‘There’s a human being in there’: Psychologist at hearing for Lehigh Valley skinhead brothers who killed family ‘dumbfounded’ by change in David Freeman
Clinical psychologist Frank M. Dattilio, evaluating David Freeman two months after the Salisbury Township teen participated in the murders of his parents and younger brother, found himself confronted by what he described in court Wednesday as “a block of ice” — cold, remorseless, emotionless.
“He was very primitive in many ways,” Dattilio said Wednesday, the second day of a resentencing hearing in Lehigh County Court for Freeman and his brother, Bryan — one-time neo-Nazi skinheads who, with cousin Nelson Birdwell III, killed Dennis and Brenda Freeman and 11-year-old Erik Freeman on Feb. 26, 1995.
At the time, Bryan was 17 and David, 16. They received life sentences without parole when, to avoid the death penalty, they pleaded guilty to killing Brenda and Dennis, respectively.
Birdwell was charged in all three murders and convicted of Dennis’s murder. No one was convicted of Erik’s death, but prosecutors maintain Birdwell was the culprit.
Since then, a series of federal and state court rulings have held it unconstitutional to impose mandatory life-without-parole sentences on juveniles, so the Freeman brothers became eligible for resentencing. Birdwell turned 18 shortly before the crimes, so his sentence of life without parole stands.
Whether the Freemans continue as lifers or have a chance at freedom will be determined by Lehigh County Judge Douglas Reichley, who must weigh the gravity of the crimes against the idea that the brothers have been rehabilitated and will never commit another offense.
On Monday, Karl Schwartz, who is representing Bryan Freeman pro bono, said his client is remorseful — expressing “utter and desperate sorrow” over his crimes — and is a model inmate, often acting as a peacemaker among other prisoners.Dattilio, an Allentown psychologist, was retained by David Freeman’s attorney, Matthew Rapa, to build the same kind of case — a portrait of the reformed man his client has ostensibly become in the course of nearly 30 years behind bars.
Dattilio has evaluated some 6,000 offenders over 44 years and is well-known in the Lehigh Valley as an expert witness, both for prosecutors and defense lawyers.
Dattilio conducted follow-up evaluations of Freeman in 2018 and 2022. The passage of decades has seen the sullen, angry teen with the “Sieg Heil” tattoo across his forehead transform into a personable man who acknowledges his guilt and weeps with remorse, he said.
“I was just dumbfounded at the difference in his personality,” Dattilio said. “He was very engaging and forthcoming. … I thought, ‘There’s a human being in there.’ He showed spontaneous emotion, not contrived emotion.”
In 1995, by contrast, “he didn’t break a bead of sweat or one tear when I asked him about what he did. It was haunting to me.”
The Freeman brothers were raised in a strict household and resented the strictures placed on them by their parents, who were Jehovah’s Witnesses. That resentment eventually metastasized into a dangerous rage and rebellion reflected in their adoption of neo-Nazism.
David especially resented what he considered his parents’ hypocrisy. His father, for example, preached the importance of clean living in keeping with his faith, but was a frequent drinker.
David himself had his first drink at age 6, Dattilio said.
“Was that surprising to you?” Rapa asked.
“What was more surprising is that his father gave it to him,” Dattilio said.
David became a heavy drinker and marijuana user. A stint in rehab helped, but he relapsed soon after.
David was the first of the brothers to embrace skinhead culture, Dattilio said, but to what extent he bought into the ideology is questionable. He was more interested in demonstrating his disdain for society and authority, Dattilio said, and the swastika flags and Nazi tattoos were primarily meant to shock and repulse people.
“It was all designed to flip the middle finger, if you will, at society and authority,” he said.
On Monday, an expert witness for the prosecution, forensic psychiatrist John O’Brien, testified about his own recent assessment, reporting that David at one point during an interview fell into a deep rage.
Dattilio said O’Brien probed no deeper into the cause of the episode.
“I would have wanted to know if that anger was about himself or would have been externalized,” he said.
O’Brien also suggested that David Freeman minimized many of his actions. Dattilio said he had the opposite impression — that David, who rejected neo-Nazism when he entered prison and hasn’t been subject to a disciplinary action in 22 years — has accepted responsibility in full. The anger Dattilio had discerned in David was self-directed, fueled by this acknowledgment.
While David has made great progress in virtually all areas of his life, he still has work to do, the psychologist said. Notably, he has resisted undergoing therapy, reluctant to revisit the horror of the crimes.
“I believe he needs to start treatment,” Dattilio said. “I think once he progresses, he is worthy of a [sentence] reduction.”
Sandra Lettich, Bryan and David’s maternal aunt, also testified Wednesday that she believed both of them would be OK should they be paroled one day.
Lettich told the judge about how she reconnected with them years after her sister’s killings. Her father, their grandfather, would see them in prison often.
On one occasion, he asked Lettich and her husband to join him in one of the visits. That was in 2003, and she has maintained contact with both of them since.
Bryan, she said, began to open up to her after she told him they had forgiven him. David had grown through becoming more connected with the Bible, she said. Both of them are remorseful for what they did, she said.
While they do not tend to speak with Lettich about it, she recalled one time, during a prison visit, Bryan broke down in tears and apologized to her. “I wish it hadn’t happened,” she recalled him saying. “They didn’t deserve what happened to them.”
David, she said, found religion and wanted to be spiritually “free,” even if he could not be paroled. They have both expressed concern and care for their family in the time since, Lettich testified.
She said she would even have room for one of them at her apartment should they be paroled.
“I’ve seen major changes in both of them,” Lettich said.
Lettich’s sister, Linda Solivan, also reconnected with the brothers around the same time, and kept in contact with them through letters over the years, however she had not done it in many years. She, like her sister, believed both of them had changed for the better.
“He’s made a lot of changes,” Solivan said of Bryan. “He worked hard to do that.”
Solivan and Lettich both testified that, based on the interviews of Bryan and David at the time, they believe David went along with the killings because he feared he would be killed as well. Had Bryan not gone along with the killings, they said, David would not have, either.
The hearing is expected to continue through Friday but may go longer because the courthouse was closed by Tuesday’s storm.
Morning Call reporter Daniel Patrick Sheehan can be reached at 610-820-6598 or [email protected].'
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