Friends: Freeman, ex-wife were still friends

By SARAH SCHWEITZER

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 17, 2000

TAMPA -- He was a tenacious lawyer who commanded a courtroom with his booming baritone and 6-foot-plus frame. When he spoke, colleagues said, people listened.

Grover Freeman knew how many words he needed to argue a point and used only so many. He played by the rules and often avoided nasty litigation with his innate ability to smooth out the roughest spots.

All of which catapulted him to success, affording him a luxurious home, a fancy sports car and other indulgences.

But Freeman's ability to finesse conflict apparently proved little help Monday night when, sheriff's officials say, his former wife, Katherine Freeman, brought a gun to the house they once shared and shot him to death.

Colleagues and friends said Freeman, 54, made no mention of any tension between the pair in recent days.

"I have talked to three men who are his closest friends, and none of them saw any of this coming," said Patrick Dekle, a lawyer who lived with Freeman in 1980 and 1981, when both men were single. "We were all shocked."

Dekle said Freeman, a serious man with a warm manner, had a large circle of fiercely devoted friends with whom he would have shared troubles with his ex-wife.

Friends described Freeman as a man of intense interests, with a range of hobbies that included piloting a twin-engine plane, tending to a saltwater aquarium that was home to eels and seahorses, and race-car driving.

But chief among his passions, many said, was the law.

He reveled in the practice of law and was one of the area's most skilled practitioners. For nearly 20 years he had cultivated a specialty, representing doctors and other health care workers before state regulatory boards.

Last year, for example, he successfully argued that a doctor who performed a risky procedure on the wrong patient should be allowed to continue practicing medicine. In 1997, he convinced the Board of Medicine that it had revoked a physician assistant's license because of administrative error.

He practiced with the Tampa firm of Freeman, Hunter & Malloy.

His defense of the medical profession, some friends said, was instinctual, since his father had been a thoracic surgeon. But early in his career he had worked on the other side, prosecuting cases for the medical board.

Freeman grew up in Lakeland, an only child, and attended Florida Southern College for two years before transferring to Florida State University. He graduated from the University of Florida College of Law and moved to Tampa.

His first wife died of breast cancer in the 1970s. He lived alone for a number of years, moving into a new Carrollwood home that he attended to with a kind of hyperattention.

"He built a duck feeding station where the lake runs behind his house," said Laurie Winkles, a long-time neighbor and friend. "He was always tinkering with his house, his yard."

In 1986, he married Katherine, an outgoing woman whose personality was a marked contrast to his.

They had one child, Freeman's only, and divorced in 1996, nearly 10 years to the day after their wedding.

In an agreement the pair worked out, Freeman took the lion's share of the property. She got the 1994 Toyota 4Runner, a Prudential stock account and jewelry, along with a lump sum of $110,000, $96,000 in alimony and $1,450 in monthly child support.

He got the marital home, valued at $650,000, several condominiums, various vehicles, including a Lexus and 1962 Porsche, a boat, stock in an aviation company that owns a Cessna aircraft and various bank and stock accounts.

Friends marveled at the amicable nature of the divorce and their ability to maintain a relationship afterward. They talked occasionally and one evening, Winkles said, she had him over to her new house, which was just a short distance from his, for a dinner party.

Even after he remarried, there was little friction. A pattern that had held ever since, friends said.

"Just last Thursday, I saw them all at a sports banquet and it was all very cordial," Winkles said. "Everyone seemed very happy."

-- Staff writer Jeff Testerman and researcher John Martin contributed to this story. Sarah Schweitzer can be reached at (813) 226-3400 or schweitzer@sptimes.com.

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