OCEAN CITY -- To Ocean City's tourist trade, Classic Taxi co-owner Christy L. Freeman presented herself as a flirtatious NASCAR mom who could keep her customer's secrets.
"We have hauled everyone from famous singers to the general lay worker," she wrote on the five-year-old company's Web site, which features an image of Freeman as a suggestive sorceress. "Everybody has a story and we hear it all ... but you didn't hear that from me."
But the story police told about the 37-year-old woman yesterday - that she had stowed the remains of a stillborn baby and at least three more small bodies in and around her house - was so disturbing, so discordant with even her detractors' perceptions of her, that it has scandalized a devil-may-care beach town.
Freeman was charged Friday with first- and second-degree murder after police found a dead baby in a vanity beneath her bathroom sink, according to charging documents. Since that initial discovery, authorities have found the remains of two more in garbage bags in a trunk in Freeman's bedroom and another in a motor home parked in the driveway, police said.
With her longtime boyfriend, Raymond Godman, Freeman owns and operates Classic Taxi, which boasts American cars from the 1950s and 1960s. Yesterday, Classic Taxi's garage in a West Ocean City business park was closed. About 10 cars were parked out back, including a pink-and-white 1961 Cadillac Fleetwood with fins and a shiny teal Chevy Corvair from 1965.
According to the company's Web site, Freeman and their children moved to Ocean City in 1990. Godman, a mechanic, founded the taxi company in 2002.
"I am the woman behind the scenes trying to keep things running smoothly," Freeman writes on the site. "My hobbies are our four children. We enjoy NASCAR races and the ocean. As a family we fish, boat and camp together."
A customer, Rafael Reyes, said yesterday that he thought Freeman was a "good person, an everyday person." Classic Taxi was popular with year-round residents, he said.
Jay Hancock, a member of the City Council, said Freeman is well-known around Ocean City. On the "big issue with regulation of the taxis, they were both very active and supportive of measures to have some rules for the cab business," he said.
"She was very outgoing and friendly," Hancock said. He said he saw her a few weeks ago in the grocery store and they talked about the taxi business.
Freeman might have been able to disguise her pregnancy, according to interviews with those who know her.
"She was a big woman to start with. Her attire was very casual," Hancock said. "In the summer, it was loose-fitting T-shirts, and in the winter it was loose-fitting flannel shirts."
Some in the resort's competitive taxi business took offense at Freeman's bohemian nature and said the company failed to properly maintain its fleet.
"She was kind of dirty, always dressed in dirty sweat shirts - real boisterous, real gossipy," said Michael Larrimore, who drove a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 for the company from March to June. Larrimore said he quit because the car's brakes failed.
"They were not classic cabs, they were junkyard junks," said Ron Cecil, owner of a competing taxi company. "If you saw the insides of the cabs, they were just totally disgusting."
Freeman is no stranger to the court system, having appeared several times to file charges against others as well as to answer charges as a defendant.
She was convicted in 1999 of failing to obtain a dog license and fined $20, court records show. Three years earlier, she received a $45 fine for having a "dog at large," according to a computer summary of her record in state court.
But more often, she brought charges against others. In 1995, she filed destruction of property charges against an Ocean City man who was later found guilty. Her complaint against a neighbor on Sunset Drive in 1999 ended with the case being put on the inactive docket, which allows cases to be resolved without a conviction. Freeman accused a Salisbury woman of trespassing in 1995, a charge that led to the woman's conviction.
Most recently, she was sued by Atlantic General Hospital - the same medical facility she was rushed to Thursday - for failing to pay for a March 2003 emergency room visit. According to court records, she had a chest X-ray and other diagnostic tests. In February 2006, a judge ordered Freeman to pay $960.19.
gadi.dechter@baltsun.com
Sun reporters Chris Guy and Matthew Dolan contributed to this article.