http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-al_5freemanfeb27,0,7705711.story?coll=all-sunday-hed
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-al_5freemanfeb27,0,7705711.story?coll=all-sunday-hed
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Decade after murders, are we safer?
Freeman slayings shocked region. Now, officials try to act early on problem behavior.
By Romy Varghese
Of The Morning Call
She wanted her 18-year-old nephew to stop hanging out with her teenage sons and leave her house. It was late. Her sons and nephew had other ideas. Her sons were tired of her rules.
On Feb. 26, 1995, Brenda Freeman headed to the lower floor of her split-level Salisbury Township home to talk to her sons for the last time.
The next day, her sister-in-law found her on the floor in her nightdress, her body stabbed repeatedly. Brenda's husband, Dennis Freeman, was bludgeoned in his bed, his head crushed with an aluminum baseball bat. Their youngest son, 11-year-old Erik, was killed in his bed as well, his blue and white pajamas bloodied from a beating with a 3-foot pickax handle.
Ten years ago this week, the brutal crime shocked the Lehigh Valley, especially considering the defendants: the Freemans' teenage sons, 17-year-old Bryan and 16-year-old David, and the couple's nephew, Nelson Birdwell III.
The odd behavior of the neo-Nazi-tattooed Freeman brothers, one of whom handed in a high school test that was scribbled with racist remarks, may have sounded alarms earlier had it occurred in today's post-Columbine and post-9/11 world. It's uncertain if resources now would have prevented the savage murders, but procedures such as diversity training and awareness of issues from gang violence to drug abuse work to head off threats to safety. And school officials appear to take no chances when it comes to acts that are potentially threatening.
''Times have changed,'' said Jennifer McCoy, an Allentown School District teacher who attended Salisbury High School with the Freeman brothers. ''You can't go by the same rules you did 10 years ago.''
The Freeman brothers, in prison for life without parole, never explained their motivations to officials. They've denied killing their younger brother. Birdwell, also serving life without parole, denies participating in the murders.
Recent written requests for interviews with the Freeman brothers have gone unanswered.
''There are crimes that are unfathomable,'' said Lehigh County Judge Robert L. Steinberg, who was the county's district attorney at the time.
The Freeman brothers had a history of getting in trouble. But Brenda and Dennis Freeman were decent, normal people, according to Steinberg and others involved in the case. There were no accounts of abuse in the family, nor did any allegations against the parents, who were Jehovah's Witnesses, surface after the murders.
''The worst thing you can say is that they were strict,'' Steinberg said.
Berserker
The Freemans' two oldest sons, Bryan and David, chafed under their rules. They resented their parents' attempts to control them.
Bryan Freeman was hospitalized twice for mental illness. His brother David received treatment for substance abuse and had been in several juvenile facilities.
In the few years before the murders, the brothers started getting deeper in neo-Nazi beliefs, although they were not known to belong to any organized skinhead group.
They began sporting skinhead haircuts and wearing military garb. According to Salisbury police at the time, the brothers' disruption in the house prompted officers to go to their home five times in the two years before the murders.
The situation apparently escalated in the weeks preceding the murders. The brothers arrived in school with neo-Nazi tattoos on the tops of their foreheads. Bryan's tattoo read ''Berserker'' and David's read ''Sieg Heil.'' Bryan already had a swastika tattoed on the side of his neck. Their cousin Birdwell, a frequent companion, also had a ''Berserker'' tattoo.
Police said the Freeman brothers threatened to kill their parents. Alarmed, Brenda Freeman contacted the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and Barry Morrison, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in Philadelphia. Morrison talked to her at length and gave her local referrals for help, such as Al Molinatti, then the Allentown Police Department's community relations officer.
Molinatti said Freeman was concerned that no matter what she and her husband did, they had no control over the boys. He gave her some information on skinheads, gave her avenues for counseling and advised her to talk to the boys' guidance counselor.
School officials were working on an intervention, according to Michael Adams, program director for ALERT Partnership, which is affiliated with Lehigh Valley Hospital's Department of Community Health and Health Studies. He had spoken to Brenda Freeman too, and to her sons, in this effort.
''Sadly, I don't know if there is much we could have done differently,'' said Adams, adding he doubted the brothers could have been treated at that point.
Brutal murders
On the night of the murders, the Freeman brothers and Birdwell had gone to the movies and returned to the Freeman home at 1635 Ehrets Lane.
Brenda Freeman repeatedly told Birdwell to leave and told her sons to go to bed. The last time she went down the stairs, her oldest son, Bryan, grabbed her, stuffed a pair of shorts in her mouth and stabbed her with a knife.
David Freeman and Birdwell went upstairs to Dennis Freeman's bedroom. With an aluminum bat, David smashed in his father's face. Birdwell was convicted of participating in that death. Birdwell then went into Erik's room and struck him repeatedly with a pickax handle, Steinberg said. Birdwell was acquitted in that murder.
After the murders, the three fled to Michigan, where they were apprehended three days later.
The Freeman sons pleaded guilty to killing their parents and are serving life sentences in state prisons, Bryan Freeman in Albion, Erie County, and David in Mahanoy City, Schuylkill County. Prison officials declined to release any details of their imprisonment.
Birdwell is serving a life sentence at the state prison in Greene County after a jury conviction, which he is asking a state Supreme Court judge to throw out. If the court declines to hear the case, or hears it and denies the request, he will have to turn to federal courts for relief.
Birdwell's defense was that he was simply at the scene of the murders and fled with his cousins out of fear.
A Green County prison official said Birdwell has completed his general equivalency diploma and has no incidents of misconduct on his record.
Focus on hate crimes
Although the Freeman brothers confessed to killing their parents, there was little sense of closure at the time. The savagery of the crime horrified the Lehigh Valley, as did the shocking news that another Valley teenager killed his parents within days of the Freeman murders. That teen,Jeffrey Howorth, was a seemingly normal 17-year-old with loving parents. But on March 2, 1995, he shot his father George five times in the kitchen and his mother Susan nine times in the dining room of their Lower Macungie Township home.
Jeffrey Howorth was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has been at Norristown State Hospital since October 1995.
''There was a lot of concern about what was happening in the community,'' Steinberg said.
The Freeman case sparked much discussion about skinheads. Workshops on how to deal with hate groups were held in the community, Adams and Molinatti said.
A group of professionals from various backgrounds formed The Hate Crimes Consortium and organized a national conference in Philadelphia in 1998, called Youth and Hate Crimes: Prevention and Intervention Strategies.
It was a ''very complicated undertaking,'' said Barry Morrison, who added that he wasn't completely satisfied with the outcome of the conference.
The problem is, Morrison said, that there is no one group or treatment option that specifically targets youths in the white supremacy movement.
Concern over skinhead activity has receded as ''we've moved onto other trends,'' Adams said.
More awareness, resources
Still, 10 years after the Freeman murders, there is more awareness of problems such as gang activity, said Adams and Molinatti. Before, they said, Allentown officials declined to publicly acknowledge the existence of gangs. Now, police throughout the area talk openly and share information on gangs, Adams said.
Programs promoting diversity and awareness are institutionalized now at schools, Adams said.
Thanks to the Internet, there are more resources for parents, Molinatti said. Knowing more about what the child is involved in, ''You might have a better conversation on what is really transpiring,'' he said.
For instance, you would be better informed to question your child if he said he hates Jews, Molinatti said.
Although Morrison is dismissive of the idea that resources to deal with young, violent skinheads have improved greatly in the past 10 years, he uses facets of the Freeman case to educate others. At events, he talks about a test one of the Freeman brothers turned in at high school. Instead of answering the questions, the teenager wrote anti-Semitic and anti-African-American statements, drew pictures of male and female genitalia, and said he was willing to die for the neo-Nazi cause.
The test was returned to the boy, Morrison said, marked for grammar and with a ''mild comment'' from the teacher, saying that he should rethink some of his ideas.
Such a test would be likely to spark a different reaction today.
On April 20, 1999, two high school seniors at Columbine High School, armed with guns, knives and bombs, walked through the school, killing 12 students and one teacher before killing themselves. And the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America killed almost 3,000 people.
''All schools have changed in the past 10 years,'' said Al Fields, superintendent of the Salisbury Township School District.
The state made money available after the Columbine attack for schools to improve safety, Fields said.
That and homeland security concerns prompt schools to take things more seriously, he said.
New attitudes
Fields was the Salisbury Middle School principal in 1995 and couldn't recall if the school district made any specific changes in procedures after the Freeman murders, other than beefing up security when the brothers were fugitives.
Asked to describe officials' response now if a student showed up at school with neo-Nazi tattoos, as the Freeman brothers had done, Fields said there would be some sort of action depending on the situation and in consideration of constitutional freedoms. And if a student turned in a test on which racist remarks were scribbled, Fields said he would hope that the teacher wouldn't simply return the exam to the student without taking other action.
Jennifer McCoy, who was a student at Salisbury High School with the Freemans and recalled them as quiet kids who kept to themselves, said the murders and Columbine have given her lessons she can apply as a teacher.
''It helps me to keep an eye out on the quiet ones,'' she said. And if she gets back a test such as Freeman's, she would follow her training and turn it immediately over to the guidance counselors. It's better to have the student annoyed at you rather than miss a potential problem, she said.
It's this kind of attitude that many schools have these days. An incident in Oley High School in Berks County earlier this month was the latest situation in which some people wondered if schools were taking security concerns too far. Matthew W. Pattison, an 18-year-old National Merit Scholar finalist, put on a gorilla mask and sheepskin shawl and climbed onto his school's roof as a prank. His actions galvanized dozens of police officers, FBI agents, helicopters and bomb-sniffing dogs. Facing reckless endangerment and other charges, Pattison spent a night in jail under $300,000 bail but was released after it was lowered to $50,000.
''Our reaction now is to overreact, maybe,'' Molinatti said, referring to the Oley incident.
''A lot of red flags''
Still, a forensic psychologist who evaluated David Freeman in August 1995 said that even in the pre-Columbine and 9/11 world, the Freeman murders could have been prevented with early intervention.
''In David's case, there were a lot of red flags,'' said Harry Krop, a Gainesville, Fla., psychologist asked by Steinberg, the district attorney at the time, to determine David Freeman's mental state and ability to be rehabilitated.
David had been maladjusted for a long time, Krop said. He started drinking when he was 6 or 7, stealing beer from the refrigerator apparently without his parents catching on until he was 13 or 14. He started smoking cigarettes at age 10, marijuana a year later. He also abused prescription drugs. He committed vandalism and stole to buy drugs or just for the fun of it, Krop said.
David resented his parents' deferring to the Bible when he talked to them. He began getting in trouble at school. One 10-day suspension he incurred in eighth grade was for threatening to kill a coach after a game. He was also asked to write an apology to the coach.
It appeared that the consequences of his actions, such as suspensions, didn't correct his behavior, Krop said, and he became more overtly troubled. He collected news clippings about people killing their parents.
Krop was barred from asking David about his older brother Bryan, whom authorities believed to be the dominant figure of the three.
Krop was quick to say he doesn't fault anyone for what happened to the Freemans. But he noted there was little, if any, communication between the sons and parents, nor any coordination among the teachers, parents and sons.
''Never feel like you're intruding,'' is the lesson for parents, Krop said. ''It's better to intrude and be involved, even if you get chastised by the kid that you're invading his privacy.''
'Cold blooded' killers
But Krop, like Steinberg, had noted that cases of children of killing their parents are more unusual when there are no allegations of abuse.
''It's really scary how a kid that age could have been such a cold-blooded killer of his family,'' Krop said.
Cpl. Joseph Vazquez, the state police investigator, said that when he saw Bryan Freeman, the teen was reminiscent of serial killer Charles Manson, by the way he looked through a person.
''I've never seen another 18-year-old who has that affect,'' Vazquez said.
Hate was why they killed, Steinberg said.
It's an unsatisfying answer, and even he, on a personal level, can't fully grasp the crime.
Often, ''individuals have less understanding of what they did,'' Steinberg said. They might not understand why, either.