Multi-State Crime Spree
In 1966, Freshwater was an 18-year-old high school dropout who got involved with an older man named Glenn Nash. Together, prosecutors alleged, they embarked upon a multi-state crime spree, killing a liquor store clerk in Tennessee, a cab driver in Mississippi and a grocery store clerk in Florida.
Nash was deemed incompetent to stand trial, but prosecutors in Mississippi and Tennessee continued building their cases against Freshwater. She claimed she hadn’t killed anyone and had only stayed with Nash because he threatened to kill her. Regardless of who pulled the trigger, prosecutors argued Freshwater was complicit in the killings as an accomplice.
Freshwater was tried twice in Mississippi, but both trials ended with hung juries. In Tennessee, however, she was convicted of murder and given a 99-year prison sentence.
In October 1970, roughly 18 months into her sentence, Freshwater and a fellow inmate climbed a fence and escaped from the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville. Investigators eventually recaptured the other woman but lost track of Freshwater.
Building a New Life
After she escaped from prison, Freshwater vanished—at least in the eyes of authorities. She started building a new life for herself as “Tonya Myers,” living and working just a few miles from her childhood home; back then, the application process for a Social Security card was much easier. She held a variety of jobs, including as a waitress, bartender and country club manager. Later, she became licensed to sell insurance and real estate.
Freshwater never contacted any of her old friends or family members—and on the few occasions when she did run into someone she knew, they apparently didn’t recognize her. Her family had her declared legally dead in 1984.
Over the years, Freshwater became a master at “social camouflage,” according to Dr. Leslie Dobson, a clinical and forensic psychologist. She maintained a mundane, day-to-day presentation that simply never garnered attention.
“You don’t hide by being invisible, you hide by being forgettably normal,” Dobson tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
She also gave birth to two children before marrying Joe Hudkins and having a third child with him. Hudkins died of cancer in 1988.
In the late 1990s, Freshwater joined a telephone dating service and met a truck driver named Daryl McCartor, the man who would eventually become her second husband. At the time, Freshwater was in her early 50s, a mother of three and a grandmother of three. They had only been married 18 months when police apprehended Freshwater and revealed the truth about her past.
Cracking the Case
Freshwater may have evaded authorities for more than three decades by hiding in plain sight, but police never stopped looking for her.
They finally cracked the case by entering her birth date into a national vital statistics database. To their surprise, a name popped up: Tonya Hudkins, living just outside of Columbus, Ohio. When investigators compared the photo on Hudkins’ Ohio driver’s license with Freshwater’s mug shot, they were shocked at how much the two women resembled each other—nearly twins, just one that looked like a slightly older version of the other.
After a bit more sleuthing, they become more and more confident that Hudkins was really Freshwater. They eventually convinced a judge to issue a search warrant for fingerprints. When police finally confronted Freshwater, she hugged her family goodbye and said, “I was always afraid this day would come.”
Reunited Once Again
The fingerprints were a match. Freshwater was returned to the Tennessee Prison for Women, though this time she was kept in maximum-security segregation away from other inmates. A judge ordered her to serve the remainder of her original 99-year sentence, plus another year for escaping.
Freshwater continued to maintain her innocence, with her attorney Stephen Ross Johnson arguing that the “true measure of her character was evidenced by her life after she escaped.” Meanwhile, Nash, after spending years in psychiatric hospitals, was released in 1983.
Freshwater and her attorneys appealed the original 1969 conviction, arguing that prosecutors had withheld key evidence in her case: a letter from an inmate claiming that Nash had confessed to killing the liquor store clerk alone.
In May 2011, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals granted her a new trial, a judgment that was later upheld by the Tennessee Supreme Court. While awaiting retrial, Freshwater reached an agreement with prosecutors: a “best interest” Alford plea that allowed her to plead guilty without admitting guilt. Under the deal, Freshwater was sentenced to 25 years in prison, with credit for time served and good behavior. In November 2011, she was released from prison.
“I am thankful beyond words to be reunited with my family,” Freshwater said in a statement shared by her attorney at the time. “My faith in God and the belief that I would be with my family again are what kept me going and looking to the future with optimism. It’s a new and wonderful day.”
Since then, Freshwater has maintained a low profile and stayed out of the limelight. Shortly before she was released, however, her husband hinted at how she planned to spend her time. McCartor told the Columbus Dispatch the couple hoped to pick back up where they left off—after legally changing her name to Tonya.
“We married for better or worse,” he added. “The worse came first. Now, we’re looking forward to the better."
