Mark Foster Murder: Santeria Plot, Frame-Up, and Insurance Payout

The Mark Foster murder was a 1997 Wisconsin killing that looked like a roadside homicide but turned out to be a suicide-by-proxy: Foster, a 45-year-old Minneapolis pharmacist and self-styled Santeria high priest, arranged his own shooting so that a follower would inherit his spiritual powers, three beneficiaries would collect more than $300,000 in life insurance, and two men he resented would be blamed. His follower Gregory Friesner pulled the trigger. His nephew Brent Thompson drove and disposed of the weapon. Both were eventually convicted on federal charges. His wife was never charged.

Who Mark Foster Was

Foster worked as a pharmacist at Drug Emporium in St. Paul and had founded Quanta Press, an electronic library business that sold database products including agricultural reference materials distributed through federal agencies. By 1997 his finances were, in investigators’ words, “spiraling out of control.”¹

Away from the pharmacy, Foster led a small group of followers who practiced a blend of Santeria, voodoo, Tantra, and Palo Mayombe. He claimed to have become a high priest by shooting his predecessor in a New Orleans cemetery, a story later debunked.² He kept an altar in the attic of his Southeast Minneapolis home and conducted rituals there. His most devoted recruit was Gregory Friesner, whom he met at a Twin Cities bookstore and installed as his second-in-command. Friesner came to believe that killing Foster would transfer the high priest’s powers and soul to him.¹

In April 1997, four months before his death, Foster married Sarah Phillips-Foster. She had previously been with a man named Jack Frazier and had been married to James “Jimmy” Bailey Jr., with whom she was locked in a bitter custody dispute. Bailey allegedly assaulted Foster and Phillips-Foster at a May 1997 custody hearing.² Both Frazier and Bailey would later be the men Foster tried to pin his own death on.

The Plan He Built

Foster needed to die in a way that insurers would treat as homicide rather than suicide, and he needed a credible suspect pool. He took out life insurance policies totaling more than $300,000, naming his wife Sarah Phillips-Foster, his nephew Brent Thompson, and Friesner as beneficiaries.¹ The ritual promise of inherited priesthood gave Friesner his motive to shoot; the policies gave everyone else a payoff.

In the days before his death, Foster wrote his own obituary, drafted a letter to his attorney blaming his wife’s ex-boyfriends for his anticipated death, and recorded a farewell videotape the afternoon before the killing. On the day itself, he retrieved a .44-caliber carbine rifle from a storage locker and supplied it as the murder weapon.³

He also planted a note in his own shoe for police to find. It read: “Jack Frazier isn’t here but it’s Jimmy Bailey? Or look alike? Geez It’s 3 toughs. Hope I’m OK.”¹ It was meant to steer investigators toward Frazier, who resented the end of his relationship with Phillips-Foster, and Bailey, who had recently lost the custody fight against her.

The Killing

On the evening of July 18, 1997, Brent Thompson drove Foster and Friesner from Minneapolis to a rural stretch of road in Dairyland Township, Douglas County, Wisconsin, about 45 miles south of Superior.³ Foster was dressed head-to-toe in white, which investigators identified as ceremonial garb for a Santeria high priest.¹

At the roadside, Friesner shot Foster in the heart at close range with the .44-caliber rifle Foster had provided. Thompson then threw the weapon into the St. Croix River.¹

How The Frame-Up Collapsed

The note in Foster’s shoe made Frazier and Bailey early suspects, but both men had solid alibis and were cleared quickly. Searches of Foster’s Minneapolis home then surfaced the attic altar, the farewell videotape, and business cards belonging to investigators placed on the altar as “targets of their anger.” Frazier, for his part, personally investigated and disproved Foster’s story about killing a priest in a New Orleans cemetery. “They tried to set me up on a murder charge,” he later said. “It’s like something you read about in a book. Crazy people do crazy stuff.”¹

Investigators from the FBI, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department, and the Minneapolis Police Department identified Thompson and Friesner as suspects, but prosecutors didn’t have enough to charge them.³ The case went cold for roughly 18 months before Thompson confessed. His account confirmed that Foster had planned his own death from start to finish.¹

Charges And Sentences

On July 10, 2002, a federal grand jury indicted Friesner and Thompson on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to defraud insurance companies, and firearm-related offenses.³

Friesner pleaded guilty to the federal firearms charge of using and carrying a firearm in the ritualistic shooting death of Mark Foster, and was sentenced to ten years in prison.⁴ Thompson, who admitted driving the group to the site and disposing of the weapon, was sentenced to three years.¹

Sarah Phillips-Foster And The Insurance Money

Sarah Phillips-Foster was never charged. The 2002 federal indictment referred to her only as “Individual A.” The Douglas County Sheriff’s Department had treated her as a main suspect in a possible conspiracy, but without direct evidence or a confession tying her to the plot, prosecutors did not pursue charges against her.²

The insurance payoff Foster designed the plot around did not go smoothly for his beneficiaries. UNUM Life Insurance Company, which had issued a $100,000 basic policy, withheld payment to Phillips-Foster, citing a Minnesota statute that bars benefits from going to anyone who “feloniously and intentionally” kills the insured, and questioning whether she was involved. UNUM eventually deposited the disputed funds with the court through an interpleader action, and an appellate court later found the insurer had not abused its discretion in withholding the benefit given the evidence of her potential involvement.²

1
Oxygen. Mark Foster Arranges Own Murder in Santeria Plot
2
Findlaw. Phillips-Foster v. UNUM Life Insurance Company of America
3
World Religion News. Federal Indictment in Voodoo Murder
4
World Religion News. Guilty Plea in Voodoo Murder