Power Saws, Little Red Wagons & Corpse Finding Cats

Libertyville, Iowa, is a small farming town in Jefferson County in the south-east of the state, about an hour and fifty minutes from Des Moines and roughly three and a half hours from St Louis. In the early 1990s its population was about 360, and the whole county held only about 4,000 people. Jefferson County had gone seventeen years without a murder when, in the autumn of 1991, a farmer and antique dealer named Harold Freeberg was shot to death, cut apart with a knife and a power saw, and scattered over his own land.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it She was five feet tall and worked from home selling insurance, including dismemberment insurance, for a company based in Cedar Rapids. Her first husband, Dale Guffey, said that after their second child was born in 1969 she suffered a severe mental collapse, probably a form of postpartum illness, and spent more than two months in a mental health facility. She was, he said, never violent towards him or the children; she turned her distress on herself. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now He farmed land between Libertyville and Batavia, a little closer to Libertyville, and dealt in antiques, travelling to estate sales in other states and selling to buyers who came from as far away as Washington. He had seven children and had been married five times. details of the account remain covered until revealed Four more marriages followed, the last to Janabel Spees ending in divorce in 1984. Friends said that every marriage began smoothly and then, after a year or two, Harold changed.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it They married and, within the first year, Harold adopted Heather. this part of the story is covered for now She never asked. After the adoption, she said, he began to change, becoming irritable over things that did not call for anger. In the early winter of 1990 the name-calling began and escalated into physical and sexual abuse. He kicked her and broke a toe because the house had settled and a crack appeared in the floor. When a bull died, or a piece of equipment broke, or one of his ex-wives raised an alimony dispute, he beat her. He shook her, slapped her, choked her, strangled her with an alarm clock cord, hit her on the back of the head with a five-gallon bucket, stabbed her in the arm with a fork and threw a knife at her. More than a dozen attacks took place between the winter of 1990 and September 1991; one left her in a wheelchair for three days. He threatened to kill her if she left and told her that, if she did, he would have her daughter's fingers cut off joint by joint. He also slapped Heather hard enough to make her lip bleed and pulled her out of her bedroom by the hair.

On 29 September 1991 Harold lost his wallet. details of the account remain covered until revealed He told her that she and Heather would spend all day searching, and he pointed a gun at her. That night, in front of a friend and an antique contact, he joked that he could chop up his wife and adopted daughter and spread them over the farm with the corn chopper. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it That night, she later said, Harold pulled her out of bed, shouting, and demanded that she come down to the basement vault room to help pack for an antique trip. He had a gun in his hand and said he was going to kill her. She grabbed two handguns from a cabinet near the basement stairs and fired, she said with her eyes closed, two shots from each. Harold fell, saying, "Why'd you go and do that for?"

The next morning she saw Heather off to school, drove to Grand Rapids on insurance business, collected Heather and bought fast food. That night, after Heather went to bed, she dismembered Harold on a big table, working for about six hours with a knife and a power saw. She cut off his legs at the knees, took off one arm, removed his intestines into a plastic bag and put the bag near a water well, because Harold had once threatened to put her remains in the well. She took the torso across the road, south of the machine shed, in Heather's little red wagon, and used the family Lincoln to carry other parts into a field. Afterwards she scrubbed the garage floor while Heather carried out the rubbish.

this part of the story is covered for now She said she had last seen him on 7 October, that he had left with an unknown man in a white van to go antiquing in Illinois, and that an anonymous caller had told her Harold was in a hospital. Two deputies visited the next day. Heather told them that the only strange thing she had noticed was a group of cats in the garden by the house that would not go away and seemed to be eating meat. The following morning the sheriff's office organised a search. They found a torso, an arm, the lower halves of two legs still wearing shoes and socks, and a large piece of flesh that appeared to include the genitals and part of the abdomen, spread around the farm. The body was Harold's. A .38 revolver and a .22 revolver were in the house, and a third .22 was in a shed across the road to the east. The autopsy found four gunshot wounds from two different weapons; his heart, other internal organs and genitalia had been removed, and the limbs cut off with a knife and a power saw.

details of the account remain covered until revealed She was held on $500,000 bond. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now The prosecution argued that it was not self-defence to shoot a man in the back, hide the guns, dismember the body, scatter the parts and tell people for a week that he had gone off in a white van. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now She later spoke to college criminal justice classes about her case. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Harold Freeberg's children said they would contest the will.