No More Human Remains Found in Ocean City Search
posted 5:51 pm Tue July 31, 2007 - Ocean City, Md.
The yard around Christy Freeman's home - and a vacant lot next door - have been dug up and sifted shovel by shovel by the FBI. No additional human remains were found. Police say they did find the remains of a dog.
Investigators were also trying to determine why Freeman had bruises on her legs, stomach and forearm when she was found bleeding last week.
Ocean City Police Chief Bernadette DiPino said investigators want to know what caused Freeman's bruises.
"We're going to bring in a domestic violence expert to determine, could it be self-inflicted? Could it be from someone else? Could it have been an accident?" DiPino said.
Police spokesman Barry Neeb said interviews with Freeman led police to believe she caused the stillbirth. They also have not said whether they believe she was responsible for the other three sets of remains.
Freeman was being held without bond Tuesday, as investigators continued to excavate the grounds at her home in a search that has turned up four tiny sets of remains, including the 26-week-old male fetus.
She initially denied having been pregnant even after she was taken to a hospital Thursday and doctors discovered a placenta and part of an umbilical cord, police said.
She eventually told police she had delivered a dead and deformed baby - claiming that she did not see any hands or feet - and that she had flushed the body down the toilet, according to charging documents.
Police got a search warrant and found the infant wrapped in a white towel with a blue stripe in the cabinet below the bathroom sink, according to the charging documents, in which authorities describe the baby as a "viable fetus/infant," with hands, feet and facial features.
A 2005 Maryland law allows murder charges against people accused of killing a viable fetus. Authorities have not said why they think Freeman killed the fetus in her bathroom, which the state medical examiner says was stillborn.
None of the bodies appeared to be full-term, police said, including the remains of the most newly delivered child, a boy, who was found in a vanity below the bathroom sink in Christy Freeman's home.
Two other corpses were found in plastic bags in a trunk in her bedroom, and another in a bag in a small recreational vehicle parked in her driveway.
Police kept searching in the scrubby, overgrown yard outside Freeman's house after the cadaver dogs hit on new possible scents.
"I want to clear my name in this case," Freeman, 37, told a judge at a bond hearing Monday when she was ordered held without bail on first-degree murder and other charges in the most recent death. "If you offer me a bond, I'm not going to leave ... I'm going to be here. I'm going to help clear this situation up."
Soon after the hearing, police said the chief medical examiner's preliminary report found the baby boy was stillborn, but the cause of death was still under investigation. Police spokesman Barry Neeb said it was possible the charges against Freeman could be amended as a result.
Freeman, who has four other children, came to authorities' attention Thursday, when emergency medical technicians and police were called to her apartment on the second floor of a small, rundown white house less than a block off the Coastal Highway, the main north-south route in this resort town.
Her boyfriend, Raymond W. Godman Jr., said Freeman had passed out in the bathroom and he carried her to the sofa, according to the charging documents. She was lying down and bleeding heavily, and had a garbage bag and towels under her.
Police then found the two sets of remains and a placenta in the bedroom trunk Thursday, and a plastic bag with the fourth infant's corpse Friday in the motor home.
The chief medical examiner in Baltimore was examining the remains and trying to determine the causes of their deaths, their ages and if they were related to Freeman.
Freeman and Godman, who owned a cab company called Classic Taxi, lived with her other children at the home, where paint was peeling from the exterior and an air conditioning unit was rusting. A number of fishing poles were stored on an upstairs balcony.
Police said the other children were safe and Godman is not a suspect.
Classic Taxi specializes in using cars from the 1950s and 1960s, according to the company's Web site. On the Web site, Freeman's profile said she and Godman had been a couple since 1988 and her hobbies were "our four children." She said the family were NASCAR fans and liked to fish, boat and camp together.
A man who answered the phone at Classic Taxi declined to comment.
Ron Cecil, 71, owner of Aaron Taxi, said he had met Freeman through the local taxi association and said he saw her driving a cab several weeks ago. The charging documents described Freeman as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, and weighing 180 pounds, and Cecil said she often wore sweat shirts.
"She could have easily been pregnant and it not have been known," he said.
Neighbor Jodi Kerlin, 31, said she saw Freeman about a month ago as Freeman took out her trash and it appeared then that Freeman might have been pregnant. "The thought passed through my head," said Kerlin, who recently gave birth. "I passed it off."
But an investigation into all the babies' deaths continues.
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Associated Press writer Brian Witte in Annapolis, Md., contributed to this report.
By RANDALL CHASE
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