Cold Case Files - REOPENED: The Final Fare

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

A taxi driver is dispatched on his last call of the night outside Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Hours later, the driver’s body is found face down by the side of the road, and forty years will pass before the murderer is brought to justice.

An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Use your best judgment. In February of 1961, John Orner was in his 60s and worked the evening shift as a taxi driver. On March 1st, the company that he worked for, State Cab, dispatched him to the officers club right outside Fort Jackson, South Carolina. It was near the end of his shift, so he likely believed it would be his last fare of the night. He wasn't wrong. It was the last fare of the night. It was also his last fair ever.

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. He usually finished up around 11 o'clock, sometime like that, around that time at night. And he would come on home, and he didn't come in. And so everyone knew that something had to be wrong for him not to come in, and he hadn't called in or anything. That was Tom Joyner, John Orner's son-in-law. The morning after John disappeared, his taxi was found abandoned in downtown Columbia. They found his cab, and there were blood spots on the front seat of the cab. That's when they knew that something had happened

to him. The investigators searched the car and besides the blood spots, they found the contents of John's wallet scattered in the back seat. Outside the car, they found pieces of mud stuck under the fender, so they took some samples. The samples were then sent off to be analyzed by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, commonly known as SLED. When the mud was looked at under a microscope, it turned out to be a grainy sand, a huge lead in the case, because that particular type of sand was only found in one place, the Carolina Sandhills. Three days after the cab was found abandoned, a group of police and volunteer searchers

found John's body about 30 miles from Columbia in the Carolina Sandhill region. He had been dumped in a ditch alongside a country road. Detective L.B. Harmon was part of the search group. It was a sad sight. I wouldn't have done a dog that way for them, but I had to kill him for some reason, just throw him out there on the side of that road and down the back one. His body was face down, fully clothed, but his pockets had been turned inside out. He had a single gunshot wound to the back of his head.

During the autopsy, the medical examiner was able to extract three bullet fragments. The fragments were sent to the ballistics department and identified as a specific type of bullet, copper-coated lead ammunition. Detective Harmon asked ballistics if there was a way to identify the type of gun. It wasn't long before he was certain it was from a.32 caliber revolver,

Harrington and Richardson gun, because he had a gun just like it at the time. The investigators visited all the local pawn shops and used gun dealers, looking for a Harrington and Richardson revolver. After a few days, they found a log from a pawn shop called the Capital Loan Company that included the sale of the same type of gun and also the same type of ammunition on February 28, the afternoon before John went missing. The purchase had been made by Edward Freiberger, an Army private at Fort Jackson. The investigators contacted the CID, Criminal Investigation Division of the Army, at Fort Jackson. Unfortunately, Freiberger had gone AWOL the night John Orner

had gone missing. This is investigator Carl Craig. If you buy a weapon at three o'clock in the afternoon on the 28th of February 1961, Mr. Orner takes missing that night. Private Freiberger bought an identical weapon. And when you start to look for him, he's AWOL. Don't have to be a Scotland Yard detective to put two and two together here. Private Freiberger was the only suspect in John's murder. And no one knew where he was for about a month. On March 29, 1961, Tennessee trooper Don Meredith was working the lake shift

when he noticed a man hitchhiking. Here's trooper Meredith. I encountered this hitchhiker just east of town, and I stopped to check him out just to see who he was and what the situation. And he said he was in the Army. And he proceeded to talk, and I determined he was AWOL. Meredith took the man into custody and patted him down for weapons, discovering a gun. It was loaded, and he told me he just bought it in a pawn shop in Knoxville.

Trooper Meredith learned that the hitchhiker was a man named Edward Freiberger, and not only was he AWOL, he was also a suspect in a murder. Meredith also realized the gun he confiscated could have been the murder weapon. So the sheriff in Richland County called me to see if I had this certain gun, and he wanted to know if he could get it, was wanted in a murder case. And I said, certainly. Freiberger was locked up in a military stockade, and his gun was sent to South Carolina to be examined by SLED's ballistic team.

The gun arrived in Columbia on April 20th, and a quick check of the serial number proved it was the same gun sold by the Capital Loan Company to Freiberger. The next step was to connect the bullet fragments collected during the autopsy to the gun. The sheriff took it to Mr. Cate, who examined the gun along with several other guns. He eliminated several weapons, but did not eliminate this gun. The examination couldn't eliminate the gun as the possible murder weapon.

It also couldn't conclude that it was likely the murder weapon. So while the discovery of the gun was compelling, it was not direct evidence. The district attorney chose not to pursue murder charges, despite Meredith and Craig's thoughts. I don't know why it didn't happen. I think anyone would agree that that's very strong circumstantial evidence. They had the gun and they had the man. Should have been prosecuted. That's all I'll say. He wasn't prosecuted, though, and it took 40 years for another lead to be discovered. Tom Joyner and his wife went to church every Sunday to pray for

answers in his father-in-law's case. In September of 1999, Tom felt a change. It came to me while I was in church to do something. And it just, it gave me a feeling that something is going to happen. And it happened. What happened was that Tom ran into an old friend, Bill Brown, who was a captain at the Sheriff's Department. So I asked Bill if he could find out what the status of that case was. And he said, I'll see what I can find out for you. In Columbia, there was a three-man team dedicated to solving cold cases.

Captain Brown paid a visit to the team after speaking with Tom Joyner. This is investigator Carl Craig. Bill Brown stopped by my cube and asked me specifically if I had remembered a murder taking place at Fort Jackson of a cab driver in 1961. And I said, yes, I do. His name was Orner, and the suspect was named Freiberger. Craig was the only officer who remembered John Orner's murder. Detective Brown explained that he went to church with John's only living relatives

and that they still prayed for the case to be solved. He told me that he went to church with the only remaining relatives of Mr. Orner, and he asked me if I would take another look at the case. I told him I would. Craig and his partner, Investigator Brian Metz, pulled out the Orner case file for the first time in 40 years. This is Investigator Metz. I was amazed. Finding a file like that sometimes can be the hard part. And, you know, that was not a hard part for us. We had it.

The hard part was going to be finding the people who wrote the reports in the file and the evidence that those reports were describing. I found that all nine people who touched this case were dead. I looked for the evidence and I couldn't find any. The gun was gone. Where was it? The cold case detectives found the reports of the firearm testing that was conducted at SLED.

And even though they knew it was a long shot, they decided to contact them to see if they still had the gun. They spoke with Ira Parnell, the supervisor in the firearm lab. And when they called, I said, you're not going to believe this, but I have the evidence basically in my hand, and it's in very good condition. And they almost came through the phone. Needless to say, Metz was shocked that the long shot had paid off. I mean, I had to ask him again, you have what?

And he, yeah, we have the guns. Parnell found the bullet fragments pulled from John Orner's skull and two identical.32 caliber Harrington and Richardson pistols, one of which was the gun taken from Edward Freiberger in 1961. The cold case investigators asked Parnell to re-examine the evidence to see if a match might now be possible. He compared the test fires with the bullet fragments pulled from John's skull. Like the previous ballistic examiner in 1961, Parnell concluded that the evidence was close, but not quite a match. Here's Parnell again.

I was very close. If I had had anything else to support it on another section of bullet, then I might well have gone with a positive. Unfortunately for the investigators, they were in the same place where the original investigation had come to a standstill. This is Investigator Craig again. So we still have this weapon. It's gone through two examiners now. It's inconclusive. They won't say it is, and they can't say it isn't.

The weapon that killed Mr. Warner. Disappointed, but also determined, the investigators decided to try something a little different. It was decided that let's go outside to an independent firearms examiner and see what they say. If they say it's inconclusive, we can wrap this thing up and put it back in the box once it came.

In February of 2001, the investigators contacted John Caton, who was a criminalist and a firearm tool mark examiner. He had worked for the Kansas City Police Department for 31 years and then opened his own forensic lab. This is John Caton. The bullet was in three pieces. There was fragments. In examining the bullets, there was still some blood and tissue on the bullets, and I cleaned that. Caton hoped that cleaning the bullets might reveal more of their surface,

so there would be more visible rifling marks, scratches on the bullet made when it exits the gun. He soaked the fragments in a solution of warm water, saline, and soap. Then he used a sonic agitator to loosen any remaining bits of tissue. When he was finished, the fragments were examined once again

to see how they compared with the test fires from Freiberg's gun. There was sufficient identifiable, predictable, reproducible pattern on the question bullet matching it to the test bullet that I'd fired. Simply put, it was a match. Caton called the investigators to let them know the results. Here's investigator Craig again. He called my chief and says, you have the murder weapon.

The Freiburger murder weapon is the weapon that fired these three fragmented projectiles. In the third examination of the bullet fragments, the cleaning had made the difference, and a forensic match, possible. The procedure that John Caton used was a lot different than SLED used. He cleaned the projectile in a manner which hadn't been done before. That was the crucial point in identifying it. In August of 2002,

a jury returned the verdict. Guilty of murder in the first degree. 41 years after the fact, Edward Freiberger was found guilty of killing John Orner. Investigator Carl Craig had worked the case for free, volunteering his time to the cold case unit. Tom Joyner believed that his family's faith in a higher power was an essential part of solving the case. I call it a divine intervention case.

I don't know how many people believe a divine intervention case. I don't know how many people believe in divine intervention, and I say divine intervention in this case because it happened in church. Oh, yes, definitely divine intervention. I definitely believe so. And when Carl mentioned that fact to me as the case was over, I said, Carl, you are right on the money. You are there, my friend.

Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz and Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me at Brooke Giddings on Twitter and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group Podcast for Justice. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETv.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at aetv.com slash real crime.