Extracted from The McComb Enterprise-Journal (McComb, MS)
Monday, December 9, 1968

Wife Badly Hurt

Pike Man Dies in Family Fuss

A 47-year-old Pike county painter died and his wife was critically injured in what officers termed an apparent murder attempt and suicide over the weekend.

The man was identified by Sheriff Robert “Tot” Lawson as Lloyd Rudolph Freeman who is believed to have plunged a butcher knife into his chest after attacking his estranged wife, Vivian Freeman, with it in her house trailer about 8 p.m. Friday.

Mrs. Freeman remained in Beacham Memorial Hospital, Magnolia, with critical wounds from the knife.

SHERIFF LAWSON said investigating county lawmen Toad Nobles and Willie Hedgelin pieced together these events leading to the stabbings:

Freeman recently was released from jail where he was held on charges arising from an earlier family dispute. He had been warned to stay away from Mrs. Freeman's home in a house trailer near her brother's home in the Centerville Community east of Magnolia.

However, Friday night Freeman apparently parked his car some distance from the trailer and walked to it. Mrs. Freeman was in the trailer with a boy 12 or 13, a relative of hers.

FREEMAN IS SAID to have attacked his wife with a butcher knife, and the boy fled to Mrs. Freeman's brother's home for help.

When the brother, Cecil Pounds, arrived, Freeman had already stabbed himself. Both the man and the woman were taken to the hospital, but the man was dead by the time he got there.

Mrs. Freeman was reportedly improving today, but her condition still remained critical.

Coroner Joe Kennedy said a coroner's ruling in the case is being held open pending further investigation.

SERVICES FOR Freeman, a native of Amite County, were held at 2 p.m. from Hartman Chapel with burial in Tangipahoa Cemetery.

He leaves his son, Lloyd R. Freeman Jr. of Magnolia; two brothers, Carl of Bogalusa and Lewis of Lexington, N.C., and his sister, Mrs. Irma Weems of Summit.