An Interracial Ohio Couple Claimed a 2019 House Explosion Was a Hate Crime. The Feds Now Say It Was a Hoax

On August 7, 2019, at 12:36 a.m., fire officers from the Sterling Fire Department responded to a call of a home explosion at the end of the Spruce Street, on a block roughly 40 miles south of Cleveland.

What they found were charred remains, with just a blackened chimney and two-car garage standing. Suspicion pointed to a hate crime at the hands of racist arsonists: a misspelled N-word and hastily-drawn swastika had been spray-painted on the garage door.

Angela Frase, who is Black and Brad Frase, who is white, had owned the home since 2009 and were devastated.

“It’s a blessing me and my husband…were not here,” Angela Frase told reporters . “Last night I got up here, I threw up twice. I woke up this morning thinking maybe this is a dream... We decided that whatever happens, we're not rebuilding here. We're not coming back. We're done."

It was a suburban tragedy with national implications, coming at a time of heightened racial tensions and protests. The New York Times , CBS News and others covered the incident.

Neighbors and family offered the Frases places to stay. Investigators opened up an arson investigation. And the couple received hundreds of thousands of dollars for hotel stays and in property loss claims. A $5,000 award was offered by the Blue Ribbon Arson Committee to help the Frases find the culprit.

Which may be, a federal investigation argues, Angela Frase herself.

Frase, a complaint filed September 19 in the Northern District of Ohio Court reads, was behind the effort to fleece their insurance company out of a check for a home they didn't want.

From June 2019 to June 2020, "Frase did knowingly devise and intend to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud [her] insurance company," the complaint reads, "and to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises."

Federal prosecutors claim that Frase's Facebook postings leading up to the explosion, and inconsistencies surrounding purported electrical issues beforehand, are sufficient to accuse her of four counts of fraud.

That evidence, the complaint reads, goes back to the summer of 2019, when Angela began complaining on her Facebook page about encroaching floods in the area, suggesting she was ready, one post stated, "to sell this place and move."

On July 3, 2019, the Sterling Fire Department responded to a second call from Angela after she said her home was "full of smoke" for a second time. Irritated, she and Brad temporarily moved to a relative's home. Online, Angela blamed the home's faulty electrical system. (The fire marshal later said the cause of the fire was "undetermined.")

Their house, Angela wrote, "had to be rewired up to code," according to the complaint, and seemed to blame previous owners. "So illegal. They couldn't believe it hasn't burnt down before."

Responding to a comment on Facebook from someone offering help, Frase said, "If you really want to help me, you can blow the rest of the house up."

On August 6, 2019, the evening before the explosion, fire officials responded to a call for a natural gas leak at the residence. They discovered that a stove burner had been left on and gas levels had escalated to highs that endangered not only the house but surrounding structures. They called Frase at the hotel she was staying at, and she returned to the residence before going back to her hotel around 6 p.m.

But she returned, the Feds allege, traveling from her hotel to the residence later that evening shortly before midnight. Less than an hour later, officials responded to calls that the house had exploded and was on fire.

On August 11, Angela told cops she had left her hotel the night of the 6th to "check on her cats," the complaint reads, and had found "white power" sprayed on the garage. A stuffed doll painted black with a rope around its neck was discovered in their mailbox. A plastic baggie with "DIE" on it, containing a white substance, was dropped off after.

When Sterling police asked the Frases to deliver Ring footage of possible intruders and suspects, Brad never acted.

"No surveillance photos were ever provided," the complaint says.

The feds accuse Angela of defrauding their insurance company of more than $320,000. The full complaint can be read below.

[pdf-1] Update: An original version of this story mistakently said Brad Frase was also indicted. The error has been corrected.

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