Prosecutor drops rape charge against man convicted in Hilton Head cold-case killing. Why?
Prosecutors dropped a rape charge on Friday against a 57-year-old man convicted in the Hilton Head victim’s killing more than 30 years ago.
Eckerin Frazier, 57, previously of Hilton Head Island, pleaded guilty in 2001 to voluntary manslaughter in the death of Bertha Neaman in 1988 after a cold case investigation from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office. What went unsolved, however, was who sexually assaulted Neaman before she was killed.
In 2019, while Frazier was serving a 25-year sentence in Neaman’s death, the Sheriff’s Office charged him with criminal sexual conduct in the first degree, citing “conclusive” new evidence linking Frazier’s DNA to semen found in the autopsy, Maj. Bob Bromage with the agency said.
But on Friday, the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office dropped that charge.
It’s the latest disagreement between the county’s law enforcement and prosecutor offices, as the 14th Circuit faces an unprecedented backlog of criminal cases worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner and Solicitor Duffie Stone have clashed over how to deal with the deluge in cases.
One of the considerations in dropping Frazier’s charge, according to Hunter Swanson with the Solicitor’s Office, was limited court time and resources with so many other cases waiting.
“I’m not going to throw something to a jury just to see what they’ll do when I have living victims whose offenders haven’t been punished,” Swanson said.
Swanson, the lead prosecutor of the special victims’ unit, said the largest obstacle in bringing the charge to a jury was the differences in the DNA evidence.
A DNA test in 1999 compared samples from Neaman to Frazier’s DNA. The 1999 test excluded Frazier as a match to the crime, according to the Solicitor’s Office.
But 30 years later, the Sheriff’s Office said a new test compared Frazier’s DNA to that sample and two other untested items. The 2019 test showed a match to Frazier, proving he committed the sexual assault, the agency said.
According to Swanson, this discrepancy over 30 years would create doubt among a jury.
She also the DNA evidence has changed so many hands, between state investigators, the FBI, and the Sheriff’s Office, that its integrity could be called into question.
Bromage, with the Sheriff’s Office, argues that the new DNA technology shows with a greater level of certainty that Frazier’s DNA is linked to the sexual assault.
“We have the responsibility to bring people to justice on our end,” he said.
After pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in Neaman’s death, Frazier served the majority of his 25-year sentence. As a result of a prior, unrelated sexual assault conviction, Frazier is a registered sexual offender.
In 1982, fewer than six years before Neaman’s killing, Frazier confessed to raping a 65-year-old East German woman who was vacationing with her family on Hilton Head. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison but served much less time.
Now released after serving his sentence for manslaughter, he is being sent to live at a halfway house in Charleston, according to Swanson.
‘She didn’t bother nobody’
Lonnie Neaman, Bertha Neaman’s son, said he was “very disappointed” in the Solicitor’s Office’s decision.
“I really thought that they had enough evidence to at least go ahead and take it to trial. They said they didn’t,” said Neaman, 64, of Bluffton.
In the 1980s, his family lived on Hilton Head near Folly Field when U.S. 278 was a two-lane road. His mother delivered newspapers across the island.
Donna Creel, 72, of Lake City, S.C., said her mother, Bertha Neaman, would bring bags of dog food on her routes, rip the bags open, and feed stray dogs along the way.
“She didn’t bother nobody,” Creel said. “She did her job, she slept, she went home.”
On March 15, 1988, Neaman, 60, was found dead behind the New Church of Christ on Spanish Wells Road. She was shot to death and sexually assaulted before she died, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
A cold case investigation in 2000 led to multiple witnesses who had information that Eckerin Frazier killed Bertha Neaman, Bromage said.
The Solicitor’s Office indicted Frazier on a murder charge, but he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter the following year.
A reporter called and sent an unanswered email to Frazier’s listed public defender. The executive director of a Charleston halfway house said Wednesday that Frazier had not arrived to the facility.
Lonnie Neaman said he was in his 30s when his mother was killed. The hurt never goes away.
Though he wanted Frazier to spend more time in prison for the sexual assault, Neaman said he is glad Frazier gets a second chance at life.
“I really hope it goes well for him,” Neaman said. “You don’t understand somebody who can take the life of another person to start with, [but] I wish him well.”
This story was originally published September 1, 2021 at 12:25 PM.
