While talking to police, the warrant says, Frazier denied taking any jewelry, the laptop, or anything else — except for Konopka's cell phone, which he told them he threw away in a Drake Hotel garbage can. Police apparently found that hard to believe, explaining that there was jewelry found on the steps near the exit where Frazier admitted leaving the house.
Not long after the interrogation, authorities charged Frazier with false imprisonment, burglary, robbery, and murder.
Jack Balingit
Jack Balingit
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When a guard led Frazier into the Department Nine courtroom last week for an early pretrial hearing, Frazier didn't look menacing. As his close-set eyes scanned the courtroom, he looked more like a scared kid waiting at the principal's office than a cold-blooded killer. His tattoos barely showed under his orange jail jumpsuit as he sat waiting along the edge of the courtroom, his shoulders sloped, while his public defender, Susan Kaplan, asked Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow whether she and Deputy District Attorney George Butterworth could approach the bench.
When Frazier did approach the podium with Kaplan, his responses to the judge were barely audible.
"He is soft-spoken," Kaplan told the judge.
If convicted, Frazier could face life in prison. Frazier and his attorney both declined to speak with SF Weekly about the case. Court documents indicate Frazier has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The medical examiner's report was still pending at press time. But on the night of Konopka's death, the medical examiner at the scene did tell an inspector that it was a homicide, and that Konopka "died at the hands of another person."
Police investigators refused to comment for this story. A spokesperson for the district attorney's office said Frazier is being charged with first-degree murder because Konopka died during the commission of dangerous felonies — in this case, robbery and murder.
But Frazier's friend, Tommie Henry, insists that his pal wasn't capable of murder. "If anything, it was some kind of accident," Henry says. "Either the person that he was with went too far or wanted to go too far, or something in the process of their contact went wrong."
If Frazier is telling the truth, it wouldn't be the first time a bondage session has gone awry. (See "Safe Words" sidebar for details.) Bondage and sadomasochistic activities rely on consent and trust — and it's the responsibility of the dominant person, or "top," to respect the "safe word" decided with the other person, or "bottom," and not hurt that person more than he or she really wants. A man named Master J, for example, says that after 10 years of experience he has learned to read a situation by looking in the bottom's face and eyes.
Still, there's an element of risk. "Any time anybody plays, they are literally trusting the other person with their life," says Master J.'s partner, Sparky, who identifies himself as his boi.
For Konopka's widow, however, there is no gray area. Ethel Konopka says she has little interest in discussing the case with reporters, but she did say that her husband's death was no accident. "No one has the right not to help. Nobody has the right to murder somebody, or let them die," she says. "And that's the only thing I'm interested in."
She adds, "My husband did not die of natural causes."
