Touching Story Ends in Case of Attempted Murder

As a journalist, he wrote the wrenching story of a mother’s struggle to raise a daughter with Down’s syndrome. Now there is more to the story. Police say the two became lovers, and that he tried to kill her sleeping husband as she watched with a baseball bat in her hands.

Michael Frazier has been charged in a plot with Lisa Whedbee to kill John Whedbee with a butcher knife early Wednesday. Later in the day, Whedbee filed for divorce and a restraining order against his wife.

“This is just so sordid,” said Dwight Van de Vate, a Knox County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

Frazier, lifestyles editor at the Oak Ridger in Oak Ridge, won an award for his 1993 Mother’s Day story about the Whedbees and their 4-year-old daughter, Brittany, who is mentally retarded and bedridden since suffering a stroke in 1991.

Frazier and the Whedbees attended Trinity United Methodist Church. She sang in the choir. Frazier, himself married, played the organ.

Authorities say she also may have been trapped in an abusive marriage and turned to Frazier for help.

Police say Mrs. Whedbee let Frazier into her Knoxville-area home and they waited until her husband came home and went to sleep.

Whedbee, 33, an insurance agent, said he awoke to find a man standing over him with a butcher knife and struggled with him. Mrs. Whedbee stood by with a baseball bat and did nothing when her husband called for help, police said.

Whedbee broke free, grabbed the bat and ran. Police say he later identified his attacker as Frazier.

Frazier, 32, was charged with attempted murder and remained in custody Thursday in lieu of $50,000 bond. Mrs. Whedbee, 31, was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and released on $50,000 bond.

Less than a week ago, Mrs. Whedbee obtained a protective order against her husband that allowed him to remain in the house. She claimed her husband of nearly 12 years had threatened and beaten her, but they agreed to try to work out their differences.

Frazier told police he knew nothing about the attack, Van de Vate said. But Mrs. Whedbee “has been willing to talk to authorities,” Van de Vate said, without elaborating.

Peter Esser, publisher of the Oak Ridger, a small afternoon newspaper 25 miles west of Knoxville, had no comment except to confirm that Frazier is still an employee. Frazier’s article about the Whedbee family won the 1994 Malcolm Law Memorial Award for feature writing from the Tennessee Associated Press Managing Editors.