Coldest of cases: Ex-Fort Jackson soldier finally free in 1961 Columbia taxi murder
Questions of injustice in a half-century-old crime saga have been quietly resolved for the accused, a one-time Fort Jackson soldier, but mystery still surrounds the brutal homicide.
There was no announcement from the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s office about a courtroom plea last month that allowed 74-year-old Edward Freiburger to be freed once and for all in the 1961 shooting of a Columbia cab driver.
The unpublicized deal ended one of South Carolina’s longest-running legal battles that involve a brutal murder.
The deal was this: If Freiburger entered a qualified plea to the killing of driver John Orner, Freiburger would be given credit for the 14 years he served in prison in South Carolina.
Freiburger entered an Alford plea, which is a guilty plea in which a defendant asserts innocence, but acknowledges that the prosecution has enough evidence that a jury could reach a guilty verdict.
And so, on June 8, Freiburger pleaded to voluntary manslaughter, said his attorney, John Blume, a nationally known defense lawyer and Cornell University School of Law professor who has worked on the case for 10 years.
“One of the reasons I took this case is because I don’t believe he did this,” Blume said. “But I understand why some people might say, ‘I wouldn’t enter a guilty plea to something I didn’t do.’
‘You know, John,’” Blume said, recounting a conversation with Freiburger, ‘the people who know me know I didn’t do this. And the people who believe I did it, are always going to believe that, no matter what. And I’m 74 years old, I’ve served 14 years for a crime I didn’t commit, and I want to get this thing behind me.’”
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, whose cold case detectives arrested Freiburger in 2001 in Orner’s death, said he believes Freiburger is guilty. But he said this kind of a plea is a fair outcome.
“Justice was served in this case when you look at his age,” Lott said. “Also, the (Orner) remaining family did not want to go through another trial.”
For more than 50 years, Orner’s murder and the arrest of Freiburger have attracted bursts of intense media attention.
In 1961, Orner’s bloodstained taxi was found abandoned near Gervais and Assembly streets in downtown Columbia. His body, with one gunshot wound to the head, was located several days later in a ditch off U.S. 601 in Lower Richland County. Police said they believed the motive in the death of the 63-year-old was robbery. The bullet fragments came from a .32 caliber Harrington and Richardson revolver, authorities said.
At the time, Freiburger was a Fort Jackson recruit, just 18 years old. The day before Orner disappeared, Freiburger bought a .32 caliber Harrington and Richardson revolver and bullets at a Columbia pawn shop. Then he went AWOL.
Several weeks later, as Frieburger was hitchhiking in Tennessee, a state trooper arrested him and confiscated the revolver. For a time, Freiburger was a suspect in Orner’s death, but he wasn’t arrested.
Forty years passed before Lott’s cold case detectives, who had come across the revolver and traced it to Freiburger, felt they had enough evidence to arrest him.
During those decades, Freiburger had lived a quiet life in Indiana as a Sears store manager. He was married, had three children and attended church. Two of his children were police officers.
Freiburger was put on trial in Columbia in 2002. A jury convicted him of murder, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison. At the time, a defendant was eligible for parole in 10 years after getting a life sentence.
In 2005, the conviction and sentence were upheld by the S.C. Supreme Court.
However, in 2015, in another post-trial proceeding, where the performance of Freiburger’s trial lawyers were reviewed, the S.C. Court of Appeals ruled the defense team had failed to introduce a key document at the 2002 trial. That document was a 1961 letter by then-State Law Enforcement Division chief, the late J.P. Strom, stating that Freiburger’s gun didn’t fire the bullet that killed Orner.
Evidence against Freiburger was “purely circumstantial and – other than ballistics – weak,” the Court of Appeals wrote. There also was evidence that police knew about another Harrington and Richardson revolver that might have been the murder weapon.
By 2015, however, Freiburger was eligible for parole and was paroled. Around the same time, the courts ordered his case be sent back to Richland County for a new trial.
“So instead of being released on parole, he had to go back to jail and wait until the solicitor’s office decided if they were going to retry him,” Lott said.
In August 2016, state Judge DeAndrea Benjamin, acting on a request by Blume, released Freiburger on $30,000 bond while the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s office under Dan Johnson decided what to do.
Last month, 10 months later, Johnson’s office decided. Assistant Solicitor Luck Campbell was on hand for Freiburger’s final plea. Fifth Circuit officials last week declined to comment.
Getting the plea saved prosecutors the expense of a trial they might have lost, especially since defense lawyers now had the Strom letter the Court of Appeals said “undermined” the case. However, new scientific methods of testing bullet fragments might have helped the prosecution, Lott said.
Blume said last week that Freiburger was going back to Indianapolis to live with his family.
“He was retired when the cold case unit picked him up,” Blume said. “He’s going to resume his retirement in a more favorable setting.”
Blume said it was in Freiburger’s best interest to do what he did.
“It wasn’t the complete exoneration that he and his family had hoped for, but it nevertheless brought this to an end,” Blume said. “Also, from his perspective, he had an experience with the right to trial by jury and found it less than satisfactory.”
Lott said, “We upheld our promise to the victim’s family, which was to never forget, and never let it go away, and we didn’t.”
This story was originally published July 2, 2017 at 6:30 PM with the headline "Coldest of cases: Ex-Fort Jackson soldier finally free in 1961 Columbia taxi murder."