by Fred Rosen
“I didn’t see when he first did it, but when I left the room to go upstairs, as I saw him, he had his hands over her mouth,” David replied.
“Were they on the floor or still standing up?”
“They were still standing, but just about like on the floor.”
“Did you see the knife he had?”
“No.”
“As you were looking at him, you say they were starting to go down.”
“That’s what it seemed like.”
“Did you actually see them go down on the floor?”
“No.”
“You turned around and went upstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Ben come right after you?”
“A couple of seconds later he was right behind me.”
“As you were going upstairs, did you hear anything from downstairs?”
“No.”
“Did you hear your mother screaming or anything?”
“No.”
“Did you hear any scuffling noises or anything?”
“No.”
“You went upstairs?”
“Right.”
“Did Ben ever tell you he hit your mother with anything or have anything to do with killing your mother?” Vazquez interjected.
“I don’t recall him saying anything,” David answered.
“How about Bryan? Did he ever tell you what happened to your mother?” Metzler asked.
“Bryan said he hit her with something in her face.”
“Did Bryan tell you anything else?”
“He said he stabbed her in the back.”
“Did he tell you how many times?”
“No.”
“You told us before that Bryan stabbed your mother a couple of times in the back.”
“He didn’t specify how many it was.”
“Who told you that Ben hit your mother?”
“Bryan.”
“Was Ben there when he told you that?”
“No.”
“Where was it that he told you that?”
“When Ben was going around to check on everybody.”
“That’s when he told you what happened downstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“Getting back to the pick handle, do you know where Ben got that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he have that in his hand when he came upstairs or did he get that somewhere upstairs?”
“He had it when he came upstairs.”
“You don’t recall seeing that in the house anywhere?”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve seen it before, but—”
“Would it have been in the family room downstairs?” Metzler interrupted.
“It should have been like in the garage, but—”
“After you had gone upstairs, did you hear the garage door open?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“OK, on the road now, did your brother drive at all?”
“Yeah.”
“When did he drive?”
“I don’t know, I was tired.”
“Along the way, did you sleep at all during the whole trip in the car?”
“I didn’t sleep.”
“How about Ben?”
“He slept for a little bit.”
“And Bryan?”
“No, he didn’t sleep.”
“While the three of you were at Frank’s’ house, did anybody make any phone calls from there, the three of you guys?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You didn’t make any calls yourself.”
“No.”
“You don’t recall seeing Ben or Bryan calling anybody?”
“No.”
Metzler was finished. Donohue then had a few questions.
“In your conversations with me, you expressed remorse over this, isn’t that right? In fact, you wished this had never happened, isn’t that right?” Donohue asked.
“Yeah,” David answered, his head sinking lower, his voice almost inaudible.
“If you could rewrite history, it wouldn’t have happened, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell your mother you were going to kill her?” Vazquez asked.
“I didn’t really recall ever telling her I was going to kill her.”
“Have you ever threatened your parents to any of your friends, in or out of school?”
“No, no, never!”
“Is everything you’ve told us tonight true?” Metzler asked.
“Yes,” David responded.
“Is there anything else that you can think of that we haven’t asked you?”
“No.”
Donohue looked up at Vazquez.
“I have nothing further,” Vazquez concluded.
“Anything you want to talk to me about before we finish here?” Donohue asked.
“No.”
“You know, during this recording of this interview, you’ve been upset, but you’re had a full opportunity to talk?”
“Yes.”
David Freeman’s statement of his culpability in the murders of his father, mother, and little brother concluded. Shortly afterward, Bob Donohue had a conversation with Joe Vazquez. According to Donohue’s recollection, Vazquez said, “I believe David is telling the truth.”
FIFTEEN
Now, it was Bryan’s turn to corroborate what David had said and pull the noose tighter around the rat Benny’s neck. With his court-appointed attorney, James Branson, present to represent Bryan’s interests, Metzler did most of the questioning.
While he seemed coherent and alert, Bryan was clearly very annoyed. Drinking a can of Diet Coke, Bryan listened as he was advised of his Miranda rights by Metzler. He waived those rights and began his version of the night of the murder.
“We got to Wendy’s about 5 or 6. Ben was with us.”
After staying at Wendy’s a few hours, they went to the AMC movie theater, where they split up. “Me and Ben saw Boys on the Side and David saw Murder in the First. We got home about 10:30.”
“Who was in the house?” Metzler asked.
“Everyone. My mom, father, and little brother.”
“Go on.”
“We were downstairs hanging out, when my mom came down and kicked Ben out. She did that twice. The third time Ben came back in, it happened. I picked up a knife, and I stabbed her.”
“Where’d you get the knife from?”
“My room. A big steak knife.”
“I stabbed her in the back, and Ben and my brother took off upstairs.”
“What happened with your mother?”
“She pulled the knife out of her back and we struggled. I closed my hand around the blade. When I got it, I stabbed her again. I tried to gag her with my hand.”
“Then what happened?”
“She fell. I tried to cover her mouth with my hand. I put shorts in her mouth. I bit her hand. Then I threw the knife away.”
Soon after, David and Ben came downstairs.
“Did they say anything?” Metzler asked.
“Ben said, ‘Is she dead?’ Then Ben hit her over the head a few times. She kept trying to get up. He struck her with the pick handle.”
After that, Bryan said he went upstairs and went into the rooms. As he talked, he kept his head down. When he looked up, his face was streaming with tears.
“I went into my dad’s room and took his wallet. Then we changed. Blood was all over us. We left the clothes in the living room and brought along some socks and underwear. Ben went around to make sure everyone was dead, then I went outside and moved my dad’s van to get the car we were going to take.”
“What were you wearing when you left?”
“A plain white T-shirt and jeans.”
“OK, then what did you do?”
“After that, we went to the 7-Eleven to gas up, where we got gas and cigarettes, then straight up Interstate 78 to Ohio and then Michigan.”
“Where’d you meet the He
sses?”
“I met the Hesses at a New Year’s Eve concert in Detroit.”
“Was Michigan the first place you thought of going?”
“No. I was thinking of Atlantic City, but I changed my mind. I took Route 22 to the turnpike to Exit 35 and across the state.”
He related how they’d checked into the Ohio motel for the day, how they threw Benny’s bloodied clothes away, and their flight to Michigan, where they checked into the Holiday Inn.
“At the Holiday Inn,” Bryan continued, “the cops came because we’d paid in small bills. The hotel clerk had gotten suspicious. So they checked it out.”
“What did you say when the cops asked you where you got the small bills and coins?” Metzler asked.
“I told them the truth. I said I got it from my dad’s wallet.”
By 12:18 P.M., they had gotten to the Hesses’ house.
“Frank was there. We talked a lot and drank beer. We watched a movie that night. We slept on a bed downstairs. We got up the next day around noon. Dave and Frank went ice fishing. I went to Farmer Jack’s Market.”
After that, the cops got them.
“Go back to the night it happened. How was it decided who would go upstairs?”
“We had an argument about that.”
Eventually, David and Ben went upstairs.
“Ben went over and hit my brother. Ben said he hit my father and brother. He said he cracked my brother’s skull and hit him in the face. He said it didn’t take that many times to hit Erik. He said his skull just shattered.”
“Where did he say he hit your dad?”
“He said he hit my dad in the face.”
“And David?”
“He said he hit my dad with a baseball bat. He didn’t say where he hit him.”
“Did David change his clothes because they were covered with blood?”
“David split his jeans earlier in the day kneeling down. That’s why he changed his jeans.”
“Did you tell David and Ben to kill your father and little brother?”
“No way! I never told them anything like that.”
Not according to David and Ben.
“Why’d you kill your mother?”
Bryan looked down and his voice broke.
“I just lost control.”
Bryan cried. Metzler gave him a moment to compose himself, then continued.
“Did Ben stab your mother?”
“He stabbed her more times, yes.”
According to Bryan, his mother was still alive and Ben went back to finish the job.
“Did Ben say anything to you about what had happened?”
“Ben said, if we were caught, we should take the rap because I had a documented history of mental illness in a state hospital.”
The interview was over.
In the early morning hours, Bryan was returned to the cell he shared with his brother to await formal arraignment. They were tired, spent, worried. In another cell, Ben refused to speak to anyone but his mother. Ben had not given a statement. He was too smart for that. He had been arrested before and knew the drill. You do not speak to cops. Let them prove their case.
Ben Birdwell relaxed in his cell, while his cousins sweated in theirs.
SIXTEEN
Later that same day, a week after they were murdered, Dennis, Brenda, and Erik Freeman were laid to rest. It was March 6, 1995.
The funeral service was held at Allentown’s new Kingdom Hall on Emmaus Avenue, the one that had replaced the old one in Salisbury Township. The hall was relatively plain, with theater-type seats facing a stage with a simple podium.
During the funeral service, no one talked of David or Bryan, or Benny for that matter. Instead, those who were present listened to biblical teachings of hope.
“It’s the same message we preach when we go door-to-door,” one Witness recalled. He wouldn’t give his name because to do so glorifies the individual, which is anathema to JW teachings. “We want to comfort the family, and what will comfort them most is that these people believed in the resurrection of the dead.”
Radio, TV, and newspaper reporters converged on the funeral service like a pack of wild wolves, ravenous for a story. Their hunger remained unsatiated when they were barred from the Kingdom Hall. They were even stopped from going into the parking lot. So they stayed on the perimeter of the property, right off the avenue, stopping traffic as they photographed whomever they could, grabbing anyone walking by for a comment. They had stories to file.
Inside, during the hour-long service, friends of the family, Dennis’s co-workers, all those who attended, listened to one of the Elders, Andrew Grencer, who only briefly mentioned the dead by name. Other elders explained that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t eulogize the dead, focusing instead on Jehovah’s religious teachings.
Outside, after the service, the press milled around, looking for further comments.
“For me and a lot of us, it brings closure,” said Margaret Dillon, a secretary at Salisbury High School. She was there along with about twenty-five from the school district.
“Spiritually, we’re all a family,” explained Susan Crater, a Jehovah’s Witness from Reading. “That’s why I came. It’s our brotherhood.”
An anonymous church Elder said, “We sense it’s going to be months and even years before we can deal with this.”
A few days later, David and Bryan Freeman and Ben Birdwell came before a Michigan judge for a formal reading of the charges against them. It was a scene played over and over again on national television.
There they were, the menacing-looking skinheads in their prison jumpsuits, the tattoos readily apparent on their shaven heads. Led into the courtroom by guards, shackled hand and foot, they took seats in the jury box, while the lawyers stood before the judge hearing their cases. It was all just a formality. The defendants waived their rights to fight extradition. Whatever was in front of them they were ready to face it.
Before they left Michigan, David and his brother Bryan sat down together with Michigan State Police. Using an Ohio road map, they indicated the spot where they thought Benny had dumped his alleged bloodied clothes. The coordinates were conveyed to the Ohio State Police, who mounted a massive search. After hours and hours of searching for the valuable evidence to no avail, they finally had to call off the search.
Either the Freeman brothers were telling the truth and had just gotten the coordinates wrong, or maybe someone had come across the clothing and, for whatever reason, had gotten rid of it. Of course, there was the other possibility that the Freeman brothers were liars and Ben Birdwell was an innocent pawn in this game of life and death that in its almost surreal turns, was beginning to look like a film by Luis Bunuel.
There was no physical evidence to connect Benny to the murders, simply the brothers’ word that he had been responsible for killing Erik and helping to kill Dennis. Ben thought that with no physical evidence to connect him directly to the murders, all he could be charged with was hindering prosecution by driving the escape vehicle.
Someplace in the depths of the Midland County Jail, a police technician was at that moment examining the clothes Ben Birdwell had been wearing when he was captured. There was the jacket he had on that said “White Power” across the back. There were the jeans. There was the good luck pin he had in his pocket that said “KKK.” And there was his dark blue T-shirt.
The technician looked at the T-shirt. It appeared clean to the naked eye, but looking closer, the technician saw something else. He examined it under a microscope.
It took a few seconds to adjust the magnification and the light, but the fabric of the shirt getting clearer and clearer. Then … yeah, that was it.… Yeah, yeah! Under the microscope, what the technician had seen faintly with his eye became clear.
There were spots all across the front of Benny’s T-shirt. Blood spots.
After their arraignment, Connie Chung and a camera crew from CBS showed up at Frank Hesse’s house. He declined to be interviewed. ABC’s
news magazine 20/20 also decided to present the Freeman/Birdwell case to its viewers. They dispatched ace reporter Tom Jarriel to Midland, where he was dramatically photographed walking down the same road the Freemans and Birdwell had walked before their capture. He went on to interview some of their friends and to focus exclusively on their neo-Nazi beliefs as the causative agent in the family tragedy.
He missed the real story.
Newsweek came in the following week with a report on the case that once again focused on neo-Nazism and its threat to America. Nothing was mentioned about David and Bryan’s formative years as Jehovah’s Witnesses, nor Benny’s record.
Fearful of transporting them back to Pennsylvania on a public aircraft, the Michigan State Police chartered a plane to fly the heavily shackled skinheads directly into the Allentown International Airport. No stop-offs in Philadelphia or Baltimore to change planes.
When it landed in Allentown, the media thronged to the airport to see the skinheads emerge from the plane. Despite the fact that it was still winter and the temperature hovered in the low thirties, the three boys were clad in their short-sleeved, prison-issue cotton jumpsuits. The press got as many close-ups as possible of their foreheads, with the indelible Nazi symbols standing out, like fiery brands of hate. They were quietly led down the steps to waiting police cars.
The motorcade sped from the airport onto Route 22 briefly, and then down Sixth Street, arriving at the Lehigh County Jail right behind the courthouse. They were issued new jumpsuits and given cells. Bryan and David requested and were allowed to share the same cell. Since the crimes, the brothers had gotten even closer than they had been before.
For his part, Ben was content to be put in a cell alone. The last thing he wanted was to be with his cousins. He knew he wouldn’t survive five minutes in their presence.
In the newspapers that evening, Erik’s death was portrayed as being the most brutal. Questions were asked. Why did Erik have to die? What had he done? The only thing Erik appeared to be guilty of was obeying his parents. Would this be enough to make David and Bryan kill him?
The media had no knowledge at that point of the content of the brothers’ statements. They assumed that since Birdwell had been charged only with hindering the brothers’ capture—as Ben had expected—he was merely along for the ride. As for their grandfather, Nelson Birdwell Sr., he called for capital punishment.
