On 29/12/1999, best friends Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman planned a sleepover to celebrate Ashley's 16th birthday.
That afternoon, Lauria asked her parents for permission to spend the night at her friend's house. Her father, Jay, told her to be home before noon the next day to care for the family's animals.
Lauria's last words to her father were, "I love you".
Lauria then drove to the mobile home of Ashley's parents, Kathy and Danny Freeman, located on a property in Welch, in northern Craig County, Oklahoma.
Bodies in the burned home
On the morning of 30/12/1999, a passing couple saw smoke rising from the Freeman home. By the time firefighters arrived, the house was engulfed in flames.
Jay and Lorene Bible heard that police had found a female body but were made to wait anxiously for five hours outside the scene. Lauria's car was parked at the property, but her parents were given no information about whether she was alive or if she was the deceased woman inside the burned home.
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The burned-out mobile home of the Freeman family on the morning of 30/12/1999. Image: Foxtel |
The burned-out mobile home of the Freeman family on the morning of 30/12/1999. Image: Foxtel
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) made everyone wait until the medical examiner arrived at 2 p.m. The examiner, who knew the Bibles, revealed to them that the female body was wearing a wedding ring and had broader shoulders, larger than a teenager's, suggesting it was likely Kathy Freeman.
The autopsy report, filed on the evening of the 30th, delivered shocking news: Kathy had died before the fire, from a fatal gunshot wound to the back of her head.
Now "missing," Danny became the prime suspect. Locals said he had anger management issues; some revealed he dealt cannabis and methamphetamine.
Police errors
Despite three people still missing, at 6 p.m. on the 30th, the OSBI inexplicably lifted the cordon on the crime scene.
Early the next morning, the Bibles rushed to the burned home to search for clues about their missing daughter. Within minutes, they discovered another body, which had been trampled by investigators the previous day. Lorene immediately recognized Danny, despite his head being partially destroyed.
"You could see Danny in his gray pants, flannel shirt, and white T-shirt. You could see the footprints all over him. He’d been there the whole time," Lorene told Foxtel.
Jay questioned, "I don’t understand how anyone missed it. It was so obvious."
Relatives confirmed the body as Danny's due to a stainless-steel wire from reconstructive sinus surgery found in the victim's sinus cavity.
The medical examiner determined Danny had also been shot, but in the face. Instead of concluding that whoever shot the Freemans had also abducted the girls, the OSBI declared the teenagers were hiding somewhere.
Authorities returned to the Freeman home and tried to regain control of the crime scene.
The Bibles refused to leave, and local search parties scoured the property and surrounding area for any sign of the girls.
Jay and Lorene sifted through the ashes but found no bodies, only personal belongings like Lauria's car keys, wallet, cash, and identification, indicating the girls hadn't left voluntarily.
Since the OSBI didn't enter the girls into the national missing persons database, Lorene made posters herself and launched a search campaign.
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Lauria Bible (right) and Ashley Freeman. Image: People |
Lauria Bible (right) and Ashley Freeman. Image: People
The methamphetamine party
In 2000, Craig County's newly appointed sheriff vowed to solve the Freeman murders and the disappearances of Lauria and Ashley.
Confidential informants, including jailhouse snitches, revealed clues about the girls to police. All leads pointed to methamphetamine users, dealers, and manufacturers in the towns scattered across northeastern Oklahoma.
Several people reported seeing evidence that the girls were alive two days after the fire, at a New Year's Eve party in a drug den in the backwoods of neighboring Ottawa County.
One ex-con reported hearing it was "a drug deal gone bad… parents murdered, girls taken." The girls were allegedly injected with methamphetamine, tied up, and repeatedly raped.
The party likely took place at the home of notorious local meth cook Chester Shadwick, in Wyandotte, 30 miles from Welch. Another possible location was the dilapidated house of father and son Paul Glover Snr and Paul Glover Jnr, who dealt and manufactured methamphetamine, and lived near the Neosho River.
In sworn affidavits, witnesses disclosed watching a videotape of the girls being assaulted. One saw "a dirty blonde girl… tied at the wrists, on her knees," being sexually assaulted in a house with distinctive rock walls, which he recognized as Chester’s. This witness said that upon seeing a later news report about the missing teens, he recognized Lauria as the girl in the video.
Others said the girls might have been alive up to a week after their abduction, tied together and looking "gaunt" in the video.
In 2001, police searched Chester and Glover’s homes, finding videotapes, a camera roll, blood on a carpet, and a meth lab. Nothing connected to Lauria and Ashley was found, and the blood wasn't human.
The killer's lies
In 2002, Texas death row inmate Tommy Lynn Sells wrote to a newspaper claiming he killed the girls.
Tommy, a notorious “Railroad Killer”, had murdered a 13-year-old girl in Del Rio, Texas, an 11-hour drive from Welch, one day after Lauria and Ashley disappeared.
Tommy was brought from a Texas prison back to the roads of Oklahoma, where he supposedly disposed of the girls' bodies. However, Tommy was later determined to be lying.
Near the 5-year anniversary of the case, Alabama state police arrested an addict named Jeremy Jones in Ottawa County, east of Welch, for rape, murder, and arson.
Jeremy raped a girl in a mobile home in Mobile and set it on fire, but he told police he “felt really bad about… two girls in Oklahoma”.
Jeremy had been arrested on the morning of the Freeman fire, in a car parked just 15 minutes from Welch, drunk and carrying a syringe.
After being sentenced to death for the Mobile murder, Jeremy claimed he dumped the girls' bodies in Galena, Kansas, an area of old mine shafts 40 miles from Welch.
In 2005, police searched Galena, only to discover another lie from a killer seeking attention or a break from death row.
The ringleader revealed
In April 2018, police held a press conference announcing they had cracked the case, bringing charges against Ronnie Dean Busick.
Ronnie, 66, was charged with conspiring with Phil Welch and Dave Pennington to murder the Freemans and abduct and imprison the girls for seven days.
All three men were methamphetamine addicts who had lived in Picher, now a ghost town amid thousands of acres of abandoned lead and zinc mines, 20 miles from Welch.
Phil died in 2007 at age 61, and Dave died in 2015 at age 56.
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Jay and Lorene Bible cry during the 2018 press conference, saying "all we want is to bring Lauria home." Image: Foxtel |
Jay and Lorene Bible cry during the 2018 press conference, saying "all we want is to bring Lauria home." Image: Foxtel
The prosecutor cited evidence of "Polaroid photos of the girls in their final days… seen by multiple people" and "multiple confessions by the three men to multiple other people about the crimes".
An affidavit stated that the Polaroid photos were kept as a "trophy" inside Phil's briefcase and passed around within the ringleader's drug circle. The girls were allegedly "tied up in a mobile home in Picher, raped and tortured." Some photos showed Phil lying next to the girls.
Those who gave statements, mainly girlfriends or acquaintances of the suspects, said they bragged about the murders and threatened anyone who considered going to the police. Phil, a former preacher, threatened to kill a woman and her children and throw them down "a pit in Picher" with the missing girls.
Witnesses said the men stated that "if they hadn't run… they'd probably still be alive".
Investigators searched the crawl space at the former home of the alleged mastermind, Phil, but found nothing.
Charged with four counts of first-degree murder, Ronnie agreed to plead guilty to withholding information about the case and accessory to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 5 years probation, with his release date contingent on leading police to the girls' bodies.
Police searched thousands of mine shafts in Picher in 2020, but to no avail.
A drug debt leads to murder
From prison, Ronnie claimed the crimes stemmed from a debt of one or two ounces of methamphetamine that Danny owed Phil. One ounce is equivalent to 28 grams, worth several hundred USD.
Investigators believe Phil, Dave, and Ronnie went to the Freeman home on the night of the incident to collect the debt. Phil carried a loaded shotgun under his coat.
Danny had a loaded .357 magnum revolver on the table. During the confrontation, he reached for his gun and Phil shot him dead. Phil then went into the bedroom and shot Kathy before dragging Danny's body into the same room.
"He didn't want to leave any witnesses," Ronnie said of Phil.
Meanwhile, hearing the gunshots, the two girls escaped through the back door and hid in an empty field.
The three men ransacked the house, taking cash and cannabis, and then set it on fire. As the flames rose, the girls stood up, were spotted, chased, and captured. They were locked in Dave's truck and driven 25 miles to Phil’s mobile home in Picher. There, the girls were tied up, gagged, and injected with methamphetamine by Phil.
Despite being on the police radar, the men were never questioned about the crimes before their deaths.
Ronnie, in failing health and wanting to downplay his role in the crimes, has yet to tell police where the bodies are buried.
After Ronnie was charged, Lorene said: "Hopefully I can look him right in the eye and say, 'Tell me where my baby is'."
Tue Anh (according to New Zealand Herald)
