Dark secrets of rural backwater where teen girls vanished
It was a tiny rural community, but unknown to the family of Lauria Bible when she vanished with her best friend, dark forces were at work.
It was December 29, 1999 and best friends Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman were spending Freeman’s 16th birthday having a slumber party at her parents’ trailer.
Lauria, also 16, had pulled into the driveway of her parents’ home that afternoon to ask permission to sleep over.
Her father Jay told her to be home by noon the next day to take care of her family animals, which included a pig.
Her last words to him were, “I love you daddy”.
“You don’t expect them to be the last words you hear, but … out the door they went. I didn’t think nothing of it,” Jay said.
Lauria went off to the stay with Ashley’s parents, Kathy and Danny Freeman, along a rural road on a property in Welch, Oklahoma, about 10km south of the Kansas state line.
For most of the around 600 residents of the small farming community, it was a quiet night, but they were largely unaware of dark currents rippling through Oklahoma’s northeast.
A new four-part documentary series, Hell In The Heartland: What happened to Ashley and Lauria? which streams on Foxtel examines the case 20 years after the murders.
Jax Miller, working with former police officer Sarah Cailean, rakes over what the police missed or ignored, the determined campaign by Lauria’s parents and the teen’s ghastly fate.
On the morning of December 30, 1999, a couple on their way to work saw smoke billowing up from the Freemans’ home
Firemen arrived, then local Craig County sheriff, George Vaughn, to what appeared to be the scene of a suspicious fire which had torn through the home.
When Jay and Lorene Bible arrived, they learned a female body had been found inside but had to wait an anxious five hours outside the crime tape.
Lauria’s car was parked at the property, but the couple was given no information about whether she was alive or if she was the dead female inside the crime scene.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI), in the first of many botched moves in the case, made everyone wait until the medical examiner arrived at 2pm.
The ME, who knew the Bibles, unofficially told them that the female body wore a wedding band, was broad shouldered and larger than the girls, so was probably Kathy Freeman.
Stream Hell In The Heartland: What happened to Ashley and Lauria? on Foxtel On Demand. New customers get a 10-day free trial. Sign up at foxtel.com.au
Her report filed that evening on December 30 had a bombshell: Kathy had died prior to the fire, from a shotgun wound to the back of her head.
At that point, a “missing” Danny Freeman became the main suspect and locals knew he had anger issues; some knew he was a drug dealer of cannabis, and possibly methamphetamines.
Inexplicably, and despite the fact three people were still missing, at 6pm on December 30 the OSBI released the crime scene from police custody.
Early the next morning, an anxious Jay and Lorene Bible turned up at the burnt out Freeman farm to search for clues as to their daughter’s disappearance.
Within minutes, they had discovered another body, which had obviously been trampled over the day before by crime scene investigators.
Despite the fact it was missing the upper part of its head, Lorene said immediately, “that’s Danny right there”.
Body just trampled over
“You could see he had on grey seat pants, he had on a flannel shirt, a white T-shirt,” she told Foxtel.
“You could see boot marks down his whole torso where he’d been walked on the day before.
“He’s been here the whole time.”
Jay pondered, “How did nobody notice is beyond me, but it was plain and simple and easy to see.”
Lorene called 911. Danny Freeman’s brother, Dwayne Vancil, arrived and could see stainless steel wire in the sinus cavity of Danny’s face.
“He had had reconstructive surgery with stainless steel wire so I knew that was Danny,” he said.
The authorities arrived back at the Freeman property and tried to resume control of the crime scene.
The ME determined Danny Freeman had been shot too, but in the face.
Instead of concluding that whoever shot the couple had the girls, the OSBI was now claiming the girls were hiding out.
Police make major mistake
The Bibles refused to leave the crime scene and groups of locals began arriving to search the property and the land beyond for any sign of the girls.
Jay and Lorene sifted through the ashes of the trailer and found no trace of their bodies, but just enough personal items to establish the girls didn’t leave of their own volition: Lauria’s car keys, her purse, cash and ID.
When the OSBI failed to post the girls’ details on the national database as missing juveniles, Lorene made missing persons posters and began a campaign to find the Lauria and Ashley.
Sins of the brother
Details about the Freeman family began to emerge.
Danny Freeman had been at war with the Craig County Sheriff over the death of his son, Ashley’s 17-year-old brother Shane, a year earlier.
A troublemaker who burgled local houses, Shane had been on the run and living in a stolen truck when a deputy found him.
The deputy shot him dead after Shane produced a gun, a fact which Danny disputed but was investigated and found to be true.
In 2000, Jimmie Sooter was elected the new Craig County sheriff and vowed to solve the Freeman murders and Lauria and Ashley’s disappearance.
Confidential informants including jailhouse snitches came forward with tips about the girls.
They all had to do with addicts, dealers and meth cooks in the underbelly of the towns dotting the Ozark Plains of northeastern Oklahoma.
Meth house
Multiple people alleged they had seen evidence the girls were alive two days after the fire at a New Year’s Eve party at a meth house in the badlands of neighbouring Ottawa county.
Former meth cook, Randall “Cowboy” Madewell, told Foxtel he heard it was “a drug deal went bad … the mum and dad got killed, the girls was abducted”.
The girls were allegedly drugged with meth, tied up and repeatedly raped.
The party was possibly at the house of popular local meth cook, Chester Shadwick, at Wyandotte, 50km east of Welch.
Another possible location was the ramshackle house of meth dealers and cooks, father and son, Paul Glover Snr and Paul Glover Jnr, who lived around a bend in the Neosho River.
Witnesses signed affidavits they had seen videotape of the girls being assaulted.
One had seen “a young dirty blonde headed girl … tied by the wrists, on her knees” being sexually assaulted in a home, which had a distinctive rock wall he recognised as Shadwick’s.
The witness said when he later saw a TV report about the missing girls he recognised Lauria Bible as the girl on the videotape.
Other affiants said the girls may have been kept alive for up to a week after their abduction and that in the video they were tied up together and looked “emaciated”.
In 2001, officers searched the Shadwick and Glover properties, and found VHS tapes and a roll of film, blood on carpet and a meth lab.
Nothing related to Lauria and Ashley, and the blood was not human.
Serial killer claims he murdered the girls
Then in 2002, a Texas inmate wrote from Death Row to a newspaper claiming he killed the girls.
Notorious “railways” serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells had murdered a 13-year-old girl in Del Rio, Texas, an 11 hour drive from Welch, a day after Lauria and Ashley disappeared.
Sells was taken from his Texas prison back to county roads in Oklahoma where he supposedly left the girls’ bodies.
He was lying and nothing was found.
Near to the five year anniversary of the Freeman murders, Alabama police arrested a meth user from Ottawa county, east of Welch, for rape, murder and arson.
Jeremy Jones raped a girl in a trailer in Mobile and burnt it down, but told police he had a “lot of guilty conscience over … two girls in Oklahoma”.
In a chilling interview, when asked about the picture of “a pretty young girl”, he replied, “Yeah. But they ain't pretty when they’re crying”.
Jones was arrested on the morning of the Freeman trailer fire, in a vehicle just 15 minutes away from Welch, drunk, and in possession of a syringe.
Already sentenced to death for the Mobile murder, Jones said he dumped the girls’ bodies at Galena, Kansas, an area 60km northeast of Welch, which is pocketed with old mines.
In 2005, Jay and Lorene Bible went to Galena as police searched, but it was another confession and recant by a killer seeking publicity or just a break from Death Row.
Enter Facebook
Ten years pass, and in that decade, Lorene Bible was still meeting drug dealers to follow up tips, but had taken up a new weapon in her quest.
In December 2015, the Bibles’ Facebook page, Find Lauria Bible, received a tip to look at another convicted killer, and a drug associate of Danny Freeman’s, Charlie Krider.
Lorene gained permission to search Krider’s former property, but searches of a well and an old basement yield nothing.
Breakthrough
Then, 18 years after they lost their daughter, in April 2018, the Bibles were summoned to a media conference by Craig County District Attorney, Matt Ballard.
Police believed they had finally cracked the case.
He announced that charges had been filed against a man, Ronnie Dean Busick.
Busick, 66, was charged with acting in concert with Phil Welch and Dave Pennington in killing the Freemans, abducting the girls and keeping them alive for up to seven days.
The three men were welders and meth addicts who had been living in Picher, now a ghost town among thousands of miles of disused lead and zinc mines, 30km northwest of Welch.
Warren Phillip Welch II had died aged 61 in 2007 and Pennington in 2015, aged 56.
Ballard cited the evidence of “polaroid photographs of the girls in their final days … seen by multiple people” and the three men’s “many statements to multiple people about the crimes”.
The Polaroids were kept “like a “trophy” inside Welch’s leather briefcase and passed around the ringleader’s circle of drug dealers, one affidavit states.
The girls were allegedly “tied up in a trailer house in Picher where they were raped and tortured”.
In some photos, Welch was lying next to the teens.
After the conference, Lorene and Jay Bible fronted the podium, both in tears.
“We’re not finished. I will not stop until we bring the girls home,” she said.
“There are people out there … who are afraid to talk.
“But somebody knows where these girls are, and for me I need to bring my daughter home.”
Evil preacher
The affiants, mostly girlfriends or acquaintances of the three men, said the killers bragged about the murder and threatened anyone who might go to police.
Welch, a fiery holy roller church preacher when he wasn’t dealing meth, threatened to kill one woman and her children and throw them into “a pit in Picher” with the missing girls.
Jerri Shelton, David Pennington’s stepdaughter, described Welch as an “intense … scary person”, and remembered going to the Freemans’ house as a child.
She said at the time of the Freeman murders, she had lived with Pennington in “the pink house in Chetopa”, 20km directly north of Welch.
One affidavit was from a witness who overheard Welch and Pennington calling the victims “two little bitches” years after the crime.
Witnesses said the men had told them “if they wouldn’t have taken off running … they would still be alive.”
According to another affidavit, the teenagers were kidnapped, tied up, raped and held in a mobile home at 412 South College St in Picher for a “matter of days” before being strangled.
No house is at that address today.
In April this year, Lorene Bible underwent a liver transplant and was recovering well.
In the same month, investigators went to search an old cellar of the former home of the man considered to be the crime’s mastermind, Phil Welch, but found nothing.
Charged with four counts of first-degree murder, Ronnie Busick cut a deal and pleaded guilty to withholding information on the case and accessory to first-degree murder.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison along with five years of probation, his possible release date depending on whether he led police to the girls’ bodies.
A search of an old cellar in Picher last year found nothing, and thousands of mine shafts in the area have also proved fruitless.
Danny’s meth debt
Busick has since said from prison that the crimes all began with a debt involving one to two ounces of meth owed by Danny Freeman to Welch.
To put that in perspective, methamphetamine or “ice” is sold in “points”. One point equals 0.1 gram, worth about $50 in Australia, though much less in the US. One ounce equals 28 grams, or 280 points, worth $1400, or $2800 for two ounces.
Investigators now believe Welch, Pennington and Busick went to the property on the night in question to confront Danny Freeman over the debt.
Welch was carrying a loaded shotgun under his trench coat.
Freeman had a loaded .357-caliber Magnum revolver lying on the table and during the encounter, he went for it and was fatally shot by Welch.
He went into the bedroom and shot Kathy Freeman before dragging her husband’s body into the same room.
“He didn’t want to leave any witnesses,” Busick said of Welch.
Meanwhile, hearing the gunshots, the girls had escaped out a back door and lay hidden on the ground in an open field.
The three men ransacked the house, stealing money and marijuana, and then set the mobile home on fire.
While it was ablaze, the girls stood up, were spotted, and chased and captured.
The girls were held in the Pennington’s truck as they tore down rural dirt roads the 40km to Welch’s mobile home in Picher.
There the girls were tied up and socks put in their mouths and shot up by Welch with meth.
Despite the men being on the police radar as linked to the girls’ disappearance, they were not interrogated about the crimes before their deaths.
Busick, in ill health and keen to minimise his role in the crimes, has not been able to tell police where the girls’ remains are.
As Lorene Bible said after he was charged: “Hopefully I will get to look at him right in the eye and say to him, ‘Tell me where my child is’.”
Hell In The Heartland: What happened to Ashley and Lauria? Available on Foxtel.
Trump rocked by twist in Qatari jet scandal
A bombshell report has linked the “mysterious” transfer of almost $US1 billion to a secretive Pentagon project with Trump’s latest controversial gift from Qatar.
‘Last stand’: NY Gunman’s chilling final plan
Here’s everything we know about the football player turned gunman who opened fire inside a Midtown Manhattan office tower.
Trump navy chief’s dire Australia warning
Donald Trump’s pick for a top navy role has sounded a dire warning about America’s ability to meet its AUKUS commitments to Australia.