Hey bykerladi...you're right about it being odd that's there's not anything more about this...I am intrigued now to know more about this unsolved case...The only thing I have found so far is this article, but it's from the 4-2-07 so pretty recent and not to much more info then what you have already. I'll keep digging and let you know if I find anything else.
Friend: Victim never bothered anyone
Monday, April 02, 2007 By TOM QUIGLEY
The Express-Times
Phillipsburg resident Ron Titus remembers Bobby Freeman -- his friend and co-worker at Ingersoll-Rand -- as a hardworking, average Joe.
"I worked with Bobby up at Rand for years," Titus said. "When his death occurred and the way it occurred was kind of shocking."
Titus said investigators "beat the brush and beat the brush and beat the brush."
"He was just an average Joe," Titus said. "It just bothered me that a guy like that who never bothered anybody would be brutally murdered, thrown out in a cornfield and left to rot."
Titus said the rumor mill kicked in immediately after Freeman's death and theories about who killed him were rampant.
Freeman lived on Centre Square in Easton at the time of his death and frequented the bars in downtown Phillipsburg.
"Bobby hung out in the barrooms," he said. "He was not a high-profile person, not socially, not politically."
Titus said Freeman was short in stature but able to defend himself.
"But he got along with anybody," he said. "He never had a hostile word for anybody."
Freeman worked hard at Ingersoll-Rand as a welder with the maintenance crew, Titus said. Freeman worked primarily in the plant's foundry.
"He was an excellent worker," Titus said, describing a job that sometimes entailed "standing on your head inside a vessel welding. It was tough work."
Rita Jones' collection of papers linked to her brother's killing includes an old reward poster offering $1,600 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her brother's killers. The poster includes an image of Freeman dressed in a suit, sporting a moustache and wearing sunglasses.
A yellowed obituary reveals Freeman served in the U.S. Army and belonged to a Palmer Township American Legion post. He was also a member of the Golden Arrows motorcycle club.
Freeman and his wife celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary only weeks before his murder. His body was interred at the Greenwich Presbyterian Cemetery in Bloomsbury, the obituary reads. He was the father of two.
There is a death certificate as well. In it is a mercifully brief description of the cause of Freeman's homicide.
"Multiple injuries," it reads. "Physical assault (violent)."
Jones wrote a brief letter to the editor in January 2004:
"It has been 12 years since Robert Freeman Sr. was murdered. Just a reminder to the person or persons who murdered my brother. Maybe one day someone will come forward and give up the information," she wrote.
Reporter Tom Quigley can be reached at 908-475-8184 or by e-mail at
tquigley@express-times.com.
