The Atlanta Lawyer Who Killed His Wife | Fred Tokars
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On November 29th, 1992, Sarah Tokars and her two sons, six-year-old Ricky and four-year-old Mike, left her parents' home in Bradenton, Florida, around 12.45 p.m. They were visiting from Georgia to celebrate Thanksgiving and stayed the weekend to enjoy some extra family time. They even brought the family cocker spaniel, Jake, along for the trip.

Normally, Mike and Ricky hated leaving their grandparents' house. Sarah's father, John, recalls how they'd always cry before the long, nine-hour drive back to Marietta, Georgia. But something about this trip was different. Instead of crying, the boys left singing their song of choice, "I'll Be Home for Christmas." Sarah and the boys lived in an upscale home in Marietta, a small suburb about 30 miles north of Atlanta.

Her husband and the boy's father, Fred Tokars, was a successful big city attorney who defended people with deep pockets and plenty to lose. Fred got pulled into an emergency meeting that weekend and flew back from Florida on Saturday morning. Sarah and the boys were left to drive home alone. They pulled into the garage around 10:00 PM, exhausted from the long day's drive. Mike was asleep in the back seat. Ricky was eager to get inside.

Sarah fumbled with her keys while Jake, their dog, pawed at the door. But somebody opened it from the inside. Somebody that wasn't Fred. Curtis Rower, a 22-year-old addict with a sawed-off shotgun, stood on the other side. He ordered Sarah and Ricky back in the car. But Jake, the family dog, wasn't about to let this man kidnap his family.

He barked out of control. So Curtis punted him across the garage, shutting him up for good. Sarah got back in the driver's seat and Curtis sat behind her. Ricky sat in the front passenger seat while Mike stayed asleep in the back, unaware of what was happening. Curtis kept his shotgun pressed against the back of Sarah's head and ordered her to drive. She pleaded for her life and begged him not to hurt the children. In her mind, Curtis probably had a problem with her husband.

Little did she know, her husband was the puppet master behind the whole thing. Fred's business partner, Eddie Lawrence, hired Curtis to kill Sarah, promising a $5,000 reward for her head. Eddie told Curtis that Sarah was his ex-wife and that Mike and Ricky were his kids. Sarah was not Eddie's ex-wife, nor were Mike and Ricky his kids. However, Curtis didn't know any better.

Sarah had recently stumbled onto some pretty incriminating information about Fred and his business dealings. If she kept poking around, if she kept asking questions and talking to people, she might cost a lot of evil men a lot of money. And when it comes to drug dealers, you never mess with their money. Perhaps shaking with nerves in the backseat, Curtis ordered Sarah to drive into the city, but she didn't know the way. She lived the life of an upper middle class suburban mom,

She didn't like Atlanta and avoided big cities altogether. Fred told her how Atlanta was nothing but violence, crime, and drugs. She had no reason to doubt him either. Fred began his career as a prosecutor, but transitioned to criminal defense. He'd seen both sides of the coin and came to a pretty sound conclusion. Atlanta was no place for Sarah and the children, and they should avoid it at all costs. So instead of getting lost on their way to the city,

Curtis ordered Sarah to drive down a dead-end street. Dim street lights kept visibly low, and Sarah knew driving down that road would only end in death. She pulled over and begged Curtis one last time to let them go. Things got worse when Mike woke up. He tugged on Sarah's sleeve, asking why a strange man with a gun was sitting next to him. Why can't they just go home? That's when Eddie walked up beside the car. He looked at Sarah, and she looked at him.

her face sunk with betrayal. She once saw Eddie as a family friend and Fred's business partner, but now she was on the verge of blowing up their drug smuggling and money laundering operation. She hadn't trusted him for some time, but never thought he'd go this far. Fighter flight kicked in and Sarah pushed Ricky's head to the floor. She slammed on the gas and turned the wheel towards Eddie, trying to run him over. But the sudden jerk caused Curtis to pull the trigger

and the shotgun blast blew the back of Sarah's head all over the dashboard. Blood and brain matter splattered across the car and covered everyone inside. Curtis bailed out as the car rolled across the street and into a field. The car eventually stopped, and the two petrified brothers ran hand in hand to the closest house. They pounded on the door, screaming about how someone had just shot their mom, until a man finally answered.

Imagine answering your door close to midnight to find two screaming boys covered in blood. Ricky reportedly said, "A bad black man with a pirate gun shot my mom." Part one, when Sarah met Fred. Looking up at an Atlanta billboard in the mid 80s and early 90s, you'd probably see Fred Tokar's face plastered on the side. He was like the Saul Goodman of Atlanta, Georgia, an up and coming lawyer looking to get out of the district attorney's office.

You can only make so much money prosecuting high-level drug dealers. Defending them was much more lucrative. Fred learned that early on and planned on starting his own private practice. His nickname in the DA's office was "Fast Fred," which had nothing to do with how quickly he handled cases. He liked fast cars, nightclubs, and women. He liked bragging about his violent cases and dangerous clientele to the ladies he met.

Stories of murder, rape, drugs, and violence piqued the interest of white suburban women. Women far removed from Atlanta. Women like Sarah. In the mid-80s, Sarah was living with her sister, Chrissy, in a condominium complex in Dunwoody, Georgia, a town 30 minutes north of the city and due east of Marietta. She was watching the evening news one night, soaking in a gruesome story about an Atlanta attorney who was butchered by his lover.

That's when she saw a handsome junior prosecutor named Fred appear on TV. She recognized him as a fellow Yankee living in the Deep South. There was something comfortable about him, something she immediately latched onto through the TV screen. They'd met before and grew up in the same suburb in Buffalo, New York. Sarah had felt out of place for some time. She worked as a school teacher in Florida until 1981, when she married an Atlanta health club owner she met on the beach.

She moved to Georgia and taught aerobics at her first husband's club, a club that catered explicitly to Atlanta high society. Members included Atlanta Falcons football players, young nightclub investors, and some of the most beautiful women in the city. Those women ultimately led to their marriage dissolving and Sarah moved in with her sister. The two worked as promoters at the Perimeter Nightclub, one of Fred's favorite nighttime destinations. According to Chrissy,

Sarah always boasted the optimism of a high school cheerleader. She could fill anyone with pep rally-level enthusiasm, making her the ideal nightclub promoter and someone Fred took a quick liking to. After seeing him on TV, she called Tokars on a whim, and he regaled her and Chrissy with his high-octane tales from the courtroom. But there was something about Fred that almost hid in plain sight.

He seemed to know everything about Atlanta's dark underbelly, which made sense for a well-known defense attorney. In reality, Fred was Atlanta's dark underbelly. Part two, Tokar's criminal enterprise. Cocaine fueled the 1980s club scene. Anybody who got their hands on pure Colombian powder could punch their ticket to millions overnight. But moving drugs and money got more complicated once the government cracked down.

While Fred couldn't help them smuggle coke across the border, he could help them launder their millions for a price. The same year, Tokars began his own practice. The government passed sweeping anti-money laundering laws. Fred, ever the self promoter, penned an article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle. He wrote about how these new laws were so complex that drug dealers would have no choice but to consult with attorneys. If you read between the lines,

Tokars clearly told every drug dealer from Miami to Maine, "I'm your guy." Fred learned early on that heavy cash businesses like nightclubs were the perfect front for drug money. He and his business partner, Eddie Lawrence, got in bed with a band of Detroit cocaine dealers as early as 1986, helping them set up offshore bank accounts and funnel money through the nightclubs. Sadly, Sarah was oblivious to Fred's double life.

She had dreams of starting her own family, reminiscent of the one she missed so dearly. She was one of seven sisters born into a loving Catholic household. Her parents enjoyed the perfect marriage and Sarah just wanted something close. She wanted to quit her job when Ricky was born in 1986, but Fred was vehemently against it. Being the peacemaker of the family and not wanting to see her second marriage dissolve, Sarah reached a compromise.

She'd work half the day in the office and half the day at home. Sarah ultimately got what she wanted, just not how she expected. Atlanta issued stiffer penalties for drink and drive laws and outlawed two-for-one happy hours. The AIDS epidemic tore through town and crackdowns on cocaine made the party drug harder to get. All of these changes were costing nightclubs some serious money. The only options were to close, launder drug money, or lay people off.

Sarah lost her job and she became a housewife by default. Money got tight after Sarah lost her $40,000 salary or about $100,000 today. Fast Fred became frugal and abusive Fred and refused to make needed repairs around their new home in Marietta. He took control of the family finances and put Sarah on a strict budget. She wasn't allowed to have her own credit cards or checking account.

She couldn't buy new furniture or hire people to make household repairs. Fred basically gaslit her into believing she didn't know the value of a dollar. Once again, poor Sarah just sat there and took it. Her second child, Mike, was on the way. She couldn't risk losing everything now. Fred didn't like how close Sarah was with her family either. He made it difficult for her to travel, refusing to give her gas and hotel money.

When he did permit a trip down to Florida, he'd make pregnant Sarah and baby Ricky drive the nine hours, while he took an up-and-down flight. His verbal abuse eventually turned physical before Mike was born. A family friend invited Sarah and Fred to a party he was throwing, but Sarah called back and said they couldn't come. She held the phone close and confided in him that she wasn't well, that her arms were covered in bruises.

The friend was shocked and didn't know what to say. Sarah followed up, saying, "You wouldn't say anything about this, would you? Don't even tell Fred I called." Part 3: Sarah Gets Sus Mike was born in 1988. By then, Sarah had grown increasingly suspicious of Fred's shady business dealings. He'd spent most nights away from home, and when he did show up, he was rather distant.

Fred showed all the warning signs of infidelity, and everyone around Sarah could see it plain as day. Fred's frugal spending habits left the house in worse shape every year. By 1988, the air conditioner was broken, and the lock on the sliding glass door didn't work. While their Marietta neighbors enjoyed the luxuries of upper-class life, Sarah felt like a prisoner in a deteriorating home. Though, there was one room in her prison Fred forbid her from entering.

the basement. Sarah knew her ticket to freedom was in that basement. Fred kept a safe down there, presumably full of incriminating documents and evidence. If she could open it, maybe she could use it as leverage to leave Fred and retain custody of her kids. For all his criminal activity, Fred was still one of the most powerful lawyers in Atlanta. Sarah could never beat him in divorce court. If they broke up,

She'd be a single woman with no job, no money, and no means to support her children. Meanwhile, Fred was a wealthy and well-respected attorney with a home and padded bank account. The judge's decision wouldn't be too hard, but maybe the rumors about her husband weren't true. Maybe the people he defended were holding him against his will, forcing him to launder their drug money with a gun to his head. What if cracking that safe put her children's lives in danger? Those fears kept brewing after Mike was born.

She drew up a new will, naming her sister Karen as Mike and Riggi's legal guardian should something happen to her. She left all her worldly possessions to the kids and never mentioned Fred by name in the will, only saying, "If my husband does not survive me." But Fred wasn't ignorant of Sarah's updated will. He plotted his own backup plan, taking out $1.7 million worth of life insurance policies on Sarah,

policies that named him as the sole beneficiary. In the end, Sarah weighed all the options and came to one final conclusion. She had to open that safe. Sarah hired a private investigator named Ralph Perdomo to follow Fred while she worked on cracking the safe. Ralph confirmed Sarah's suspicions that Fred was cheating on her, but an unfaithful husband wasn't enough to win custody of Mike and Ricky. On a hot August day,

Sarah finally cracked the code. She sifted through his documents, looking for anything she could use against him. Alongside the paperwork were several medicine vials, later described as prescription pills. Sarah called Ralph to look at the documents and see if anything proved Fred's criminal behavior. While Sarah found exactly what she was looking for, Ralph refused to take it with him. As a PI, he still had to operate within the law

and breaking into someone's safe was very illegal. Instead, Ralph told Sarah to photocopy everything in the safe and give the copies to someone she trusted. She understood that his hands were tied, so she asked Ralph for one more favor, for him to turn his investigation over to the police if something happened to her. At the time, Ralph thought she was just being overdramatic. Looking back on it, he realizes how she must have felt. But while Sarah played detective in her own home,

The real Atlanta Police Department was already digging into Fred. They knew the kind of company he kept, and they narrowed their search to a specific club called the Parrot Nightclub. They suspected Fred and Eddie were using the club as a front for their drug dealer buddies. They just had to prove it. The stakes had never been so high, and Fred's criminal connections pegged Sarah as a liability.

They weren't willing to risk a messy divorce case, especially given Fred's status as a high-profile attorney. Sarah was officially marked for death. Part Four: They'll Get Over It Sarah was never supposed to drive down to Florida for Thanksgiving in 1992. A few nights before the trip, Eddie and Curtis broke into the Tokars' home, slipping in via the broken lock on the sliding glass door.

She was supposed to die that night, but Jake, the Cocker Spaniel woke up and started barking. A light flipped on upstairs, and Curtis and Eddie fled into the night. Sarah and the kids drove down to Bradenton on Tuesday, only stopping to pick Fred up from the Tampa airport. Per usual, he flew down alone, forcing Sarah to drive the nine hours. Fred hung around until Saturday, and then hopped on a plane back to Atlanta.

About 15 minutes after Sarah left on Sunday, Fred called his father-in-law, John, to see when she was supposed to get home. John waited until 10:00 PM for his daughter to call, but she never did. He tried calling himself, but the line was constantly busy. Around midnight, after several failed phone calls, Bradenton police knocked on John's door to deliver the heartbreaking news. Sarah was dead and his grandchildren saw the whole thing.

Fred was in Montgomery for the evening and received a visit from Alabama police telling him the same story. Both sides of the family gathered at a hotel in Atlanta. And Sarah's sister, Gretchen, remembers Fred acting very strange. She says he couldn't control himself and that he kept crying, "I want my mommy." Around 4:00 AM, his mother, Norma Tokars, drove to the hotel from her Atlanta apartment.

He didn't calm down until she cuddled in bed beside him. After Sarah's funeral, Fred agreed that Mike and Ricky were better off with their grandparents in Florida. But John had his sneaking suspicions about Fred. He found it strange that Fred wouldn't divulge his clients to the police saying, "This is looking bad. Tell them who you were dealing with so they can get to the bottom of this." In the weeks following Sarah's murder, police connected the dots on a few of Fred's business partners and arrested Eddie Lawrence.

His secretary told police how Eddie tried to get his hands on a gun he'd been trying for the past few weeks. That secretary's name was Tuesday Rower, Curtis Rower's sister. At the time, Curtis was a small-time criminal with a rap sheet full of petty arrests. Police found him hiding under a relative's bed, and he promptly confessed to killing Sarah Tokars. Though Curtis wasn't about to go down alone.

He told police how Eddie offered him $5,000 and a kilo of cocaine to knock off his ex-wife. Eddie even told him not to hurt my kids. After failing to kill Sarah before Thanksgiving, Curtis broke back into the house on November 29th and waited for her to get home. Meanwhile, Eddie waited in the getaway truck parked nearby. In his taped confession, Curtis told police that Eddie hadn't paid him yet. He couldn't see the getaway truck when he forced Sarah back into her car and panicked.

He demanded she drive to a housing project in Atlanta, but Sarah didn't know how to get there. So, about a half mile from the Tokars' house, Curtis told her to pull down a side street and into a cul-de-sac. Instead, she pulled over to the side of the road and began begging for her and her children's lives. Until now, police had no idea how involved Fred was with Sarah's killing. To them, Eddie orchestrated the entire thing to protect some business deals.

But that didn't stop the rumors about Fred from spreading around the city. In the court of public opinion, Fred Tokars just ordered the hit on his wife. Caring for Mike and Ricky became the full-time job of Sarah's surviving family. They stayed with their grandparents in Bradenton and Sarah's sisters visited on rotation.

Eventually, Sarah's sister Jody took up the mantle of surrogate mother. According to Gretchen, the boys really attached themselves to Joanie, who looks very much like Sarah. Fred only visited twice a month while public pressure around the case mounted back in Atlanta. By June, he couldn't take it anymore come June. He kidnapped Mike and Riggie and drove to their vacation home in Ontario, Canada. Perhaps he knew the police were moments away from learning the truth.

Eddie and Curtis spilled their guts, implicating Fred in Sarah's murder. And while there was no physical evidence tying him to it, the cops had plenty against him for money laundering and racketeering. But don't worry, murder and kidnapping charges followed close behind. According to Eddie's testimony, Fred wanted Sarah dead after she threatened to divorce him. He didn't want to risk losing any assets to her in divorce court, so he figured killing her was the better option.

Perhaps the most disturbing fact is that Fred wanted the kids to watch. He told Eddie they'd get over it. As you can imagine, they never did. Eddie received what some called the deal of the century to testify against Fred on racketeering and murder charges. As the prosecution's star witness, it wasn't hard to convince a jury that Fred Tokars was the puppet master behind the whole thing.

He was officially convicted on federal racketeering charges in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison. Three years later, a jury found him guilty of Sarah's murder and tacked another life sentence onto the first one. But for his cooperation, Eddie got off with a 12 and a half year sentence and life imprisonment in the witness protection program. According to Eddie's wife, Bernadette, he's staying in a federal facility that looks like a college dorm.

As for Curtis, he received a life sentence after pleading guilty. Judge George Krieger looked at him and said, "Mr. Rohrer, each day you should think about the two children that no longer have a mother because of your actions." Part Five: A Fate Worse Than Death Sarah's family wanted the death penalty for Fred, but they had to settle for life in prison.

Bill Torpey, a writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, believes Fred Tokars' time in prison was a fate worse than death. His role as a lawyer put a massive target on his back, and he'd catch regular beatings from fellow inmates when he didn't help with their cases. One inmate in particular, Dustin Lee Honkin, in jail for meth but wanted for murder, was pretty talkative regarding the people he'd killed.

Fred went to the FBI on his attorney's advice and soon became a jailhouse informant. He had hundreds of conversations with Dustin, who bragged about beating an earlier case after killing several witnesses. He even told Tokars where they might find the shallow graves. One of those murders was the slaying of his drug dealing partner, the partner's girlfriend, and her two young daughters.

Dustin justified killing the kids, saying, "They were rats being raised by rats." Fred helped put Dustin away for good. He even prevented a prison break after Dustin and other white supremacists plotted to escape and slaughter more witnesses. His lawyers asked for a sentence reduction, but that thankfully didn't fly. Fred was moved into witness protection for his efforts, similar to Eddie.

He had his own private cell, a private bathroom, cable TV, and access to a phone. But his cushy new life wasn't all that great. A neurological disease coupled with chronic pain left him in a wheelchair. He could hardly eat or take care of himself. He urinated through a catheter, wore diapers, and looked anorexic. Fred's life was utter misery, and all he wanted to do was talk to Mike and Ricky, now full-grown adults.

But that never happened. Part 6: Fred's Final Victim Fred's actions put his children through hell, a hell that Mike never truly escaped. Mike was 24 years old in 2012 when his aunt contacted Bill Torpy at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mike had aspirations to become a journalist, and his aunt wanted to know if Bill had any advice for him. Bill laid it out clean: journalism is a cruel world and a hard place to make a living.

Still, he was willing to help Mike publish his first piece. After all, covering his mother's gruesome murder put Bill on the map when he joined the Constitution in 1990. It was the least he could do. Mike's article was a first-person account of his and Ricky's journey following their mother's death and Fred's incarceration. They published on the 20th anniversary of Sarah's death, and it was the first time Mike had spoken publicly about the murder.

Ricky grew up to become an emergency medical technician, and Mike earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia. But a master's degree wasn't enough for Mike to make a living. Although he'd written a few books and bounced around several newspapers, Mike could never break into the world of professional writing. According to his aunt Chrissy, Mike struggled his whole life with PTSD and depression. He tried to find happiness through music and writing, but Fred stole that from him.

At times, he'd make very poor decisions. Mike struggled to find work in early 2020 and decided to make the four-day drive from Florida to Los Angeles to reinvent himself. He planned to stay with one of his aunts until he could get on his feet. So Mike loaded his life into his car, including his yellow lab, Frank, and headed out west. But the COVID-19 pandemic was just starting and Mike struggled to find a motel to take him in.

The drive itself did a number on Mike's six foot four frame. He'd gained some weight in recent years and being crammed in the car for four days caused him to feel weak upon arrival in LA. But Mike's aunt struggled with cancer and was quarantined during the early pandemic. He didn't want to risk giving her COVID. So Mike stayed in his car where his physical condition worsened

One day, she came out to check on him and found her weak, limp nephew barely hanging on in the car. Mike arrived at the hospital, where doctors discovered blood clots behind his knees. Sadly, the clots spread from his knees to his lungs, and Mike died of a pulmonary embolism at 31 years old, Fred's final victim. Fred Tokars never saw or spoke to either of his children again, and he never will. In May of 2020,

Fred died of natural causes alone in his Pennsylvania prison cell. After his death, Sarah's sister Joni simply said, "He should have died in the electric chair 28 years ago."