Fred Tokars: Atlanta Lawyer, Wife’s Murder, Death in Prison

Fred Tokars was an Atlanta attorney, former Fulton County prosecutor, and part-time municipal judge who orchestrated the 1992 contract killing of his wife, Sara Tokars, to stop her from exposing his role laundering money for a cocaine-trafficking ring. He was convicted in both federal and state court, sentenced to multiple life terms, and died in federal prison in Pennsylvania in May 2020 at age 67.¹

The Public Lawyer

Tokars started out as a junior prosecutor in the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, where colleagues nicknamed him “Fast Fred” for his self-promotion and his fondness for the Atlanta nightlife. He left the DA’s office to open a private practice in criminal defense, then moved into tax fraud and divorce work. Though he had never prosecuted a white-collar or computer fraud case, he marketed himself as an expert, taught at law schools and professional seminars, and in 1990 published a piece in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on money-laundering laws and how drug dealers hire attorneys to work around them.²

He built political cover along the way. Mayor Andrew Young appointed him a part-time city judge. He served as campaign treasurer for Leah Sears-Collins during her run for Fulton Superior Court, and he donated more than $7,000 across the campaigns of Sears-Collins, sheriff candidate Jackie Barrett, and Solicitor General Paul Howard.² Prosecutors would later call him a “seemingly strait-laced pillar of society” and a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”³

One of the more striking overlaps in his double life: Tokars taught money-laundering courses for the Georgia Police Academy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy at the same time he was laundering drug money himself.⁴

The Hidden Client Base

Tokars served as attorney and business adviser to a cocaine distribution network run by Julius Cline and Jessie Ferguson, drug dealers from Detroit who had moved to Atlanta.⁵ Cline’s operation moved roughly 20 kilograms of cocaine per week through Atlanta and Chattanooga.⁴

Because Ferguson and Cline had records that kept them from obtaining liquor licenses, they used James Mason, a local businessman and Tokars client, as a front man for a string of Atlanta nightclubs including the VIP Club, Traxx, the Parrot, and Diamonds and Pearls. Tokars incorporated many of the entities, listed Mason as director or owner, and ran drug proceeds through the businesses.⁵ He moved client money into offshore accounts in Montserrat and the Bahamas, wrote a booklet called Tax Havens and Offshore Investment Opportunities that functioned as a laundering guide, and advised dealers to keep cash at home and store cocaine in apartments rented under fake names to avoid a paper trail.⁴

He also partnered with Eddie Lawrence, a real estate developer who used drug proceeds to buy and rent property. Together they built a network of real estate businesses designed to squeeze multiple profits out of the same clients.⁶

Why Sara Tokars Became a Threat

Fred and Sara Tokars had two sons, Ricky and Mike. Inside the marriage, Fred kept tight financial control: Sara was on an allowance, was not permitted her own checking account or credit cards, and Fred insisted on handling transactions in cash. Sara consulted a divorce attorney and said Fred had physically abused her and threatened to use his “political contacts and the judicial contacts” to take the children if she left.²

She began building a case of her own. She hired private investigator Ralph Perdomo to follow Fred and got into a basement safe he had forbidden her to open, finding documents, bags, and vials of pills. She told Perdomo to take everything to police if anything happened to her.² She told her neighbor Sarah Suttler, “I can divorce Fred now because I have the goods on him… I have found papers of income tax evasion.” She gave her sister Christine Ambrusko copies of the incriminating documents with the same instruction.⁴

By late 1992, federal investigators had independently opened a drug and money-laundering probe on Fred. A divorce and custody fight would have opened his hidden assets and his clients to view. He had also increased life insurance coverage on Sara from $250,000 to $1,750,000 in August 1989, with himself as beneficiary.⁴

November 29, 1992

Sara and the two boys, ages four and six, were coming home to the Kings Cove neighborhood of East Cobb, Georgia, after a Thanksgiving visit with relatives in Florida.⁷ Before they could enter the house, a gunman forced his way into their vehicle, ordered Sara to drive, and after she pulled over on a residential street shot her in the back of the head with a sawed-off .410 shotgun. Both boys were in the back seat.⁸

Blood-spattered and in shock, the boys made their way to a nearby house, where the older told the homeowner, “A bad man shot my mom.”⁶ The killing was first investigated as a possible robbery gone wrong.

How the Hit Was Arranged

Investigators eventually traced the murder to Fred through Eddie Lawrence, his business partner, who acted as the middleman. Lawrence owed Tokars roughly $70,000 and was in financial trouble. Tokars promised to put half of Sara’s life insurance proceeds into Lawrence’s failing ventures if Lawrence found someone to do the killing.⁶

Lawrence hired Curtis Rower, a crack addict, for $5,000.⁶ Lawrence was in a separate vehicle at the scene of the kidnapping. The three men held several planning meetings, the last one just hours before the shooting. Prosecutors argued Tokars had three motives: keeping Sara from exposing his drug ties in a divorce, taking custody of the children, and collecting the insurance money, part of which he needed to cover roughly $700,000 in drug proceeds he had failed to launder for his associates.⁹

In the appellate record, Tokars was quoted telling Lawrence that Sara “wanted to take his house and his money” and that he would kill her first: “He worked too hard… and she never did anything. All she ever did was spend his money, and… he wasn’t going to give it to her.”⁴

Federal Conviction

A federal grand jury indicted Tokars and James Mason on August 25, 1993, on charges including racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, violence in aid of racketeering, murder-for-hire, drug conspiracy, and money laundering. Because of heavy pretrial publicity in Atlanta, the trial was moved to the Robert S. Vance Federal Courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama.¹⁰

On April 8, 1994, after a five-week trial, the jury convicted Tokars on all remaining counts. He received concurrent life sentences on four counts (racketeering conspiracy, racketeering, violence in aid of racketeering, and murder-for-hire) plus 97 months on the drug and money laundering counts, also concurrent.⁵ Mason was convicted on nine counts and sentenced to 200 months.³ The Eleventh Circuit affirmed on September 6, 1996.⁴

State Capital Trial

Georgia pursued a separate capital murder case despite the federal conviction, which drew public debate over double jeopardy. The trial was moved to LaFayette, Georgia, and ran from January 30 to March 8, 1997. Cobb County District Attorney Tom Charron sought the death penalty.⁹

Tokars was represented by Bobby Lee Cook, one of the best-known trial lawyers in Georgia history.¹¹ Cook went after the credibility of Eddie Lawrence, the state’s key witness, who had received a plea allowing 12.5 years in federal prison and entry into the Witness Protection Program in exchange for testimony. Cook called him a “flimflam artist” and told him on cross, “You’ve lied so much, even you don’t know when you’re lying or telling the truth.” Co-counsel James Berry framed Tokars as an “innocent dupe” being set up by corrupt detectives, an embittered business partner, and the victim’s family.¹²

On March 8, 1997, the jury found Tokars guilty of malice murder. In the penalty phase it imposed life imprisonment rather than death. The state trial cost more than $1 million, and because Tokars was already serving life without parole federally, it did not change his incarceration.⁹

Everyone Else in the Case

Curtis Rower, the gunman, confessed. His first trial ended in a mistrial; he was convicted at the second and sentenced to life without parole.⁶ Eddie Lawrence pleaded guilty in both state and federal court, served roughly 12 years after testifying against Rower and Tokars, and entered the federal Witness Protection Program on release.⁷ The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Tokars’s appeal.

Ricky and Mike Tokars were raised by their maternal grandparents, Dr. John and Phyllis Ambrusko, in Bradenton, Florida, with Sara’s six sisters helping.¹³ Neither son ever spoke to their father again despite letters he sent from prison. Mike, who was four the night of the murder, later became a journalist, working for The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Post, and The National Memo, and as a researcher on Crime Watch Daily With Chris Hansen.¹⁴ He died of a pulmonary embolism on April 3, 2020, in Newport Beach, California, at age 31.¹⁵

Death in Prison

Fred Tokars died of natural causes at a federal prison in Pennsylvania in May 2020, at 67, weeks after his son Mike’s death. His attorney, Jerry Froelich, said Tokars had been held in what he called “secret custody,” unlisted in the federal prison system, and had suffered a neurological disorder and other ailments for years, running a high fever for days before his death. An autopsy would have been needed to confirm whether COVID-19 played a role.¹

1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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PoliceMag. The Murder of Sara Tokars
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Encyclopedia.com. Frederic Tokars Trial 1997
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Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Life of Bobby Lee Cook
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JRank Law. Frederic Tokars Trial 1997 – Innocent Victim
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Crime Online. Mike Tokars Has Died
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WSB-TV. Friends Feel Renewed Sadness