By Monte Mitchell
JOURNAL REPORTER
The day after the Jan. 24 killings at Ron Hudler's Christmas-tree farm in Grassy Creek, Freddie Hammer packed up and left for the Gulf Coast of Florida.
He had been telling people for weeks that he was planning to go there at the end of the month to see his stepfather, John Frohmander.
Hammer left his truck in the garage at his stepfather's second home overlooking a golf course in West Jefferson and picked up the Ford Thunderbird that his stepfather wanted.
Then he and his wife, Brenda, and their 10-year-old granddaughter left North Carolina for Punta Gorda - an 800-mile trip.
Hammer drove the Thunderbird. Brenda Hammer drove the couple's Chrysler Town and Country van so that they would have a vehicle to make the return trip.
Even before the Hammers reached Florida, a tip came in to the Ashe County Sheriff's Office from someone who knew that the Hammers were on their way out of town.
Hammer had neglected to tell his probation officer that he was leaving the state, a violation of his probation order two months earlier in a worthless-check conviction.
On Saturday night, Hammer and his family went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant that Frohmander wanted the others to try.
None of them knew that a U.S. marshal's task force was watching.
Arrest in Florida
It didn't take long for Hammer's alibi to fall apart.
Investigators had knocked on his door around midnight the day of the killings, and Hammer told them that he had been working at Marlon Krider's place in Todd that morning.
But the fire chief from the New River Volunteer Fire Department saw Hammer heading north on N.C. 16 toward Grassy Creek that morning. And when investigators talked to Krider, he couldn't verify that Hammer had been there that morning.
There's an axiom in law enforcement that without a lead in the first 48 hours, the chances of solving a case are cut in half. Witnesses forget things. Evidence disappears. People cover their tracks.
In less time than that, investigators had their suspect in the killings of Ron Hudler, Fred Hudler, and John Miller Jr.
On Saturday morning, investigators arrived at Hammer's door again, this time armed with a search warrant.
His adult stepson, who lives in a trailer on the property, opened the door. There investigators found rifles, shotguns and at least one pistol, which is illegal since Hammer is a felon and not allowed to own firearms. Investigators also found an empty box for a gun scope.
The stepson told investigators that the scope was mounted on the .22 magnum rifle he had gotten for Christmas. When investigators asked for the rifle, he couldn't find it. A .25-caliber Beretta automatic pistol, one of a pair owned by Brenda Hammer, was also missing.
Investigators seized 10 firearms, along with the empty gun-scope box. They also took a partly empty box of .25-caliber bullets.
The missing weapons and box of ammunition provided another piece of evidence in the growing case against Hammer.
At the murder scene, investigators had recovered .22-caliber and .25-caliber casings. They also found lenses and broken pieces of a scope, one that would have fit in the empty box they found at Hammer's home.
All three victims had a wound consistent with a small caliber gun such as a .25, according to an affidavit filed by investigators. One victim was shot with a larger-caliber bullet, possibly a .38.
Cash had been stolen from a steel gun safe that had been unlocked. Investigators say they believe that Hammer tried to load the safe onto his truck, but gave up and instead opened the safe with the keys.
About 4 p.m. Saturday, investigators found Hammer's truck at his stepfather's home in Ashe County.
Four hours later, investigators returned with a search warrant. The truck had recently been washed. The tires - Uniroyal Liberators - appeared consistent with tire impressions found in the garage in Grassy Creek.
They seized the truck and a ski mask from the stepfather's garage. They also found ammunition and other paraphernalia consistent with the weapons used at Grassy Creek, including an empty .25-caliber Beretta box and a cloth handbag containing a .38-caliber shell. Someone had seen Hammer with a .25-automatic pistol the day before the killings.
U.S. marshals were waiting in Punta Gorda when Hammer and his family arrived back at Frohmander's home after dinner. The marshals and other agents swarmed the truck. They jerked Hammer out and threw him on the ground. The others were ordered to stand against the truck with their hands up.
Hammer was taken into custody on a charge of leaving North Carolina without notifying his probation officer. None of the others were charged with any crime. Hammer went to jail at the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office. The others stayed in a hotel that night as officers searched Frohmander's home. The search-warrant records there are sealed.
By 3 a.m. Sunday, authorities had enough information to charge Hammer with three counts of capital murder in the deaths of Ron and Fred Hudler and John Miller Jr.
Brenda Hammer waited at the Charlotte County Jail to see her husband, talking several times by telephone to her sister, Berna Howell, in Ashe County.
She told her sister about the raid and the television coverage in Florida, but she insisted that her husband was innocent.
"Well, Brenda, they have all this evidence against him," Howell said.
"Well, he didn't do it," Brenda Hammer told her.
Buried evidence
John Miller's family held his funeral the day after Hammer's arrest. Miller's wife, Amanda Clark-Miller, gave the eulogy.
"When John and I started together we were two separate people, but by the time that man was taken from me we had become one incredible being," she said.
She carried his ashes home with her in an urn.
The next day, hundreds of people lined up to pay respects to Ron and Fred Hudler at the Boone Family Funeral Home in West Jefferson. The visitation was scheduled for two hours, but lasted from 6 p.m. until nearly midnight.
Ron Hudler's surviving sons, Dale and Bill Hudler, had harvested a number of Christmas trees and hauled them to the funeral home. They shook hands and hugged people amid a forest of trees they had set up near the caskets.
Father and son were buried in a private ceremony among the hills of Christmas trees in Grassy Creek.
The Hudler family declined to be interviewed for this series, saying that their grief is too fresh, but they have appreciated the outpouring of support they have received. Hundreds of people have driven down the dirt road to gawk at the murder scene, and they want that to stop.
The weekend after the funerals, on Sunday Feb. 3, authorities drove up to Cripple Creek, Va., where Hammer kept a camper.
After his arrest, Hammer told authorities that he visited his camper the morning of the killings. Authorities believe that Hammer drove up to the campsite after the tree-farm killings to dispose of evidence.
They had already searched the camper a week earlier, looking for handguns, a .22-caliber rifle with a damaged scope as well as cash and jewelry belonging to Ron Hudler.
They didn't find these in the camper, but they did seize soap, a loofah scrub, hair fibers and plumbing pipes. Outside they seized partly burned clothing that smelled of kerosene from a fire pit, and a pile of burned debris.
This time, they also searched a neighbor's property, digging through leaves and underbrush in the woods about 150 yards from Hammer's camper.
Hammer's neighbor gave them permission to search the property, so there is no public record of what was found.
"We found evidence that links him to the crime scene," Grayson Sheriff Richard Vaughan said.
Hammer is in jail in Dublin, Va., charged with three counts of capital murder.
His preliminary hearing is set for June 2. He could be tried before the year is out, but his attorneys can ask for a continuance. Hammer faces the death penalty, as required by Virginia law in capital murder cases. If he is convicted, it will be up to a jury to decide whether he is sentenced to death or life in prison without parole.
The guards deliver meals o his windowless cell through a hole in the metal door t. He says he gets out one hour a day to shower and make collect phone calls, usually to his wife. He also gets time for exercise. Officers bring around a razor on Wednesday nights and Sunday nights so he can shave.
Brenda Hammer still lives in the frame house she shared with her husband. She is trying to keep up her husband's firewood business. Someone had cut down the road sign for the business that was on Old N.C. 16, and had torn down another sign.
The kitchen is clean and warm, heated by a wood stove tucked into a corner. There are many figurines of black-and-white cows perched around the kitchen. There's a cow clock on the wall near a "cow crossing" sign. On the wall beside the kitchen table is a framed print of The Last Supper.
She is certain that her husband wasn't involved in the unsolved killing of Tim Shatley. He was at home with her the night that Shatley was killed, she said, and she also believes that her husband is innocent in the disappearance of her nephew, Jimmy Blevins, and in the tree-farm killings.
"If I ever found out he did do anything, I would be the most destroyed person in the world, because I've put my faith in him," she said.
Letter from jail
In February, the Journal wrote Hammer in jail requesting an interview. That letter and those that followed explained that the newspaper was looking into the killings at the Hudler farm, the disappearance of Jimmy Blevins and the killing 30 years ago of Philadelphia police Officer Charlie Uffelman.
His attorneys advise him not to write letters to the newspaper, but he does anyway.
"I don't know what to do," he writes in his last of four letters, postmarked March 3. "I know what I should do and that is take the advise (sic) of my 6 lawyers. Every one of them are totally against myself writing you which is understandable. They say 6 heads are better than one. I believe you when you say you are not in cahoots with the police and I appreciate that. I know your (sic) trying to get to the truth of this matter as I am also."
The guards provide him with paper and a flimsy, rubbery pen. He writes that he is innocent and that authorities are trying to pin the murders on him in revenge for him killing a police officer 30 years ago. He writes of wanting to provide for his family and of returning to the church where he taught Bible study.
"I'm still trying to figure all this out myself, as the police haven't told my attorneys much of anything," he writes in a letter dated Feb. 14. "You may think I'm being overly calm about this whole incident. I'm not. The only thing that's keeping me sane is the fact that I've been here in prison before. I've been run thru the mill, sort of speak. I'm very careful about what I say and who I say it to, because I know what newspapers and TV news can do to one's reputation, one's family. There are a lot of false stories floating around right now. I will make them all clear in due time.
"I'm not saying I'm perfect," he writes. "I'm just not the guy everyone thinks I am because of Jim's disappearance, along with Ron Fred and that other boy's death. Papers and news has made me out to be a monster. So far from the truth."
He signs his name Freddie P.
In a postscript he writes:
"I give you permission to write what is fair and accurate."
A second postscript follows, signed with a smiley face.
"If you go the long haul with me you will not regret the outcome. Promise."
A month ago, he called his wife while she was talking with a reporter. Hammer asked to speak to the reporter, and she handed him the phone.
Hammer said he knows what authorities found in Cripple Creek. He said he has heard that investigators had found either Ron Hudler's briefcase or his lockbox in Cripple Creek.
But he didn't know how the briefcase or the lockbox would have gotten there.
"I don't have a clue," he said. "I'm stuck in here, and I don't know nothing."
He denied any role in the killings at the Hudler tree farm.
"I had nothing to do with none of that whatsoever," he said. "I wasn't even there. They just pointed the finger at me and said, ‘You did it.' I just happened to be in the wrong direction going down the highway."
He said he can explain why he was seen on N.C. 16 on the morning of the killings.
"I'm not denying that whatsoever," he said.
Because authorities didn't ask him for every detail of what he did that Thursday, he said he told them only about working in Todd and left out that he also delivered wood that morning to a customer who lives off N.C. 16, about a mile from the Hudler farm.
Hammer's wife, Brenda, got back on the phone. He was mistaken about the day, she told her husband.
"You took it on Friday," she said. "I know when you took it."
Mildred Rash, a longtime customer of Freddie P.'s Firewood, later confirmed Brenda Hammer's recollection about the delivery to her home.
"It was the day after the killings," Rash said. "We'd already had supper."
■ Monte Mitchell can be reached in Wilkesboro at 336-667-5691 or at mmitchell@wsjournal.com.