Victims' kin make yearly trek to killer's mental hearing

Two women linked by tragedy passed up a sunny, spring afternoon yesterday in favor of a dark, empty courtroom where a psychiatric hearing was held for a man who wasn't there.

Neither woman had to attend the hearing, but both felt compelled to be there despite the pain that resurfaces every time they find themselves in Mount Holly.

Just a few blocks away from the county courthouse, two of their loved ones, Hainesport Police Officer William Wurst, 24, and Mount Holly Police Officer Donald Aleshire, 30, were killed when an Army-trained sharpshooter who claimed to be Jesus poked his rifle out a third-floor bedroom of his family's home and opened fire.

That was March 28, 1975 - Good Friday - and every year since gunman James Carhart was found not guilty by reason of insanity, police officers, family members, or both, have attended these psychiatric hearings.

"I come every year because my husband was killed," said Eileen Aleshire Frerking, 60. "My husband has been dead longer than he was alive."

Mount Holly Police Officer John Holmes was paralyzed by one of Carhart's bullets and died from complications in 1992.

Yesterday's hearing, which was closed to the media, lasted more than two hours and featured testimony from Carhart's treating doctor at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Winslow Township, Camden County.

Assistant Burlington County Prosecutor John Brennan said there were no major revelations regarding Carhart's mental status: he's still suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

"He's still considered a danger to himself and society," Brennan said. "He's not going anywhere."

The issue that wasn't decided, Brennan said, is whether Carhart, 57, should be allowed "therapeutic" trips, accompanied by security, to banks, convenience stores, and restaurants in order to acclimate himself to society once again.

Therapy is fine, Brennan said, but not when it suggests Carhart will have a life outside of Ancora one day.

"We have always said that we fully support any therapy on the hospital grounds," Brennan said.

Brennan said Judge Thomas S. Smith has questioned whether Carhart even wants the therapy, as he often commits offenses before his hearings that make him lose privileges and unable to attend.

Smith, Brennan said, would not make a decision on the therapy until he could see Carhart in person.

In 2000, controversy erupted when a county judge granted Carhart visits to see his ailing mother in Pemberton Township, Burlington County. That order was rescinded when Ancora could not come up with an adequate security plan.

Brennan, who has been handling the case for about a decade, was 12 years old when the shootings rocked South Jersey.

"I still remember riding by the house and seeing the bullet holes," he said.

The other female family member at the hearing, Wurst's cousin, declined to comment. *