After fizzled tailgates, Falcons superfan 'Birdlady' faces criminal charges

It was “basically a deserted lot surrounded by a neighborhood,” said Blair Quasnitschka, who purchased tailgate tickets from Freeman. “There’s other Chiefs fans there, obviously all through the same connection. But it’s vacant.”

Southwood and Baskett-Cook, who are both listed as witnesses in the court action against Freeman, cited an exchange of emails that stipulated preparations would begin around noon that day. But when the 3 p.m. start time arrived with hundreds of fans gathered, there was still no sign of Freeman or the party supplies.

Baskett-Cook said she phoned Freeman, who responded with a litany of excuses for why she was running late, including a broken trailer and a hospital stay the evening before the game because she had passed out trying to load the trailer. She said she had been stopped by police while heading to the venue.

Their description of Freeman’s rapid-fire array of excuses resembled her responses during her ESPN interviews. Her responses were riddled with inconsistencies and difficult-to-follow meanderings.

Various tailgate organizers and ticket holders said they placed calls to Freeman, but they went straight to voicemail. Baskett-Cook said she spoke with Freeman multiple times that day, and each time, Freeman assured her that she was a half hour away. Just hang on.

“I just need to know when you’re going to be here,” Baskett-Cook recalled telling Freeman the last time they spoke, around 3:30 p.m. “Share your location, do whatever you need to do. You are under a contract.”

Freeman didn’t show. Ticket holders started demanding a refund.

Baskett-Cook said she waited until 6 p.m. before leaving for the game and sending a message telling Freeman she was in breach of contract. During the first half, Baskett-Cook said she started receiving bizarre reports: Freeman was inside the stadium, in full “Birdlady” regalia.

Freeman acknowledged to ESPN that she did appear at the stadium, though she said it was late in the game. After listing the excuses for her tardiness, Freeman said she ultimately arrived at the tailgate, but it was after her clients had left.

She said frozen food and nonperishable items for the tailgate were stored at her house in Macon, Georgia. She sent ESPN photos of moldy, clearly expired food items that she said were purchased for the tailgate. The Chiefs fans were welcome to retrieve them whenever they liked. Or she could throw them another tailgate.

“They took [an arrest] warrant based on a lie, saying they had a contract,” Freeman said. “They didn’t have a contract.”

She cited her friendship with Baskett-Cook as the reason she proceeded with the tailgate despite her assertion that the contract was canceled.

Because the amount exchanged between the tailgate organizers and Freeman totaled more than $1,500, it pushed the case over the legal threshold from small-claims to an alleged felony.

That’s how the Birdlady, feathers and all, wound up leaving Mercedes-Benz Stadium in handcuffs.

DAYS BEFORE FREEMAN’S ARREST, Chiefs fans told a reporter for television station Atlanta News First that they had filed an official fraud complaint with the Atlanta Police Department. The news was all over social media. Yet Freeman told ESPN that she attended the Nov. 3 game unaware of the arrest warrant.

Police said they tried contacting Freeman by phone multiple times but got no answer. They visited her Macon house to execute the warrant, knocking repeatedly at the door. They even did a welfare check at a hospital. They finally decided to try the place where she is known best: at the stadium.

Freeman described the embarrassing arrest as “cruel and malicious.”

She said the allegations were meritless because the contract had been voided when the tailgate leadership changed weeks before the event. She acknowledged being late, citing various reasons, including blaming assistants for not doing their jobs. Freeman said she showed up at the tailgate venue closer to the 8:20 p.m. kickoff — hours after the tailgate’s scheduled start time. By then, the Chiefs fans had already left.

She said various payment services gave refunds to fans who requested them. And the offer still stood to put on a substitute tailgate or let the fans retrieve the items stored in her house.

Freeman often posted on social media about her charitable work in the community, with player foundations and as an unofficial fan ambassador to the city. But the latest allegations are hardly the first complaints that she had failed to deliver on promises.

Freeman denied the other allegations as well.

Did all those cases boil down to a series of misunderstandings or something more systematic?

Baskett-Cook also asserted in an Internal Revenue Service complaint that Freeman had abused Birdlady Cares’ 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.

The contract they signed with her listed Birdlady Cares as the “caterer.” Nonprofit status meant the revenue Freeman generated was exempt from federal income tax. The IRS declined to comment on Baskett-Cook’s complaint.

WHAT’S TRUE OR NOT about Freeman’s background is difficult to decipher.

She was born in 1959 and grew up the daughter of a minister in Forsyth, Georgia. Her LinkedIn page says she attended Mercer University.

She was employed as a sheriff’s deputy in the early 1980s, although the dates she provided don’t match those from the sheriff’s office. She told ESPN she was “a sharpshooter” and “had to prove herself” as a Black female sheriff’s deputy.

On her LinkedIn page, she says she was a juvenile specialist and crime-scene photographer working in “all aspects of law enforcement,” including having Georgia Bureau of Investigation training as a juvenile specialist and crime-scene photographer in 1980 and 1981.

The GBI said it has no records of Freeman receiving those certifications.

She also claimed to be licensed or certified by the FBI National Academy Associates as a juvenile specialist and CSI photographer. Riley Moran, director of marketing and communications, said the nonprofit, nongovernmental group “does not offer licenses nor do we offer certificates in those areas.”

Freeman responded that she took the necessary classes. She did not provide documentation.

Freeman listed a job as a specialist and claims adjuster for State Farm from 1984 until 1988. It is the last full-time job listed on her LinkedIn page, where she lists her work experience since then as the Superfan Atlanta Birdlady, calling herself “The # 1 Winged Super Uber Fan with The Sparkling-Glittered-Rhinestone Smiling Face.”

Freeman said she fell “about 42 feet” off a one-story rooftop while on an inspection job for State Farm when she was 28, in June 1987. She said she spent the next decade in and out of hospitals in Macon and Atlanta, had at least 17 surgeries and that she was “an inpatient at Emory for over three years.”

She claims she was pronounced dead four times. She told ESPN she has suffered from low blood pressure, asthma, breathing issues, low blood sugar, a prior stroke, heart issues and depression.

She describes herself as a medical miracle. “They just don’t understand, I should be brain-dead. I shouldn’t be able to walk or sit up by myself or even feed myself,” Freeman told the “American Sports History” podcast in 2022. “But I just believe in mind over matter, and I don’t have to accept what the doctor says.”

Freeman said her insurance eventually ran out. She had been on long-term disability from her rooftop fall, then Social Security Disability Insurance kicked in. She said disability checks do not fund her Birdlady lifestyle nor are keeping her financially afloat.

“It’s not like I don’t eat if I don’t get that check,” Freeman said. “It’s just not like that. So I can afford to do these things.”