'THE ULTIMATE PERSONIFICATION OF EVIL'

Prologue

“Some guy’s on the line, asking for you,” the young copy clerk announced as she stood at my desk in the newsroom of the St. Petersburg Times. “He sounds kooky, weird. He yells. You might take a pass on this one.”

It was early February 1982, and I had recently begun writing a column for the Times after about three years as a reporter there. I was struggling. Column writing wasn’t as easy as it looked. Compelling topics were hard to come by. Thus I was reluctant to blow off even the looniest of callers without at least a quick hearing.

“You get a name?” I asked as she turned and walked toward the city desk.

“I think he said ‘Good’ or something close to it. First name’s ‘Bud.’ ”

Bud Good? I rolled that through my mind and drew a blank. Seconds later, the telephone jangled, and when I lifted the receiver to my ear I was immediately assailed by a gravelly baritone that sounded like a badly out-of-whack cement mixer.

D’ALESSANDRO “This is Bud Goode calling from Fort Myers. My son’s name is Arthur Frederick Goode the third — we call him Freddy — and he murdered a little boy down in this area about six years ago. Sex crime. Freddy’s set to be executed on the second of March. That bastard (then-Gov. Bob) Graham just signed the death warrant. Listen, Freddy’s crazier than hell and dumber than a box of rocks, and they’re gonna execute him. The State of Florida’s gonna execute a crazy moron. It’s a disgrace, an absolute disgrace.”

I listened in stunned silence.

“You still there?” Bud bellowed.

“Yeah, but I’m wondering why you called me.”

“I called you,” Bud said slowly, as if lecturing a child, “because I want you to write about this case and show what an injustice killing Freddy would be. That’s what the hell I want. How soon can you get on it?”

“Let me do some checking, and I’ll get back to you.”

“Fine. Do your checking. But you better hurry; they’re gonna fry my boy in a month. If you won’t do it, I gotta find somebody else.”

I undertook a quick investigation into the case of Freddy Goode. It didn’t take long to put together the bare bones of the story. Freddy grew up near Baltimore, living with his mother, father and three sisters. In one of those inexplicable quirks, the sisters all turned out to be perfectly normal. Bud worked as a water and sewer inspector and as a milk delivery driver. Mildred Goode, Freddy’s mother, was a housewife. In 1975, Bud and Mildred retired to the Fort Myers area.

Freddy, who was 27 years old in 1982, had been in constant trouble in Maryland. He couldn’t keep his hands off of little boys. He was a chronic pedophile, a sexual predator.

The last scrape with the law was serious, but Freddy’s lawyers worked a deal. In exchange for dismissal of multiple charges of child molestation, Freddy voluntarily admitted himself for treatment at a psychiatric hospital in Baltimore. Freddy quickly tired of treatment, however, walked out of the hospital and made his way to south to be with his parents. Bud insisted that arrangements were being made for Freddy to return to the hospital in Maryland, but that red tape slowed the process. Whatever the delay, it proved fatal to Jason Verdow.

SMITH On March 5, 1976, Freddy lured Jason, a 9-year-old Cape Coral boy, from a school bus stop at the intersection of Patterson Street and Old Pondella Road. Freddy took Jason to nearby woods, where the child was raped and strangled. The body was discovered the next day.

Not long after the murder, Bud and Mildred Goode, who later insisted they did not know Freddy had killed Jason, put their son on a Greyhound bound for Baltimore and told him to re-enter the hospital. Freddy skipped hospitalization once again and went on the prowl. He kidnapped a 10-year-old named Billy Arthes, a newspaper delivery boy, in suburban Baltimore. With Billy in tow, Freddy fled to Virginia, where he snatched 11-year-old Kenneth Dawson. As Billy Arthes watched in horror, Freddy raped and strangled the Dawson boy and hid the body in a wooded area.

Freddy was captured and Billy Arthes was rescued in Virginia on March 24, 1976, nine days after Billy was taken from the streets. Freddy was tried for the Dawson murder, with Billy as the star witness. He received a life sentence; Virginia had no death penalty at the time.

Freddy was brought back to Florida and tried in Fort Myers in 1977 for the Verdow murder. He was again convicted — Billy Arthes testified in that case, also — and the sentence this time was death. Unlike the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Florida was itching to exterminate Freddy Goode. Appeals dragged on, but it appeared, in February of 1982, that Freddy might be executed on March 2.

As unsettling as the basic facts were, they were made worse by Freddy’s outrageous behavior. His trial in Fort Myers was a circus, with Freddy performing in the center ring. His professed goal was to kill at least one little boy in every state. He held a surreal press conference. He threatened to burn and mutilate jurors. He bragged about the killings. He sent graphic letters describing the sexual violation and brutalization of his victims to their families. After Billy Arthes testified, Freddy reached out as the boy passed the defense table. Freddy grabbed Billy’s hand and pressed into it a piece of candy. “I love you, Billy,” he said, looking soulfully the bewildered child’s eyes. “Goodbye.”

Throughout the trial and later, Freddy insinuated that the boys he defiled, terrorized and even murdered had enjoyed their time in his company and that he “loved” him. He lobbied loudly for the legalization of pedophilia. He outspokenly called for his own execution and the execution of others on Death Row. He salaciously coveted the small sons of other inmates after catching glimpses of family photographs in their cells. Simply put, Freddy could not keep his damn mouth shut.

DOBBERT He became known as the Most Hated Man on Death Row, which was no mean feat, considering that Ted Bundy was a neighbor. If Freddy had been placed in the general population at Florida State Prison, inmates and guards alike would have tripped over one another in the scramble to get their hands on him.

That is where the case stood on the day Bud Goode telephoned me. Helluva story, I thought. Great column material. I called Bud and said I would pursue it.

Those telephone conversations with Bud Goode were my portal into the world of Freddy Goode. In the intervening years, I have thought — on more than one occasion — that I should have heeded the advice of the copy clerk and passed on Bud’s call.

But I didn’t.

And so here I sit, writing once again about a man who was a walking plague on defenseless young males. Appeals and stays kept Freddy out of the electric chair until 1984. When they finally threw the switch, nearly seven years after the conviction in Fort Myers, there wasn’t a wet eye in the place, I’ve been told.

Twenty-five years have passed since the execution, and, despite efforts to erase Freddy from my memory, he remains with me. Not a constant presence, but a presence all the same.

As I learned in the course of reporting this story, I am not alone.

Part One: The Lawyers

BUD AND MILDRED GOODE Joe D’Alessandro and Wilbur Smith worked opposite sides of the legal street in the Jason Verdow murder case. Mr. D’Alessandro, the prosecutor, sought to have Freddy Goode executed. Mr. Smith, who handled Freddy’s post-conviction appeals, fought to save his client’s life.

At my invitation, the 70-year-old Mr. D’Alessandro, who spent more than 35 years as a prosecutor in Lee County, sits in a booth at a local McDonald’s, sipping coffee with an ice-water chaser, and recalls his impressions of Freddy Goode. Dressed in shorts, T-shirt and sports cap, Mr. D’Alessandro could pass for a wellto do snowbird whiling away an afternoon with idle chatter. But his relaxed appearance is at odds with the subject at hand.

“When I think of Freddy Goode, I think of evil, the ultimate personification of evil,” Mr. D’Alessandro says. “You know, that case still bothers me, bothers me greatly, and it’s been what, 30 some odd years? I’ve been in a lot of situations. I saw a lot of horrible things as state attorney. Terrible crimes, bad, bad people. I’m no innocent. I’ve seen more than my share. But Freddy Goode, well, he reached in and touched something deep inside me. Something I didn’t even know existed in me until I came across him. It was like he reached in my gut and pushed a button. I didn’t want to just prosecute him, I wanted to hurt him. I mean physically hurt him with my own two hands. If I had had many cases like Freddy Goode, I probably could not have continued as a prosecutor. It was way too emotional.”

Mr. D’Alessandro debated attending Freddy’s execution before finally deciding to stay away.

Arthur Frederick Goode was convicted of sexually molesting and murdering two young boys, one here in Southwest Florida. He was executed in Florida 25 years ago. “I talked myself out of going,” he recalls. “I wanted to go. I didn’t go because in the back of my mind I knew that I wanted to see him die. I knew that his death would make me happy. That troubled me, being happy like that because somebody is dead. Part of my religion (Mr. D’Alessandro is Catholic) is that I’m not supposed to be happy when somebody dies, under any circumstances.”

Despite his conflicted feelings, Mr. D’Alessandro remains certain that death was the appropriate punishment for Freddy Goode.

“What else could you do?” he asks. “If ever there was a case that called for the death penalty, it was this one. I have no qualms about that. Yet, the emotions it brought out in me still make me uneasy. And, yes, it’s fair to say that Freddy Goode remains stuck in my head. Anyone who met him, who spent any time with him, felt the same way. He was that sort of guy.”

Wilbur Smith took heat for his representation of the notorious murderer/child molester. Even close friends were appalled and openly wondered how he could work to spare Freddy from the electric chair.

Kevin Pierce, who covered Freddy’s trial in 1977 as a wide-eyed 19-year-old reporter for a local radio station, says passions ran extraordinarily high, and the reaction of Mr. Smith’s friends was indicative of the atmosphere surrounding the case.

“You have to realize that in 1977, Fort Myers was still a small town,” Mr. Pierce says. “Something this monstrous simply didn’t happen in this area. That’s what people thought at the time. It wasn’t a crime of passion or an argument gone wrong. This was something altogether different, and it shocked this community.”

Mr. Smith, 64 years old and a former Fort Myers mayor, says he was approached by Bud and Mildred Goode to represent their son at trial. Freddy dismissed him, however, because Mr. Smith wanted to keep his client off Death Row. Freddy wished to be executed, he told Mr. Smith.

Later, Mr. Smith was retained by the parents to appeal the death sentence. Among Mr. Smith’s arguments was one that Freddy should be studied, not executed. Perhaps, Mr. Smith said, the medical and scientific community could learn from Freddy’s pathology and prevent similar tragedies down the road. The appellate courts, however, were having none of that.

“If anybody is insane, this guy was insane,” Mr. Smith says now. “We shouldn’t execute the insane. I believe that. But Freddy didn’t meet the criteria the law sets for insanity. He wasn’t paranoid, he wasn’t schizophrenic, so he slipped through the cracks of what is defensible insanity. I made the argument that the governor should grant clemency in the case. Not to set him free; no one wanted that. I wanted (Freddy) to be studied. That guy was a walking laboratory. I believe we could have learned a lot from him. He was coherent, and he was more than willing to talk about his innermost thoughts. We could have benefitted by making him a laboratory experiment.”

Duane Dobbert is professor of criminal forensic studies at Florida Gulf Coast University and a nationally recognized expert who has written extensively about sexual predators and serial killers. Dr. Dobbert was unfamiliar with the Freddy Goode case (it predated his move to Florida), but he agreed to read some material relating to it. It is his opinion that Freddy Goode would have been an ideal subject for research.

“I would have loved the opportunity to interview him,” Dr. Dobbert says. “(Researchers) are capable of manipulating these people to get truthful responses. (Freddy) could have been a gold mine of information. He was the classic sexual sadist, and from what I’ve read, one of the worst. In that respect, he was something special.”

Like Mr. D’Alessandro, Freddy has taken residence in Mr. Smith’s psyche. As proof, Mr. Smith reaches into a desk drawer at his law office in downtown Fort Myers. He produces a tattered piece of yellow, legalsized paper. It is a letter dated “3-17-79,” and it was written — in an odd mixture of cursive and childlike block letters — by Freddy Goode. It is addressed to the parents of Kenneth Dawson, the boy Freddy killed in Virginia.

“Freddy gave it to me and asked me to mail it to the Dawsons, but I could not do that,” Mr. Smith recounts. “In it he apologizes for killing their son, but he does it in such a way that it is hurtful. I could not send it to those people. And yet, for some reason, I could not bring myself to throw it away. It’s been in my desk for all these years. I’ve never saved anything like that connected with a case, before or since.”

“He was one of the NICEST boys I ever saw,” Freddy wrote about the boy he raped and murdered. At another point, Freddy told the child’s parents, “I will arrange to have some FLOWERS sent to you.”

I read the letter and handed it back to Mr. Smith. “Quintessential Freddy Goode,” I say.

Mr. Smith shakes his head, refolds the letter and returns it to the desk drawer.

“Yes,” he says, “quintessential Freddy Goode indeed.”

Part Two: Bud and Mildred Goode

Mildred Goode, Freddy’s mother, greeted me at the front door of their home. It was a gray, drizzly day in February 1982, and it looked as if a pewter lid had been clamped over the whole of Southwest Florida.

“Bud’s in the kitchen, mixing a drink,” she said. Mrs. Goode wore batwing glasses, and her head was crowned with what looked to be an inexpensive, silver wig that tilted slightly starboard.

The home was modest but well kept, and Bud was found, as promised, in the kitchen preparing a cocktail from a half-gallon bottle of Jim Beam. He poured with a heavy, heavy hand.

“You want a drink?” he asked. I declined, and he didn’t press the point.

He topped a tall glass of bourbon and ice with a faint splash of ginger ale and told me to follow him to the back porch, where Mildred awaited and nearby palms stirred in the damp breeze.

Bud eased into his favorite chair, took a long pull of his drink and let out with a satisfied “aahhh.”

“Nothin’ better than the first sip of the first drink of the day,” he observed as he abandoned his libation long en ough to light an L&M cigarette. “Some folks might think this is too early in the day to be drinking (it was a few minutes past 2 p.m.), but this old doc told me years ago that if you’re not an alcoholic by the time you reach 40, you’re never going to become one. Hell, I’m 67, so I guess I’m in the clear on that one.”

Bud raised his glass again, looked me square in the eyes and said, “OK, what do you want to know?”

For the next three hours or so, Bud and Mildred Goode talked about Freddy. About how the pregnancy that produced Freddy had been a surprise (Mrs. Goode was 39 a t the time and going through early menopause). She didn’t carry him full term, and he was a small baby who required an incubator. They talked about how he was strange, even as a child. About how his adolescent years had been a nightmare, filled with unexpected visits from police officers and angry parents who appeared at the Goodes’ front door, demanding to know why Freddy acted the way he did around their young sons.

Psychiatric help proved futile. So, driven to exasperation, the Goodes, especially Bud, resorted to bizarre stratagems designed to alter Freddy’s behavior during the years they lived in Maryland. Bud attempted to get Freddy addicted to alcohol, figuring that if his son remained stupefied he would be incapable of bothering little boys. Turned out that Freddy hated strong drink; he preferred ice cream. Bud arranged a sexual liaison between Freddy and a mentally challenged teenaged girl in the neighborhood. Freddy still preferred little boys. And then they beat Freddy (“It was like whippin’ a damned dog… He could never figure out why I was doin’ it,” Mildred told me), but that produced no change in his behavior.

Most troubling to me, though, was the Goodes’ conduct following Jason Verdow’s murder. They denied even suspecting that Freddy was involved. But I learned that on the evening of March 6, 1976, shortly after the late news ran a long piece on the discovery of Jason’s body, a neighbor heard Bud screaming at his son.

“Did you kill that boy?”

Shortly thereafter, Freddy was put on a bus to Baltimore. That decision directly led to the kidnapping of Billy Arthes and the kidnapping and the murder of Kenneth Dawson.

Bud told me he couldn’t recall screaming at his son, and he became increasingly agitated as the interview progressed from that point. He was a disturbing man, still lean, leathery and muscular at 67. Bud wore large, thick glasses, and his hangdog features were as lined and creased as a trail boss’s saddle. Throughout the interview, he fairly hummed with nervous energy and was variously cooperative and combative. As the drinks added up, the abrasive side sharpened.

When I finally called an end to the interview, Bud said, “When the hell are you going to talk to Freddy?”

“Two days from now,” I said.

Bud remained on the back porch, finishing his fourth or fifth liver-wilting bourbon and ginger, while Mildred showed me out.

“When you see Freddy, will you tell him I love him?” she said at the door.

I told her I would, but I never did.

Part Three: Jason’s family

I attempted to interview Jason Verdow’s parents in 1982. I never reached them, but I somehow got in touch with Lance Verdow, Jason’s older brother. I cannot now recall how that came to pass. Lance, who was 23 at that time, told me that his parents did not wish to comment.

“My parents have had people after ‘em to talk for six years,” he explained. “Life goes on, but we just don’t like to be reminded of it all the time.”

This time around, however, Jason’s mother did speak to me, although she remains wary of the media.

“I’m very cautious,” she says. “I don’t talk about how (Jason) was killed or any of those details, because I don’t know them, and I don’t want to know them.”

She is 69 years old, and her name now is Helen Hubbard. She and Jason’s father, Walter, were divorced at the time of the murder, and she has remarried.

She says Lance was correct; she couldn’t speak about the crime in 1982. She says she did not come to grips with the tragedy until 1990 — 14 years after it occurred.

What brought about the change?

“What actually happened is that after all that time I finally gave it over to God,” she says. “I never stopped going to church, really, after it happened. But I just couldn’t get past it until God took it over.”

In 1990, Mrs. Hubbard put her newly found strength to work and founded the Southwest Florida chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, which helps affected mothers and fathers work through the grief and anger that inevitably accompanies such a crime.

“(Founding the group) was as much therapy for me as for anybody who came to the meetings,” she says. “Every week we would go around the circle and each person would tell their story. It helps. It really does. For 15, maybe 20 years, I don’t know, I could not say the words ‘sexually assaulted’ and ‘strangled.’ That was how my child died, but I just couldn’t say it. If someone who didn’t know the details asked, I would just say that my child had died and leave it at that.”

Of her son’s murderer, she says: “I never forgave Arthur Goode for what he did. Am I supposed to forgive him? I never blamed his parents in any way. I don’t dwell on it. When I gave it up to God, I gave it up. I feel as if I remain a work in progress. But, you know, people will say things, and they mean well, but I have to step back and take a breath, knowing that they don’t mean to be hurtful.”

What sort of comment arouses those feelings? I ask.

“The worst is when people say that it’s God’s will,” she replies quickly. “It was not God’s will.”

Lance Verdow is 51 years old and lives in Tennessee. He does not recall our conversation of 27 years earlier, but he is willing to talk nonetheless.

He says he is glad Freddy Goode was executed, but, in the end, his death did little to ease the Verdow family’s pain.

“I mean, Jason’s still gone, isn’t he? Killing (Freddy) didn’t bring Jason back,” he says. “I don’t know if the taking of one life justifies the taking of another life, but I am 100 percent in favor of capital punishment. But if they had really wanted to punish him, they should have given him life and put him in with all the other inmates. That would have been real punishment.”

A Cape Coral park was named in Jason’s honor, and while Lance says he appreciates that gesture, even well-intentioned reminders are just that — reminders of a horrible occurrence.

“For a while, you just couldn’t get away from it,” Lance says. “That was tough.”

The Verdows moved to Southwest Florida from Upstate New York in 1969, when Jason was 3 years old. For a time, Walter and Helen managed a travel-trailer park, and she says the park’s residents loved the little boy.

“They knew he was special,” she says.

What was Jason like?

Mrs. Hubbard lets out a hearty laugh at that question. The laugh is neither bitter nor sad. It is a laugh filled with love. A mother’s love.

“He was the perfect child,” she says. “I know you’re thinking this is what all mothers believe. But in Jason’s case it was true. He was very outgoing, energetic and intelligent. He loved baseball. He was sweet. He was an angel, an absolute angel. And he was put here for a reason. I believe that. He was here for a reason. He touched a lot of people in just 9 years.”

Does she have any idea what that reason was?

There is no laughter, just a long pause. Finally, Mrs. Hubbard says: “I don’t really know. But I know there was a reason. Maybe it was to make me the person I am today. But I can’t say for sure. There definitely was a reason, and I still miss him.”

Part Four: A Visit to Death Row

The guard at Florida State Prison who escorted me to my appointment with Freddy Goode was a tubby, pear-shaped young man with a thick cap of tightly curled red hair. He said nothing as we made our way through a succession of steel doors on our way to the interview room.

The interview room was surrounded by windows, and I could see Freddy, sitting in a straight-backed chair. His dark hair was combed into Prince Valiant bangs, and even at a distance, his prison pallor was remarkable. A profusion of acne craters gave his face the look of a lunar landscape, and he had black eyes that were set deep in his head. Although Freddy was alone, his eyes darted from side to side, as if he anticipated an attack from an enemy hidden somewhere within the room. He was a man of medium height, slim but soft, his physique seemingly devoid of muscle tone and definition.

My escort unlocked the interview room and stepped aside.

“Just a suggestion,” he said. “Be careful with this son of a bitch.”

“Careful?”

“Yeah, don’t let him get to you.”

“Get to me?”

“You know, mess with your mind. He’s good at that.

Tune him out, if it gets too heavy.”

It was the best piece of advice that I never took.

The heavy door slammed shut, and Freddy arose from his chair. I extended my right hand and Freddy recoiled, as if he feared I might strike him. When he realized t hat I intended nothing more than a courtesy handshake, he offer ed his right hand, which was joined to his left by metal cuffs. It was then I remembered that Freddy used his hands to kill, and I felt the first rush of queasiness. Many more such rushes were to follow.

We were barely in our chairs when Freddy asked me, “How old do you think I look?”

I knew he was 27, but I gave an honest answer. “I’d say 20, maybe 21.”

That displeased Freddy, and he stuck out his lower lip in a pout. “Most people think I look about 18 or even 17. They can’t believe how old I really am. You see, I’m very immatur e. I ’ m just like a little kid myself.”

For about an hour, Freddy rambled. He extolled the delight of having sex with young boys, wondered why society chose to “persecute” him because of his sexual preferences and declared that he still enjoyed watching “kiddie shows” on the small, flickering black-and-white television set that was stationed across from his isolated prison cell.

“I have remorse now for the kids I murdered,” he said in a manner that suggested rehearsal. “I know you’ve heard about all the bad letters I wrote the families, but I wouldn’t do that now; I’m sorry for it… I just wish I could bring those kids back. But I guess people don’t believe me.”

I asked Freddy how his remorse affected him. Sleepless nights? Loss of appetite? Crying spells?

“Huh?” he responded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But Freddy proved quite loquacious when asked about his violent sexual fantasies.

“Sex with a little boy is such a beautiful thing,” he said. “There are ways to do anything, and there ought to be a way to do (pedophilia). I love it.”

Freddy said if the state would release him and give him a child to care for, all would be right.

“Maybe they could give me an orphan,” he said. “I’d take real good care of him. You know, a lot of people think I’m one of the most politest people ever was.”

After more than an hour of this psychotic claptrap, I signaled to for a guard.

The same young man who led me in, led me out.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“How do you think it went?”

“I can only guess, but I’ve got a pretty good ide a. ”

“I’ll bet you do,” I said.

He chuckled as we approached the final exit. “Sweet dreams” were his parting words.

I took a deep breath as I stepped into the fresh air outside the prison. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than a stiff drink, such as the one Bud Goode had offered two days earlier.

It was a long drive back to St. Petersburg.

Part Five: Billy Arthes

“The most incredible thing about this whole case may be that boy who Freddy Goode kidnapped up in Maryland but somehow lived to tell about it,” says Joe D’Alessandro, the former prosecutor. “And the way he testified at the trial here. I don’t know how he did it. He was an amazing kid.”

That “amazing kid” is Billy Arthes. He is 44 years old now and lives near Baltimore with his wife and three children. He is registered nurse and works at Johns Hopkins. His life is good. But for years, his life was hell, and Freddy Goode was the cause.

“Let me say upfront that I am leery of the media,” Mr. Arthes says over the telephone from his home in Maryland. “The media takes thing out of context and twists them. I’ve seen this personally. In my view, the media always glorified Arthur Goode, and I can understand why. He was a very interesting figure, a parent’s nightmare. But that’s all he was — a nightmare. Northing more.”

Mr. Arthes continues: “I’ve been approached for interviews, and people have talked to me about doing books or a movie. ‘No,’ that’s what I say. This is a sensitive subject, very painful. Arthur Goode left a path of destruction that was absolutely devastating to many people.”

Despite his misgivings, Mr. Arthes consents to an interview, which lasts more than 90 minutes. Throughout the conversation he is articulate, cooperative and cordial.

Mr. Arthes was a 10-year-old paperboy when Freddy Goode abducted him on March 15, 1976, two blocks from his home in suburban Baltimore. Like many survivors of traumatic events, Mr. Arthes says numerous details of the nine-day abduction are lost to him. He cannot, for example, remember the day of the week or the time of the day the abduction took place. His mind has simply erased much of the ordeal, which must be something of a blessing.

Mr. Arthes didn’t need to work as a child. His father, Frederico, was a research physician, and the doctor believed in the value of work at an early age. Mr. Arthes says he used the proceeds from his newspaper route to buy tickets to home games of the Baltimore Orioles.

Mr. Arthes was with Freddy Goode when Kenneth Dawson was kidnapped in Virginia. Freddy forced his young captive to witness the Dawson boy’s murder.

“I was no more than an arm’s length away when he killed him,” Mr. Arthes recounts. “I cannot begin to describe the horror and fear that I felt.”

Mr. Arthes says he has no idea why he survived his ordeal and Kenneth Dawson and Jason Verdow did not.

“I just did what I could do to stay alive,” he says. “I’ve had enormous guilt over the fact that I lived and they did not. Occasionally, Arthur Goode would choke me with his hands until I passed out. When I came to, he’d tell me that was just a reminder that he could easily kill me at any time. I was petrified.”

John Waters, the preening Baltimore filmmaker of “Hairspray” fame, became intrigued by Freddy Goode and interviewed the killer not long before his execution. In an article that appeared in a Baltimore publication, Mr. Waters suggested, without interviewing Mr. Arthes, that the young boy might have had Stockholm Syndrome, which occurs when captives bond with their captors.

“That is crap,” Mr. Arthes says. “I never bonded with Arthur Goode, and I never liked Arthur Goode in any shape or fashion. I hated him then, and I still do. I was terrified the entire time.”

Dr. Dobbert, the expert in criminal behavior, says that because Mr. Arthes was only 10 years old at the time of the abduction, the chances of Stockholm Syndrome being in play are extremely remote.

“I think what (Mr. Arthes) is saying is undoubtedly true,” Dr. Dobbert goes on. “He was a child held by a sexual sadist and killer. He must have terrified beyond what we can comprehend. That has nothing to do with Stockholm Syndrome. That is fear.”

No one knows how much longer Billy Arthes would have lived if Freddy Goode had not been captured in Virginia. Freddy and young Billy had done yard work for a woman, who asked them back to clean her basement the next day. That night, she saw photographs of Freddy and Billy Arthes on the news. She contacted authorities, and Baltimore County detectives and Virginia state police were waiting at her home when the Freddy and Billy arrived on March 24, 1976.

Mr. Arthes recalls that when he realized that he was finally safe, he dissolved into uncontrolled sobbing. It took minutes, he says, to pull himself together and inform his rescuers that another boy had been killed and that he could lead them to the body.

Mr. Arthes says a Baltimore detective, upon learning of the Dawson murder, knocked Freddy’s legs out from under him, and kicked him several times in the face.

After hours of questioning, Baltimore detectives announced that they were taking Billy home to be reunited with his parents. Virginia officials said he could not leave the state, that he was to remain in their custody for further questioning.

Mr. Arthes recalls: “Those Baltimore County police officers drew their weapons and said, ‘No, he’s not staying here; we’re taking him home now.’ And that’s what they did.”

Mr. Arthes testified twice against Freddy, in Virginia and in Fort Myers. While holding Billy hostage, Freddy had confessed to killing Jason Verdow. Mr. Arthes’ recollection of his testimony in Fort Myers is limited, although he does remember squeezing a lump of Silly Putty while on the witness stand.

“It helped to ease the tension,” he says.

The trauma of his kidnapping exacerbated problems within the family, Mr. Arthes says. His father dissolved into alcoholism and also took the unusual step of leaving his work in Baltimore to join the Air Force. The family was stationed in Germany, and Mr. Arthes says his parents hoped getting out of Baltimore would soothe things. It did not, and they eventually returned.

For years, Mr. Arthes was plagued by problems of his own — heavy drinking and other destructive behaviors.

Eventually, though, he emerged from the darkness. At the age of 38, he earned his nursing degree.

At one point several years back, Mr. Arthes decided to drive to Virginia to visit Kenneth Dawson’s grave. His daughter, a teenager who knows of his ordeal, joined him.

“Things were so unclear in my mind that I didn’t know the date (Kenneth Dawson) had been murdered,” he says. “I knew it was sometime in March of 1976, but that was all.”

Standing at the grave, Mr. Arthes says his daughter tugged at his sleeve.

“Look, Dad,” she said. “Look at the day he died.”

Mr. Arthes looked. The date on the headstone was March 20. It was then that Mr. Arthes recognized the significance.

“Seventeen years later, to the day exactly, on March 20, my twin boys were born,” he says.

“What I went through no longer defines me as a person,” Mr. Arthes continues. “It did at one time, but not now. Sure it’s still there. Just before you called, I was going through some things, and I found some old papers about it. I cried. It doesn’t go away, but it doesn’t define me as a person. I’m beyond that.

“Still,” he goes on, “I’ll always wonder why I survived and those other boys did not.”

Epilogue

The two columns I wrote for the St. Petersburg Times about Freddy Goode created a minor stir. Readers were appalled by the facts, and most of them projected their own prejudices into the story. Some callers and letter writers branded me a bleeding-heart who portrayed Freddy in the best possible light in order to generate sympathy and keep him out of the electric chair. Those on the other side said I made Freddy out to be such a savage that death was the only just ending to the case. They said I gave short shrift to his mental defects. Everyone had an opinion.

Bud Goode’s opinion was not long in coming. A day after the last column appeared, he called and reached me at the Times. Without introduction or preface he said: “We’ll, I hope you’re satisf i e d. I suppose the only thing that would make you happy now is if you could go up there and throw the goddamn switch yourself.” He hung up abruptly, never giving me a chance to reply, even if I had had one, which I didn’t. I never heard from him again.

Freddy Goode remained an object of morbid curiosity long after his death. In 1995, the Weekly World News, now defunct but once the most outrageous supermarket tabloid of them all, profiled Bud and Mildred Goode. The headline read: “Our son is a child killer!” The story described Freddy as a “creepy killer” and a “sicko psycho.”

Bud died years ago, and presumably Mildred has too. I could find no trace of her. If alive, she would be in her 90s, and her health was fragile, even as far back as 1982, when she told me suffered acute attacks of angina.

Several years back, an intermediary facilitated an exchange of e-mails between Mrs. Goode and Mr. Arthes.

“She apologized, said she was not well and was ready to meet Jesus,” Mr. Arthes recalls. “I told her she didn’t need to apologize, because it wasn’t her fault.”

Whether the Goodes ultimately found peace is unknown. I suspect not.

And that begs this question: Did anyone who knew Freddy emerge unscathed?

Surely, the lives of Helen Hubbard and Billy Arthes are remarkable testaments to the resilience of the human spirit, although they paid an incalculable price in the process. It is doubtful that Joe D’Alessandro and Wilbur Smith lose sleep over Freddy Goode after all these years, but I’d wager there are times he rushes into their minds’ eye, unbidden and unwelcomed.

Dr. Duane Dobbert even suggested during an interview that this article was a means for me to purge Freddy Goode. “Cathartic” was the word he used. I had not thought of that exactly, but it makes sense, I suppose, and I certainly value his opinion and respect his judgment. But Freddy never did great harm to me — as he did to his victims. He is more like an aching tooth that comes and goes at odd times in my life. Annoying, but not life-threatening.

Awhile back, I finished one of my periodic readings of Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” which has long had my vote as the Great American Novel. About midway through the writing of this piece, an inner voice told me to go back and consult the book, that something important could be found between its covers. That may sound strange, but it made sense to me, for when you strip Gatsby of all its English 101 folderol, it boils down to obsession and loss. And obsession and loss are at the core of this story. As I thumbed through my well-worn copy, I went, almost reflexively, to the final page and the book’s last line. There it was.

That final sentence reads: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

In the sad, strange case of Freddy Goode, I believe that many of us are — decades later — “borne back ceaselessly into the past.” This need not be. Helen Hubbard and Billy Arthes, for all their woe, are proof of that. 