New evidence leads to murder indictment for Oklahoma prisoner

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A man in a federal prison in Oklahoma on drug and counterfeiting charges faces possible extradition to Minnesota after being indicted in a 1984 Minneapolis murder case.

Bill Daymond Bailey, 45, was indicted by a Minnesota grand jury on Dec. 5 for the May 1984 murder of Agnes Frofrowicz, who apparently died of a heart attack during a sexual assault in her house, which was burglarized.

If convicted in Minnesota, which has no death penalty, Bailey could receive a life prison term.

Bailey, who is in a federal prison in El Reno with a projected release date in 2014, was initially charged with second-degree murder shortly after Frofrowicz's death. But the charges were dropped and Bailey was freed after authorities, using an early form of DNA testing, could not tie him to semen samples taken from Frofrowicz's body.

Former Minneapolis homicide detective Bob Nelson, who was initially assigned to the case, had evidence he believed tied Bailey to the crime, including a series of checks from Frofrowicz's bank account that were cashed by Bailey and a flashlight found in his apartment that Frofrowicz's relatives said belonged to her.

But without the semen evidence, Nelson said he could not charge Bailey.

"We didn't have enough evidence to get a conviction," Nelson said. "Without the DNA, we don't have enough evidence today."

Years later, the case was handed to Sgt. Barb Moe, a Minneapolis homicide detective.

While new DNA testing methods might have been able to link Bailey to the crime, the semen samples taken from Frofrowicz's body had been ruined when a freezer keeping such evidence at the Minneapolis Police Department malfunctioned.

With that semen evidence destroyed, Moe reasoned she might be able to obtain more samples from the medical examiner, who likely would have taken swabs from Frofrowicz's body before an autopsy was performed.

Moe obtained a search warrant in June to seek slides from the case in the medical examiner's cold storage units.

She got both blood and semen samples, which were taken to a Minnesota crime lab for modern DNA testing and produced a positive match to Bailey.

Bailey has a long history of violent crime, beginning in Oklahoma before Frofrowicz's death where he served nine years of a 30-year sentence for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill after former conviction of a felony.

After his parole, he joined his wife in an apartment about a block from Frofrowicz's house in a nearly abandoned part of Minneapolis.

After the charges related to Frofrowicz's death were dropped, Bailey was charged with three counts of burglary and one count each of assault and aggravated robbery after police found him in a ransacked house. He was linked to two other burglaries, including one in which a 69-year-old woman was stabbed in the back.

Bailey pleaded guilty to the burglary charges and was sentenced to more than five years in a Minnesota state penitentiary.

Bailey's parole officer, Gary Johnson, urged Oklahoma authorities to revoke Bailey's parole, but Bailey was eventually released.

In 1991, Bailey returned to Oklahoma City and was again charged with murder for the Dec. 9, 1991, fatal shooting of Jerry Lee Brooks, 52, who was found lying beside a car, shot in the chest.

In January, 1992, the charges against Bailey in that were dismissed during a preliminary hearing because of insufficient evidence.

Bailey's current prison term stems from a 1997 case in which he and three other men were charged in Oklahoma City on 10 counts each of counterfeiting, narcotics and weapons violations. The men had obtained original federal reserve sheets and were using them to counterfeit small bills, which they spent at local businesses.

Bailey pleaded guilty to two of the charges -- counterfeiting and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.

He was named a "career offender" and sentenced to 20 years in the El Reno federal prison.