Former Mizzou teammates struggle to reconcile murder-suicide committed by Jed Frost
Over the last few months, a few former Mizzou basketball teammates of Jed Frost came to realize he was struggling emotionally with the potential ramifications of a divorce filed for in May by his wife, Beth.
So they did what friends do. They checked in on Frost more often with texts and phone calls as recently as last week, trying to lend encouragement and support.
From his responses — some brief, some more at length and some even humorous — they had no hint or notion that Frost was on the verge of committing an atrocity:
Authorities in Dallas, Texas, told multiple local media outlets that Frost on Tuesday went to the office of his estranged wife, a Dallas County medical examiner, and shot and killed her. Then he wounded another employee before killing himself with the gun.
“It’s just so sad,” said former Mizzou coach Norm Stewart, for whom Frost played from 1990-94.
In some ways, that simple term says all that can be understood about this shattering action.
At least until more can be brought to light about Frost’s descent into whatever form of sickness led to a final act so heinous that it will be forever entwined with his name.
No wonder one friend who had recently been in touch didn’t immediately want to publicly speak of the unspeakable or try to make sense of the senseless.
Not while he remained stunned himself and struggled to reconcile how the person he knew could reach a point of doing such a thing. Not while he is consumed with grief for all those affected, particularly the children, 9 and 5. So much so that he woke up weeping in the middle of the night, overwhelmed by it all.
Even as he intellectually understands that whatever compelled this was beyond his grasp, he can’t help but wonder if he could somehow have done something more, or differently.
Another former teammate, Julian Winfield, said he was dumbfounded and that “there are no words.”
Something that was just as true among teammates from that era as they reached out to one another over the last few days.
It’s too shocking to process.
“I’m not trying to figure it out. Because I can’t,” Winfield said by phone from California, where he works in the insurance business.
All he can think about, he said, is how are the children? And what of the extended families? What about her co-workers? And those who had to respond to what was initially considered a possible active-shooter situation and arrived on the scene to a murder-suicide?
“You don’t want to realize or believe that that could happen,” Winfield said. “But it’s real.”
Why and how it became a reality is another matter when it comes to Frost, who went to Mizzou as a walk-on but earned a scholarship his senior year as part of a team that went 14-0 in Big Eight play.
The couple was married in 2001, not long after the former All-Metro player at Park Hill High was named the Kansas City Metro basketball coach of the year for taking Park Hill South to the state championship game a year after the team had gone 1-23.
Frost later spent one year as a volunteer assistant at Iowa State and three seasons as the director of basketball operations at Hawaii before taking jobs as an insurance and financial representative when Beth was preparing for a career change.
According to Beth Frost’s LinkedIn profile, she earned graduate and master’s degrees at the University of Central Missouri before attaining her degree in osteopathic medicine at Kansas City University in 2012. The couple then moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where she undertook residency training in anatomic and clinical pathology.
During those years, she gave her husband a handmade leather messenger bag featuring brass equestrian hardware and branded with a small elephant. That proved the inspiration for FROST, a customized luxury leather bag business he’d later create.
(The personalized bags began at $6,000. While the website remains up, it could not immediately be confirmed whether the business had still been in operation in recent months.)
The imagery on that first bag, he later told ImagesArizona.com, was personal to their own story, including a nod to Lexington being the horse capital of the world.
“She wanted me to take that part of the story with me everywhere I go, because that’s part of who we are,” he said, later adding that the elephant “represents the difficulty we endured together when Beth was in medical school. It’s something that’s meaningful to us that no one else would know.”
Those words seem both chilling and apt now.
Because there are parts of this story that no one could know … and no one may ever know now.
The couple spent three years in Arizona, where she worked for the Maricopa County medical examiner’s office, before moving to Dallas in 2020. According to the Dallas Morning News, citing court records, Beth Frost filed for divorce on May 2.
The newspaper wrote that the grounds for divorce in that filing said the marriage had become “insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities between Beth and Jed that destroys the legitimate ends of the marriage relationship and prevents any reasonable expectation of reconciliation.”
While the initial filing said Beth Frost had not requested protective orders or custody of their children, the newspaper added, court records showed a child custody evaluation was ordered in early October.
Meanwhile, financial issues loomed.
Per the Morning News:
“According to a lawsuit filed Aug. 2 in Dallas County, Jed Frost’s father was seeking $228,916 he said the couple owed him from a series of loans. James Frost Sr. said he gave them the money to purchase property, including one house in 2006 and another in 2010, along with covering medical and living expenses, the lawsuit says.
“The lawsuit said the couple had paid just under $75,000 toward the balance and was ‘fully aware’ James Frost Sr. expected to be repaid in full. However, the lawsuit goes on to say when he demanded the remaining payment from the couple, they refused.
“An October court filing shows that Beth Frost denied her father-in-law’s allegations and requested that the lawsuit be consolidated into the divorce case.”
The newspaper also reported that court records showed Jed Frost was being sued by State Farm Federal Credit Union over a loan of about $50,000 and that Frost denied owing the money.
Speaking generally and not suggesting any specific knowledge of Frost, Winfield thought about the prevalence of mental illness and the stigma it still seems to hold in certain circles.
Perhaps all the more so superimposed over athletes, who might see themselves as invincible or able to handle anything while they’re competing and thus less likely to seek the help they might need.
So he often tells his friends, his own children and youth players he coaches, “If something doesn’t feel right, it’s OK to say something.”
You’ve got to check on your loved ones and your friends, he added, and let them know you are there for them.
No doubt that can be vital.
Alas, though, that also can only go as far as someone will let you in.
Frost had that sort of engagement with at least a few people, who never could have imagined that his distress would lead to this horrific turn.
It’s just so sad.
This story was originally published November 11, 2022 at 6:30 AM.