Haydee Freytes was beaten and shot to death the day after she turned 23 because she took heroin from a dealer and wouldn’t or couldn’t pay for it, prosecutors said yesterday.
First Assistant District Attorney Francis T. Chardo gave that account to jurors during opening statements in the murder case against Glenn D. Taylor, 43, and Mwandishi G. Mitchell, 31.
Even if Freytes was a drug user who sometimes sold her body to feed her habit, she was a human being whose life was snuffed out, Chardo said.
“But to Glenn Taylor and Mwandishi Mitchell she was a piece of trash,” Chardo said. “She was a prostitute and a drug user and they thought nothing of taking her life over a minor drug debt.”
Chardo described Taylor and Mitchell as part of a Philadelphia-based heroin distribution ring. Chardo said Mitchell was “infuriated” because Freytes’ had stolen drugs.
If convicted of first-degree murder, Taylor and Mitchell would face life in prison.
But attorneys for both men said the entire case is based on the statements of another drug user who walked the street to feed her addiction to crack cocaine.
Both defendants have claimed they were with family members the night Freytes was killed.
“They are drug dealers,” Taylor’s attorney, Justin McShane, told the jury. “I’m not saying they’re not. Drugs ruin families and people. I’m not saying they don’t. This case has nothing to do with drugs.”
“This case is not about lifestyles,” Mitchell’s attorney, Sanford Krevsky, said.
Taylor and Mitchell are charged with Freytes’ killing on Nov. 1, 2000. Harrisburg police investigators found her partially clothed body at Italian Lake in that morning.
The prosecution’s key witness, an admitted former prostitute and drug user, said she was with Taylor and Mitchell on the night of the killing.
The witness testified that the men picked up Freytes at North Third and Seneca streets early that day with the promise of money and crack cocaine.
The witness, whose name is being withheld by The Patriot-News, testified that Freytes’ face “turned white” after she unknowingly got into a car with the defendants.
A deadline imposed for the repayment of the drug debt had expired the day before, which was Freytes’ 23rd birthday – Halloween.
Mitchell drew a handgun and pistol whipped Freytes in the front of a station wagon as it sped uptown toward Italian Lake, the witness said.
The witness said the last time she saw Freytes, the woman was being dragged by the throat by Mitchell at Italian Lake.
“He drug her into the woods and that’s the last I saw of her,” the witness said.
McShane attacked the witness’s credibility and brought up her past drug use.
Under questioning, the witness admitted that she was a crack addict at the time of the killing. Her cross-examination is to resume this morning.
The witness, who also admitted to a past life of prostitution, grew to know Freytes, called “Cachi” by friends. The witness said she knew nothing of the outstanding debt or the danger facing her friend.
The witness served 16 months in jail on drug and prostitution charges. She said she has since cleaned up her life and now works at a local supermarket.
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