Chronikle #118 Craig Allen Frear Case

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The year was 2004, Myspace was just a year old when Mark Zucherberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room not knowing the impact he would have on social media.  Google was now offering a free email service called GMail.  Former President Ronald Reagan passed away from pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer’s Disease.  Martha Stewart was caught doing inside trading on the stock market and would find herself serving prison time.  Halo 2 was released by Microsoft and gamers everywhere wanted to get their hands on a copy to see the all new graphics.  Skype was introduced and started to take off as an all new way to communicate with one another near and far.  Ken Jennings won 74 straight games on Jeopardy with his winnings coming to a total of 2.7 million dollars.  Things were taking off in 2004 with advancements in technology and science happening and social media starting to change the way the world communicated with each other.  The Frear family was not interested in the events of 2004 as they were engulfed in their own search for their missing 17 year old son and brother who never made it home one warm summer day in June.

Craig Allen Frear was born on October 14 1986 to William “Bill” and Veronica. Craig had an older brother Matthew and a younger sister Kathleen.  The family lived in upstate New York.  Craig was a very popular and well liked young man who was close with his family, after his older brother left for college he became close with his sister.  Craig was smart, funny and athletic. He loved soccer and was good at the sport.  In 2004 Craig was finishing up his Junior year of high school and was set to start as a Senior, it was also announced he would be Captain of the soccer team, something Craig was excited about and looking forward to.  At 17 years old Craig stood five foot eleven inches and weighed 190 pounds he had reddish/brown hair and brown eyes.  Craig was a responsible young man who had a core friend group he hung with since elementary school, the group had never been in trouble criminally and was overall a well liked well behaved group of teens.  Craig had a part time job at the Price Chopper, he began working there when he was fifteen years old.  He started off as a bagger and then was promoted to the dairy department, where Craig would unload and put up product,  in doing so he became very friendly and close with the truck drivers and began spending most of his time while at work hanging out and talking with them.  This was something his mom Veronica says was not a red flag to her at the time but looking back it should have been.  Craig had recently taken the SAT’s and scored very well on them, he had cut his hours at work until after his final’s and soccer was underway and all seemed to be going well in Craig’s life, until the day he never came home.  

Craig with his mom Veronica.

In April of 2004 Craig had an internship at his school where he was a teacher’s assistant, he had done well but when it was over he failed to turn in his assignment.  This was not like Craig but his mom shrugged it off as him being a teenager and told him he better get the assignment done and handed in, thinking he just needed a little extra push to get the paper done.  Once again at the time Veronica thought little of this event.  Now she looks back and believes it is another red flag as this was not like her son.  Around the same time Craig had checked some CD’s out from the library with his brother Matt’s card and failed to return them, when Matt found out he told his brother he had to return the CD’s.  Craig told him he would do it right then, but lied and never turned them back in.  This was out of character for him as well.  What had made the sudden changes come over Craig had something happened that no one knew about or was he struggling with something much deeper than that?  

One night the soccer team held a banquet where Craig was named captain.  After the banquet  all of his friends were going out, Craig told his mom he didn’t want to go.  Veronica was baffled by this, her son always wanted to go hang out with his friends.  She asked her son what was wrong and told him it was ok to go out with his friends.  His grandpa was coming to visit that night and Veronica thought this might be why Craig did not want to go out. So she reassured her son his grandpa would not mind and he could go out with his friends.  Craig told his mom he just really did not want to go out.  This was very odd behavior for Craig.  Veronica would not push the issue but looking back she wishes she would have pried a little more and found out what was going on with her son.  

Sunday June 27, 2004 started off normally, with no indications of it being unlike any other day.  Veronica and Bill were off to take Kathleen to her soccer tournament, Matt was still away at college, and Craig was heading out to work or so his parents thought.  As she told her son goodbye that day she had no idea it would be the last time she would ever see him.  Veronica and Bill were having company over that night, the soccer tournament was not far from the Price Chopper, she would leave the game a little early and run to pick up supplies before returning home.  While at the Price Chopper she planned on saying hello to her son and telling him what time dinner would be ready.  To her surprise she was told he was not there.  Very odd, she thought but she finished shopping and headed home.  Craig did not have a cellphone, he was getting one in October for his birthday, so his mom began calling everyone of Craig’s friends. Veronica eventually tracked down where Craig was and called the apartment of an ex girlfriend (NOTE: Some articles state it was a friend and not an ex girlfriend’s place he was at that day.) At first the young woman lied and said Craig was not there, however Veronica had a gut feeling he was and called back, this time the young woman put Craig on the phone.  Veronica was not pleased with her son, she asked what was going on and why he was not at work?  He said he was sorry he knew he was late and should have been there 45 minutes ago.  Craig told his mom he was heading to work now, she would tell him dinner would be ready at three pm.  Craig would not go into work when he hung up the phone with his mom, he would stay where he was.  Veronica just had a feeling Craig was not being truthful and called Bill.  She asked her husband to drive by the Price Chopper and make sure Craig was there as she told him he was headed to work but was running late.  Bill agreed to see if his son was at work.  When he went into the store he was overloaded with information about his son.  Turns out Craig had been fired over a month ago.  He had been given verbal and written warnings about his performance, while he was at work he was only hanging out with the truckers and dock workers, not actually working, then he stopped showing up at all and they let him go for this.  When Bill told Veronica she immediately called the apartment where Craig was and in a raised voice asked him what was going on, she knew he had been let go from work, what was he doing and where had he been all this time, Veronica wanted to know and questioned her son.  Craig said he would explain it all when he got home, he wanted to tell her in person.  He told her he was not going back to Price Chopper and would be starting a landscaping job soon with Matt.  (NOTE:  Not sure if this was his brother Matt or his friend Matt.  It was never made clear.)  His mom was not pleased and told him to get home now.  Craig said he would be there in 10 minutes, by this time Veronica had already told Bill where his son was and he headed over to the apartment to get his son.  (NOTE: Craig had a car that was paid for and his license.  His car was left at the apartment that day.) When Craig walked out of the complex it is believed he saw his dad standing near his car and took off around the back of the apartments to walk home instead of drive.  There was a well beaten path from the back of the apartments to the family home.  When Bill let Veronica know he was outside and Craig had not come out yet she called the ex girlfriend back.  This time the young woman would tell her he had left right after he got off the phone with her and was no longer there.  Veronica believed her, but where was her son? Bill was alerted and he came back home. Veronica had a bad gut feeling when Craig had not returned home yet she went to the police station to report Craig missing.  Veronica would have trouble filing the report as he had gone missing in a different county than where they lived, neither department wanted to take the case.  Finally she got Scotia county to file the report but they were not interested in starting an investigation, they would tell the parents he was a strong athletic young man, who was more than likely with friends and would come back on his own.  No matter how many times Veronica told the police something was wrong her son did not just leave they would not listen to her.  She had heard the same thing that most mothers with missing teens hear, he will be back. He is a big athletic young man. He is fine and can take care of himself, Veronica in her gut knew this was not true.

When it was clear to the family the police were not going to start looking for her son, Veronica would take matters into her own hands and hire a private investigator and start searching with friends, family and neighbors to find Craig.  The first search she held, over three hundred people showed up and the police were called not to help with the search but with crowd control.  The search of the location he was thought to have walked home yielded no clues in where Craig had gone.  The private investigator would find two witnesses who saw Craig walking along the railroad tracks in the direction of his home which was located in a cul de sac.  This was the last confirmed sighting of Craig at that time.  It was possible Craig had gone to someone else’s home from the trail, he might have wanted to let things cool down before he was faced with the task of explaining everything to his parents.  Perhaps the stress of life had gotten to him and he took off to start over, no one knows exactly what happened, it truly was as though he vanished without a trace.

Craig did have a little money saved from work and he had done some jobs for his grandparents where he made money, was it possible he had just left?  The family’s minds were going wild on what could have happened to their son and brother.  The private investigator also found out he had been going to the homes of lesser known friends, these were friends his parents did not know very well and had a history of getting into trouble and had issues in school.  Veronica believes something could have happened at the Price Chopper where he worked. As he just seemed off the last couple months before he vanished.  She recalls one day he came home from work and had a small piece of paper and said look mom, some woman gave me her number and told me to call her.  Veronica said Craig was very happy about this, she told him it was kind of inappropriate as the woman was older and asked him why he had not tore it up and thrown it out yet.  Craig laughed and said he wanted to tease the guys on the dock and trucks with it.  Veronica said she saw the paper for a second and it appeared to her it was a man’s writing but did not push the issue with Craig.  Looking back she wishes she did push the issue and find out whose number it actually was.  Was there a possibility that while he was hanging out with the truck drivers he made a plan to leave New York and start over?  That is a possibility but they are really endless in this case as there has not been any sign of Craig, the only belonging that was found was two weeks after Craig vanished and it was his wallet, the parents of a friend of Craig’s were moving a dresser in there son’s room when they found Craig’s wallet behind it, they asked there son why he had this, he told them prior to Craig vanishing they had been driving around and when he dropped Craig off he saw he left it in his car and placed it on his dresser to give it back but forgot about it as it had fallen behind the dresser.  The friend’s parents would not immediately turn Craig’s wallet over to the police or the family. They said they were worried their son who had been in trouble before would get in trouble for having the wallet.  It was not until a woman overheard the friend’s mother talking at lunch to another person about finding the wallet, that it was then reported by the woman who overheard the conversation to police and the family was alerted.  His wallet still contained his driver’s license.  Why did this friend really have his wallet?  Not much else can be found on this friend, other than he was not a part of Craig’s friend group since elementary he was a friend who was considered a trouble maker.  Was the wallet left by Craig or did the boy have it for other reasons?  One day the answer to this may be known for now it seems to be a mystery as all we have to go on is his parents saying he had nothing to do with Craig’s disappearance.  

On June 26, 2004 the night before Craig vanished he went to his ex-girlfriend’s graduation party, where most of his close friends were in attendance as well.  At the party Craig seemed to distance himself from the crowd and at one point was talking on the phone where he thought no one could see or hear him, a woman was in close proximity to Craig and overheard him say something to the effect of I can’t believe you are doing this to me or I can’t believe you did this to me. No one to this day knows who or what Craig was talking about on that phone call.  He was very anxious and pacing back and forth while talking on the phone.  Is it possible Craig was planning on leaving and whoever he was talking to was leaving early or was someone going to out his sexuality if indeed he was a homosexual.  It was known that Craig had a lot of girlfriend’s at the same time, could it have been an ex or a jealous ex boyfriend of one of Craig’s ex’s?  It was said before the possibilities are endless when it comes to what happened to Craig.  The police would try and trace the call but by the time the call was found out about it was some years later and the records had been deleted or copied over.  The woman who told Veronica this was a very reliable and credible person.  The police did recently within the last year or so release new information.  A coworker is thought to have seen Craig sometime between June 27th and July 2nd.  Nick (coworker) did not know Craig was missing as he had not been back to work, when he came back for his shift he heard employees talking about Craig being missing, odd he thought.  He told them he just saw Craig at the traffic light on his way to work, he isn’t missing Nick told them, when he saw him he was fine.  Nick was stopped at a red light on Route 50 when he looked to his left and saw Craig in the passenger’s seat.  Craig looked over at him and the light changed the vehicle Craig was in turned left and Nick turned into the Price Chopper parking lot.  Not thinking anything about seeing his coworker.  If Nick did see Craig this meant he was still alive after he was reported missing.

Craig’s disappearance has left a whole in the Frear family.  Bill and Veronica would divorce after 28 years of marriage.  Bill has since passed away and while online forums continue to believe he had something to do with his son’s disappearance, police and the family do not.  His sister Kathleen has since grown into a woman with two children of her own.  Matt has a wife as well.  The family has never stopped looking for Craig.  If you have any information on this case please contact the number below.  

DISCLAIMER:  The Certified Roarikle would like to thank all sites that the information came from and state that in no way is copyright infringement intended. 

As always thank you for reading Roarikons, until next blog.

The Roarikle

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