AUSTRALIAN FATHERS WHO HAVE MURDERED THEIR CHILDREN DARCEY FREEMAN Today, little Darcey Freeman should be sitting in a small seat in a Victorian classroom. She would be in the later years of primary school, mastering her times tables. That’s how it should have been. But she never made it to her first day of school on January 29, 2009. At about 9am, her father Arthur Freeman pulled his Toyota Land Cruiser over into the extreme left hand lane of the Westgate Bridge, Melbourne’s tallest. Near the highest point, he alighted from the car and pulled Darcey, 4, from the front passenger seat. In front of his sons Ben, 6, and Jack, 2, he dangled Darcey, who was just days off turning 5, over the railing. Then, to the horror of motorists, he dropped her. She fell 58m over the edge and, according to young Ben, did not scream. Apparently emotionless, he drove off. One of his surviving children, Ben, would then clamber into the front seat. He knew what he saw, even if he did not understand the gravity of it. “I said ‘go back and get her. Darcey can’t swim’,” the child told police, later, in an interview. But Freeman kept driving. “He didn’t go back and get her,” the child said. As the enormity of his actions set in, a trembling and crying Freeman then handed himself over to police at the Commonwealth Law Courts building. Later, the Supreme Court concluded Freeman’s only motive could have been to hurt his former wife, Peta Barnes. Before his murder, Freeman rang his ex-wife, who was waiting at the school to witness her daughter’s milestone. “Say goodbye to your children,” he said. “You will never see them again.” The earliest date he will be eligible to be released will be January 29, 2041. He will be 67 years old.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 09:05:05 +0000
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