A SORRY PLIGHT

    They put me in their iron boot, wedged shakes between my knees, hammered down with both their canes on either side of me. I took their jolly recklessness to mean that I’d been caught, in between the sinking ship and the ticking clock. My horse was dead, I mean to say, I didn’t think to ask, he always said he’d ride again as soon as three days passed.

“The prisoner traces a divided lineage.” explained Henry Seward, addressing the court in the William Freeman trial.  “On the paternal side his ancestry is lost among the tiger hunters on the Gold Coast of Africa, while his mother constitutes a portion of the small remnant of the Narragansett tribe. Hence it is held that the prisoner’s intellect is to be compared with the depreciating standard of the African, and his passions with the violent and ferocious character erroneously imputed to the Aborigines”

  “The tiger hunters of Africa” and the “ferocious Aborigines,” followed the “delicate state,” and the “badge of degradation” of the 1820’s, as another defense counsel’s  reasoning for any African American, Indian, or woman killing another human being. But these killings were not of a fellow prisoner, an argument in a bar room, a family member, or card game, or even a political assassination. No. This was an entirely different animal. This was the senseless butchery of an innocent white family on a incomprehensible scale. What happened on the evening of March 12th in Fleming defied any reasoning or explanation. Psychopathic insanity could be the only defense available for Freeman. Henry Seward would offer his services. 

     

    On the night of March 12th Sarah Van Nest peeked into the dark chicken coop and counted the hens on the roost—all there. She then closed the slat door, and threw the latch. She had some eggs cradled in her apron, so when she turned on the slippery ramp she was a bit off balance. Catching herself on the door frame, she dropped three eggs and cussed between her teeth, blaming her clumsy self.

     She could see the dull, golden lamp light through Helen’s window. Then again, a glint off something…….behind the fence slat. What the….. It happened so fast, Sarah Van Nest never heard the stirring in the bushes, as William Freeman erupted into the yard, plunging his butcher knife so deeply, and with such force, into the young mother’s pregnant belly, the tip broke as it hit her spine. We know from the autopsy report “her liver was slashed in two.” Her apron twisted, catching between her legs, as she stumbled towards the light of Helen Holmes’ room……. 

     Hearing the commotion in the yard, unable to make out what exactly was happening, Helen Holmes opened her door just as the mortally wounded, pregnant, young mother rushed in. Instinctively, Helen Holmes slammed the door shut, and locked it behind Sarah Van Nest; then stood dazed and paralyzed as Sarah Van Nest died before her eyes. Then Helen heard more screaming coming from the front of the house.  

    William Freeman cursed the blacksmith George Hyatt’s iron knife, stuck the broken blade in his belt, and picked up his long handled hog sticker. He went to the back door on the left side of the house, opened it and stepped over Peter Van Nest’s body, his pipe clutched in a death grip, his other hand buried deeply in his jacket pocket. 

     According to Bill’s recollection when asked who he killed first, he said he thought it was “the man,” [Peter Van Nest] but he wasn’t sure. In the recreation of the crime scene, it was determined, that before killing Sarah Van Nest, Freeman had greeted the young father with the words he would repeat over and over again to the Auburn constables, “If you eat my liver, I will eat yours.”