Who Will Stop Airman Jacob Frye?

Key Takeaways:

1. Military domestic violence is a pervasive issue. Military command repeatedly failed to hold Jacob Frye accountable, allowing him to continue abusing multiple women with minimal consequences.
2. Survivors were forced to protect themselves and each other, exposing his pattern of abuse when the system wouldn't.
3. Frye used fear, manipulation, and legal loopholes to maintain control, revealing how abusers often exploit gaps in both the justice and family court systems.

He attacked one girlfriend. Then the next. Then a third.

After he strangled the last one, the survivors found each other. They compared stories. They compared scars—the kind you can see, and the kind you can’t. And together, they decided they had to stop him. Because it looked like no one else was going to.

Not the military, which had delivered almost no consequences for his repeated assaults. Maybe they figured they needed him at work. After all, every branch of the military is facing declining recruitment numbers. Or maybe it really is the boys’ club that people say it is. Maybe they just protect their own.

People often ask, “Why is domestic violence still so widespread?” They suggest longer sentences, more shelters, stricter laws. Those might help. But they miss the darker truth: many abusers don’t fear the law—because they’ve learned they can break it and walk away. Again. And again.

In April, DomesticShelters.org highlighted a story on a Kansas airman named Jacob Frye who had just received 12 months of confinement—the military’s version of a civilian jail—for multiple incidents of domestic violence against various women. This included strangulation, decidedly the most urgent precursor to an abuser committing homicide.  

Soon after, one of the victims of Frye reached out to DomesticShelters.org. “All three of us would be willing to speak to you,” she wrote. “I want changes for other victims.”

Two of the survivors ended up going through with the interview while one survivor is still contemplating speaking out. It’s not easy going public about domestic violence. Not only do survivors have to walk back through the trauma they would much rather block out, they also put themselves at risk. Abusers don’t want to be called out on their choices. To an abuser, everything they did they’ve justified a reason for in their head. They were drunk. They were stressed. It wasn’t that serious. They’ve changed now. They’ll never do it again. 

But that kind of thinking doesn’t stop abusers. Abusers who are allowed to hide in the shadows are empowered to find their next victim—another person who will believe their lies that the ex-partner is “crazy,” and that the rumors of control or violence they might hear are just the product of a jilted woman.

Red Flags Missed and Abuse That Slowly Escalated

Kayci met Jacob, or Jake as she calls him, in 2013 through an online dating site. She was 26 at the time, and he was 28. They hit it off immediately, talking on the phone for hours at a time. She describes him as charming with a big personality. His Air Force background carried a certain authority and appeal that drew her in. Not long after they started dating, he asked her to move in with him in a city an hour away from where she lived. She agreed immediately, missing this potential red flag, through no fault of her own. Abusers like to move a relationship fast— “lock it down” if you will. But to their potential victim, it doesn’t come across as sinister. It comes across as kismet. They’re made for each other; of course things would easily move to the next level. 

This is where the problems started. Even though they were in love, Jake wanted to make sure he was Kayci’s only love. 

“He asked me if I’d ever been in love before. I was just being honest,” says Kayci. She told him about a previous serious relationship that didn’t work out. 

“He would always bring it up and throw it in my face,” she says. “I was confused. I was with him, and I loved him, but he was so angry.”

From there, he escalated his abuse, as is often the case. He started calling Kayci a whore for having been with men before she’d ever met him. He started breaking her down mentally. She can’t remember everything he did, she says, but she knows it was bad. 

“It’s like my subconscious is protecting me from those things.”

He would apologize afterward, but then he would do it again. 

“Looking back on it, it was always the same vicious cycle.” 

Unmasking the Violence 

In April of the following year, Kayci and Jake went to a concert. Kayci bought the tickets—front row. They had a great time, she remembers. Jake got a little drunk, Kayci didn’t and drove them home afterward. That’s when a switch flipped. The boyfriend who was charming and fun at the concert suddenly turned violent and aggressive in the car. 

“He just started freaking out and yelling at me, saying he wasted his time and he hated the concert. He said he didn’t know why he was with somebody like me,” says Kayci.

He tried to exit her Jeep while she drove down the highway, screaming at her to stop the car. Kayci was scared to death. 

She managed to get them back to their house where Jake demanded she give him the keys. She had a feeling that if she did, he was going to lock her out of the house. 

“I probably shouldn’t have been alone with him in the house, but whatever,” she says. At the time, being trapped outside in the chilly night alone seemed like a scarier fate. She refused to hand over the keys. That’s when Jake pulled her right arm so hard her body flew across the seats. She was probably 115 pounds at the time, she says, and he was much, much bigger. She screamed in pain as he began to bend her right arm around the passenger side seat. She felt like her arm was going to break at any second. Her hand still tightly gripped the keys, so Jake began to slam her arm against the car door until the keys finally fell free. 

As she lay there, stunned and in pain, Jake did as she predicted and went inside the house, locking her out. 

“I couldn’t do anything. I was too embarrassed to call anyone. My family didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what to do.”

It’s common for survivors to minimize abuse by an intimate partner. Adopting the title of “victim of domestic violence” isn’t always an easy truth to admit. Every survivor feels like they should have seen it coming. But as the analogy goes, when the water is slowly heating up, you might not realize you’re in danger until it’s already boiling. 

Jake eventually turned on the home’s porch light, and Kayci knew he had unlocked the door. She went inside and fell asleep; he left her alone. In the morning, she woke up with bruises covering her legs and the side of her body, where she had been wedged in between the middle console and the gear shift of her car. Jake woke up and claimed he remembered nothing. 

“That’s his cover, always is,” says Kayci of Jake’s conveniently timed amnesia. 

Believing His Promises, Blocking Out the Past Abuse

When she described the night before, he predictably started his apology tour. He said it would never happen again. She wanted to believe him.

The tricky thing about abusers is that they’re not abusive all of the time. There is often enough good sprinkled in between the bad that the survivor has a reason to hold onto hope. 

Soon enough, Kayci was pregnant. Things were OK for a while, until they weren’t. She was four months pregnant when he got mad at her, told her to “get the f*ck out of here” and that he didn’t want to see her. Before she could make a move, his hands were at her throat. 

“I couldn’t breathe or talk,” Kayci says. “I was starting to get tunnel vision, and all I could think of was my baby.”

As he strangled her, she felt her body start to go weak. Seconds before she would have lost consciousness, Jake released his grip. Gasping, she fell to the floor and Jake left. He had made his point. He was in control.

“I should have called the police, but I was too scared,” says Kayci. She was afraid he’d turn the situation around on her, tell police she had grabbed him—which she had to try and get him to stop. She was afraid of going to jail while pregnant. And even though strangulation is one of the highest lethality indicators, meaning an abuser who strangles a victim is more likely to kill them, Kayci worried about being a single mom. Could she do it on her own?

At the time, staying felt less dangerous than leaving. Jake took a hiatus on his abuse, just long enough to propose that he and Kayci should get married. She accepted. It would be Jake’s second marriage. Kayci knew a little about his first wife, but not enough to know if she had endured the same abusive cycle Kayci was currently trapped in.

“Jake’s mother slightly shed light on abuse that may have happened to [his ex-wife]. But she made it sound like the family didn’t really believe [her].” 

Kayci, meanwhile, hoped things would be different once they were a family of three, a hope that was shattered just a few months after their son was born. She found out Jake had been cheating on her. Before they could reach their one-year anniversary, Kayci asked for a divorce and moved in with her mom. 

Jake tried to coerce her to come back, of course. But his seduction technique of getting arrested wasn’t his most successful plan. Then again, no one’s ever claimed abusers are always that bright.

“We were sitting in the car, and I was feeding [her son]. My mom did not want him at her house,” says Kayci. Jake got mad and grabbed Kayci by the arm, pinning her against the car’s console, refusing to let her go. To try and get free, Kayci poured the baby’s food on him.

“He got out of the car and called the police.” She thinks he was hoping he could get her in trouble, but once police saw the bruises on Kayci’s arm, it was Jake that they arrested. While he was in custody, Air Force investigators came to where Kayci was staying and asked her for details on Jake’s abuse. 

“I told them everything,” she remembers. “And then I never heard anything back from the military.” 

Jake escaped any charges for that incident, as is all too common with domestic violence. He tried apologizing to Kayci, and when that didn’t work, he moved on to threats. He threatened her that if she didn’t come back, he would get full custody of their son. Staying with a cheating abuser was one thing, but handing over your baby to an abuser is a whole other level of terror. Kayci relented. 

“He made me believe he went to therapy and changed. I fell for it,” she says.

UCMJ Gave the Abuser a Slap on the Wrist—Even Though She Knew Might Be Murdered

Then came baby number two and, a little while later, baby number three—two more boys.

“He ended up strangling me when I was pregnant with our third son,” she says. She reported him this time; he got arrested. The military investigators came back and again, Kayci told them the truth. Then Jake pulled a move too many abusers are notorious for—he threatened that if she didn’t recant and say it was all an accident that he would take her children and she’d never see them again. That thought scared Kayci, as it would any mom. 

“I told the military it was an accident,” she says. 

The military didn’t question how Jake’s hands could accidentally wrap around his wife’s neck and apply pressure. They gave him something called an “Article 15”, defined as “a nonjudicial punishment … imposed by a commander as a means to deal with minor violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).”

“It was basically a slap on the wrist,” says Kayci. “He couldn’t rank up for two years, but that was it. After that, he punished me in any way he could. I heard about how I ruined his life constantly.” 

Looking back, she feels robbed of those early years with her babies, unable to take in the joy of being a new mom because she was constantly in survival mode. 

“I was reduced to a shell of a human while I was with him, while trying to raise my sweet little babies. I was basically on my own. There were a couple of times he threw me to the floor and spit on my face, all because I was trying to talk with him about helping me more with my boys. He would tell me, ‘That’s what I pay you for!’” she remembers, telling her she was a horrible mother and person. 

She started to have a strong gut feeling that Jake would eventually kill her, a thought that she couldn’t seem to shake. At times, her mind wandered to a dark place where she considered taking her own life before he could.

“My children are the only thing that saved me from killing myself,” she says. She felt stuck. She didn’t have a job, and he monitored the finances closely. She felt she had ruined her credibility with the Air Force command and couldn’t go back to them for help. For a year, she planned how she could escape. Then, a small window of opportunity struck—Jake got deployed. While he was away, the state sent her a $5,000 tax return.

“I told him about it,” she says. “I gave him $4,000 and kept $1,000 of it. This was my exit.” She planned out the day she would leave, two weeks before Jake was set to come home. In a cruel twist of fate, he got back early, unannounced. Maybe he knew, Kayci thinks. It was 10 o’clock at night when he walked in the door. She knew she was out of time. 

“I had a friend come over. I gathered what I could and told him he would not stop me from leaving, or I would call the police. I got the boys and got out and we haven’t been back since.”

Life After Escaping, Frye Finds New Victims

Kayci was able to escape with her life, but the courts still awarded Jake custody of his sons every other weekend despite Kayci bringing them evidence of his abuse. When asked if she thought they were safe with him, Kayci starts to cry quietly on the other end of the phone. 

“My youngest son is afraid of the water,” she says. “And I think it’s because of him.”

This is where Jake’s next girlfriend comes in, Ava. After Kayci left, it didn’t take long for Jake to move on to a new victim. 

“I wanted to warn Ava, but I also didn’t want to rock the boat,” says Kayci. “I was so scared for her because I knew he wasn’t going to change, but I didn’t want to be ‘the crazy ex.’ Lord only knows what he had told her about me.”

Ava and Kayci eventually connected. After all, Ava was helping to care for Kayci’s children when Jake had them. Ava confessed to Kayci that yes, Jake was mean to her at times but he’d never put his hands on her. Kayci said that’s how it had started with her, too. 

“I know by experience you can’t just make somebody leave [an abuser]. They’re going to have to figure it out themselves. Luckily, all it took was one time.”

That part of the story belongs to Ava—she’ll tell it if and when she’s ready. It was only after Ava escaped Jake that she told Kayci what he’d done to her son. 

“[Ava] said, ‘I never wanted to tell you this.’ She’d gotten home from work one evening and heard [Kayci’s son] screaming and yelling, and Jake screaming and yelling. She walked into the bathroom and [Jake] was holding [Kayci’s son] under the water [in the bathtub] and then bringing him back up. He was only a year-and-a-half old.”

Her little boy is 7 now and is still afraid to put his face in the water when he showers. Childhood trauma can have lifelong effects like that. But at least, Kayci thinks, he’s alive. 

“[Ava] was too scared to call the police on him. She yelled at him to stop and grabbed [Kayci’s son]. He was relatively fine, but terrified.”

After that, Kayci took Jake back to court with this new accusation. The court limited Jake’s custody but didn’t see it necessary to keep him from his kids altogether. He was allowed visitation for one day every other weekend from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Maybe the judge figured abuse only happens at night?

Eventually, Jake got in trouble again for abusing a third partner, a story we’ll tell next. After that, he had no choice but to stay away from his and Kayci’s children. He hasn’t seen the boys since 2023, says Kayci. When he gets out of prison eventually, if he comes back for them, she says she’s ready.

“I will do anything to fight for my kids,” she says. 

Another Woman, the Same Pattern of Abuse

After Ava came Ivy, who met Jake on Tinder in 2021. She was 39 at the time and Jake was likely antsy to find his next victim. When we spoke with Ivy, she was about to go ask the court for a lifetime protection order from Jake, if that’s any indication of how this story is going to go. 

“I shouldn’t have to go back to court. It should just be a box that I check,” she says, implying that survivors shouldn’t need to continually justify their desire to keep an abuser away from them.

When they met, Ivy already had two older children from a previous relationship and was looking for a fresh start. Jake’s charisma drew her in, but the red flags followed soon after. 

“We were sitting on the tailgate of his truck. He started talking about having worked at a place as a camp counselor and putting someone in a [choke] hold. ‘Let me show you,’ he said. He kept insisting. I said, ‘Fine, but if I say ‘uncle’ you let go of me.’ I tried to tap out and he held it a little longer than I was comfortable with,” Ivy remembers. Whatever his intention, the message was clear—he had the physical power to restrain her, and she knew it.

When Kayci learned Jake had found yet another victim, she desperately wanted to warn Ivy.

“This is when the Gabby Petito situation was in the news,” Kayci says. “I felt it in my bones—I knew what was happening to Gabby before she was killed.”

So Kayci made a social media post, comparing her previous situation with Jake to Gabby’s. She set the post to public in hopes that Ivy might see it. She did. 

“She was really concerned about it,” remembers Kayci. But when Ivy asked Jake about it, he blew it off. After all, what was he going to do? Abusers rarely outright admit what their plan is or take responsibility for their actions. 

“But [Ivy] was already seeing red flags,” says Kayci. Unfortunately, Ivy wasn’t yet ready to grasp the severity of what Jake was capable of.

The Cycle: Abuse Escalates Again, Violence Erupts Again

Over time, Jake’s small demonstrations of power and control grew, escalating to a 2022 Christmas party thrown by Ivy’s workplace. It was at a country club, and Ivy took Jake as her date. She says she had a few glasses of wine while Jake, she remembers, was drinking significantly more than her. Once out on the dance floor, she says he grabbed her hair “suggestively,” drawing the attention of one of her superiors who politely told Ivy that they should tone it down. During the next dance, Jake did the opposite.

“He flings me, like a spin thing, real hard and I almost barrel roll into a crowd of people at the edge of the dance floor.” Luckily, she was able to stop herself in time. Embarrassed, she asked Jake, “Why would you do that?” His response: “F*ck them, they think they’re better than us anyway.”

She asked him if he wanted to leave. He didn’t. Instead, he wanted to dance with a female coworker of Ivy’s. Emotional abuse can sometimes take the form of trying to humiliate a partner, especially in a public setting. Ivy brushed it off. “I’m not a jealous person,” she says. 

Soon, the party wound down and Ivy and Jake were heading out. Before they could get to the door, Ivy says Jake grabbed a bottle of wine from one of the tables and shoved it toward Ivy, implying they should take it with them. Instead, she set it back down.

“Now he’s pissed, because he sees I put it down. He grabbed it and beelined it outside to his truck.” Jake got in the driver’s side. Ivy offered to drive, and Jake predictably declined. Instead, she says, he drove away and began screaming at her. 

“It’s like I got in the truck with a monster,” she says. Jake abruptly pulled onto a dirt road and stopped the truck, reached over toward Ivy and snatched her glasses off her face. He rolled down his window and threw them outside into the dark, cold December night. Abusers like to humiliate, after all. 

Get out and get ‘em, bitch, she remembers him saying. 

“I literally got out in the freezing cold and had to crawl in a dark ditch and find my glasses.”

She thought about not getting back into his truck after that. But it was 32 degrees out, and fear—and cold—overrode her instincts. “I just want to go home,” she told him, already bracing for what might come next.

As they drove, Ivy watched the GPS on her phone. They weren’t heading toward her house. Jake was speeding, weaving down the country roads like they were being chased. He was yelling, erratic. At one point, the speedometer hit 100 miles per hour.

“He was grabbing and pulling at me, trying to rip my hair out,” she says. “He took off my glasses again, crushed them in his hand and threw them on the floor.”

Panicked, Ivy begged him to slow down. She found a winter hat in the truck and pulled it on, hoping it might protect her scalp. Then came a move that could have killed them both.

“He unbuckled my seatbelt and slammed on the brakes,” she says. Her head hit the windshield—hard.

Disoriented, likely concussed, Ivy couldn’t react before Jake yanked her by the hair again. In a chilling echo of how he’d assaulted his ex, Kayci, he dragged Ivy across the seat and shoved her under the steering wheel. She tried to curl into a ball under the driver’s seat as his hands wrapped around her neck, strangling her. 

In the only act of self-defense she could manage, Ivy tilted her head down and bit him.

“I could feel bone in my teeth,” she says, crying.

He let go. But it wasn’t over. Jake ran around to the passenger door and tried to drag her out by her feet. She clung to the seat, convinced he was trying to throw her onto the road and run her over. At last, he released her.

“My mind was racing,” she says. “Should I lock him out? Call the police? Would that make him madder?” Instead, Ivy quietly shared her location with a friend. “I want to go home,” she texted her friend, saying nothing else.

Jake got back in the truck. He was silent. Ivy watched as he steered off the road, driving through ditches and across open farm fields. The speedometer hit 90 again. Then they returned to the pavement—just in time for a sharp curve.

“I don’t want to die,” Ivy pleaded. “We’re important to people. Please, please stop.”

He didn’t.

It Took Almost Dying to Recognize Abuse

The truck flew over the curve, launched into the air above a ravine. For a moment, silence. Then a brutal impact. Ivy felt a hot, stabbing pain shoot from her tailbone up her spine. The truck landed hard, skidded into a ditch, and—miraculously—didn’t roll.

Ivy was hurt badly but she could walk. She thought about making a run for it, but she didn’t know what Jake’s next move would be if she did. She stayed in her seat and held her breath. She felt like a hostage. 

It was now 2:30 in the morning. Ivy told Jake she’d call AAA and tell them they hit a deer but the person who answered the phone said it was too late for them to get a tow truck out to the rural area where they were. She tried to call her aunt who used to work at a domestic violence shelter. She knew her aunt carried a gun, and she’d protect Ivy. Her aunt didn’t answer the phone. 

Ivy’s knee was swollen, her hands hurt, her teeth hurt, her head throbbed. As Jake fell asleep, she sat staring straight ahead, waiting for the first hint of daylight when she felt like she could call her brother who lived nearby. She told him the same lie she’d told AAA—they hit a deer.  

“My brother knew when he rolled up,” she says. “There were no swerve marks on the pavement where the truck left the road.” Ivy was shaking and had blood on her coat. But she didn’t expand on the events of the night for fear of an altercation between Jake and her brother. The air in the truck was thick with tension as they drove to Ivy’s house, her brother making small talk with the man who had just tried to kill her.

Surviving Was Just the Beginning 

Ivy ended up needing radiofrequency ablations to heal a bulged disk in her spine. It took 10 months of physical therapy for her to turn her neck without pain. Even though Jake would later try and use the defense that he must have been drugged at the party, no one bought it, especially Ivy, who reported the incident to police a few days later. 

Even though Ivy had photos of her injuries, nothing came of it for weeks while Jake called her incessantly. Eventually, the Air Force investigated the incident, though it took over a year for him to be tried and sentenced. The Air Force gave Jake 12 months of confinement at the end of 2024, and the story went public for all to see. His early release is possibly Christmas this year, says Ivy. 

“I’m so proud of her,” says Kayci, who soon learned Jake hadn’t changed with Ivy, not one bit. “And I’m so f*cking angry,” she adds. 

The Military’s Statute of Limitations For Domestic Violence

“After what happened with [Ivy], I told her that I would speak with the [military] investigators to help prove her case of domestic violence,” says Kayci. She sat down for a grueling six-hour interview.

“The investigators decided that charges needed to be pressed for me and my children as well. Obviously I was all for that happening, as it had been a long time coming. I truly thought that during the two-year process of investigation that my children and I were actually going to see some justice.”

It didn’t happen. In August of last year, Kayci was told the five-year statute of limitations had passed. No charges were filed against Jake for what he did to Kayci—the multiple assaults, the strangulation. 

“Women need to know that they have an unfortunate ‘time limit’ to seek justice,” says Kayci. 

There are myriad reasons survivors don’t come forward immediately following abuse. Many survivors fear being revictimized by a flawed legal system that won’t support them, or stigmatized by peers who don’t believe them. They may also fear judgment from police. A study by the ACLU found that of 900 survivors surveyed, 88 percent stated police “sometimes” or “often” do not believe victims or blame victims for violence. 

Strength and Struggle in the Aftermath of Domestic Violence

“I want women to know it does get better,” says Kayci. “The grass is greener in leaving an abusive partner. It’s hard, and it can take a long time sometimes, but it is so worth it. I’m just glad I’m here and I can talk about it and help other women if I can.”

After years of therapy, Kayci’s happy to report that she’s in “an incredibly healthy and safe relationship with an amazing man…..he has stepped into a role that was greatly missing from my boys’ lives, and has done it all with grace, understanding, patience and kindness.” She says she has a hard time expressing how grateful she feels for all of them to be where they are today, “truly happy and safe.”

Despite that, Kayci says the lack of military response has left her and her children struggling financially. After Jake was arrested, Kayci fought to receive compensation from the military, called forfeiture pay. When a servicemember is court-martialed or otherwise punished, the military can force them to lose a portion or all of their pay and allowances. This pay can be allotted to dependents of the servicemember. 

Kayci was told she would receive six months of his pay to provide for her children, but so far, she has only received one deposit, and says it was for the wrong amount.

“They still refuse to give me answers as to why this is not being taken care of in a timely manner,” she says, despite her recurring calls to military officials. “The excuse I typically get is that they ‘don’t deal with this often.’

“To be honest, I am really really struggling financially right now, which is why I am still fighting so hard for answers. I have an amazing job that I love, but it’s still not enough to keep myself and [my children] going each month since I have completely lost all child support. I am so worried that they are just going to let this slip through the cracks.”

Despite multiple attempts by DomesticShelters.org to reach out to Air Force public affairs with a deadline for comment, we received no reply. 

Recently, a judge granted Ivy her civilian lifetime protection order against Jake, but as with most abusers, he wasn’t done quite yet with his torture.

“Flash forward a week later, and I received Jake’s notice of appeal,” she says. She’s still waiting for the hearing date, where, inevitably, she’ll have to face Jake once again and plead her case for safety. It angers her, but also propels her to be the voice of change. 

“I believe that when there is a domestic violence or assault conviction in any federal court, including UCMJ, all states should recognize this as a felony conviction and automatically grant the victims a lifetime [protection order]. I don’t know exactly how but I want to help make this change for other victims.”

There’s still one conversation that haunts Ivy to this day. She can see it clearly—the police officers standing in her living room, snapping photos of the deep bruises spread across her skin. Her teenage daughter, wide-eyed and trembling, looked at her and said, “He should be locked up for attempted murder.”

Ivy’s heart ached. But before she could stop herself, the words spilled out: “But he won’t. It’s just domestic violence.”

Even now, Ivy remembers the shame in her daughter’s eyes—and the numbness in her own voice. She had minimized her pain, her reality, her worth—because the world had taught her to. Because even then, she didn’t believe what had happened to her was serious enough. 

If you see red flags in your relationship or feel like something is wrong, reach out to a domestic violence advocate in your area who can help you identify what’s happening and provide resources for safety and support.