Thread: Man living in closet charged in homicide:Speaks no English

By COLIN FLY
Associated Press Writer

NASHVILLE, Tenn.
A man was beaten to death after catching his wife's lover living in a closet in their home, police said Tuesday. Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 35, was charged with homicide in the slaying of 44-year-old Jeffrey A. Freeman over the weekend.

"From time to time, you come across a case with very unique -- even bizarre -- circumstances," police spokesman Don Aaron said. "This one probably rates right up there with them."

Freeman's wife had allowed Rocha-Perez to live in a closet of the Freemans' four-bedroom home for about a month without her husband's knowledge, police said. On Sunday, her husband heard Rocha-Perez snoring and discovered him, authorities said.

Freeman ordered his wife to get the man out of the house while he went for a walk, authorities said. Martha Freeman told authorities that when her husband returned, Rocha-Perez confronted him with a shotgun, forced him into a bathroom and bludgeoned him.

The Freemans were co-owners of a company that does background checks for apartment rental and job applicants.

Note:
They just stated on TV suspects speaks no english.
Guess he must not have been born and raised in NASHVILLE.
Link:
http://www.mergedigital.com/sns-ap-kill ... menews-hed

http://www.courttv.com/news/2006/0921/freeman_ctv.html

Updated Sept. 21, 2006, 4:59 p.m. ET

Martha Freeman claims her lover killed her husband in 2005.


Murder trial set for wife and lover, who allegedly lived in closet before killing husband
By Emanuella Grinberg
Court TV
Almost 16 hours after Martha Freeman's husband was strangled and beaten to death in the couple's upscale south Nashville home, she finally reported his death to police.

If her decision to wait was puzzling, so was the explanation she gave police: She claimed her lover, an illegal Mexican immigrant who was living in her closet, killed Jeffrey Freeman after Freeman discovered him snoring in his makeshift abode.

But prosecutors deny Martha Freeman's version of events that led to the April 10, 2005, murder, and are expected to outline their theory during opening statements next week in the 41-year-old widow's murder trial.

Freeman and her former lover, 36-year-old Rahael Rocha-Perez, are each charged with first-degree murder in the violent bludgeoning of Jeffrey Freeman. If convicted, they face life in prison.

When police responded to the 911 call that Freeman asked a neighbor to make, they found the body of Jeffrey Freeman, 44, lying face-down in the master bathroom.

His head, which had sustained multiple blunt-force trauma injuries, was wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag and the rest of his body in a sleeping bag. A medical examiner's preliminary examination also detected possible signs of ligature marks around his neck.

Story continues



The rest of the home appeared undisturbed, according to police, except for the discovery of several other black garbage bags containing wet bath mats, towels, a pillow case with apparent bloodstains and wads of torn telephone cord.

Metro Nashville Police Department detectives also found the closet that Martha Freeman claimed her lover lived in for about a month before her husband's death.

The 2-by-8-foot storage space contained a foam pad, pillows, blankets, three loaves of bread and several objects of diversion, including a Nintendo GameBoy, a radio, and several adult magazines.

Investigators also found an "overnight bag," which contained lingerie and pictures of Martha Freeman in various states of undress.

Martha Freeman was seemingly forthcoming with authorities about her relationship with Perez, whom she referred to as "Christian," and his alleged role in her husband's death sometime after 9 p.m. that evening.

Initially, only Perez was charged with Jeffrey Freeman's murder, and Martha Freeman became a witness at his preliminary hearing, providing detailed information about their relationship and the night her husband was killed.

Freeman said she met Perez at a July 4 celebration in 2004 during a rocky period in her marriage. The two went to a hotel in downtown Nashville with two of his friends, and she admitted to having "intimate" relations with the three men.

From there, the lovers conducted an on-and-off relationship with the aid of an English-Spanish translator, which eventually culminated in Perez moving into a closet in the Freeman home in March 2005.

She testified that on the night of April 10, 2005, both she and Perez were asleep in the room she maintained separately from her husband, when Jeffrey Freeman discovered Perez and told him to leave.

According to Martha Freeman, her husband of 10 years then went to walk their dogs. When he returned, Perez grabbed him by the shirt collar and forced him into the bathroom at gunpoint while Martha Freeman waited outside.

"I heard water running, I heard a lot of thumping, a lot of noise," she testified at the hearing in 2005. "I was absolutely terrified of what was going on and also, if he could have done this to my husband, I'm not sure what he was going to do to me."

When asked why she didn't immediately call police, Freeman admitted she didn't "have an answer," and attributed it to the medication she was taking for a bipolar disorder.

In the hours between the incident and the 911 call, Freeman said she went to Walgreens to pick up a prescription for antidepressants and walked her dog twice.

Story continues



She said she also called her in-laws and told them their son would not be able to talk to them, as was his common practice, because he was not feeling well.

Finally, around 4 p.m. the following day, she went to a neighbor's home and told her what had happened. The neighbor called police.

Freeman's testimony in the preliminary hearing came to an abrupt halt, however, when the presiding judge expressed his own incredulity toward her statements.

"I've got a problem with allowing this to go any further without allowing her some representation because I can see her being charged in this case," Judge Casey Moreland told lawyers. "This is so bizarre, it is hard to believe."

Four months later, in August 2005, a grand jury indicted her on one count of first-degree murder. She has been out on $75,000 bail since August 2005. Her former lover remains in custody.

Since her indictment, prosecutors have been tight-lipped about their theory about the crime. But in 2006, an investigator told the newspaper The Tennessean that he believed much of the crime scene had been staged, including the supposed situation of the live-in closet lover.

Attorneys for the defendants did not return calls for comments, but in 2006, a lawyer for Perez insisted he was innocent and suggested that Martha Freeman's involvement in the slaying was greater than she let on.

"He has always maintained his innocence, and no disrespect to Mrs. Freeman, but her credibility, her reliability, her mental stability will seriously be in question at a trial of this case," attorney Peter Strianse told the Tennessean.

Perez did not make any statements to police following his arrest.

Jury selection begins Monday afternoon in Davidson County Circuit Court.

Freeman said she met Perez at a July 4 celebration in 2004 during a rocky period in her marriage. The two went to a hotel in downtown Nashville with two of his friends, and she admitted to having "intimate" relations with the three men.

The entire story is bizarre, this is just sleazy.

HBO Movie....its got it all

Ran across a photo.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... /1001/NEWS

Monday, 09/25/06

'Closet' murder case goes to trial
Wife, lover accused of killing husband

By SHEILA BURKE
Staff Writer


Police have called it one of the most bizarre cases in recent memory: A man living in his married lover's closet is discovered, then fatally beats and strangles her husband in their Nashville home.

As the first-degree-murder trial begins this morning in the death of 44-year-old businessman Jeffrey Freeman, prosecutors and defense attorneys each face a host of complications that experts say make the outcome of the case impossible to predict.




The case drew national media attention, which is expected to continue during the trial.

Convictions could mean life in prison for Freeman's wife, Martha, and the man she said she was having an affair with, Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez.

Martha Freeman, 41, testified during a preliminary hearing last year that Rocha-Perez had lived for a month in the closet of a spare bedroom in her home.

On April 10, 2005, she said, her husband followed the sound of snoring and confronted the woman and her lover.

Jeffrey Freeman said he was going for a walk and wanted Rocha-Perez gone by the time he returned, his wife told the court. But instead, Rocha-Perez, 36, waited until Freeman returned, then strangled and beat the man to death, Martha Freeman testified.

At the time of that preliminary hearing, Martha Freeman had not yet been charged with a crime. Now that she also is a defendant in the case, her statements to authorities — or even her testimony during the televised preliminary hearing — cannot be used against Rocha-Perez unless she takes the stand.

Attorneys commonly advise murder defendants against taking the stand, and without the wife's words, prosecutors face an uphill battle to prove their case, one legal expert said.

"It's a very difficult case for the state to prove given that the evidence that (Rocha-Perez) was living there or did anything was largely circumstantial, is my understanding," said Nashville lawyer David Raybin, who is not involved in the case.

Both defendants have maintained their innocence.

During this week's trial, jurors are expected to hear how the wife waited more than 16 hours before calling police to the couple's upscale home in the Mountain View subdivision of south Nashville, near Brentwood.

Instead, authorities have said, she ran errands while her husband lay dead on the floor in an upstairs bathroom.

Jurors also probably will learn of the evidence police found at the scene, including the contents of the closet: a TV, men's magazines, a Nintendo Game Boy, a foam mattress, food and other items.

In recent months, investigators have said they are skeptical of Martha Freeman's account that the man had lived in her closet and suggested the scene had been staged to make it appear as if he had. The investigators have not said why they suspect Freeman would have made up the story.

Rocha-Perez, a bricklayer who had an apartment in Murfreesboro, was arrested soon after police were called to the crime scene on April 11. At the time, he was in the country illegally from Mexico.

His lawyer, Peter Strianse, said the law is clear about the admission of Martha Freeman's statements.

"If she decides, as is her right, to not testify, then any of those alleged statements would not be admissible against Mr. Rocha-Perez because of the Constitution and laws of the state of Tennessee and laws of the United States, he would not be able to confront and cross-examine those statements with her being an unavailable witness," Strianse said.

Martha Freeman's lawyer, Rich McGee, refused to say whether his client would take the stand. He would only reiterate that she maintains her innocence.

"Martha Freeman has consistently stated she did not kill her husband, and that will be the position of her counsel throughout the trial," McGee said.

In e-mails obtained by police after the crime, Martha Freeman said she was taking medicine for mental illness and compared her life to that of a character on "Desperate Housewives," ABC's dark comedy about the intersecting lives of women in suburbia.

But despite the problems with the prosecution, acquittals in the case are far from assured, legal experts said.

Picking jurors will be key in ensuring that the panel isn't unduly swayed by bias against Rocha-Perez's status as an illegal immigrant or Martha Freeman's documented history of marital infidelity.

"I'm frankly concerned about his status … and I'm trusting that the jury is going to hold the state to its very high, very strict burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in this case and not be biased against my client because of his immigration status," Strianse said.

Controlling the jury's passions could be as important for defense attorneys as refuting the evidence, Raybin said.

"I have several Hispanic clients, and I think that is a real issue right now," Raybin said. "People have extremely strong emotions about the immigration issue, and it is much deeper than what many people will say.

"The sexual relationship between the man and this woman and the immigration thing are much bigger issues than this closet thing is concerned."

http://www.hendersonvillestarnews.com/a ... 315/MTCN05


Co-defendant Martha Freeman toys with a ring during jury selection in Judge Randall Wyatt's courtroom. (SHAUNA BITTLE / THE TENNESSEAN)

Tuesday, 09/26/06
'Closet' jury pool asked, can you judge an illegal fairly?
Defense satisfied that it weeded out bias

By SHEILA BURKE
Staff Writer

The issue of illegal immigration was a recurring theme Monday as jury selection be-gan in the murder trial of a suburban wife and the man she said lived in her closet.

Martha Freeman, 41, and her former lover, Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 36, face up to life in prison if convicted of the slaying of the woman's husband, Jeffrey Freeman, who was killed in his upscale south Nashville home in April 2005.


But the attorneys for both defendants wanted to make sure that jurors would not be biased against them because Rocha-Perez was in the country illegally when he was accused of the killing.

One of his attorneys started out the day by telling potential jurors of Rocha-Perez's immigration status and that Rocha-Perez does not speak English, before asking them if they would be able to give him a fair trial.

"I guess my question to you all is, are you going to hold him accountable for a murder because he's an illegal immigrant," Nashville attorney Peter Strianse asked the panel. The attorney said you couldn't turn on the radio or TV without hearing about the issue.

The prospective jurors nodded and said yes, they could give Rocha-Perez a fair trial, but a later round of questioning revealed that some had questions and biases.

"Why is he undocumented?" one woman asked. "That's something that validates people in our country, when they're citizens, and that's missing," she said.

The woman was later re-moved from the jury pool, but there was no indication as to why.

Freeman's attorneys worried that jurors might be prejudiced against her, both because she cheated on her husband and because she did so with an illegal immigrant.

Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Randall Wyatt excused one man after the judge said he told him, in a private conference at the bench, that he had a personal issue involving both adultery and illegal immigration.

But most people said the circumstances in the case would not prevent them from being fair.

A number of high-profile crimes in the Midstate in which illegal immigrants have been arrested have heated the immigration issue. The cases have led officials to apply for a federal program that would let deputies check the immigration status of every inmate booked into the Metro Jail.

Prosecutors Katy Miller, Tom Thurman and J.W. Hupp didn't focus on the immigration issue, but asked whether potential jurors could be fair to both the defense and the state.

They also wanted to know whether jurors could find someone guilty of murder even if that person didn't do the actual killing but played a role.

At the end of the day, the lawyers picked a jury of eight women and four men and selected one of the two alternate jurors. There are five blacks and seven whites on the jury and no Hispanics.

Outside court, Strianse said he believed jurors would be fair to his client.

"If their answers are true and correct, I feel comfortable with it, because not many jurors had a problem with that issue at all, and they all said they could set that aside and judge the case just on the facts and the evidence. So hopefully they were being completely candid, and I have every reason to believe they were." •

http://www.fairviewobserver.com/apps/pb ... 321/MTCN06

Wednesday, 09/27/06

Murder case looks at timing, clothing
Two on trial in husband's death

By SHEILA BURKE
Staff Writer


An attorney representing an illegal immigrant accused of killing his lover's husband told a jury Tuesday that police had no scientific evidence linking his client to the crime.

He also said that though police tested a laundry list of his client's clothing for blood linking him to the April 2005 killing, none was found.

But a prosecutor in the state's opening statements said that by the end of the testimony in the trial there would be no doubt that Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez and Martha Freeman, a suburban wife, were guilty of first-degree murder.

"And after you hear that testimony, there'll be no doubt at all that this was a premeditated, intentional murder," Senior Assistant District Attorney General Katy Miller told the jury.

She and two other prosecutors fended off an attempt to have a mistrial declared during the first day of testimony in the murder trial of Freeman and the man she said lived in her closet.

Rocha-Perez, 36, and Freeman, 41, face up to life in prison if convicted. Both are accused of killing her husband, 44-year-old Jeffrey Freeman.

The day began with a problem with one of the alternate jurors. It turned out he couldn't be on the jury because his son had worked for the victim. Lawyers picked two African-American women as the two alternates for the jury of eight women and four men.

Miller described an elaborate crime by two lovers that ended up with Jeffrey Freeman's death.

The businessman and former disc jockey was strangled and beaten to death in his south Nashville home near Brentwood. His wife did not call for help until more than 16 hours later.

While her lawyers conceded that she was guilty of adultery and delay, one of them told the panel that she was in the middle of two men who fought over her. That same lawyer said that if Martha Freeman had been involved with the murder, she had plenty of time to cover up the crime scene and get rid of her husband's body.

"She had plenty of time to take the body, hide it next to wherever Janet March is buried and then we'd never know for sure whether Jeff Freeman was even dead," Nashville defense attorney Glenn Funk told the jury.

The first day of testimony featured 10 witnesses, including some of Freeman's neighbors.

One said she called 911 after Martha Freeman pounded on her door on the afternoon of April 11, 2005. Another said she saw Rocha-Perez running inside a nearby home under construction on the afternoon when police came.

Two workers at an extended-stay motel testified that Martha Freeman had stayed there with Rocha-Perez from October 2004 to January 2005.

The testimony prompting the mistrial request came from Metro police officer William Stone. Stone testified that he was called out to the crime scene at 5424 Incline Drive and got a text message that said a woman said a man got a shotgun and killed her husband.

Martha Freeman told police that her lover killed her husband, but those statements are not supposed to be mentioned in the trial unless she takes the witness stand and is subject to cross-examination.

For that reason, defense attorney Peter Strianse asked Davidson County Judge Randall Wyatt to declare a mistrial or have the two defendants tried separately because the officer let her statements in with his testimony.

Wyatt refused, but said he would give jurors special instructions about Stone's testimony. •



http://www.gallatinnewsexaminer.com/app ... 309/MTCN04

Thursday, 09/28/06

Strangled husband didn't die instantly
Examiner details injuries; time of death is sketchy

By SHEILA BURKE
Staff Writer


It would have taken several minutes for Jeffrey Freeman to die from strangulation after he was beaten and bound, a medical examiner testified on Wednesday in the murder trial of a suburban wife and the man she said lived in her closet.

But the doctor was less sure about what time the Brentwood businessman was killed, leaving open a window of as much as 12 hours. Freeman, he said, could have been killed sometime after 6 p.m. April 10, 2005, or early the next morning.

"That's a very rough estimate," Dr. Thomas Deering, assistant Metro medical examiner, told the court.

And the doctor said he didn't know whether the 44-year-old husband was strangled with cords found in his upscale Nashville home near the Williamson County line, choked to death or asphyxiated by some other means.

The victim's wife, Martha Freeman, 41, and her former lover, Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 36, face up to life in prison if convicted of murder.

Prosecutors have told the jury that both are responsible.

Martha Freeman's lawyers have maintained that the two men fought with each other and that their client, who was on a number of medications for mental health treatment, was guilty only of waiting more than 16 hours to report her husband's death.

But one of the lawyers for Rocha-Perez told the jury this week that his client would have been a perfect "chump" or fall guy for the wife because he's an illegal immigrant from Mexico who doesn't speak English and said neither time of death nor scientific evidence linked his client to the murder.

Deering was one of nine witnesses who testified on the second day of testimony.

In a videotaped deposition, Jeffrey Freeman's 81-year-old mother testified that her son's wife called her at her Bristol, Tenn., home and said her son was too ill to make his usual Sunday phone call to her. Another woman testified that Martha Freeman called in sick for her husband on Monday, April 11. Tara Cantrell told the court that Jeffrey Freeman never missed work. •


http://www.ashlandcitytimes.com/apps/pb ... 291/MTCN01

Friday, 09/29/06

Pair guilty of killing wife's mate
Jury finds they beat, bound, strangled him

By SHEILA BURKE
Staff Writer


It took Martha Freeman more than 16 hours to report her husband was lying dead in their upstairs bathroom. But a jury needed fewer than two hours to convict her and her former lover of the murder of Freeman's husband, Brentwood businessman Jeffrey Freeman.

The Nashville jury found Martha Freeman and Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez — the lover that she said lived in her closet for a month — guilty Thursday of first-degree murder after prosecutors revealed new, more gruesome details about the April 10, 2005, murder in closing arguments.

Martha Freeman, 41, held her hands in her face after the verdict was read. Rocha-Perez, 36, showed no emotion.

Tears pooled in Freeman's eyes when Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Randall Wyatt sentenced the pair to life in prison, which was automatic because they were convicted of first-degree murder. They will both have to serve 51 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

"Now Jeffrey can rest," said Frank Slaughter, a Bristol, Tenn., lawyer who represents Jeffrey Freeman's elderly parents in a wrongful-death suit against Martha Freeman and Rocha-Perez.

Jeffrey Freeman's wet body was found partially stuffed in a sleeping bag with a black trash bag wrapped around his face. A medical examiner testified that the 44-year-old man was beaten in the head and face, bound and strangled.

During the trial, Martha Freeman's attorney's maintained that it was her former lover who killed her husband. They said the wife, who was taking a number of narcotics along with pills to treat mental illness, was guilty only of adultery and waiting to call police.

Her attorneys were not available for comment after the verdict.

In the meantime, one of Rocha-Perez's attorneys said lawyers would ask for a new trial.

Rocha-Perez is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who does not speak English, and at the beginning of the trial his attorneys asked jurors not to hold that against him.

The lawyer was asked if he thought that status played a role in the verdict.

"I hope not," said Peter Strianse. "I mean they said all the right things on Monday and Tuesday when we were selecting the jury, that they could set that aside. I thought it was important to the jury to know of his status so there was some explanation on why he fled." Rocha-Perez was found hiding in the rafters at a house near the Freemans' 5424 Incline Drive home when police arrived.

Strianse and Nashville attorney Anna Escobar took on Rocha-Perez's case after a group of Hispanic bricklayers who worked with the defendant pooled their money.

The attorney said he thought the state didn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his client killed Jeffrey Freeman.

But a prosecutor said in closing arguments Thursday that there was no doubt that the man and woman worked it out together.

Senior Assistant District Attorney General Katy Miller said Jeffrey Freeman never struggled because he was subdued by the threat of a shotgun blast. It was Rocha-Perez who beat the husband and had the strength to strangle a 231-pound man, she told the jury. But it would have taken both him and the wife to move the body. Freeman was pulled out of a bathtub full of water, and the wife called her mother-in-law that evening and called her husband's workplace the next day to report him sick, Miller said.

Yesterday, prosecutors said that despite earlier observations made by a detective, they believed that Rocha-Perez did live in the woman's 2-foot-by-8-foot closet off the bedroom she slept in separately from her husband. •