claimed to want the boys. Sue resented Fredna, and what she saw as Fredna's intrusion into her life through involvement with her ex-husband and her sons. Sue demanded custody of the boys and $800.00 per month in child support, which no court would have granted her. Mike compromised by offering to retain custody while allowing the boys to live part time with Sue who was, after all, their mother. This was not good enough; so Sue did what was becoming very common in custody cases in the mid 1980's... she charged Mike with sexually abusing his youngest son, who was four at the time.
Mike and Fredna began the long and insanely frustrating process of hearings, meetings, DHS paperwork and struggling to find Legal Counsel (which neither could afford!). This fact is all too common in these modern witch hunts.
The boys were, at first, incredulous, and denied that their father had ever behaved in that way toward either of them. After many interviews and endless sessions with poorly trained social workers who improperly used anatomically exaggerated dolls which are tools for prompting children to supply the "right" answers, the boys gave in and began to agree that some abuse must have happened. The boys were at first placed in a state run shelter, but after a few weeks were placed in the home of their mother, the accuser. The oldest son, especially, learned as children usually do in these circumstances, what sort of stories were most pleasing to the people who now had all the power in their lives, and he became the catalyst to amplify those stories. Some of the new stories were too preposterous for any normal person to see as anything but infantile fantasy, but they were gleefully absorbed by the social workers who saw them as adding weight to the "Evidence" they were accumulating against Mike.
Mike and Fredna's story goes on... and on... and on... through charges and counter charges, through trials and hearings, through periods of hope and despair, through endless visits to the Penitentiary when, once again, there was no good news to bring. The story goes on; but it is not the story of a benevolent state protecting helpless children from an abusive father... it is simply the story of a bitter custody dispute that got out of hand; the story of an unfortunate, mentally unstable woman and two young boys who became pawns in the hands of The Dream Killers of the Department of Human Services.
The crusade to make a case was picked up by the District Attorney's office and continued in front of biased judges in the Mississippi Judicial System. The end result was that Mike Hall was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He will be up for parole, again, in September of 2002, and if that fails, again, he will finish his sentence of incarceration in 2004. Mike will finish his sentence, but he will not be free. Mike Hall will never be free. The Dream is dead.
Mississippi Justice: It's Not For Everyone... will take up the fight on Mike's behalf now, but we do not delude ourselves that Justice will be served. Short of divine intervention Mike Hall will never have justice. Justice would be to somehow return to the spring of '85 when Mike the Welder could look forward to the dream of a life of honest hard work providing the best life possible to the woman and children he loved more than life itself; back to those happy days before his children were snatched away and dragged into the world of Social Services where their lives would revolve around the pornographic toys and obscene fantasies of The Dream Killers.
There is much of the story we have not given here and did not intend to. This is only an introduction; there are Official Documents, Court Records, Official reports... a mountain of paperwork to be sorted through in order to determine what is worth presenting. In the days and weeks to come we will get to that and it will occupy other pages attached to this one. The Dream Killers, themselves, have names and faces and important-sounding titles... bought with your money... we will bring those also.
Mike languishes in prison for a crime that did not occur. Fredna continues the fight for the man she loves, and the world is a vastly different, and much sadder, place than it was in the spring of 1985, before The Coming of the Dream Killers.
October 5, 2004, Mike was released from prison after serving his required time of one-half of the twenty five years he was sentenced to. During these years he was denied parole four times; despite the fact that he was a top custody level and model inmate, having never received any disciplinary write ups. He and Fredna are trying to resume what is left of their lives; at the time of his release he was 54 and Fredna was 57 and will celebrate their 18th wedding anniversary in December of 2004; they have spent the actual prime of their lives with Mike locked up for a crime he did not commit!
The Mike Hall Story
The Coming of The Dream Killers
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For more details you might want to see the original of this story in Fredna's own words. It is a fairly long account but it has been a very long fight. This is one strong lady's effort to understand the inexplicable, to comprehend the incomprehensible and to express the inexpressible. Click on the link below.
The spring of 1985 Mike Hall was a happy man. He had been through some unhappy times in the past but the future was looking brighter. He was not wealthy but made a decent living as a welder and was the total custodial parent of two healthy sons. He was in a relationship with Fredna, whose daughter fitted between the boys in age. Mike and Fredna knew there was something special about their relationship and talked often of how neat it would be to combine their two little families into one larger and even happier family. The awakening relationship was the beginning of the end of the dream for Mike and Fredna. Mike's ex-wife, Sue, an unfortunate lady with a long history of mental and emotional instability, was out of the mental institution, again, and
This page was last updated on: January 18, 2005
