Jason Funk: Give Us a Sign

Katie Froeschle Is Attacked on the Job
(‘Muffled Cries,’ Forensic Files)

Although it certainly wasn’t his intention, Jason Funk did just about everything possible to incriminate himself before, during, and after Katie Froeschle’s murder.

The unemployed motorcycle mechanic killed the 25-year-old insurance adjuster at his residence, just after she had confirmed with a co-worker that she was at his address. In fact, she was still on a cell phone call when Jason came walking out of his house toward her car.

Zero cover-up. Next up, he left forensic evidence, including the victim’s blood, in the house and “hid” her body in a highly discoverable location.

He didn’t even get rid of the murder weapon.

But it’s another misstep in particular that cemented the 27-year-old Floridian’s ranking as the second-dumbest criminal in all 15 seasons of the original Forensic Files.

Colorado native. I’ll get to his colossal mistake in a minute, but first here’s a recap of “Muffled Cries” along with extra information drawn from internet research into the case and the victim’s young life:

Katrina Anne “Katie” Froeschle came into the world in Fort Collins, Colorado, in 1979, the only girl and eldest of three children born to Leonore Froeschle, a nurse, and Jeff Froeschle, an assistant attorney general who later went into private practice. Katie was especially close to her father. They went skiing in Steamboat Springs and scuba diving in Key West together. She also enjoyed gymnastics and softball.

The family moved to Tierra Verde, Florida, and Katie, who had long hair and attractive features, graduated from Lakewood High School in St. Petersburg and then from Florida State University in 2002. She earned degrees in finance and risk management.

Insurers deluged. Her very first job out of school, as an adjuster for Florida Farm Bureau Insurance, put her interpersonal skills as well as her business studies to use.

Katie “got all the difficult people because she could get the information she needed and soothe them,” Leonore Froeschle told the Tampa Tribune.

On November 12, 2004, Katie deserved some R&R after one of many long days. Four hurricanes had hit Florida that year, creating extensive damage and an overwhelming amount of work for insurance professionals.

Pet gone hungry. Katie planned to meet up with some friends at a restaurant after work, but she never showed up.

Her family called her repeatedly over the weekend but heard nothing. When her best friend from work, Amy Roderick, checked on Katie’s apartment, she found it empty — and yikes, no one had fed the cat.

Police began looking for Katie’s 2003 Chevrolet Impala. They learned that she had ended her workday by visiting a house in Sulphur Springs, a working-class section of Tampa, to check on a leaky roof reported by the owner.

Potential accident. Although the area has been called a bit dicey, Katie probably didn’t feel vulnerable.

“When performing inspections for roof damage, most adjusters will cite a fall from the roof as their greatest concern, not physical attack by the home’s occupants,” according to the Property Casualty 360 Daily News.

Also, that particular inspection probably didn’t even require the adjuster to go inside the home.

Auto turns up. As mentioned, Katie needed help from a coworker to locate the house at 1503 East Mulberry Drive, then told the coworker that she had arrived and described the occupant who walked toward her car.

After Katie disappeared, Jeff and Leonore Froeschle visited the two-bedroom yellow house that Jason Matthew Funk and girlfriend Pamela Hintz had moved into just three days earlier. The couple claimed to know nothing about a damaged roof or a visit from an adjuster.

The Froeschles soon discovered their daughter’s maroon Impala in the parking lot of the Harbor Club, a restaurant about a mile from the house on East Mulberry Drive. Inside the car, they found her keys and purse with no cash.

Sad development. A witness came forward to say he saw a tall man leave the car in the lot and walk away.

When a missing woman’s car turns up abandoned, it’s usually an indicator of a tragedy, and unfortunately, such was the case with Katie. A police officer spotted her dead body in the Hillsborough River. She was partly clothed and lay in the water directly behind Jason Funk’s house.

Katie’s family held a memorial service at the Island Chapel in Tierra Verde.

Not a typical crime. The news of the random killing rattled locals. “Everyone felt this one,” police officer Jim Simonson told the Tampa Bay Times as reported in a November 20, 2004 story, which also noted that the cashiers at an area CVS pharmacy “couldn’t stop talking about it.”

Tampa Police Department spokesperson Joe Durkin said that Sulphur Springs had “its share of crime” but that the “brutal and heinous” homicide “shocks the conscience of the community,” according to Colorado news publication Summit Daily.

Because of Katie’s half-clothed state, investigators believed someone had sexually assaulted her, although a rape kit tested inconclusive. They determined she had been in the water for about 30 hours.

Owner cleared. The medical examiner found pattern injuries in the form of round marks on her head. Someone had likely beaten her to death with an object.

(In a letter to the editor, Katie’s aunt would later criticize the Tampa Bay Times for printing ” horrific, graphic details” that “served no purpose” and “only sensationalized and humiliated the name of a beautiful and upstanding young woman.”)

Leonore spoke to Jason Funk’s landlord, who acknowledged he had made the claim about the roof. His behavior seemed a bit suspicious to Leonore — but anybody could get a little weird when questioned about a murder, and he gave an alibi that satisfied the police.

Erratic behavior. When investigators informed Jason Funk about the discovery of Katie’s body, he “was more concerned about the police distracting him from his birthday cake baking in the oven than about Froeschle,” the Tampa Bay Times reported on February 10, 2005. Jason said that he was jet-skiing at the time Katie disappeared.

“He was at turns cold, jovial, and distraught, and he said a few things only the killer could have known,” a January 27, 2005 Tampa Bay Times story reported.

Investigators discovered that someone had tried using Katie’s credit cards a number of times and succeeded at least twice.

Put his name to the crime. A Publix store surveillance video showed a tall white male paying for groceries with Katie’s ATM card.

And here’s the part of the story that has kept Forensic Files fans scratching and shaking their heads since “Muffled Cries” first aired in 2007: The same man paid for items at a Qwick Stop with Katie Froeschle’s card and signed his own name — “Jason Funk” — on the receipt.

The reaction of the audience members at a Montel Williams Show was typical. During a segment featuring shocking crimes, they could not contain their laughter when told about the signed receipt. “This guy is just stupid,” Williams said during the 2008 episode.

Backyard inferno. Jason left plenty of other clues as well. A lab discovered that some skin cells on Katie’s steering wheel came from Jason. Apparently, it didn’t occur to him to wipe the car interior clean after he drove the Impala from his house to the restaurant.

Inside the residence, detectives found Katie’s E-ZPass unit and business card. Outside the house, investigators identified a burn pit (incinerated items, always a bad indicator, the Slovers) with Katie’s belt — she was wearing pants and a top that day. Police also believed the killer put bloodstained synthetic carpet in the flames. Neighbor Robert Rodriguez recalled the smell of “plastic burning.”

Investigators theorized that a motorcycle muffler with a circular mounting bracket they had recovered from the house was the source of Katie’s pattern injuries. Jason had beaten her to death with the car part, they believed. His Nike sneakers had Katie’s blood on them and so did walls and miniblinds inside the house. A bank envelope belonging to Katie carried Jason’s fingerprints.

Not dodgy looking. But police didn’t have to wait for the test results before arresting Jason. They had taken him into custody immediately on a drug charge after finding 19 marijuana plants growing inside the house.

So who was this dim-witted brute?

Well, his background is a little mysterious, but some information turned up on Jason Funk. He was born on November 13, 1977 and grew up to stand 6-foot-3-inches tall. A photo of Jason “reveals a clean-cut, handsome young man, whose appearance would be impressive to most landlords,” according to Property Casualty 360 Daily News, which notes that in high-vacancy markets, many landlords “do not pull credit reports (much less run criminal background checks).”

Why she went inside. It turned out that, years before the murder, Jason had gotten himself into legal trouble owing to domestic violence and drug use.

Investigators theorized that on the day Katie died, Jason was the man who came out of the house as she drove up. (His girlfriend was at work.)

“There are any number of possible scenarios that might explain why the adjuster entered a property that seemed to require only an exterior roof inspection,” Property Casualty 360 Daily News conjectured in an October 5, 2009 story. “Perhaps she asked to use the bathroom after an unexpected long drive; maybe Funk invited her in for a drink of water; or perhaps Katie found significant roof damage and wanted to check interior ceilings for water stains.”

Still water. Forensic Files suggested that perhaps Jason made a pass at Katie, then got mad when she rebuffed him, and struck her repeatedly with the motorcycle muffler, killing her and spraying the wall with blood.

Then, not noticing that the water had no current (because of a dam), Jason threw her body into the Hillsborough River behind his house — and there it stayed, awaiting discovery.

Jason burned Katie’s clothes and the bloodstained carpet and stole her cash and credit cards. He had recently lost his job and needed money for groceries and the $850-a-month rent on the house.

Caught on audio. Then, Jason meticulously cleaned the muffler alleged to be the murder weapon; the metal sparkled, but the circular cutout enabled police to link it to Katie’s injuries.

Pamela Hintz cooperated with the police and secretly recorded some of her conversations with Jason:

“‘Honey, they can have me driving her car, spending her money, using her cell phone, doing everything else, but they don’t have me doing anything to her,’ he told Hintz. At other times, he became threatening, telling Hintz if she hung up, he would put her ‘in the river,'” the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Full confession. Despite the mounting evidence, Jason did have at least one defender. “It’s not in character for Jason to do anyone wrong like that,” said Scott Bitman, owner of Cycle Masters and Jason’s former boss.

But Jason himself seemed to come to his senses when confronted with the forensics and possibility of the death penalty.

Wearing shackles and an orange prison uniform in court, he admitted to inviting Katie into his house, attempting to rape her, and beating her to death with the motorcycle muffler.

Source of sadness. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of cultivation of marijuana.

Represented by a public defender, Jason declined to make a statement to the victim’s family.

Katie’s parents, her brother Samuel, and Amy Roderick chose to address the court about their loss. Amy mentioned that Katie only saw the good in people, and Samuel spoke of how he and his sister would stay up all night talking — but now he cries himself to sleep. Leonore called Katie her best friend.

Quite the revisionist. Their words brought Judge Denise Pomponio to tears, the Tampa Bay Times reported. She gave Jason a sentence of life without parole for the murder plus a total of 60 years for attempted sexual battery and other offenses against Katie plus having the contraband houseplants.

But during his Forensic Files interview, Jason Funk said that he was innocent and took responsibility for the murder only to avoid the death penalty.

So where is this Isaac Newton of a man today?

FSU award. Jason resides in the Wakulla Correctional Institution in Crawfordville. Also known as #168693 and listed with the Sexual Offender Predator System, he’s under close custody, meaning that armed personnel must supervise him at all times. The Florida DOC website notes that he weighs 236 pounds and has no chance of release.

To honor the woman Jason murdered, the Froeschles established the Katrina Anne “Katie” Froeschle Memorial Scholarship Fund for FSU students interested in risk management, insurance, real estate, and business law.

Katie’s former employer, Florida Farm Bureau Insurance, donated $50,000.

In 2011, with Katie’s tragic murder in mind, the American Association of Public Insurance Adjusters published Safety in the Field for Adjusters And Other On-Site Professionals. “If this manual can save one life, it’s worth it,” a press release quoted Jeff Froeschle as saying.

Weighty memorial. Over the years, Jeff has kept close tabs on Jason’s whereabouts as Florida moved him around to various prisons, according to a Tampa Bay Times story, which noted that Jeff served as a board member of the Life Center of the Suncoast, a Tampa facility offering grief counseling to families of murder victims.

Sadly, the Froeschles ended their 28-year marriage not long after the murder. Jeff said he worried that the union deteriorated because he talked about Katie too much.

His devotion continued, however.

Have some punch. Jeff collected 934 photos of his lost daughter and set them to music for a presentation for the scholarship fund — but he told the Tampa Bay Times that after viewing it twice, he found it too heartbreaking to watch again.

The article also notes that Jeff tried to work through his feelings by boxing with a heavy bag and sometimes he would “pretend the bag was Funk’s face.”

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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