesser than that. But I think they're gonna try to, they're going to try to get your head, you know what I mean?

They're going to go as much as they can, so what do you expect? Right now, when they filed the charges, they sent like a, like an offer, not an offer, but what kind of work I was thinking when it was 15 years and 85 percent on the secondary burger, and I'm hoping to get, I'll, I'll, I'll pull you out if they'll drop it down to a vehicular manslaughter.

Yeah, man, it's so crazy how quickly a life can change your multiple lives just from crossing the center line. I'm going to have to reach back out to you again, as this progresses to find out what all happens to you and pay close attention. Do you have a paid attorney or public defender? Public defender.

And that's another turning point for, for you because I think if you had a hot shot attorney you could get some s**t done but, and I, and for the record I don't think public defenders suck or anything I just think that they're so overwhelmed and they get, they get the least amount of funding compared to like prosecutors and s**t like that.

It's just, it could be, I think it can make or break a case a lot of times. And unfortunately, that's the part of the justice system that's flawed, is somebody in your situation with money can really take care of this stuff. But it sounds like you're just at the, at the mercy of public defender. How does that make you feel?

Yeah, it's it's, it's stressful because both defenders have an enormous case load for one, so they're spread thin and it's, it's, it's hard just getting ahold of my, my attorney. See, a lot of people don't understand out there and for people that are listening should really listen good. A lot of times people that are in trouble.

It's not that they're trying to get off. They're just trying to not get completely screwed out of something that they're, they don't want an enhanced charge. They want the charges that are done to them, not anything more. Take, for instance, second degree murder or vehicular homicide or, or involuntary murder.

Those things are big differences. And sometimes a good attorney are the ones that are going to determine whether you get the enhanced charge or you're going to ride with what you got. And then of course the cases where people are completely innocent too, but a lot of people don't realize those things that a good attorney can be the difference between ten more years on your sentence or not.

In a perfect world, our justice system would be 100 percent objective. Every criminal case would abide by the letter of the law and the sentences would be proportionate to the severity of the crime committed. Unfortunately, the system is flawed because it's made up of humans. The judges, prosecutors, and juries who decide these cases are not impartial and they can interpret the gray areas of the law in vastly different ways.

That's why many times I've seen two similar cases have totally different outcomes. It's particularly hard for the regular people who can't afford lawyers like Anthony to be fairly represented in court. Anthony tells me his case is in the hands of two public defenders and this has already put him on the back foot.

While perfectly competent, his public defenders are overworked and simply don't have the time to give his case the attention it needs. At the time of this recording, we're still yet to hear about the outcome of Anthony's trial. The court date has since passed and we'll endeavor to give you an update sometime in the near future.

But whether Anthony is facing five years of 15 in jail, this split second car accident has disrupted his life forever. He is no longer the same Anthony who acted recklessly and dismissed the warnings of those around him. Before closing out this conversation, I wanted to hear Anthony's thoughts about how this crime had changed him for good.

So, Anthony, do you feel like if you were to get out today, or

10 or 20 years from now, you would do exactly what you told me you did after your first and second DWI, you just drink again and drive? Absolutely not. So whenever you took your classes for the first DWI and you went through the second one, they were trying to tell you in those classes, "hey, this is what can happen to you when you drink and drive."

But you basically said that you, that stuff went through one ear out the other. What makes you think that this doesn't work either? Actually, it's like too late. You, you already did kill somebody. That's what they were trying to teach you. How does that feel knowing that that's exactly what those classes were trying to do and you went and did it anyway?

How does that make you feel? It makes me realize a lot about being all big headed and dumb and thinking I know no things and it puts other people's knowledge and experiences into the proper perspective. Like the, the arrogance that I had isn't, was just being stupid. So here's what I'm going to do, man.

I'm going to say that this is a wrap for our interview with you having this case pending and everything. I'm going to pay close attention. I hope that you continue to feed me information as you get it. I'm pretty indifferent in your situation. Like I said before, we put ourselves in that situation where that was my loved one, I'd probably want you dead, but also judges are supposed to make, they're supposed to judge not on emotion.

That's why we put them there and they're not supposed to use their emotions. They're just supposed to use logic and the laws and stuff like that. I hope you continue to reach out to me and let me know what's going on, but I wish you the best of luck, Anthony. And All right. Well, thank you. Yeah, I'll, I'll keep an eye on this book and I'll let you know what goes on when something goes on.

All right, man. Wish you the best of luck. Just let me know if anything changes. I really do want to know. Okay. Yeah, I'll, I'll keep in touch with you whenever something, something worthy happens. Have a good one. God bless. Yep. See you. Bye bye.

On the next episode of Voices of a Killer.

And he turned around and pointed at me and said, wait right there. As soon as I get my gun, I'm going to kill you. The demeanor in your voice, it doesn't sound like somebody that would have put a few bullets into two different people. He took about two or three quick steps and grabbed my nephew from behind, and I noticed that he had a knife to his throat.

He had a knife to his throat. You know, and, and, well, I, I've, I've always claimed my, my defense of self defense, I recognized that I should never have went there in the first place. It was supposed to be a fist fight that's all we went for, it, it was just bad all around. I, there was, there was no win.

That's a wrap on this episode of Voices of a Killer. I want to thank Anthony for sharing his story with us today. His ability to be open and honest is what makes this podcast so special. If you want to listen to these episodes, weeks in advance, you can now do so by joining our Patreon at patreon.com/voicesofakiller.

There you will get access to raw interviews, unseen news coverage, and correspondence with the of voices of a Killer. Head over to patreon.com/voicesofakiller to support the podcast. Your support is what keeps us. And I'm very passionate about bringing these stories to you. A big shout out to Sonic Futures, who handled the production, audio editing, music licensing, and promotion of this podcast.

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Your feedback helps us improve and reach new listeners. Thank you for your support, and we can't wait to share more stories with you in the future. Thank you for tuning in. I'm your host, Toby, and we'll see you next time on Voices of a Killer.