On March 12, 1846 around 9:30am on a Thursday, William Freeman vigilantly approached a farmhouse in a small town called Fleming. While approaching the house carrying a knife in each hand, Sarah Van Nest walked out the back kitchen door only to be attacked by Freeman stabbing her and inflicting a single deep wound in her abdomen. Sarah, trying to run to get help, died only moments later. Freeman then entered the house thorough the back door to instantly confront Sarah's forty-one year old husband, John G. Van Nest. Freeman then stabbed John Nest in the chest and the heart causing his immediate death. Freeman still remaining discontent, stabbed their sleeping two-year-old son, George Washington Van Nest with such brutality that the knife passed completely through the child's body. Continuing on with his rampage, Freeman then attacked Cornelius Van Arsdale, a hired man, and wounded him in the chest. Freeman then encountered Sarah's mother, Mrs. Phebe Wyckoff, who had now armed herself with a butcher knife. Freeman then slashed the seventy-year-old lady inflicting a deep wound. Mrs. Wyckoff, badly wounded, attempted to run to the neighbors to warn them. In this process, Mrs. Wyckoff also died. Freeman was finally captured at the Van Nest house by authorities. By this time, Freeman had murdered a husband, a wife, their two-year-old son, and a mother-in-law and badly wounded the hired man (Spiegel, 1998: 227). The town was entirely traumatized by this gruesome event. Three months later on May 18, 1846, Freeman was convicted of "feloniously, willfully, and of malice aforethought, and from a premeditated design to affect the death of the said John G. Van Nest, did kill and murder, against the peace and dignity of the people of the State of New York" (Spiegel, 1998: 227). After being indicted of this, Freeman was scheduled a court date for June 1, 1846 at the Auburn Courthouse. On this day, he entered the plea of insanity.
