BOOK
RIEVIEW
Jerry Bergman
(Investigator 61, 1998
July)
Review of Blood
Crimes; the Pennsylvania
Skinhead Murders by Fred Rosen Kensington Publishing Corporation
850
3rd Ave. New York, NY 10022 1996 Paperback $5.99
On February 26, 1995, in a suburb of Allentown,
Pennsylvania, 17-year old Bryan Freeman, his 15 year old brother David
and their cousin, Ben Birdwell, slit their father's throat stabbed
their
mother numerous times and murdered their brother Eric with a baseball
bat.
This crime without equal in Salisbury township captivated the world
with
its brutality and shocking callousness. Blood Crimes is the
remarkable
story of how 3 boys that were raised Jehovah's Witnesses became
skinheads,
active in propagating hate against blacks, Jews, "mud people" and
others.
One
explanation of why
they became involved
in the skinheads was because:
Bryan had
finally
found someone who accepted
him. In Hitler he found his surrogate father, someone who had
channelled
hate into something constructive: no less than the destruction of
anyone
who was different. It was a philosophy with broad appeal, which is why
it stood the test of time and now, fifty years later, after Hitler had
died, his legacy was the hate in Bryan Freeman's heart, hate that was
born
from rigid, unloving parents, hate born from a religion that demanded
he
stay an outsider, hate born from kids looking at him funny because he
didn't
have a birthday or Christmas dinner, hate born from too many tears and
too little love. But now, he was accepted in the white Aryan
brotherhood
of man (p. 145).
What at first
seems like
180° conversion
in values is actually shown to be a refocussing of the hatred taught by
the Watchtower. Both the Jehovah's Witnesses and the skinheads are hate
groups; only the focus of their hate and how their hate is acted out
varies.
Research on the Jehovah's Witnesses in the concentration camps during
World
War II reveals one of the reasons why Witnesses and Nazis batted heads
so often was because they were in many ways much alike – both were
highly
authoritarian groups convinced only they had the truth and the answers
to the world's problems. They both also taught that opposers should be
eliminated, the Nazis by the inevitable rule of history and the
Witnesses
by Jehovah God.
Fred Rosen
skilfully
shows the important
influence of Watchtower teaching in the murder of the boys' parents and
brother. The book also eloquently documents not only the failure of the
Watchtower, but also the failure of secular social service agencies.
The
family appealed to several secular social service agencies only when
they
realized they had lost control of their boys, and it was in a state
institution
that one of the Freeman boys first discovered the skinhead philosophy
which
all three soon reverently embraced. Once their mother, Brenda, realized
she lost control she tried everything – even going to organizations
which
were discouraged by the Watchtower such as psychologists and the
anti-Defamation
League.
The boys'
active
rebellion began in 1991
when Bryan was 13 and David 11. The boys then decided they would no
longer
attend the Watchtower meetings, and were as a result marked as bad
association
and consequently rejected by their entire congregation. By then they
had
known much rejection due to their refusal to involve themselves in many
school activities including saluting the flag, celebrating birthdays
and
the many other Watchtower taboos. This behavior severely alienated them
from their peers. The rest of the world was wrong, Brenda would tell
the
boys, the only religion acceptable to God is the Watchtower;
consequently,
they must accept being rejected by their peers at school. Rosen states
that they were enjoined from celebrating all of the holidays and:
the Freeman
brothers
never got birthday
presents either, because celebrating birthdays is prohibited under
Watchtower
doctrine. They had to listen to their friends' stories about how
wonderful
their parents treated them on their birthdays. The brothers were told
that
their present was being "in the truth," as Witnesses refer among
themselves
to their beliefs (p. 99).
In short, it was
critically
important that:
the boys'
outside life
was made difficult
by their parents' religious beliefs. Children who grow up as Jehovah's
Witnesses grow up in an atmosphere of isolation. They are not allowed
to
participate in after school group activities. Friendships with
schoolchildren
who are not Witnesses are prohibited. On the rare occasion when David
and
Brian questioned their parents' beliefs, which had been imposed on
them,
they were answered with biblical quotes from the Witnesses' version of
the Bible that supported their beliefs. Obedience was the watchword (p.
98).
Their father,
even though
he was over six foot
himself and of no small build, evidently gave up trying to discipline
the
boys and relegated most discipline to his petite wife. It was by then
evidently
too late. On the inside David Freeman:
developed a
hate
toward the authority figures
in his life, specifically his mother, father, and the Watchtower. That
hate imbued itself in every facet of his life (p.123).
Was the
callousness that
others expressed towards
the boys for so long because of their religion internalized so that
they
became calloused of the feelings of others? Even though their parents
later
violated Watchtower policy and sought outside help, Rosen wondered if
they
had earlier:
sought
intervention as
a family and stayed
with a therapeutic program, things might have turned out differently
but
to do so would have been to admit that the teachings of the Jehovah's
Witnesses
were not enough to get them through their family crisis. To do that
would
have been to repudiate the religion and risk disfellowship and
damnation
(p.126).
Some children are
able to
deal with the conflicts
between their religion and their social environment. Bryan evidently
could
not, for he:
spent long
nights
alone, staring up at
the ceiling, feeling unloved and unwanted, wondering what he had done
that
was so wrong to end up...alienated from his parents and their beliefs,
which further served to alienate him from his peers... Nowhere did he
belong
... (p. 127).
It was at this
time that
skinhead Seth Monroe
entered his life and Bryan became a convert. Soon his brother also
became
a convert, as did his cousin, Ben Birdwell who also grew up in the
Watchtower.
The man they began following, Mark Thomas, was a:
very
intelligent man
who couches his anti-Semitic,
racist beliefs behind logical arguments ‘derived' from the Bible. To
children
like the Freemans and Birdwell who grew up on the Bible and knew it
forward
and backward, and who had a perverted value system, Thomas' scriptural
interpretation was the same as the Witnesses', only more palatable (p.
150).
Soon David,
Brian, and Ben
Birdwell were uncritically
following Thomas' rhetoric just as the Witnesses uncritically follow
the
Watchtower. Rosen claims that "David and Bryan Freeman and Ben Birdwell
were among those faithful followers taking in everything Thomas
preached"
(p.170). Ironically, when they were Witnesses, a big problem was doing
drugs and smoking – but when they became skinheads their drug use
stopped
because "when you're a skinhead, you drink, but you don't do drugs
[because]
skinheads are totally against drugs" (p.155). After the boys moved from
their old authoritarian belief structure to a new one they were
obedient
to their newfound skinhead philosophy as they were to their old one. In
spite of their conformity, though, due to their isolated Witness
upbringing
they lacked social skills, and evidently conflicts with fellow
skinheads
were not unusual.
Their friends
felt the
boys "became skinheads
because...they felt left out because their family didn't care about
them"
(p.155). Their parents were said to be intelligent people, and they
"could
not have been unaware of how their sons felt, yet they apparently did
nothing
to show them love." (p.156). This same friend observed that their
younger
brother Eric received preferential treatment because he fully conformed
to the Watchtower (p.156).
It is not
uncommon to
leave one authoritarian
religion for another. The similarities of the beliefs of the new group
the Freemans associated with and the Watchtower are many. For example,
the Watchtower taught Armageddon is a battle fought between God and
Evil
people – and the skinheads teach
that
Armageddon is the battle between the
good people and the people of Satan, and God has commanded the good
people,
the Whites, to exterminate the people of Satan, which included Blacks,
Jews and others (p.170). The Witnesses' Kingdom will soon be
established
on earth and be ruled by the Watchtower. The skinheads' kingdom will
also
be established on Earth but will be ruled by the white anglo-saxons,
the
true people of Israel and of God (p.170).
The murders,
according
to testimony, were
planned. The boys first went to the movies to see "Murder in the First"
then evidently formulated the murders at a Wendy's restaurant before
they
went home to carry out their plans. Conflicting reports of what
happened
exist and of course only the boys know the truth. Nonetheless three
persons
were murdered and the three boys were all involved.
Aside from a
few
inaccuracies of the Watchtower
teachings, the author has done his homework and presents an excellent
review
of Watchtower theology. This book would even be excellent for those who
want to learn about the Watchtower and the results of their teachings.
This is not the first case of Witness patricide – this writer is aware
of
many others involving Witnesses – nor will it be the last case.
http://ed5015.tripod.com/
Dictionary of Jehovah's Witnesses at:
http://ed5015.tripod.com/jwdictionary/