Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

thirty-two years old. With the news that she had been arrested for the shotgun slaying of her husband, virtually everyone who had ever known her was stunned. Those who knew her the best weren’t surprised that she had, perhaps, lived a life of quiet desperation in her marriage. That she had chosen to escape from it by obliterating her husband was, nevertheless, unthinkable.
    Sometimes it takes a stranger to catch a sudden glimpse of the relationship a man and woman share. They can see that instance with as much clarity as if an expensive camera’s shutter opened briefly and then slid shut. A Selmer couple operated a small barbecue restaurant where Matthew and Mary had eaten a few times. They watched the interplay between the two with dismay.
    “He always ordered the big barbecue plate,” the female partner recalled, “while she had her our lowest-priced sandwich. Both times, they had their two older girls with them, and those children just begged for something to eat—but he wouldn’t order anything at all for them. And it looked as if she wanted to—but didn’t dare disagree with him.”
    Maybe that was simply Mary’s personality; she had been a quiet person for all of her life. Like Matthew—whose father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been ministers—Mary grew up in a devout home and in the Church of Christ. She had seen her parents—Nell and Clark Freeman—practice Christian charity from the moment she understood the concept, and she had also seen more tragedy than most young girls have to endure.
    Mary was born in Knox County in east Tennessee on December 10, 1973, five years after her parents married. She had a sister who was two years younger, but Patricia had contracted spinal meningitis when she was very young, and her mind would never mature beyond that of a five-year-old. Rather than being jealous because her parents had to focus so much of their time on their handicapped child, Mary Carol adored Patricia. She may have been told that her sister’s health was fragile and that God could take her away at any time, or she may have only feared that.
    She knew that Patricia was mentally slow, and she could see the braces she had to wear for her crippled hips. She was like a little mother, looking after Patricia and playing with her, albeit very carefully and tenderly.
    Like many families with a child in precarious health, Mary’s household bonded together tightly, gathering strength from one another. Because her sister needed so much attention, Mary asked for very little. She was reportedly a happy little girl—but quiet.
    Patricia Freeman died suddenly when she was about eight years old. A neighbor recalled that her mother was giving her a bath when she passed away. “She was singing one minute,” he said, “and dead the next.” She had probably suffered a fatal heart attack.
    Even though Patricia’s life had been very difficult and her illness thought to be one that would shorten her life, no one in her family was prepared for her to slip away so rapidly, and the Freemans went through a very difficult time dealing with their loss—especially Mary. They had no grief counseling, but they prayed and shared their feelings with one another.
    And they moved on. Nell Freeman taught school. She would later become a “Homebound Teacher,” the Tennessee school system’s term for someone who tutored students whose illnesses prevented them from attending classes. She understood their special needs because of all the years she had cared for Patricia.
    Clark Freeman remodeled houses long before “flipping houses” became the hugely popular endeavor that it is today. He bought them from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, fixed what was broken, refurbished and painted them, and sold them for a moderate profit. He was a man who worked very hard and seldom complained.
    Freeman was also a lay minister in the Church of Christ, and the Freemans attended services at the Laurel Church of Christ in Knoxville. Like all men in this denomination, he was the head of the household, sometimes demanding and authoritative—but Mary and her mother accepted that was as it should be. They weren’t always happy about it, though.
    And then the Freemans did something that few couples would have the fortitude and unselfishness to do: they adopted five children, all of them siblings who needed a loving home. Mary Carol had lost her only sister, but now she was one of six children. Eric, Chase,