Blood Crimes

by Fred Rosen

  He played various cuts by two skinhead bands, including Bound for Glory and Aggravated Assault.

  By 1 A.M., the boys were pooped and started to turn in. David was the last. He was stone-cold drunk, so drunk that he had to step outside for a wintry blast of frigid Michigan air. That and vomiting in the field outside seemed to clear his head, and he went back inside. He smoked some weed and went to sleep.

  The boys awoke to a sunny day.

  They breakfasted on coffee, cereal, and milk. David, in particular, needed the coffee because he was nursing a hangover. By 11 A.M., they were finished and went down to the river to go ice fishing.

  Ice fishing is a peculiar custom in the north country. Unlike most easterners, who try to stay in out of the cold weather, and southerners, who can’t tolerate it, denizens of Michigan’s north country find something in every season to make sport of. Arctic weather is no exception. Cutting a hole in the thick river ice, the fisherman sinks a line in and waits patiently in the frigid cold for some fish to snap at the bait and then be reeled in for dinner.

  And that’s what the four boys did that day, with Frank taking the lead in showing the other three what to do, for while David, Bryan, and Ben lived in a semi-rural area, they were essentially city boys.

  So the boys fished. For the remainder of the bright, winter afternoon in a new year, they waited patiently for a bite until about 3:30 P.M. After reeling in and getting their tackle and stuff in order, they went back to the Hesse homestead, getting there at about 4 P.M.

  It just wasn’t their lucky day. The fish had refused to bite. The boys began to have a late afternoon repast when suddenly they heard a disembodied voice from outside, coming in loud and clear on a bullhorn:

  “Frank Hesse! Frank Hesse!”

  “What the heck did you do now?” Frank’s father Ronald asked.

  “Nothing, Dad, I swear.”

  “Frank Hesse, we want you and David, Bryan Freeman, and Nelson Birdwell …”

  “Nelson?” Frank asked.

  “… to come out with your hands up!”

  “What the hell did you guys do?” Frank asked.

  Bryan smiled.

  Outside, the place was surrounded by cops, members of the Michigan State Police, supplemented by officers of the Midland County Police Department. Sergeants Tom Mynsberge and Dick Harms of the Michigan State Police watched as the door to the Hesse house opened slowly and the four boys slowly made their way outside. As soon as they had cleared the farmhouse, a cop barked an order for them to keep their hands overhead and hit the ground. They readily complied, and uniformed officers moved in to quickly cuff their hands behind their backs.

  In order to prevent them from concocting a story, all four boys were placed in separate cars.

  “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to the presence of an attorney …”

  As the boys were read their rights, Ronald Hesse watched the squad cars pull out. Damn! He already had enough trouble with his son Auggie, over the charge that he had beaten a black guy at a local supermarket.

  As his squad car pulled out into the road, Frank Hesse flicked his long hair back over his shoulder and looked back at his father until he was a lonely speck on the horizon.

  FOUR

  Midland has 43,000 people living within its environs. In Midland County, there are 88,000 residents, and there are maybe two to three homicides a year. The state of Michigan does not have the death penalty. In fact, it was the first state to ban it in the 1840s. But if you were to kill on federal land in Michigan, you could get death.

  The last man executed in Michigan was a federal criminal, who was hanged sometime during the 1930s. The man who pulled the gallows lever was the sheriff of Midland County.

  Norman Donker was the prosecuting attorney for Midland County, Michigan. A tall, serious-looking man, with a dour demeanor, he had gone grocery shopping and had returned home to find four messages on his answering machine. One of them was from a Philadelphia TV station. They had heard that the Freeman brothers and Nelson Birdwell had been captured and were looking for a comment.

  Not knowing anything about this, Donker contacted the state police. They had been just about to call the prosecutor to let him know that the three fugitives had been captured.

  Frank Hesse would be questioned and released soon after his arrival at the Midland County Jail, an old building in the heart of the Midland metropolis. David was booked at 7 P.M., Bryan at 7:38 P.M., and Ben at 8:06.

  In Michigan, seventeen is the age of consent. If you’re seventeen, you’re an adult and can be charged as one and questioned as one. Bryan and Ben were placed in separate interrogation rooms. David Freeman, at fifteen years old, was still considered a minor. Still, considering the crimes he was accused of committing, police weren’t sure where to put him. Should he be held with his brother and cousin, or sent to the juvenile division? It was an unusual situation for the Midland Police.

  Out in the police garage, David cooled his heels in the back of a cruiser until the venue issue was sorted out.

  Finally, after consulting with Donker, it was decided to take David to a temporary holding cell. He was transported to the Midland County Law Enforcement Center. Sitting alone there, without his brother or his cousin, David felt desperate, hopeless, and most of all, alone.

  They got me, they got me, I’m going down. That’s it! What do I do? What do I do?

  They had him all right, and there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe, just maybe, now was the time to try to save Benny, as they’d planned, in case they were captured. Well, they had been captured, dammit, and inside, he felt like shit.

  David waived his right to counsel and decided to give a statement. Detective sergeants Tom Mynsberge and Dick Harms took him into an interrogation room, once again advised him of his Miranda rights, and made certain that he was making the statement of his own volition.

  With the legal niceties done, it was down to business.

  “Well, basically, what we’d like you to do is on Sunday, which would be the 26th of this month, can you tell us what transpired at your residence? We want to make sure that you put the reasons and events leading up to what actually happened. If you would. Please.”

  Harms and Mynsberge were sitting in a plain, seven-by-twelve-foot cinder block room. It was a room used for questioning suspects, the kind of antiseptic, windowless interrogation room that differed little from state to state, where cops sat patiently waiting for suspects to spill their guts.

  David sat in front of a scarred wooden table. A tape recorder had been placed in front of him, and one of the cops had turned it on.

  “Well,” David began, speaking into the microphone. “We were home that day. And we … we came home later. Our parents were asleep. They started saying, ‘Oh, if you go outside, you’re gonna be locked sleeping outside. You know you can’t leave the house for anything after 11 o’ clock.’ They, they were just saying ‘you’re not allowed to be doing any of that stuff. Gotta follow our rules or you’ll be out of here.’ They kept making up all these new rules, like saying that if they don’t like somebody, we’re not allowed to be with them.”

  “This is your mom and dad saying this, Dave?” Harms asked, using the familiar of his name.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “OK, go ahead.”

  “This, I don’t know … it’s like, if we couldn’t follow the rules, we’d be kicked out of the house and just, like, a lot of real strict rules, and we couldn’t take it any more.”

  “So then there came a point in time when they had you leave the house?” Harms surmised.

  “Yeah, we’ve left the house before.”

  “I mean this particular night.”

  “No, it was, was not that particular night.”

  “OK,” Harms said patiently, “then what happened?”

  “Well, we was, a little bit later, my mom came downstairs. My brother took a knif
e and started stabbing her. I went upstairs, and I was beating my dad in the face with a baseball bat and cut his throat. I went to my little brother and smashed his face in.”

  As he described the slaughter of the two people that had given him life and his little brother. David Freeman’s voice was curiously flat and unemotional.

  “With?” Harms asked.

  “A bat.”

  “So you were downstairs when this happened to your mother?”

  “Yeah. For, like, a couple of seconds.”

  “And what did you see your brother Bryan do?”

  “Put his hand over her mouth and stabbed her.”

  “Whereabouts did he stab her?”

  “In the back. Everywhere.”

  “How many times?”

  “I … I was only down there for a couple of seconds.”

  “What kind of a knife did he have?”

  “It was a steak knife or something. It was pretty big. After that, I couldn’t come back downstairs or anything.”

  “So then you went upstairs while this was going on?”

  David nodded.

  “Did you see your mother fall to the ground?” Harms wondered.

  “No, I went back downstairs once after that, but I didn’t look at her,” David replied, his head sinking down, his voice a monotone.

  “And then you went upstairs, and that’s when you had contact with your dad and brother?”

  “Yeah, they were sleeping in their rooms.”

  “They were in separate rooms?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And they were in their own beds?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then what happened?

  “After everything was done, we grabbed the car and left.”

  David had tried to avoid talking about what he and the others had done. And Harms being the good detective he is, picked up on that.

  “No, I mean, you went into your dad’s bedroom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “First?”

  “Yeah, I went into his bedroom first.”

  “And then what happened in there?”

  “First, I hit him in the face with the bat and cracked his skull. I hit him, like, two or three more times, and I cut his throat.”

  The words themselves cut like a knife, slicing through the air, and chilling it until the only thing that wasn’t frozen were the words themselves.

  “And what did you cut his throat with?”

  “A steak knife.”

  “And you got it from?”

  “The kitchen.”

  “Did your dad do anything when you cut him?”

  “No, he never woke up.”

  “You’re pretty sure he was dead?”

  “Yeah. He was dead.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I went into my little brother’s room and I—”

  “What is his name?” Harms interrupted.

  “Erik,” David said.

  “And what happened then?”

  “I hit him in the face with a bat, and he just died like that. He never woke up, either.”

  “There was somebody else with you in the house at the time?”

  “Yeah. That was Ben.”

  “And where was he when Bryan went down to the basement with your mom?”

  “He was down there, but I don’t know for how long.”

  “Did he see what happened to your mom?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” David answered hesitantly.

  “And then did he see what happened to your dad and brother?”

  “Yeah, he’s the only one that had to go back in their rooms for some stuff. He’s the only one that would, that could do it.”

  But Harms was more interested in whether or not Ben had participated in the homicides.

  “Where was Ben when you were doing your brother and your dad?”

  “I seen him walk by once and look in, but—”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No.”

  “Where was he when Bryan was doing your mom?”

  “He was downstairs for a little bit, and then I guess he came up.”

  “So then he eventually found out that there was something wrong with all three of them, your mom and dad …”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “How did you learn that? What did Ben say?”

  “Oh, after that, Bryan came upstairs and he said, ‘Well, she’s dead, and you know, I got Dad and Erik.’”

  “Who said that she’s dead? Ben?”

  “Bryan did.”

  “But what did Ben say?”

  “He didn’t say, he really didn’t say anything at all. After we left, we didn’t really say anything for a while,” David continued.

  “Did Ben know that they were dead then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did he know that?”

  “Oh, he went back in the room.”

  “You saw him go back in the room?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In whose room now?”

  “In my dad’s, after he was dead.”

  “Did he go into your brother’s room after he was dead?”

  “No, but the door was open.”

  Harms had no way of knowing that when Valerie Freeman discovered Erik’s body, the door to his bedroom was closed. David was lying, trying to protect his cousin.

  “You don’t know for sure if he saw your brother or not?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah what? How did he know he was dead then?”

  “Course we told him.”

  “While you were still at the house?”

  David nodded.

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I told him everybody else was dead.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Nothing. He didn’t say nothing,”

  “What did you do with all the clothes you guys were wearing and everything?” Mynsberge asked.

  “They’re still at the house.”

  “You left everything at the house? So, the clothes you have here you changed into, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did Bryan cut his hand? Was that when he was killing your mother?” Harms continued.

  “Not that I know of,” David answered evasively.

  “Did he actually fall?”

  “He said he fell.”

  “OK, what happened to the knives that were used to kill your family?” Harms asked impatiently.

  “We put them back in the sink, both of them.”

  “You clean up or anything?”

  “I didn’t,” David answered, almost defensively.

  “How about the baseball bat? Where’s that?”

  “It’s sitting in the dining room, I think.”

  “You guys ever use an ax handle?” Harms wondered.

  “Yeah, that was used, too. It was a pick handle.”

  “Who used that?” Mynsberge asked.

  “Me. I used that and there was, like, a real big gold baseball bat.”

  “Who did you hit with the ax handle?” Harms broke in.

  “Oh, that would have been my brother,” David answered, totally nonplussed by the question.

  “And did you hit him with the baseball bat, too?” Harms asked.

  “I only hit him once.”

  “With?”

  “The handle.”

  “OK, and you say that did something to his face or skull?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you told anyone else about this?”

  David looked down and mumbled, “No.”

  “Nobody?” Mynsberge pressed.

  “No.”

  “You guys were just pretty quiet about the whole thing?” Mynsberge asked dubiously.

  “Yeah.”

  “There was no talk going on, just wondering what happened?”

  “No. We just kept asking, ‘What the hell did we do it for?’”

  “You wished it would all go away, huh?”
/>
  “Yeah.”

  He was looking down. Mynsberge took note of what appeared to be a spasm of conscience.

  “Hard to take back once it’s done.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you came up here to Michigan. These guys, Frank and August, they don’t know you’re on the run?”

  “No, they didn’t know anything about what had happened.”

  A confession by a suspect under the influence is inadmissible. The detectives had to make sure David was sober.

  “Do you drink at all Dave? When’s the last time you had anything to drink?” Harms asked.

  “A couple of nights ago,” David lied.

  “You’re not on any medication, are you?”

  “No.”

  “OK. We appreciate you having told us what’s happening. Is there anything else that you have to say?”

  “That’s it, that’s everything,” David said.

  “You’re pretty much sure that they were, all three of them were dead when you left there?”

  “Not really.”

  Once again, the two cops ignored the inconsistency of the answer.

  “Did the money from your trip, is that what you went back in the bedroom for?”

  “That’s right. That’s why I went back into the bedroom.”

  “Is there anything left in the car? Any money?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What do you think should happen now?” Mynsberge wondered thoughtfully.

  “I don’t know,” David replied.

  “Gonna wait and see?”

  “Whatever happens, happens. There ain’t much I can do about that now. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail.”

  “When Bryan did that to your mother, did something spur you to go up and do that to your dad?”

  “Oh yeah,” said David, suddenly remembering. “Bryan said, when she was coming down, ‘Whoever pussies out, they’re getting stabbed.’”

  “Who did Bryan say that to?”

  “Me and Ben.”

  “So I guess you guys were just to the point after they kicked you out, it’s pretty much in Bryan’s mind that things had to be taken care of right then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he try and get you guys fired up a little bit?”

  “I wasn’t really fired, you know, I was just—”

  “How about when it happened?”