Victim blaming is the act of saying, implying, or treating a person who has experienced harmful or abusive behavior like it was a result of something they did or said, rather than placing the responsibility on the perpetrator, or person who did the harm. The most blatant example would be blaming a rape victim for causing the other person to commit the crime – it was their clothes, or behavior. It was their fault for putting themselves in the situation to begin with. That last example is exactly what happened to Sandra Cheskey.
In the fall of 1973, 13-year-old Sandra Cheskey, a seventh grade student, was relatively new to Sioux Falls, SD. She had met 17-year-old Roger Essem and the pair began dating. On the night of November 17, Roger and his friends,18-year-old Stewart Baade, 14-year-old Dana Baade, and 15-year-old Mike Hadrath were planning to go to Gitchie Manitou. Roger asked Sandra if she wanted to go with, and she did.
Gitchie Manitou was a popular hang-out spot for teens. “There were a lot of parties at that place, a lot of beer parties,” said Bill Hadrath, Mike’s older brother.
They settled into a spot about 30 yards away from the Big Sioux River in an opening among the trees and started a fire. Stewart had his guitar, they were smoking marijuana, and singing, not a care in the world.
What they didn’t know was that 29-year-old Allen Fryer, 24-year-old David Fryer, and 21-year-old James Fryer were in the area, looking to poach deer. When they happened upon the group, David moved in to spy. He quickly reported back that the teens were smoking marijuana and the Fryers decided they were going to pose as narcotics officers and confiscate the drug.
After about 20 minutes, the group heard the sound of sticks snapping, and then a gunshot. Another gunshot and Stewart had been hit. Everyone dropped to the ground and Stewart started screaming, “I’ve been shot. It hurts. It hurts.” Roger was shot and killed immediately.
The group ran for the trees, but the Fryers weren’t finished with them. They ordered the group to come out. Reluctantly, Mike and Sadra emerged and asked the Fryers who they thought they were. But the Fryers were in charge, and Allen quickly shot Mike in the arm, telling them that they were police officers. Mike and Sandra quickly fell to the ground.
When the Freyers came down from the ledge, they kicked their feet and told them to quit playing dead. Then they assured them that Roger would be alright – he had just been shot with a tranquilizer gun.
Allen and David took control of the situation, and quickly forced Dana, Mike, and Sandra out and away from their campfire. They marched them along a trail and back to the van at gunpoint, taking Stewart with them. Sandra’s hands were bound as she was loaded into the Fryers’ truck.
Everyone else was left behind with James and David. Once Allen was gone, James and David lined Dana, Mike, and Stewart up in front of the van and executed them.
Meanwhile, in the truck, Allen told Sandra that he was a police officer, and that he was “The Boss.” He untied her and told her she was too young to be busted in a drug deal. He also told her that the other two would do as they were instructed
About an hour later, they all met up at a farmhouse. Allen got out of the truck, and James got in. He told Sandra to take off her clothes and then raped her. “I was a virgin, you know,” she told Allen after James got out of the truck and he climbed back in.
She remembered him saying, “Nah, no you aren’t.”
“‘I’m only 13.” she told him.
She said Allen was shocked and told her, “I’ll do what I can to get you out of this.”
When it came time to get rid of her, Allen told his brothers he would do it. But he, instead of killing her as his brothers expected, he took her home instead.
The next morning, a Sioux Falls couple came upon the bodies of Stewart, Mike, and Dana in the tall grass at Gitchie Manitou and called police.
Sandra spent the next few days with investigators, going over mug shots, discussing details about what had happened. Because of her bluntness about the attack and all the details she remembered, combined with her composure, investigators began to question her credibility. They interviewed her multiple times and even made her take a polygraph test.
“They weren’t mean to me,” she later recalled. “They just thought that I knew the names of the people that did it, and they wanted them. They didn’t want to do all this driving around because, in their minds, they thought, ‘Why would they let her go? Why did only one of the three rape her?’ To them, it seemed unbelievable.”
On November 29, Sandra accompanied the Lyon County, Iowa, Sheriff, Craig Vinson, as they drove around, searching for the farmhouse. It was when they were near Hartford, South Dakota, that she spotted a large red fuel tank next to a garage, and she knew that’s where she had been taken. The farm was owned by Allen Fryer’s employer, a local farmer.
As she sat in the car with the police, she spotted Allen drive by slowly in the same truck she had been abducted in. “That’s him,” she told the Vinson, “That’s the boss.”
Allen Fryer was arrested immediately, with David and James being arrested shortly after.
Allen claimed it was Sandra’s friends who were shooting at him and his brothers. He claimed they had “accidentally” killed someone. But by his third interview, he caved and told them the truth, justifying their actions by saying that the teens had been drinking and smoking marijuana, and they wanted to steal it.
David Fryer told the same story before changing it to what really happened.
The interview with James Fryer took a different turn. He blamed his brothers for everything. He confirmed David’s story, that the teens had been smoking marijuana. He said that Allen was pretending to be a detective. He claimed that Sandra was laughing, having a good time. She willingly had sex with David and James.
James blamed his brother for killing all four of the teenage boys. He happened to be serving jail time during the time of the crime, but had been enrolled in the Work Release Program. He managed to avoid going back to the jail that night by calling and impersonating his boss, saying he needed to work an extra shift, giving him time to go off with his brothers.
On February 12, 1974, David Fryer pled guilty to three charges of murder and one charge of manslaughter. He admitted to killing Stewart Baade and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He didn’t like the sentence and said, “If all my appeals fail, I’ll actually write the governor and ask for the death penalty. I won’t live out my life in jail. Keeping me locked up for life can’t turn around what happened. It can’t bring those people back.”
In 2016, David asked the Parole Board to overturn the “without possibility of parole,” which was denied.
Allen Fryer underwent psychiatric testing before being found fit to stand trial. He was found guilty of four counts of first degree murder and was given four consecutive life sentences.
James initially agreed to extradition from Sioux Falls, SD to Iowa, but later fought the extradition, thinking he might end up back out on the streets.
On June 18, 1974, both James and Allen managed to escape from the Lyon County Jail. They stole a vehicle and fled the state. They were later caught in Gillette, Wyoming, and brought back where they faced federal charges.
James’ trial began on December 3, 1974. Just as Allen had, he underwent psychiatric testing and was determined to have an IQ of 85 and poorly controlled his behavior. He was found guilty of three charges first degree murder and one degree of manslaughter. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Since James had been sentenced to life in prison, the District Attorney chose not to proceed with the rape charges, making the choice to not subject Sandra Cheskey to a rape trial.
All appeals for all three of the Fryer brothers fell through.
Allen is currently serving his sentence at the Penitentiary in Anamosa, Iowa.
David and James are currently serving their life sentences at the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility in Fort Dodge, Iowa
As for Sandra, her life didn’t get any easier. She wasn’t offered counseling for her trauma. Sandra had become the “Gitchie Girl,” and no one wanted to be associated with her. Her classmates shunned her, having been told by their parents to “stay away from that girl from Gitchie Manitou.”
The media all said the same thing, why would a girl her age go out with boys four or five years older than her? Why was she even there? How had she managed to survive, was she in on it?
To them, the obvious answer was, “She was asking for it.”
It didn’t matter that she had survived trauma. That it was because of her the perpetrators had been caught and convicted, jailed for the rest of their lives. She was still alive, and her suffering was of her own making. After all, she wouldn’t have been raped had she not been there to begin with. Plus, if you believed the accounts of the Freyers, she had offered herself willingly.
Just months after the attack that changed her life forever, she dropped out of school.
Today, there are numerous rape victims who look to Sandra Cheskey as their hero, giving them strength to come forward and tell their stories.
Up Next, another tragedy in the wilderness, the Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders.
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