What Happened To Claudette Ficik? New Details About Pregnant College Student Murdered By Her Boyfriend Jason Ragland
This relationship quickly turned deadly.
Valeriya Popova 22 / Shutterstock We all want to believe we can trust the person we're seeing but all too often, that person happens to be the first suspect when someone is found dead or goes missing.
And in the case of Claudette Ficik, a 19-year-old Georgia college student who was killed in the '90s, her boyfriend was the one to blame.
Heartbreakingly, Ficik was found dead six weeks after she'd gone missing, and ultimately, investigators traced the crime back to the man she'd been dating at the time, Jason Ragland.
So, what happened to Claudette Ficik?
Here's everything you need to know.
Claudette Ficik went missing in 1994.
After Ficik left Georgia to visit her parents in South Carolina, she was never seen again and her family launched a full scale search for her when she never arrived at their house as expected.
Two days later, her truck was found abandoned in Atlanta, but Ficik's body wasn't found until six weeks after she'd disappeared.
When Ficik was found, they discovered she was four months pregnant.
Ficik was found in the Oconee River, where her body had been dumped.
A boat anchor had been tied around her body with nylon rope to ensure that she'd sink to the bottom, and it was discovered that she was pregnant.
Ficik's boyfriend, Jason Ragland, was immediately a suspect but he denied being involved and even managed to pass a polygraph test.
When Ficik's family celebrated and mourned her life with a funeral, they still didn't know what exactly had happened to her.
Later, Ficik's boyfriend confessed to the murder.
Originally, Ragland said he was supposed to go to South Carolina with Ficik to meet her parents since she was pregnant, but stated that he'd skipped the trip because they argued.
Later, it came out that the anchor found with Ficik's body was from the company Ragland worked at, and he ended up confessing to killing her.
Ragland and Ficik's case went to a grand jury.
Following Ragland's confession, the case went to a grand jury.
At first, it seemed like there wasn't enough evidence to tie Ragland to the case but investigators continued to push for more serious charges against him considering the fact that Ficik was pregnant at the time of her death.
Ragland is now serving out a life sentence.
Ultimately, Ragland was sentenced to serve life at the Burruss Correctional Facility in Georgia, where he still remains today, more than 20 years later.
Interested to know more? Ficik's murder was featured on the Investigation Discovery series Betrayed in an episode called "Little Shop Of Horrors."
Nicole Pomarico is an entertainment and lifestyle writer whose work has appeared in Cosmo, Us Weekly, Refinery29, and more.