OCEAN CITY -- Two blocks from where sunbathers relax along the city's famed Boardwalk, more than a dozen federal agents and police officers using a backhoe and cadaver dogs spent yesterday searching for more bodies after the remains of four babies were found in and around the modest home of a local taxi cab company co-owner.
How they died remained murky last night, but businesswoman Christy L. Freeman, who appeared in state court yesterday on charges of killing one of her own, pledged "to clear my name."
A few hours later, authorities released new medical evidence that raised questions of whether a homicide had been committed at all. A preliminary report from the state medical examiner's office in Baltimore concluded that the male baby found under the bathroom sink was stillborn and just 26 weeks old.
Despite that finding, Worcester County State's Attorney Joel Todd did not back away from the first-degree murder charge, saying the evidence indicated that Freeman intentionally caused the death of one of her unborn children and violated a 2005 state law that makes it illegal to kill a viable fetus.
Freeman "did something to terminate that pregnancy," Todd said, without providing details about the evidence. The prosecutor added that in court, "we will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did something to cause this baby to be stillborn."
Investigators have not released the sex of the three other babies, saying they are trying to determine how they died and whether Freeman is criminally responsible. Police said they suspect all four - described by authorities as "pre-term" - are Freeman's, but have charged her with only one killing.
The co-owner of Classic Taxi, a company whose female drivers drove passengers in a tail-finned 1961 Fleetwood Cadillac and boxy 1963 Ford Fairlane 500, Freeman is well-known around town, living in a second-story apartment with her longtime boyfriend and business partner, Raymond Godman, and four children.
On her company's Web site, she is photographed wearing an elaborate hat, expresses her love of NASCAR and the beach and counts her children among her "hobbies."
Police reported yesterday that Freeman's four children are safe and Godman, who is listed as the owner of the home, is not a suspect in the case.
Stunning local residents and tourists alike, the charge marked Ocean City's first murder case in five years - since a young Philadelphia couple killed and dismembered companions they met in a bar.
Yesterday, police cordoned off Freeman's small side street of mostly two-story bungalows, many occupied by some of the city's 12,000 permanent residents and tucked on the west side of Coastal Highway, the resort city's main street.
A small birdhouse hung from Freeman's apartment, which had an air-conditioning unit in one side window. Her balcony was filled with fishing gear and a bicycle. Black shutters had been closed over the upper apartment windows.
To the east and on the other side of Coastal Highway is the rest of Ocean City, where a mix of high-rise hotels, condos and motels hosts a summertime weekend population that can swell to 350,000.
Yesterday, workers used chain saws and shovels to tear up the backyard of Freeman's apartment building and a lot adjacent to her Sunset Drive address. A backhoe dumped dirt in a truck as a tall evergreen hedge was cut down.
Describing the property as a "complex crime scene," local police called in almost a dozen FBI agents for help in recovering evidence. Two cadaver dogs hit on possible scents, suggesting remains might be buried there, according to Ocean City Police Chief Bernadette DiPino.
Authorities said that excavation of the site could take three days.
The timing of yesterday's media-police spectacle came on a day of intermittent showers that kept many people watching from their front porches. More than 50 reporters, photographers and television crews quickly filled the narrow street as television satellite trucks, all facing west, set up to transmit live reports.
Rafael Reyes, 30, who said he is a friend of neighbors, said he occasionally has taken the couple's taxicab service. He described Freeman as a "good person, an everyday person," and that the locally owned and operated taxicab company was popular with year-round residents.
Frank Manderach, 37, who lives next door to the couple, said the couple has four children - two boys and two girls - and rents out the first-floor apartment.
He said he believes that city officials told the couple to clean up their property recently and that they subsequently erected a picket-type fence.
"He's a hippie type," Manderach said of Godman. "I would have never suspected anything like this. Why would you store something like that in your house? It's disgusting." He said the couple were "into NASCAR and racing" and recently asked him whether he was interested in having some painting done.
He said police swarmed the property after Freeman was hospitalized last week, and police took away the RV parked outside.
Jody Kerlin, another neighbor, said she saw police remove something small from one of the holes dug in the backyard. She wasn't sure what. Kerlin said police told her not to let her dog out in their backyard because it could interfere with the police dogs' trying to pick up a scent.
In court yesterday afternoon, a calm, articulate but visibly frightened Freeman, dressed in a gray denim prison jumpsuit, appeared for a bail hearing lasting no more than five minutes.
"I want to clear my name in this case," Freeman said. "If you offer me a bond, I'm not going to leave. ... I'm going to be here. I'm going to help clear this situation up."
Worcester County District Judge Daniel Mumford rejected that request, ordering Freeman to remain behind bars last night without bond. Police said she would be brought to the county jail in Snow Hill.
Her next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 27.
Police began investigating Freeman Wednesday when she became violently ill with severe cramps and vomiting in her apartment, authorities said.
Police and paramedics arrived at 1 a.m. Thursday and found her lying on a sofa. Her boyfriend told authorities she had passed out in the bathroom and he carried her to the sofa.
"Freeman denied being pregnant or having any knowledge of pregnancy," Detective Todd Speigle of the Ocean City Police Department wrote in charging documents.
Emergency medical workers took Freeman to Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin, and she was later transferred to Peninsula Regional Medical Center. There, social workers suspected something more was wrong.
"Freeman was carrying a 36-week-old placenta in her womb that did not contain a fetus," Speigle wrote. "At the time Freeman had no explanation as to the whereabouts of the fetus/infant."
Eventually, she told police she had given birth to a "gloopity glop," according to charging documents. Freeman told the police detective that when she pushed on the deceased, deformed baby, the umbilical cord snapped, court documents say. The baby, she told police in court papers, was flushed down the toilet.
But police said they searched her home and found a "viable fetus/infant" wrapped in a towel in the bathroom at Freeman's house. The body was more fully formed than Freeman described initially to police, according to court papers.
Later Thursday, two more sets of remains were found inside garbage bags in a trunk in Freeman's bedroom, a police spokesman said. A third garbage bag concealed with the other two contained what appeared to be a placenta, police said.
On Friday, another set of remains was found inside a motor home parked in the driveway, said Barry Neeb, the spokesman.
Just after noontime Friday, Ocean City police announced that Freeman had been charged with first- and second-degree murder and manslaughter in connection with the death of the baby found under the sink.
All of the remains have been taken to the state medical examiner to determine the age and cause of death. Neeb said the medical examiner will determine when they died and whether they were full-term.
Friends and neighbors were still trying to come to terms yesterday with news about Freeman.
"I knew her very well because I am a bartender at Seacrets," said neighbor Mike Korman, 23, referring to a popular Ocean City nightclub where her taxis picked up patrons. "All this is very, very bizarre."
matthew.dolan@baltsun.com
Chris Guy and Andrea F. Siegel reported from Ocean City and Matthew Dolan from Baltimore. Sun reporter Anica Butler also contributed to this article.