Reward Fund Started in Wake of Racial Vandalism

Religious organizations and neighbors of a black couple whose Agoura home was hit by racially motivated vandalism last week established a reward fund Saturday to help authorities capture those responsible for the attack.

“I can’t tell you the outrage that was in my mind when I heard about this,” said Frank Eiklor, president of a religious task force, who joined about 25 others gathered Saturday at the home of the victims, Matilda and Szebelski (Larry) Freeman.

The couple’s residence was broken into Aug. 29 and vandalized for the second time in two years. The intruders slashed chairs, spray-painted walls and curtains, and destroyed photographs and appliances, causing an estimated $30,000 damage. They also overturned an aquarium and placed the fish in a bowl filled with manure, and spray-painted a red swastika on a wall.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said they suspect the vandalism was the work of skinheads, white racist youths who espouse a neo-Nazi ideology. A sheriff’s spokesman said Saturday that no suspects have been arrested in connection with the incident.

Eiklor, a white Orange County minister who is president of the Southern California Task Force Against Anti-Semitism and Bigotry, said he organized Saturday’s show of support for the Freemans because “unchallenged racism is a disgrace to the Christian church. We won’t stand for this kind of thing.”

“We’re with you. We love you. We hurt with you,” Eiklor told the Freemans. His organization contributed the first $700 to the reward fund.

An hour later, the amount had grown to $3,000. Glenn and Beverly Carlson, who live next door to the Freemans, set up the fund and contributed $500.

“We were going to start this anyway,” Beverly Carlson said. “What happened was absolutely outrageous. The children around here are just terrified.”

Also showing support was Rabbi Aaron Kreigel, whose Temple Ner Maarav in Encino was vandalized with neo-Nazi graffiti last year, and Barbara and Jack Groeser, a Thousand Oaks couple who said they did not know the Freemans.

“I’m 100% with you in stopping this now,” Larry Freeman, a retired real estate broker, told those assembled in his living room. “I was wrong not to go public the first time.”

A similar incident occurred at the Freeman home in the predominantly white upper-middle-class neighborhood known as Saratoga Ranch in October, 1987.

Matilda Freeman, who said she feared speaking in public, wrote her remarks about the most recent incident on paper.

“While I was away, my home was totally ransacked,” she wrote. “Signs of hate were scribbled on the walls . . . I was distressed and confused . . . “

But she said her faith in “the goodness of others” was quickly restored.

“As I stood confused in the shambles of my broken home, all my friends, neighbors, relatives and clergy quickly came to my aid,” she wrote. “Swiftly, they helped to clean up the mess.”

Indeed, not a sign of the damage from the incident remained Saturday.

Beverly Carlson said neighbors organized a work party Friday and cleaned the Freeman house.