An 11-year-old witness points a finger at her father’s suspected killer: Her sister’s forbidden boyfriend

Sierra Friar, 18 years old at the time of her exclusive interview with “48 Hours,” talks about the morning of Oct. 2, 2017, when her father, Aaron, and 15-year-old sister, Ellie, vanished.

Sierra Friar wakes up to yelling

11-year-old Sierra Friar wakes up to her father Aaron Friar yelling and the sound of glass breaking around 5:30 a.m. Terrified, she stayed in her room until she felt safe enough to come out. 

Family gone; blood everywhere

Around 6:15 a.m., when the house is quiet, Sierra exits her room to find her father and her older sister Ellie have disappeared. She sees the living room walls covered in blood and shattered glass from an overhead light fixture on the floor. She then calls for help.

Sierra is brought to her mother Maggie Friar’s home a couple of blocks away. 

A mother’s frantic 911 call

Maggie Friar calls 911 at 6:42 a.m. “Something happened and nobody can find my ex-husband or my oldest daughter … there’s blood everywhere.”

The search is on for Aaron and Ellie Friar

At 6:43 a.m., Medford, Oregon, police officers are dispatched to Aaron Friar’s home for a welfare check and a missing persons case is declared. 

A trail of blood to nowhere

Officer Logan Boyd approaches Aaron Friar’s home and sees a visible blood trail from the front door to a back gate that leads to an alley. The blood trail continues for a few feet then disappears. There are fresh tire tracks near where the blood trail ended.

Aaron Friar’s car is then reported missing, too. 

A major death investigation begins

Based on the totality of the scene and suspicious circumstances relating to the missing persons, a MADIU — Major Assault and Death Investigation Unit —callout is initiated.

All-hands-on-deck

At 7:40 a.m., a request goes out to all Medford Police detectives to respond to the Friar home. 

Sierra Friar tips off investigators

Around 9 a.m., Det. Shannon Reynolds interviews Sierra who says she was hiding in her bedroom but then looked through her window and saw Ellie’s boyfriend Gavin MacFarlane outside the house. She mentions MacFarlane is not allowed at the house and that Aaron Friar had forbidden Ellie from seeing Gavin after learning he was 19 years old.

A break in the case

This is the break the police were looking for. Detectives begin tracking MacFarlane’s cellphone.

Aaron Friar’s bloody car is located

At 9:52 a.m., Aaron Friar’s missing vehicle is found about five miles east of his home.  

Officers notice dried blood on the rear bumper and find more blood soaked into the carpet of the trunk. 

Ellie Friar found alive, but not alone

At 10:48 a.m. — four hours after police are dispatched to the crime scene at the Friar house — Ellie  is found unharmed walking alongside a busy street just a few miles from her dad’s home.

Ellie is with two men: her 19-year-old boyfriend Gavin MacFarlane and his friend, 22-year-old Russell Jones.   

Three detainees  

At 10:51 a.m. the three are separated, handcuffed, and taken into custody for questioning.     

Russell Jones reveals where Aaron Friar is

Lead detective Bill Ford decides to interview Jones before MacFarlane, as Ford had had a previous encounter with Jones and knows “he’s a talker.”

Ford decides to try what he calls “smokin’ and jokin.'” He takes Russell outside for a cigarette break.

Just slightly over an hour after being detained, Jones tells Ford that he can take him to the location where Aaron Friar’s remains were dumped    

Aaron Friar’s body found

At 12:50 p.m., at Jones’s direction, Aaron Friar’s remains are found wrapped in a green tarp and Tinkerbell fleece blanket off of a remote highway just 20 miles north of Friar’s home. With that discovery, the case officially went from a missing person to a homicide investigation    

Murder weapon found

At 12:50 p.m., the murder weapon – a baseball bat – is found lodged in a nearby tree about 8 feet off the ground. Aaron Friar’s cause of death would later be determined to be from blunt force trauma to the head. 

Three suspects, three stories

Knowing that Aaron Friar was murdered, the police zero in on their three suspects. Complicating matters, all three start pointing a finger at each other.

Jones told investigators that MacFarlane killed Aaron Friar in self-defense.

Ellie said that she believed that Jones was her father’s killer.

MacFarlane said Ellie was the one who wanted Aaron Friar dead. 

Three suspects, three pleas  

In October 2018, Gavin MacFarlane pleads guilty to murder and murder conspiracy charges. He was sentenced to 25 years to life. 

In January 2019, Ellie pleaded guilty to an adult charge of conspiring to murder her father, Aaron. She was later sentenced to 25 years. 

In August 2021, Russell Jones entered a no-contest plea to conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to 15 years.