Identified! Mystery couple murdered in South Carolina, 1976 - Pamela Buckley & James P Freund #8

[superunknown]

Too bad the connection was never made.

For sure. I will share that I also have a family member who has been, at various times over the past 40+ years, "off the radar". I think every family has someone who is like that in their family. They have petty grievances, get angry and then go dark for a while. I have an Uncle like this. Eventually the family quits worrying because he's just like that. Back then, phone calls were expensive if you were traveling and people communicated by letters most frequently.

Also, 1976 was a very unique year, especially that summer. The whole country was in celebration of the bicentennial and many people took long road trips that summer to visit historic sites. There were festivals, music events and all kinds of fun stuff going on. I was a young kid then and I will always remember how great it was. For this couple to be on the road and traveling then would not have raised any eyebrows with strangers at all.

I really hope now that they are identified, the killer can finally be caught.

 

[Canaille]

If the pictures and newspaper clippings folks have shared here are indeed of the "right" James Freund... then it seems James is from my neck of the woods. He was raised and attended school in the Lancaster area and then was stationed for a time at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Aberdeen, MD. Like most people from the Susquehanna River Valley (or whose ancestors settled there) he is of German, likely Swiss German, heritage which is reflected in his surname. He was an Army guy who had been married previously and somehow gave all that up for a life on the road, at least temporarily. Will be interested to find out if his father was indeed a doctor or if this was all just a story Jim wove to throw people off his scent (the Army?) who could've possibly been looking for him. I'm not trying to slander the dead, but could he have gone AWOL?

If I looked at the correct father, he passed away when James was about 20. The father worked as a car salesman... again, that's assuming that I'm looking at the correct one.

 

[Bit of hope]

True, but one would think the FBI would have checked the Army fingerprint database. If they could not do that, them what use is it? It is irritating, if the right records were checked at the time, this case would have been at least half solved in more like 44 days instead of 44 years.

I remember a lot of army files were lost in a fire once, don't ask me when right now..I can't recall immediately...but that might have been the/a problem.

 

[wary]

If the pictures and newspaper clippings folks have shared here are indeed of the "right" James Freund... then it seems James is from my neck of the woods. He was raised and attended school in the Lancaster area and then was stationed for a time at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Aberdeen, MD. Like most people from the Susquehanna River Valley (or whose ancestors settled there) he is of German, likely Swiss German, heritage which is reflected in his surname. He was an Army guy who had been married previously and somehow gave all that up for a life on the road, at least temporarily. Will be interested to find out if his father was indeed a doctor or if this was all just a story Jim wove to throw people off his scent (the Army?) who could've possibly been looking for him. I'm not trying to slander the dead, but could he have gone AWOL?

Well, if he’s the one people are posting about, he was married at age 18, while he was in the Army. So unless he was career military, he’d be long out.

My thought is, married quite young, maybe when the marriage broke up, he decided to just take a break from responsibilities for a while, hitchhike around and see the country. If all had gone well, it’d have made for great stories to tell his grandchildren.

 

[Fede]

Here is something about Pam:
Backward Glances: Football player poet gets revenge against his English class

"Pamela Buckley, chosen the Redwood Jaycees Sno-Queen in February and set to become Miss Redwood Falls 1971, abdicated the throne to tour the west coast with the folk-singing trio “Sunlending.”"

 

[Bit of hope]

My guess is obituaries for both of them are coming soon.

 

[branmuffin]

There are a few estate notices in a Lancaster, PA newspaper seeking out James P Freund/information related to his death on Newspapers.com in the 1980s.

That makes me sad. Wonder if a parent died and they were trying to disperse the inheritance.

It's a wonder any people before technology and social media were identified. It would be like a police force in Camden, New Jersey in 1965 having fingerprints at a murder crime scene and a Reno Nevada police force having the very same fingerprints at a murder crime scene in 1970. How would they ever have been able to crosscheck prints manually? An impossible task.

 

[vermontaigne]

But it seems that the brother gave it to him before the murders. So it doesn’t matter if the brother found it or bought it.

Lonnie (DUI guy) evidently filed off its numbers. That indicates guilty knowledge of some sort. But, was it guilty knowledge of murders, or just a worry that the gun might have been stolen property when he got it?

I haven’t researched it yet, but I’ve seen people on WS saying that ballistics identification—matching bullets back to guns, isn’t reliable. Anyone have info about that at the tips of your fingers? I’d always thought that it was as reliable as fingerprints. And, each person was shot three times. Assuming that the bullets we’re all recovered, that’s a lot to compare.

I think that most crime investigators believe that ballistic evidence is pretty dispositive. It's not regarded like hair fiber evidence, at any rate. What is interesting is that they nail a guy on DUI, do ballistics on the gun, and match them up. I think that back then, maybe even now, maybe even with a gun which has filed off identification numbers, that was going a bit beyond. So, maybe they had some prior reason to suspect the arrestee. But maybe someone here in LEO or with a close relation to someone working back then could say whether it would be a bit unusual to make those comparisons after a DUI, which was generally a slap-of-the-wrist thing back then.

 

[Suglo]

Rest In Peace Pamela & James. My thoughts are with your families.

 

[SurrealisticSlumbers]

If I looked at the correct father, he passed away when James was about 20. The father worked as a car salesman... again, that's assuming that I'm looking at the correct one.

Hah! So if we operate under the assumption that this is "our" Jim, he totally made up that name, Jacques and gave some *advertiser censored* and bull story to the campground guy about being from Canada and having a father who was a doctor who disapproved of his son's life choices. Yeah, he was definitely either a jokester or deliberately trying to conceal his identity while on the road.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

13 Aug 1976, 1 - The Times and Democrat at Newspapers.com

 

[Bit of hope]

For the families sake....I would really want them to go after the killer....never heard of anything useful, besides the gun used, was there...

 

[superunknown]

I think that most crime investigators believe that ballistic evidence is pretty dispositive. It's not regarded like hair fiber evidence, at any rate. What is interesting is that they nail a guy on DUI, do ballistics on the gun, and match them up. I think that back then, maybe even now, maybe even with a gun which has filed off identification numbers, that was going a bit beyond. So, maybe they had some prior reason to suspect the arrestee. But maybe someone here in LEO or with a close relation to someone working back then could say whether it would be a bit unusual to make those comparisons after a DUI, which was generally a slap-of-the-wrist thing back then.

I don't know what the laws were like back then, but to have gun hidden in a car that you were stopped driving while drunk, with a serial number filed off would definitely have raised LE eyebrows.

 

[wary]

The Canada angle was always debateable and really was just a clue that needed to be ruled out. No one will probably ever know if Mr. Freund was the same man who stayed at the campground or not. But being from Canada could have also been a good cover story to keep folks out of your business

Or, if he’d been traveling much through the South, it could have been an in-joke after having been asked one too many times where he was from. (I have a rather odd accent, and once someone, after hearing my rather prosaic explanation, developed on the spot an elaborate interesting story that I should tell the next person who asked where I was from.)

 

[wary]

Yes, if I'm not mistaken, James played pool there and talked with a guy. Pam was quiet tho.

Oh, the KOA campground. If there’s any truth to that story at all, I think that James and Pamela were traveling together at that point in time, not that they met there.

 

[Molly's Mom]

Based on the notice seeking information on the death or whereabouts of James P. Freund that was placed in the paper, it states that it was for the Orphan's Division in Lancaster County. I don't know anything about that court division. Does it mean that a child is trying to get an inheritance?

 

[vermontaigne]

I don't know what the laws were like back then, but to have gun hidden in a car that you were stopped driving while drunk, with a serial number filed off would definitely have raised LE eyebrows.

I agree, but comparing with a set even of bullets of the same calibre was probably pretty time-consuming, I would think, even if you had it on something as newfangled as microfiche.

 

[Canaille]

Based on the notice seeking information on the death or whereabouts of James P. Freund that was placed in the paper, it states that it was for the Orphan's Division in Lancaster County. I don't know anything about that court division. Does it mean that a child is trying to get an inheritance?

Is there a link or a screenshot of this that I missed? Or is there something you can post? TIA

 

[Betty P]

That's what I'm also wondering about. A crime passionnel?!

MOO JMO

Sumter County, SC is a really long way from Lancaster County, PA. Back when there were no cell phones and even long distance phone calls were very expensive. It was a different time and it would have been really unusual for a young woman who grew up in a smallish town/city to stalk her ex-husband across the country to murder him.

I'm assuming it was a case of a couple who married very young and grew apart. Remember, Jim was only 30 when he was killed, only 19 when he married in 1965. He was still in the Army, according to their wedding announcement

12 Dec 1965, 25 - Sunday News at Newspapers.com

He may have even done a tour of Vietnam and came home to find he felt alienated from his wife, family and home town. That happened to a lot of vets his age back then. Many moved to different cities, went to college, experienced life differently than before.

Someone mentioned earlier that he could have been on a trip to visit an old Army buddy, as there are some bases in that area. That seems a possibility.

 

[imstilla.grandma]