102. Rumors: The Murder of Joan Feeman

In the late summer of 1968, 22-year-old Joan Freeman reported for an overtime shift at Hoffman-LaRoche, a sprawling pharmaceutical complex on the border of Clifton and Nutley, New Jersey. What should have been an ordinary Saturday at work became a nightmare: Joan would not leave the building alive.

From the strange theories surrounding industrial theft and espionage to potential connections with other New Jersey cold cases, we examine the angles investigators considered and what they ultimately concluded.

In this episode, we also touch on patterns in workplace homicides, the chilling notion that a coworker could have committed the crime, and the eerie possibility of a connection to the infamous “Torso Killer”, a thread we’ll explore in greater detail in a future episode.

Join us as we honor the memory of Joan Freeman and navigate the unanswered questions that haunt her story.

Trigger Warning: This episode includes discussions of graphic violence. Listener discretion is advised.

If you have any information about the murder of Joan Freeman, please contact the Clifton Police Department at 973-470-5908.

To submit information about the murder of Alexander Messier, contact the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office at [phone]

To submit tips about the murder of Alys Eberhardt, contact the Fair Lawn PD at 201-794-5410

******

Method & Madness is researched, written, hosted, & produced by Dawn Cate

Music by Tymur Khakimov from Pixabay

***
Get in Touch!:
[e-mail]

CONNECT:

• Instagram
• TikTok

DIVE INTO MORE: 
MethodandMadnessPodcast.com

***
All sources are listed on the website, under each episode description.
MethodandMadnessPodcast.com

Thank you for listening!


Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/method-madness--6241524/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode contains graphic details of violence.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Please listen with care.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Lieutenant Carl Koehler stood back in the shadows, camera in
hand as mourners filed into Saint Valentine's Roman Catholic Church
in Bloomfield, New Jersey, dressed in plain clothes. His presence
that day wasn't to grieve, It was to watch and
record video of those in attendance. Joan Freeman was just

(00:29):
twenty two when her life was suddenly and brutally stolen
in an act of violence, and while her family said
their goodbyes, Lieutenant Cohler relied on them for something more
than memories. They were his eyes. If they spotted anyone
they didn't recognize, anyone out of place, he would approach
the person and question them. He and another officer kept

(00:51):
vigil not just at the funeral, but at the graveside too,
because it's no secret. Sometimes the killer shows up. When
the victim is someone they know, a friend, a co worker,
even a romantic partner, it can be a calculated move
to blend in, to look normal, to weep alongside everyone else.

(01:12):
But when the victim is a stranger, that's when it
turns darker. It becomes about ego and power, sitting quietly
in a pew and watching their work on display the grief, devastation,
and chaos that they caused. It isn't just theory. There
are documented cases of killers inserting themselves into the very

(01:33):
funerals of the people they murdered. And on that Tuesday
in September of nineteen sixty eight, it was imperative that
investigators quietly study the crowd, noting any out of place
mourners faces the family didn't recognize, people whose presence couldn't
easily be explained. And then there were the known friends

(01:55):
and colleagues who showed up for Joan Freeman, taking note
if grief seemed genuine or performative. By the conclusion of
Jones's funeral, Lieutenant Kohler had video footage and pages of notes.
But would any of it lead to an answer? The question,
of course, was who murdered the quiet, kind, twenty two

(02:18):
year old. Welcome to method and madness. This is rumors
the murder of Joan Freeman. I'm your host. Dawn and
Today were covering a New Jersey cold case in which
a twenty two year old woman was inexplicably and brutally.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Murdered while at work.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
This crime was so violent that it led the medical
examiner who performed the autopsy to state that he'd never
in his career seen such brutality. I've become familiar with
Jones's case over the past few months and brought to
mind other cases of women murdered under similar circumstances. Will
explore the details and the possibilities of motive throughout the up.

(03:01):
Whether these events happened last year or sixty years ago,
there's no statute of limitations on murder, and no limit
to how much each victim's lives meant, not only to
themselves but to their loved ones. Just a note, if
you like listening to Method and Madness, be sure to
leave a review or a rating on Apple, podcast, Spotify,

(03:23):
or on your favorite podcast platform. It helps spread the
word and make sure you subscribe to the podcast and
follow along on social media. And Now, without further ado,
this is Jones's story. On the radio that summer, the

(03:45):
Rascals asked, why can't.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
You and me learn to love one another.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
It was the late days of nineteen sixty eight, and
though the country was still reeling just months after the
assassinations of Martin Luther King Junior and Robert Kennedy.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Life carried on.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
People went to work. They tried to find normalcy in
the uncertainty. One of them was twenty two year old
Joan Freeman. On Saturday, August thirty first, she clocked in
for overtime at her job as a clerk typist at
Hoffman Laroche, the pharmaceutical giant straddling the Clifton Nutley border.
The sprawling campus employed over three thousand people and was

(04:25):
considered one of the best places to work in North Jersey.
Good benefits a strong safety program, even its own security force.
It was designed to protect against accidents, but not against
what would happen that day. Joan had studied at the
Catherine Gibbs School in Montclair, a one year secretarial program

(04:48):
that opened doors for many young women after high school.
For three years she worked at Hoffman Laroche, and it
was there, behind the high fences and factory walls, that
her life would end by homicide. Born in nineteen forty six,
Joan Carol Freeman was the daughter of Bertram, a World
War Two veteran, and Carolyn. She was the younger sister

(05:10):
of Raymond The family lived in Bloomfield before settling in
West Patterson, today called Woodland Park on Grand View Drive,
a quiet street that still carries whispers.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Of what happened.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Neighbors point to the Freeman home and say softly, that's
where she lived. In photos, Joan is striking her hair
pulled back in a Bardow ponytail in one, and in
her senior portrait she dons a bob reminiscent of Jackie Kennedy.
The caption underneath her senior photo in the West Passaic
yearbook says quote, Joni would like to be a secretary.

(05:46):
She remembers September seventh, nineteen sixty two, her first traffic
ticket and Saint Benedict's senior prom Her main interests include
a certain someone, stuffed animals, miniature golf, and dancing. Her
secret ambition is to spend.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Her honeymoon in Hawaii.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
In quotations are the words the light that lies in
Women's eyes, a line from Thomas Moore's poem The Time
I've Lost in Wooing and listed as her school activities
were arts, crafts, science show, pre nursing club, Spanish club,
leaderts exercises, and tumbling friends described Joan as kind, quiet

(06:27):
and stylish. If asked where she was when John F.
Kennedy was assassinated, she could have answered simply she was
a senior standing on the edge of adulthood. By nineteen
sixty eight, she was an independent young woman building a future,
and on that late summer Saturday, on Labor Day weekend,
she walked into the factory for a shift she would

(06:50):
never leave. Joan's regular workday kept her in Building one
in the Marketing and Research department, But on Saturday, August
thirty first, she carried a stack of punch cards across
the grounds to Building thirty four on Kingsland Avenue, just
one hundred feet from her desk. She needed to feed
them into a data processing machine on the second floor

(07:12):
of the Medical Literature department. By five point thirty that afternoon,
those cars lay scattered across the floor, a reporter later
describing them as strewn about like confetti. Nearby was a
site far more horrifying. A security guard making his rounds
had stumbled onto a pool of blood surrounding a body.

(07:34):
The clothing suggested a young woman, a niche shirt and pants,
but the face was unrecognizable.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
It was Joan.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Her attacker had struck her repeatedly in the back of
the head with a blunt instrument, then slashed her throat
and stabbed her multiple times. One source described her face
as looking like it had been pecked by a chicken.
The brutality was staggering. This was no accident of workplace machinery.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
This was murder.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
The data machine beside her was still humming, switched to
the on position. Joan never had.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
The chance to cry out, let alone escape. The sheer
size of the.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Hoffman Laroche complex complicated the response. Straddling two towns and
two counties, it drew in both Clifton and Nutley. Police
officers sealed off the grounds, combing through all eighty six
buildings with flashlights and spotlights long after dark. They even
searched the sewers looking for any evidence. Investigators said little

(08:37):
about what they found, careful not to reveal too much
before they had a suspect, but eventually one critical clue surfaced.
A wooden mallet identified as the weapon that crushed Joan's skull.
Dozens of such mallets were kept at the plant to
break hardened chemicals from barrels. This one had been turned

(08:58):
into a weapon of slaughter. Jurisdiction briefly stalled the case
Clifton or Nutley, but soon it was established that jones
murder had occurred on the Clifton side, putting the investigation
into the hands of the Clifton Police and Passaic County authorities.
Police Chief Joseph A. Nie released statements to the press,

(09:20):
though his updates were vague. That summer Clifton had already
seen one workplace killing. Just weeks earlier, forty year old
Reuben Alfonsa Williams, a nursing home cook, was shot five
times at his desk by his co worker and girlfriend,
fifty five year old Naomi Jones. The two had gotten

(09:40):
into a heated argument about Reuben's supposed infidelity. Now a
second murder had shaken the community. Doctor William van Vooren,
Assistant County Medical Examiner, conducted jones autopsy. In his many
years of practice, he said he had never seen such brutality.
Joan's skull was crushed in multiple places. Her throat was

(10:04):
slashed so deeply the blade stopped only at her spine.
Van Vooren could not determine whether the blows or the
cuts had come first, but estimated Joan had been dead
for about four hours when her body was discovered, placing
her murder around one thirty pm, not long after she'd
clocked in. She had not been sexually assaulted and was

(10:25):
found fully clothed. One detective put it bluntly, Joan had
been triply killed. Any one of her wounds.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Would have been fatal.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
The headlines were jarring Clifton police hunt murderer of clerk typist.
The communities of Nutley, Clifton, and West Patterson were stunned.
A brutal murder had taken place, not in a dark
alley or an isolated road, but inside the walls of
one of the region's largest employers. Joan's devastated family cooperated

(11:05):
fully with investigators. Her brother, Raymond, voiced what many quietly believed,
that the killer.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Was someone Joan knew.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Investigators agreed the violence felt personal. Joan did have a boyfriend,
but it's uncertain if he was ever cleared as a suspect.
That general uncertainty altered the way locals went about their
daily lives, locking their doors, going places in pairs, and
being more vigilant. And while law enforcement remained tight lipped

(11:36):
during the investigation headlines like roche murder news scarce led
to imaginations going wild. For the Clifton Police and the
Passaic County Prosecutor's office, the task was overwhelming. Time cards
proved that five hundred and nineteen employees punched the clock
that day, including Joan. But then there were the window cleaners,

(11:59):
the construction workers, and contractors. Sixteen investigators were assigned to
the case, but progress was slow. The wooden mallet that
crushed Joan's skull bore no fingerprints. Had the killer worn gloves.
The sharp weapon that slashed her throat was never recovered.
Had the killer brought it in and carried it away.

(12:21):
Detective Edward Snack later explained that the team looked closely
at Joanes's personal and professional life.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
We couldn't find anything bad about her, He said.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
She was a regular working girl, just a good decent kid. Still,
investigators interviewed more than three hundred people, everyone from security
guards to clerks to maintenance staff. They ran background checks,
administered polygraphs, and set up shop inside the Hoffin Laroche
complex to question employees as they came and went. Yet

(12:53):
the more the case dragged, the louder the rumors became.
There was talk of stolen drugs, a case or even
a palette of valium gone missing, had Jones stumbled upon
the theft. One former employee's family later recalled that the
story of a theft circulated heavily among workers. Many convinced

(13:16):
that that was the motive. Others speculated about industrial espionage.
An early official statement didn't help. When pressed about Joan's
work duties, investigators said releasing details might interfere with the investigation.
One newspaper quoted an unnamed source saying she may have

(13:36):
quote seen something she shouldn't have, something so important it
was necessary to shut her up permanently. And then came
the more salacious theories, a love triangle, an affair with
her boss, even claims that she'd been coerced into working
that Saturday so she could be set up. But employees

(13:58):
quickly dismissed that Saturday work, they explained was common at
Hoffman Laroche. Clifton police Chief Josephne tried to shut down
the speculation. He said, we have discussed theft with the authorities.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
There have been no thefts. We do not know the motive.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Assistant County Prosecutor Vincent Hall echoed him, insisting no information
about espionage or stolen secrets had ever been released. Still,
whispers spread faster than facts. Just a week after Jones's murder,
word flew through town that an arrest had been made,
that a suspect had been led away in handcuffs. Prosecutors

(14:39):
had to step in to confirm it was false. The
headline stated, simply, prosecutor denies Freeman case break. That same week,
a county psychotherapist offered his own disturbing theory, leading to
the headline doctor sketch first portrait of Girl's killer. Based
on the ferocity of Jones's wounds and the app sense

(15:00):
of sexual assault, he suggested the killer may have been
sexually attracted to Joan, but impotent, acting outrage born of
frustration or rejection. It was also probable that he was
a psychotic individual. What was clear to both police and
public alike was that Jones's murder was driven by anger, resentment,

(15:21):
something deeply personal.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
Many assumed it.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Had to be a coworker, after all, who else would
nowhere to find her on a Saturday afternoon inside a
secure facility. But by spring of nineteen sixty nine, investigators
publicly walked that back, noting that the grounds were large
enough for anyone to walk in, which meant Jones' killer
might just as easily have come from outside the plant,

(15:45):
possibly someone she knew from her personal life. Either way,
the effect was chilling. A young woman had been slaughtered
in broad daylight, and for the people of Clifton, Nutley
and beyond, a single question remained, was her killer walking
among them? Three months after jones murder, in December of

(16:06):
nineteen sixty eight, Assistant Prosecutor Vincent Paul announced detectives were
packing up their command post at Hoffman Laroche. The campus
had been scoured, searched, and studied. Now the work would
continue from the prosecutor's office in Patterson, and soon a
grand jury would hear the case. In January of nineteen

(16:28):
sixty nine, Prosecutor John Favos went a step further. From
then on, He said every sudden death in Passaic County
would be presented to a grand jury after the local investigation.
That meant Jones' case was officially moving into the courtroom,
even without a suspect. So what did that mean? Here's

(16:49):
where prosecutors in New Jersey had a tool that kept
a case and hope alive. It's called a John Doe indictment,
and instead of charging a named person, they could indict
an unknown suspect described by the details investigators had at
the time. The goal wasn't to solve the case on
the spot, but to preserve the evidence and lock it

(17:11):
into the legal system. That way, if the killer was
ever identified five years later or even fifty, the indictment
could be updated and the case could move forward. Today,
most people associate John Doe indictments with the DNA era,
when prosecutors indicted John Doe defined only by his genetic profile,

(17:33):
waiting for the database to produce a match. But in
nineteen sixty nine, Passaic County used the same strategy in
Joan Freeman's case, even without a name. They were trying
to leave the door open for justice. Over the winter
and spring of that year, more than two hundred people
testified before the grand jury. Detectives, Hoffman, Laroche, employees, Joan's friends,

(17:57):
including her best friend Lauren Garrett. Vincent Hull presented the evidence,
mapping out Jones' movements in the weeks before her murder.
Piece by piece, he laid out her story before the jurors.
On May twenty seventh, nineteen sixty nine, the grand jury
returned an indictment of John Doe. The document was handed

(18:19):
to a superior court judge in Patterson, and the jury
was dismissed. Hull reminded reporters that there was still no
suspects strong enough to charge, but the indictment meant the
case was alive, held open in the eyes of the law.
Was this a breakthrough or simply a way to keep
a terrible crime from fading into silence. In April nineteen

(18:49):
sixty nine, newspapers reported that three new Jersey murders might
be connected. The first went back to September twenty fourth five,
when eighteen year old Alice Jean Eberhardt returned to her
home in Fair Lawn. She just left the nursing school
she was enrolled at to attend her aunt's funeral. Someone

(19:12):
was waiting inside her house. Speculation was that they'd been
waiting behind a bedroom door. Alice was attacked in her bedroom,
stabbed sixty one times, her skull fractured. The front door
had been left unlocked, as it usually was. Her father,
Ross arrived home about two hours later and discovered Alice

(19:33):
on the living room floor. The knife was still lodged
in her throat. Fast forward to February fourth, nineteen sixty nine,
twenty year old Linda Messier pulled her car into the
garage of her Pequinock home just before three am. As
she stepped out, a man rushed her, slashing her arm.

(19:54):
Linda screamed for help, waking her father, forty six year
old Alexander Messi. He ran to protect his daughter, fighting
off the attacker, but was stabbed to death in the struggle.
Linda survived and the assailant fled. Never identified, witnesses described
him as a white man in his forties, about six

(20:15):
feet tall, two hundred pounds, with receding brown hair, wearing
a waist length jacket with a V shaped neckline. And
then there was Joan Freeman. Investigators noted that Joan, Alice,
and Linda all frequented the same four lounges in Patterson,
New Jersey. The connections didn't end there. The Eberhart and

(20:37):
Messier families had once lived just a block and a
half apart in fair Lawn. When the Messiers moved to
Totoa in nineteen fifty seven, Linda wound up at the
same high school as Joan one great apart sharing mutual friends.
One of those friends was a boyfriend of Linda's, whom
Joan tutored later. Joan's family lived only a half mile

(20:59):
from the beauty salon where Linda worked. Just a week
after Alexander Messier's murder, Linda's boyfriend was approached by a
stranger who matched the suspect's description. The man stepped out
of his car, started to speak, then changed his mind
and got back in and drove away. Who was he
and why did he back off? To this day, the

(21:22):
murders of Alice Eberhardt, Alexander Messier, and Joan Freeman remain unsolved.
The amount of secrecy surrounding Joan's case was said to
be unusual back in nineteen sixty eight, and so many

(21:43):
questions still remain. If Joan really was scheduled to work
that Saturday, why didn't anyone notice her absence between one
point thirty in the afternoon and the discovery of her
body four hours later. Was she even on the schedule
that day? And what was the urge in working on
a holiday weekend. Who gave her the assignment to feed

(22:05):
the cards into the machine, and what exactly was she
working on, why the secrecy did she check in with
anyone upon her arrival, and how close was the nearest
employee who might have heard something if it was possible
to just walk into any of the buildings in the complex,
what exactly was the job of security that day? And

(22:27):
does her killer appear in the video footage recorded by
Lieutenant Kohler on the day of Jones's funeral. The answers,
if they exist, are buried in the files from the
three month long grand jury proceedings of nineteen sixty nine. Statistically,
when women are killed at work, the perpetrator is often
an intimate partner, but Jones's case has never fit neatly

(22:50):
into that pattern, which leaves room for another possibility, one
that casts a wider, darker shadow over New Jersey in
the late nineteen sixties, because at the very same time
Joan was killed, another predator was prowling the region. Richard Cottingham,
the so called Torso Killer, would later confess to more

(23:11):
than a dozen murders in New Jersey alone. Could Joan
Freeman have been among his early victims. Some experts think
it's possible Cottingham himself, who's living out his final days
in a New Jersey state prison, denies it, saying he'd
never walk into a random, unfamiliar building to find his
next victim, and in a future episode we'll explore that

(23:35):
angle more closely.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Stay tuned for now.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
What we do know is this, when detectives revisited Joan's
case in two thousand and five, they leaned in a
different direction. Given the high security at Hoffman Laroche, investigators
were convinced her killer was most likely a co worker.
Yet even with that renewed focus, no one has ever
been charged. There been a number of similar cases where

(24:02):
a woman was killed by a coworker while at the workplace.
Twenty six year old Caroline Bington went home on her
lunch break in twenty nineteen to her apartment in Plainsborough,
New Jersey. She interrupted a coworker, Kenneth Sall, who had
broken in to install a camera in which she could
watch Carolyn without her knowledge, he had already installed cameras

(24:22):
outside her apartment, and his obsession escalated. He murdered Carolyn
in her own home that day, and a wellness check
was initiated when she didn't return to work. In twenty
twenty four, Tamara Colazzo walked out of her office at
Allegiance Trucks outside Dallas, Texas to have lunch in her car.
When she returned to her desk, coworker Travis Merrill shot

(24:46):
her five times with the revolver he'd retrieved from his car.
Merril had reportedly become obsessed with watching Tamara on her
lunch breaks was frustrated that she didn't pay him the
attention he craved. Tamara had reported him to each other.
Just this year, thirty nine year old Jennifer Harris, manager
of McDonald's in East Point, Michigan, was stabbed to death

(25:07):
by an employee that she had sent home early. Twenty
seven year old Alfini Muhammad returned to the McDonald's.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Later that day armed with a knife.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
We see examples of obsession in the workplace leading to
violence cases of violence being the answer to conflict. Common
triggers are revenge for perceived injustice, unwanted romantic interest, or
sexual harassment disputes. Studies show that women are almost three
times more likely than men to be murdered on the job,

(25:39):
and for women, they're more likely to be killed by
someone they know while men are more likely to be
killed by strangers. What will it take to close out
jones case today? I suppose it depends on what if
any of the crime scene evidence was preserved. It's possible
that her killer cut himself while stabbing the twenty two
year old to death, opens up the possibility of two

(26:02):
types of blood being collected. Another possibility is under Jones's fingernails.
But most of all, what it takes is the willingness
for detectives or a cold case squad to take another look.
With thousands of unsolved cases in New Jersey, it seems
an impossible task, but I don't intend to stop advocating

(26:22):
for their closure. Joan Freeman never had the chance to
honeymoon in Hawaii, A life unfinished and gone too soon.
Joan Freeman's parents are both deceased. Her father, Bertram passed
away in nineteen ninety and his wife Carolyn in twenty ten.
All three are buried in Glendale Cemetery in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
If you have any.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Information about the murder of Joan Freeman, please contact the
Clifton Police Department at nine seven three four seven zero
five nine zero eight to submit information about the murder
of Alexander Messi, contact the Morris County Prosecutor's Office at
nine seven three two eight five six two zero zero.

(27:08):
To submit tips about the murder of Alice Eberhart, contact
the Fair Lawn Police Department at two oh one seven
nine four five four one zero.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Method and Madness is a completely independent podcast, written, produced
and hosted by me.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
To find out more about the show, including access to
all episodes.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Visit Method and Madness podcast dot com. To support the show,
consider leaving a rating or a review, and.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
To connect them on Instagram at Method and Madness Pod.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
You can find me on TikTok and Facebook as well.
To chat, suggest a case, or to discuss the episode.
Reach out to me at Method and Madness Pod at
gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
That's it for this week. Until next time, take care
of yourself.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
You matter for christis support Text Hello to seven four
one seven four one