- Fifteen-year-old Kaleigh Fryer convinced her older boyfriend Jay Chiles to murder her strict father after he tried to stop their relationship
- Kaleigh staged the attack as a burglary and lied to police, but her diary, phone records and Jay’s confession exposed the plot
- Both teens were sentenced to life in prison — leaving her brother Keith grieving the loss of both his dad and sister in one night
Keith Fryer was 18 when, in May 2010, police knocked on the door of his high school classroom.
As he was led to the principal’s office, he joked with officers about what kind of trouble his little sister, Kaleigh, then 15, had got herself into this time.
The pair had lived with their dad, Lewis, then 50, since he’d split from their mum, Trisha, 13 years earlier. The arrangement worked well, and for years Keith and Kaleigh remained incredibly close.
In recent years the pair had drifted apart after Kaleigh started to get mixed up with alcohol and drugs and was expelled multiple times, but their dad never gave up on her.
‘He was constantly just trying to make our lives better,’ Keith told The Sun.
So when police broke the news that Lewis had died, Keith’s world was shattered.
READ MORE: Deadly love triangle: He killed his mate to win back his ex
While Keith had stayed at a friend’s house the night before, Kaleigh had told police she’d woken up around 7am to find their dad lying in a pool of blood in his bedroom.
He’d been stabbed multiple times in a frenzied attack.
She said the pair had watched a movie together the night before and they’d both gone to their bedrooms around 10.30pm. She’d slept through the night, seeing and hearing nothing.
‘Does he have any enemies?’ a detective asked Kaleigh.
‘No. Everybody likes my dad,’ she replied.
But when Kaleigh and their mum Trisha arrived at the school, Keith knew his sister was lying about something.
Investigators had questions, such as how Kaleigh had managed to sleep through the attack when her dad’s defensive wounds indicated he’d fought hard to save his life.
And, although Lewis’ car was missing, there were no signs of forced entry. How did the murderer get in?
The viciousness of the attack made police suspect this was more personal than a botched robbery.
While canvassing the neighbourhood, police chatted to two of Kaleigh’s friends. Both said Lewis had been tightening the reins on Kaleigh’s social life to get her back on the right track, something Kaleigh deeply resented.
She had a fiery reputation and wasn’t someone you wanted to mess with. ‘We all knew she had a dark side,’ Keith told The Sun.
Kaleigh also had a much older secret boyfriend.
Jerry ‘Jay’ Chiles was 21, unemployed and homeless.
Kaleigh knew her dad would never approve.
But Lewis had found out about Kaleigh and Jay just a few days earlier.
Lewis was so upset, he’d confronted Jay, telling him to stay away from his daughter.
The police questioned Jay and he admitted having a relationship with Kaleigh.
READ MORE: My stepmum murdered dad to be with her lover
Kaleigh knew her dad would never approve
He said Kaleigh would leave the back door open so he could sneak in after Lewis went to bed, and he’d sleep in Kaleigh’s room.
When pressed by detectives, Jay claimed that Lewis had caught him in Kaleigh’s room and had come at him with a golf club.
Jay said he’d grabbed a knife from the kitchen and they’d fought their way up the hallway. But bloodstain evidence at the crime scene indicated Lewis was in bed and likely asleep when he was attacked.
Confronted with this, Jay changed his story, telling detectives Kaleigh had told him she was pregnant and her dad would never let them raise a baby together. She told Jay that if he killed Lewis they could live with Kaleigh’s mum and be a proper family.
With no job or home, and believing he was going to be a father, Jay felt like he had no other option.
Jay said he’d grabbed a knife from the kitchen
Kaleigh had stayed in her room as Jay stabbed her dad to death, making it look like a botched burglary. Jay then took Lewis’ car and escaped.
Detectives recovered Kaleigh’s diary and found numerous scathing entries expressing her fury at the restrictions her father placed on her.
I hate my Dad. Your dead to me! Kaleigh wrote.
Kaleigh’s phone records also showed she’d been online around the time of the stabbing, and had spoken to Jay before she’d called police, disproving her claims that she’d slept through the whole thing.
Both Kaleigh Lynn Fryer, 15, and Jerry ‘Jay’ Jerone Chiles Jr, 21, were charged with first-degree murder. Chiles was also charged with theft of a car.
In July 2010, Chiles pleaded guilty and, after finding out Kaleigh had lied about being pregnant to manipulate him, agreed to a plea bargain of life with the possibility of parole in exchange for testifying against her.
Kaleigh was the mastermind
‘Jay’s belief is that her father is mean to her and has too many rules and she wants him dead because she’d be allowed to live with her mum and be happy and be with Jay,’ prosecutor Lesley March later told Oxygen.
Guthrie City prosecutor Billy Wheeler said, ‘Kaleigh was the mastermind. If it hadn’t been for her, this would never have happened and her father would still be alive.’
In May the following year Kaleigh Fryer, then 16, was convicted of murder and also sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Keith, now 32, says he feels like he lost his entire family that night. While he hasn’t been able to forgive his sister Kaleigh, he knows his dad would never have given up on her.
‘When she calls from prison, I do speak to her because I know that’s what Dad would want,’ Keith said.
