Copyright 1995 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
April 27, 1995, Thursday, JOURNAL EDITION
SECTION: NATIONAL NEWS, Pg. 7A
LENGTH: 416 words
HEADLINE: NATION IN BRIEF; Teenage skinheads ordered to trial in parents' deaths
BYLINE: From our news services
BODY:
Two Allentown, Pa., teenage skinheads have been ordered to stand trial on murder charges in the deaths of their parents and brother.
The weapons used to kill Dennis and Brenda Freeman and their 11-year- old son, Erik, included a knife, an aluminum baseball bat, a pickax handle and a weight bar from an exercise machine, the coroner said.
David Freeman and his brother, Bryan, "just lost it" after their mother complained they were coming home too late, their cousin Nelson Birdwell, 18, told his lawyer. COURTS
MOMS JAILED: Two mothers involved in a Chicago case in which 19 children were found living in squalor last year were jailed for violating provisions of their probation. Sisters Mayfay and Denise Melton had agreed to undergo drug and parenting counseling after they were convicted of misdemeanor child neglect. But Mayfay Melton tested positive for opiates and was sentenced Wednesday to 120 days in jail. Denise Melton was sentenced to seven days in jail for refusing to take a scheduled drug test and dropping out of the program. The children were taken from them after police discovered the appalling living conditions during a February 1994 drug raid. The 19 children belong to six Melton sisters.
- SCAM ARTIST JAILED: A slightly built woman who has wandered the country posing as an abandoned boy in order to get cash and other help from charities has been sentenced in Rapid City, S.D., to nine months in jail. Birdie Jo Hoaks, 25, masqueraded as Nathan Devine, 13, even offering a letter from "his" mother saying she could no longer take care of the boy. Hoaks had received $ 728 in cash and benefits before suspicious staff at a youth home called police. CRIME
- UNABOMBER TAUNT: The Unabomber taunted one of his injured victims for opening a mysterious package that blew up, calling him a "techno- nerd" in a letter. The text of the letter to Yale computer science Professor David Gelernter was distributed by the FBI on Wednesday, a day after another letter from the elusive bomber was published by The New York Times. "People with advanced degrees aren't as smart as they think they are," the letter said. "If you'd had any brains you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world and you wouldn't have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source." Gelernter was injured when a mail bomb exploded in his office June 24, 1993.