by Fred Rosen
“Actually, he threw up inside first. Right by the sliding glass doors.”
“Where’s Bryan?”
“Bryan was standing in the kitchen.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Nothing, really, just covered in blood.”
“Where’s the blood on him?”
“On his pants. The front. There was a lot on both legs.”
“So he’s standing there covered with blood. Is he holding anything in his hands?”
“No. He’s not holding nothing in his hands.”
“And what’s Bryan doing?”
“Just standing there.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No, he was just smoking cigarettes.”
“Which way is he facing?”
“Toward the sliding glass doors, towards Snuff and me.”
“Does Dave have any blood on him?”
“No. Not that I seen.”
“Do you see any ball bats around?”
“No.”
“Do you see any ax handles around?”
“No.”
“Any knives around?”
“No.”
“See any kind of weapons around?”
“Just what’s in the drawers.”
“OK, now we’re to the point where David is vomiting, and you’re standing there by David, and Bryan’s looking at both of you, then what’s the next thing that happens in sequence?”
“I just wanted to get out of the house. I’m like, ‘I’ll be outside.’”
“So you said, ‘I’ll be outside,’ and how do you exit the house?”
“Right out the front door.”
“Where are they when you leave?”
“They were still upstairs in the house.”
“When did you next see them?”
“Like, a minute later.”
“Who came out first?”
“Dave.”
“What’s he doing? Carrying anything?”
“No. He’s just really scared, like he’s seen a ghost. His whole facial expression changed there on him.”
“And then you see Bryan come out?”
“Bryan comes out right after he does.”
“Did they say anything as you left?”
“Nothing. They couldn’t. No one talked till that afternoon.”
“Had Bryan changed clothes?”
“Yeah. He’d changed his jeans.”
“So when you left the house, where did you go?”
“We drove by my house to pick some tapes up. Bryan wanted to.”
“To get some tapes?”
“I told them if we go by there, I’m just gonna stay home, I’m not gonna come with you guys, so we didn’t stop by my house then.”
“And then where did you go from there?”
“Right on the highway up to here.”
“Did they plan this trip ahead of time or did the trip just happen?” Harms asked.
A “yes” answer would establish premeditation and all but ensure the death penalty.
“It just happened,” Benny answered smoothly. “I don’t think they planned it ahead of time because I would have known about it before that.”
“So what kind of conversation is going on in the car that makes you think they didn’t plan it out ahead of time?”
“Well, Dave goes to Bryan, ‘Where we gonna go?’ and Bryan’s like, ‘I don’t know. We’ll probably just go up to Ohio and meet those guys.’”
“Did he mention which guys?”
“Just Frank.”
Harms and Mynsberge knew he meant Frank Hesse.
“What did they say about what happened during the trip?”
“They didn’t say nothing.”
“Did they ever threaten you again?”
“No.”
“Did they ever say, ‘Don’t say anything, don’t talk to anybody?’”
“No.”
“Who did they tell at Frank’s house when they got there? What happened?”
“They didn’t tell no one.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I don’t think they told anybody.”
“Did you tell anybody?”
“No,” Benny hastily replied.
“Did they have a lot of money with them?”
“Pretty much.”
“Where did they get that?”
“I have no clue.”
“How much money did they have?”
“About two hundred dollars.”
“And who had that?”
“Both of them did.”
“Split up between them?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you have money with you when you left?” Mynsberge asked.
“I had about twenty.”
“I can tell by talking to you that you feel a lot of remorse, at least more so then when you first started telling us about this, and we appreciate your telling us,” Harms said sincerely.
“This is your statement. If there’s anything you want to add to that that we might not have asked …” Harms continued.
Benny said nothing.
“OK, we appreciate you telling us the truth, Ben. We’re gonna stop the tape. What time is it?”
“It’s 3:05,” Mynsberge said. “This tape concludes at 3:05,” and he clicked the tape recorder off.
Mynsberge and Harms felt that Benny, just like David, was telling the truth. Mynsberge, who is a gentle man, felt that the boys were being sincere and cooperative, humble and remorseful. Nothing in their manner made Mynsberge believe either boy was trying to mislead them, despite the fact that there were contradictions in the two statements.
SIX
After a long, exhausting, twelve-hour drive, Donna and Nelson Birdwell II arrived in Midland, Michigan, on March 4. Donna immediately sought out the Midland County Jail. She was allowed to speak with her son.
“Ma, I didn’t do anything,” Benny declared.
“Was it—”
“It was Bryan,” he interrupted. “Bryan and Dave. They did it. They killed them. They forced me to come along, Ma. Ma, I was so scared!”
Donna believed her son. Benny continued to talk, telling her details about what had happened in the Freeman house.
Donna left his cell. How could she help him get out from under a potential murder charge? Realizing that the only way was to campaign in the media for his release, she granted an interview to a reporter from the local paper, the Midland Daily News. She revealed what her son had told her about his involvement—or really, lack of involvement—in the murders.
Donna told the reporter that Benny had told her that he’d hidden in a bedroom while his aunt, uncle, and cousin were slaughtered, and that he was not involved in any way in the murders.
“My son is willing to cooperate with authorities,” she continued.
Benny’s account of the crimes, as related by his mother, went something like this:
“They were downstairs making noise when Brenda went down to ask them to be quiet. When it all happened, Ben hid in the bedroom. He (Ben) was in shock. He only left with them because he was scared. He thought they (Bryan and David) would kill him, too.
“None of them knew it was going to happen. Sunday afternoon, Ben was home washing his Wendy’s uniform for work the next day.”
Donna did not condone what had happened. She said, “We are a very close family, and we support our son. He’s a wonderful, loving boy.”
That night, the Midland Daily News scooped every paper in the country. They had the first purported, eyewitness account by one of the three boys involved in what was now being called “the skinhead murder case.”
The next day, deep in the bowels of the Midland County Jail, the Freeman brothers huddled over a copy of the March 5 edition of the Midland, Daily News. They read the interview Donna Birdwell had given to the paper and her son’s account of what had really happened. As they read, the anger began. It was never too far below the surface for either brother, and it took
little to set it off. But if Benny had been in the cell with them—he had a separate cell in another part of the building—they’d have wrung his neck and saved the state the cost of extradition and trial.
They had taken the rap because it had been agreed beforehand; Benny had convinced them that if they were captured, the authorities would only try the brothers as juveniles. If he (Benny) were blamed for what happened, they would try him—at eighteen, the oldest—as an adult. He could get death.
“You guys take the blame, OK? They’ll let you off. Besides, with Bryan’s history of emotional problems, nothing’ll happen to you anyway. After all, a guy can’t be held responsible for something he does if he has a history of mental stuff right?”
That’s what Benny had told them. And they’d bought it, because they had loved their cousin and they wanted to protect him. But now, now! That son-of-a …
They needed to tell the authorities that David’s confession was concocted, that the statement was mostly a lie. And Bryan, who hadn’t said anything yet, wanted to put his two cents in.
“Hey guard, guard!” they shouted.
The guard lumbered down the narrow hallway and stopped before their cell.
“Tell the district attorney we got something to tell him,” David shouted.
“Don’t scream. You already made your statement.”
“Well, wake him up! And get our lawyer down here,” Bryan yelled.
“You don’t have a lawyer,” the guard said.
“Then get us one,” David shouted. “Tell ’em all we got a lot more to say, and this time it’s the truth!”
The guard looked at his watch. It was late, but this seemed important. He didn’t want to get in trouble if he didn’t report what was happening immediately.
“I’ll go call Donker,” the guard said, shuffling back down the corridor.
“Yeah,” Bryan shouted after him. “Yeah! Yeah! Tell him we got lots to tell him.”
“Lots!” David repeated.
PART TWO
“And a man’s foes shall be they of their own household.”
—Matthew 10:36, King James Bible “Authorized Version,” Cambridge Edition
SEVEN
Brooklyn Heights, Fall 1966
It is 8:55 in the morning.
Walking down the hill to the edge of Henry Street are scores of young men and women, mostly blond and blue-eyed, but with an occasional brunette in the bunch. They are well-dressed in shirts and ties, and in dresses that deliberately do not accentuate the human body. They talk little among themselves and pay little attention to their surroundings. They have a purpose, a specific destination, and a glazed look in their eyes.
Within the crowd on this day in 1966 is Dennis Freeman, a handsome resident of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Dennis is a tall, strapping young man of twenty-five. Unlike most people his age, Dennis does not care about protesting against the Vietnam War. He has no interest in protesting for civil rights for Negroes. He has no interest in voting for Robert Kennedy for president, or Richard Nixon, for that matter.
Dennis knows nothing about “free love.” He has never smoked marijuana; he’s never even inhaled a cigarette. Dennis’s only concern is serving God as a Jehovah’s Witness, just like his father, Clarence, and his mother, Ruth.
Since 1900, the Heights, as it’s known to residents of the borough of Brooklyn, New York, has served as the international headquarters for the Watchtower Bible Society, the parent organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Watchtower administers many different programs, including the door-to-door proselytizing that Jehovah’s Witnesses are best known for. Dennis has done his full share of such proselytizing and continues to do so. In his free time, Dennis works the Clark Street IRT subway station in the Heights. An elegantly tiled train station, he greeted travelers there with a message of salvation, If they choose to worship God the Witnesses’ way, the only way, they could seek salvation on judgment day.
But unlike other religions, which view Armageddon as an abstract concept, the Witnesses have set a date for the conflagration. Armageddon has been prophesied by the Witnesses Governing Body, a group of a dozen wise men who speak for God. The Governing Body says that Armageddon will occur seven years hence, in 1975. When it occurs, only the faithful, Jehovah’s Witnesses, will survive to inhabit the “cleansed earth.” All non-JWs will be destroyed by God.
Dennis knows and accepts that the Watchtower’s way of salvation is based upon good works, and not on the saving grace of Jesus Christ’s blood. This system, selling Watchtower books and magazines in public places and door-to-door, puts Dennis and other Jehovah’s Witnesses in a position to be saved if they are faithful to the organization and do as they are told. Faithfulness to the organization involves adhering to the rules and regulations that Watchtower elders enforce.
As for nonbelievers, those who believe in other religions, they will all be condemned and annihilated on Armageddon.
It makes no difference to Dennis that Watchtower materials said that Armageddon was supposed to have happened in 1914 and in 1925. There were logical reasons those prophecies did not come to pass. Whatever the Governing Body says is the truth is now the truth. If they say Armageddon will occur in 1975, that is what will happen because God has decreed it.
It would never occur to Dennis to question the prophecy, for if he did, he would be disfellowshiped, banished from the Jehovah’s Witnesses forever. His mother, father, sister, cousins, aunts, and uncles, all of who are Witnesses, would not be allowed to speak with him, to see him, even to go to his funeral, should he die. As far as the Witnesses were concerned, if he were disfellowshiped, he would cease to exist.
But that is not a problem for Dennis, who obeys his elders and does not question church doctrine. While Armageddon will be a worldwide event, the Heights is the bastion against the evil that roams the world in the form of other religions.
The best way to get the message out of God’s kingdom on earth is through the printed word. The Watchtower printing plant is at the bottom of Henry Street, on the edge of the Heights, where it produces The Watchtower and Awake!, the two banner publications the Witnesses use to espouse their cause on street corners in cities all over the world.
Strolling down the street, Dennis was on his way to the Watchtower printing plant next to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He would put in an eight-hour shift, with an hour off for lunch, and then, at precisely 5 P.M., he would trudge back up the hill to his quarters in one of the former hotels that dot the area.
Dennis was housed at the Margaret Hotel on Clark Street, one of the many Belle Epoque hotels that had catered to the turn-of-the-century travelers who stayed in the Heights prior to trans-Atlantic trips on one of the great Cunard or White Star ocean liners that docked in New York Harbor. But over the years, as planes took the place of steamships, the hotels became a place for transients and fell into disrepair. The Watchtower had bought them for a song, restored them to their Victorian glory, and used them to house their workers.
Though gilded from the outside, bespeaking the Witnesses’ wealth, the rooms where the workers stayed could best be described as spartan, furnished in simplicity, with a bed to sleep in, a desk at which to study Watchtower theology as interpreted by their founder, Charles Taze Russell, and a bathroom.
Night after night, Dennis sat quietly at his desk, studying his New World Translation, memorizing its passages, thanking God for the revelations He brought forth through “God’s organization.”
Russell, Dennis, and all Jehovah’s Witnesses deny that the body of Jesus Christ came to life after it was entombed for three days. They claim that Jesus was resurrected as an “Invisible Spirit Creature,” and that no one knows what actually happened to his body. Rather, they think, Jesus returned to earth invisibly in 1914.
The Witnesses deny that the return of the Jews to Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Ezekiel’s prophecy regarding the return of the Jews to their land is said by the Watchtower to be fulfilled in
their organization.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses began as a religious sect in 1879, when a Pittsburgh haberdasher named Charles Taze Russell used Hebrew and Greek translations of the Bible to interpret God’s plan for salvation. A charismatic man, Russell shared his interpretation with other members of his community during Bible study classes.
Members of the sect were originally known as Russellites, but with the ascendance of Joseph Franklin Rutherford as Russell’s successor in 1916, the Russellites became known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. Rutherford built a large house in San Diego and had deeds drawn up holding the property in trust to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who would return to earth in 1925 after Armageddon and would, presumably, live on Rutherford’s property.
Jehovah’s Witnesses spread out across the states and then the world, delivering “God’s message,” according to Russell’s interpretation.
Those early Witnesses were such effective proselytizers that before long, there were Jehovah’s Witnesses on all seven continents. Russell went corporate, forming the Watchtower Corporation in 1889. Russell moved his sect to Brooklyn Heights at the turn of the century, and a printing plant was set up that today publishes millions of handouts and Bibles that have been used to educate members and to convert people.
The Watchtower officially claims there are more than 3.5 million Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, but that figure is popularly considered to be conservative, with total worldwide membership probably closer to 4.5 million.
The Watchtower’s accumulated wealth makes it the single largest landowner in terms of property value in Brooklyn Heights, one of New York City’s most exclusive residential areas. The Watchtower buys up property for future use, and if residents refuse to leave, Watchtower will try to buy them out, as happened to this author.
Dennis was not interested in how the Watchtower conducted its business. He knew that the church did whatever it did in the service of Jehovah, and the people who lived in the buildings the Watchtower bought up were heathen. They would perish on judgment day.
It did not bother Dennis that the Watchtower had an autocratic hierarchy that exercised dictatorial control over its flock. Nor did it bother him that the Watchtower said one must come to Jesus through the Watchtower organization, thus inserting itself between an individual and Jesus. And he did not find it difficult to harmonize the organizational self-approval, self-praise, and self-identification as God’s channel, with its simultaneous calls for humility and meekness on the part of everyone else.
