Girl Sought Since 1982 Is Found

A 13-year-old Ohio girl sought by the FBI since she disappeared in 1982 was found in a Huntington Beach apartment, where her grandfather was arrested on suspicion of kidnaping, authorities said Saturday.

The 6-year search for Charity Freeman ended about 3 p.m. Friday when Huntington Beach detectives and FBI agents knocked on the door of apartment 303 in the Huntington West Apartments and Charity answered it, Police Lt. John Foster said. When officers identified themselves, Charity, her grandfather and her aunt “scattered like mice. It was pretty clear that they had a predesigned escape routes,” he said. “They were prepared.”

The girl’s disappearance drew national attention in June, 1985, when Lucas County sheriff’s deputies received information that the grandfather, Leroy Freeman, was the leader of a satanic cult in northern Ohio. Officials never confirmed a link.

“Thank goodness this may finally be coming to an end,” said Victor J. Gonzalez, an attorney for the girl’s mother, Karen Creswell of Toledo, Ohio. “It has been a long, long ordeal, one that no human should have to endure.”

Charity was placed in protective custody Friday night and flown Saturday to Ohio. Leroy Freeman was being held Saturday in Orange County Jail on suspicion of kidnaping and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Will Seek Extradition

Ohio authorities said they would seek to extradite Freeman, who allegedly abducted his granddaughter in September, 1982, in Toledo. Since then, Charity and her grandfather reportedly lived a nomadic existence, traveling throughout the Southwest. They were seen in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. They were also joined at times by Charity’s aunt, Julie Freeman, authorities said.

In 1985, Lucas County sheriff’s deputies were told that as many as 75 bodies, victims of a satanic group’s ritualistic ceremonies, were buried at a site outside Toledo. But no bodies were found when the area was excavated, although deputies did unearth several knives and daggers, pentagrams, body paint and a headless doll with its feet nailed to a board.

When Freeman was arrested in Huntington Beach, Foster said, police found no evidence of occult activities.

It also did not appear that Charity was “being held captive,” he said, adding that she appeared in “good physical shape.”

A social worker who spent the night with Charity and accompanied her to the airport early Saturday said the girl “was thin but excited.” Susan Davidson, Southern California director of the Adam Walsh Resource Center, a national group formed to find missing children, said Charity was “absolutely amazed at the manhunt” that had been mounted to find her. Davidson said that Charity, when shown newspaper accounts of her disappearance, grinned and remarked: “I’m a celebrity. . . . I guess somebody really does care.”

During the night at the police station, Charity, wearing a denim skirt and jacket, said she had attended some schools but didn’t have many friends. The teen-ager complained that her schoolmates often made fun of her because she lived with her grandfather and her clothes were old and often soiled.

“She didn’t want to talk about the past, only going home,” Davidson said. “She wondered what her mother looked like or whether her mother would hug her or be angry with her.”

Mother Remarried

In her absence, Charity’s mother remarried and gave birth to a second daughter.

“It will be a difficult reunion,” Davidson said. “Two strangers who really won’t know each other. Charity is not the sweet little 7-year-old her mother remembers.”

Saturday night, however, Lucas County Juvenile Court Judge Andy Devine gave temporary emergency custody to that county’s Children Services Board.

“The information that was supplied to me indicated that this (custody action) was necessary,” Devine said. But he would not say what the information was or who supplied it.

Charity was scheduled to be admitted to Medical College Hospital in Toledo for observation and examination, and an emergency custody hearing before Devine is scheduled for Monday morning.

Managers of the Huntington Beach apartment complex in the 6400 block of Warner Avenue said Charity lived in a two-bedroom apartment with her grandfather, his parents, Edgar and Martha Freeman, as well as a family friend, Nicole A. Alden, and a young girl named Tracey Warner. Charity’s aunt--her mother’s sister--also may have lived at the apartment.

‘Darling Girl’

The apartment was rented April 2 in the names of Edgar and Martha Freeman, apartment records show. Debbie Bates, a resident manager, said there were no records of Leroy Freeman or his granddaughter living there, although she added that she frequently saw them in the 285-unit apartment complex.

“She was a darling, darling little girl, real shy and real cute,” Bates said. “He was this little old man who drank and was always hyper. He was also sloppy. He always looked unshaved.”

Lisa Biondolillo, another apartment manager, said neighbors had complained about a persistent stench coming from the Freeman apartment.

The problem forced one couple, who did not want to be named, to move to a unit farther away from the Freemans’ apartment, they said.

The family friend, Nicole Alden, works at Henry’s Machine Works in Anaheim, where her attendance record was unblemished until she moved in with the Freemans about 3 months ago, said Joyce Lundberg, office secretary at Henry’s. After that, Lundberg said, she began calling in sick and eventually missed days without calling.

In August, 1986, investigators believed they had found Charity and her grandfather living in a commune outside Santa Fe, N.M. A girl matching Charity’s description was taken into custody, and Charity’s mother, who flew to New Mexico, even identified her as her daughter. But 5 days later, a New Mexico judge said the child was not Creswell’s, based on blood tests. Authorities, however, confirmed that Charity had been in the commune and that the girl in custody was a friend of hers.

Ohio authorities tracked Charity to the West Coast after a car purchased last November in Toledo by Julie Freeman was recently repossessed in Huntington Beach.

Julie Freeman was not arrested, Foster said.

A national expert on missing children said that in most cases where children disappear with relatives, the child is found within a short time.

“This is a highly unusual case,” said William Steiner, a board member of the Adam Walsh Resource Center. “Six years is a long, long time.”

Steiner, former director of an Orange County home for abused and neglected children, predicted that Charity “may have a difficult readjustment. She has been gone since the age of 7 and is used to a far different life style than presumably the one she left.”