The ending of the year 1999 was not the actual end of the millennium, but many perceived it as such. Trepidation abounded across the globe as fears of massive computer bugs relating to the formatting and storage of calendar data were anticipated when the calendar turned to 2000. The worries were ultimately much ado about nothing. Few computer failures were reported, and all was copacetic as the number one became the number two.

In northeast Oklahoma, concerns were of a different nature. A fatal fire was instead the hot topic, and the search for two missing millennials had put the angst of the new millennium on the backburner.

In the early morning hours of December 30, firemen were dispatched to a blaze near the small town of Welch, seventy miles northeast of Tulsa, and only thirteen miles from the Kansas state line. The mobile home of the area’s most infamous family was reduced to rubble. The parents, Danny and Kathy Freeman, were found amidst the debris. Both had been shot to death prior to the setting of the fire. The Freemans’ daughter, Ashley, and her friend, Lauria Bible, were not found.

The fire was determined to have been arson, and some speculated that Ashley and Lauria, both sixteen-years-old, may have murdered Ashley’s parents. Recent developments suggest the girls were instead likely kidnapped in the chaos of the fire.

Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible are still missing. The girls may have made it into the perceived next millennium, but they were probably murdered shortly thereafter.

 

Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible

Friends described thirty-seven-year-old Kathy Freeman as dependable, caring, and giving. She was well-liked and respected throughout the community. Her husband, however, had a different reputation.

Forty-year-old Danny Freeman was said by many to possess a violent temper. In 1985, he was arrested for beating his father-in-law who had trimmed his bushes without asking. The charges, however, were eventually withdrawn.

Because of a previous employment-related injury, Danny, a laborer, had difficulty working. The family relied on Kathy’s modest income from her job with the Doctor’s Optical Supply Company Inc. Money was so tight that the couple’s trailer home did not have running water and was heated primarily by a wood-burning stove in the living room.

Danny and Kathy Freeman

The Freemans were at odds with local law enforcement over an incident one year earlier that resulted in the death of their seventeen-year-old son, Shane. In 1998, he had been caught stealing his uncle’s pickup. A court ordered him to enroll in a counseling program through the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.

Shane Freeman

Later that year, in August, Danny was charged with abusing his son after a school counselor told police she had found Shane’s buttocks bleeding and badly bruised. During a pretrial hearing, however, Shane told the court he was no longer fearful of his father.

It was also rumored that Danny had sexually abused Ashley.

Alleged Child Abuse By Danny

Five months later, in January 1999, Shane returned to theft as he was caught breaking into the residence of Jay and Lorene Bible, parents of Ashley’s best friend, Lauria. The Bibles filed a complaint with the police, saying Shane took several of their firearms and some of Lauria’s belongings and money.

Jay and Lorene Bible

A few days later, on the evening of January 8, Deputy David Hayes of the Craig County Sheriff’s Department came upon Shane beside a parked car along a country road. Shane told him the vehicle had broken down, but the deputy ran a check on the license plate and found it had been stolen.

As Deputy Hayes approached Shane to arrest him, he said Shane reached behind his back and pulled a gun on him, forcing him to return fire. Shane was hit and died from his wounds.

An investigative panel ruled the shooting was justified.

Shane Is Killed

In February 1999, one month after Shane’s death, Danny asked several people about the location of Deputy Hayes’ residence. Some feared he was planning to avenge Shane’s death by attacking the lawman.

Despite Shane’s death, Danny’s trial for the child abuse charges began one month later in March. Unable to reach a verdict, the jury asked the judge if they could order Danny to attend counseling. After the request was refused, Danny was acquitted of the charges.

Danny Is Cleared Of Abusing His Son

The Freemans did not accept the finding that Deputy Hayes had shot Shane in self-defense. They believed their son was attempting to flee and that he had not pulled a weapon on the lawman. The couple began the process of filing a wrongful death lawsuit against the Craig County Sheriff’s Department.

 

Shortly thereafter, Danny and Kathy told friends that deputies began harassing and intimidating them.  The Freemans alleged they were frequently pulled over on claims of false traffic violations and that the deputies suggested to them, in veiled terms, that it would be in their best interests not to pursue a lawsuit. In addition, the Freemans claimed that several officers’ cars were frequently parked outside their trailer for no apparent reason.

The Freemans Claimed

Their Freedom Was Infringed

On the evening of December 29, 1999, Danny and Kathy held a party at their trailer home for Ashley’s sixteenth birthday. Also present were Ashley’s boyfriend, Jeremy Hurst, and her best friend, Lauria Bible.

That evening, Kathy, Ashley, and Lauria were seen in Kathy’s blue Toyota picking up supplies for their livestock. Lauria had called her mother and said they were going to eat in Vinita seventeen miles south of Welch. They were later seen eating at Big Bill’s Barbeque in Vinita.

Jeremy said he met the group at the local Wal-Mart after their dinner and returned to their home with them to celebrate Ashley’s birthday. He said that everything was fine when he left around 9:30 p.m. A relative of Danny who visited the residence, however, says Jeremy did not leave until 10:30 p.m.

Lauria spent the night at the Freeman home. Authorities say that no outgoing telephone calls were made from the trailer during the night.

Celebrating Ashley’s Birthday

Lauria had a dental appointment the morning of December 30, and Kathy planned to take an eager Ashley to test for her driver’s license. Afterwards, she and Danny planned to go to the Craig County Courthouse, where they were to meet with lawyers regarding the civil lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department over Shane’s death. None of the errands, however, was completed.

At 6:00 a.m. on December 30, a motorist phoned the local fire department after seeing the Freeman trailer ablaze. The flames took two hours to extinguish, by which time the home was reduced to ashes. Investigators determined the fire was arson, caused by an accelerant near the wood-burning stove.

The Freeman Home Is Reduced To Rubbles

The Freemans’ car, as well as the vehicles of Ashley and Lauria, were found on the property. Lauria’s car keys were still inside the ignition.

Investigators expected to find four bodies beneath the rubble, but were surprised to find only one. Kathy Freeman was lying on the floor in the bedroom. The results of her autopsy were even more surprising.

The Craig County coroner determined Kathy had been killed by a shotgun wound to her head. The approximate time of her death was 5:00 a.m., one hour before the fire was reported.

This finding led police to believe that Kathy may have been killed by Danny, who had then fled, taking Ashley and Lauria with him. That theory was disproven the following day, as was investigators’ contention that they had conducted a thorough examination of the scene.

Kathy’s Body Is Found

Lauria’s parents, Jay and Lorene Bible, returned to the Freeman property the morning of December 31. After five minutes of sifting through the rubble, they found another body buried beneath the debris. It was burned almost beyond recognition but was positively identified as that of Danny Freeman. Like Kathy, he was found in the bedroom of the home and had been shot at close range with a shotgun. His right collarbone had been fractured prior to the entrance of the fatal wound.

The Bibles’ amateur sleuthing had made the professional lawmen look like laymen. The following day, authorities conducted a re-examination of the crime scene but found no additional bodies.

Danny’s extensive collection of arrowheads was not in the rubble and has never been located.

Danny’s Body Is Missed By Authorities But Found By The Bibles

Many area residents suspected local law enforcement was involved in the murders of Danny and Kathy Freeman due to their anger over the potential civil lawsuit regarding Shane’s shooting. As such speculation grew, the Craig County Sheriff’s Department voluntarily turned the case over to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

The OSBI says everyone within the Craig County Sheriff’s Department, including deputies David Hayes, who had shot Shane Freeman to death, and his brother Steven, cooperated with them and consented to polygraph examinations. After the investigation was completed, all members of the Craig County Sheriff’s Department were cleared of any involvement in the murders of Danny and Kathy Freeman.

Sheriff Department Cleared

Danny was reputed to be a small-time drug dealer and user, allegedly growing marijuana near the family’s trailer. With the local authorities cleared, many theorized his murder was drug-related.

An informant claims Danny had met with two unidentified men two weeks before his murder and had a heated argument with one of them.

Drug-Related Murders?

Ashley’s purse was found amidst the debris of the burned home. Her learner’s permit and $200 were inside, but the possibility of more missing money fueled speculation that she may have killed her patents and fled with Lauria.

Jeremy Hurst, Ashley’s boyfriend, told police she had been saving money to purchase a car she planned to buy after obtaining her driver’s license. He said she stored the money in a Tupperware container in her bedroom unbeknownst to her parents. Jeremy believed she had between $5,000-$7,000, but police were unable to locate any evidence of the money or of the Tupperware container after the fire.

Friends say the car Ashley wanted to purchase was a source of friction between her and her parents, particularly with Danny, who wanted her to buy a different car.

Is Ashley The Killer?

OSBI authorities concluded it was unlikely that Ashley had killed her parents, believing she and Lauria could not stay hidden and that nothing in either girl’s background suggests they were capable of such brutal acts.

Not Likely

In May 2002, convicted murderer Tommy Sells wrote a letter to The Joplin Globe, claiming he was involved in Ashley and Lauria’s disappearance. Sells said he traveled through Welch and Vinita, Oklahoma, while returning from St. Louis on the evening the girls were last seen. He contended his memories were clouded by drug use, but that he thought he had set a fire and buried the bodies of two girls.

Sells was imprisoned in Texas at the time of his claim, convicted of two murders occurring in 1999: the strangling of nine-year-old Mary Perez in San Antonio in April and the rape and stabbing of thirteen-year-old Katy Harris in Del Rio on December 31, the day after the fire at the Freeman home near Welch, Oklahoma. For those murders, Sells was executed by lethal injection in April 2014.

Sells claimed to have murdered nearly seventy people. Authorities have connected his possible involvement to twenty-two homicides but do not believe the Freeman family and Lauria Bible are among his victims, saying there are too many inconsistencies in his story.

Tommy Sells

Another suspect is Jeremy Jones, who has been convicted of murdering a teenage girl and a woman, and who is a suspect in several murders and disappearances in six states.

Jones lived near Miami, Oklahoma, thirteen miles east of Welch, in the far northeast corner of the state, at the time of the Freeman fire. He had been released from jail at 10:30 p.m. the evening of December 30, only seven-and-a-half hours before the fire at the Freeman home was discovered. Jones moved out of the area shortly thereafter.

Similar to Danny and Kathy Freeman, one of Jones’ victims had been shot to death before her house had been set on fire, and investigators say there are other similarities between the murders. When questioned, Jones confessed to murdering them and to abducting Ashley and Lauria, saying he committed the crimes as a favor to a friend over a drug debt. After kidnapping the girls, Jones said he took them to Kansas, shot them, and disposed of their bodies in an abandoned mine shaft near Galena, thirty-seven miles northeast of Welch, Oklahoma. A search of the mine, however, yielded no trace of the girls.

Jones later recanted his confession, saying he lied to police to get better food and extra privileges in prison.

Jeremy Jones

Jeremy Jones is on death row in Alabama for murdering a woman from Turnerville. Investigators have named him a suspect in twenty-one murders, including, for many years, those of Danny and Kathy Freeman.  They now, however, no longer believe him to have been involved in the Freemans’ murders.

On Death Row

In April 2018, over eighteen years after Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible vanished, authorities announced they believe they have identified the people responsible for their disappearances and the murders of Danny and Kathy Freeman. The crimes, as theorized for many years, are believed to have been drug related.

Multiple people told police that three known methamphetamine dealers, Ronnie Busick and the now-deceased Phil Welch and David Pennington, arrived at the Freeman trailer to collect drug money owed to them by Danny.  An affidavit states an insurance card found near the original scene was traced to a car belonging to Welch and helped connect him to Busick and Pennington.

It is believed that Ashley and Lauria entered the room as the men confronted Danny and Kathy. The perpetrators then proceeded to kill Danny and Kathy, set fire to their trailer, and kidnap Ashley and Lauria. These events occurred either late in the evening of December 29, 1999, or in the early morning hours of December 30, following Ashley’s birthday party.
Ashley and Lauria are believed to have been taken forcibly to Phil Welch’s home in Picher, twenty-three miles north of the town of Welch, where they were raped and tortured for several days.

                     Ronnie Busick           Phil Welch        David Pennington

Multiple people said the men showed them Polaroids of their prize captives, and that they threatened them if they went to the police. Several of the photographs purportedly showed Welch lying on a bed next to the girls, who were bound and gagged with duct tape over their mouths.

The affidavit states Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman were drugged and raped for several days before they were strangled to death and that their bodies were dumped into a pit, which may have been a mine shaft near Picher or a cellar that was later covered in concrete. A search of nearby facilities found no trace of the girls.

The Girls Likely Met A Brutal End

In a plea deal on July 15, 2020, Ronnie Busick pled guilty to accessory to first-degree murder in the deaths of Danny and Kathy Freeman. He was sentenced to ten years in prison with credit for two years of time served, and five years’ probation.

As part of the plea Busick is required to assist authorities with locating the remains of Lauria and Ashley. Investigators say he repeatedly said “the root cellar” during multiple interviews.

Busick Cops a Plea

Searches of nearly four-hundred mine shafts in and around Picher, Oklahoma, have not produced the girls’ remains. The most recent was an on October 7, 2021, search of the root cellar of a home once occupied by David Pennington.

Bodies Not Let Located

For his designation as a “model prisoner” Ronnie Busick was released from prison on October 27, 2023, after serving two-and-a-half years of his sentence.

 

Busick Released

Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible have been missing since December 29, 1999. Both girls, sixteen-years-old at the time, were likely murdered but are still officially listed as missing persons.

Ashley Renae Freeman stood five-feet-seven-inches tall and weighed one-hundred-forty-five pounds at the time of her disappearance. She had a scar on the upper left side of her forehead, dark blonde hair, blue eyes, and an athletic build.

Lauria Jaylene Bible, a Native American with brown hair and hazel eyes, stood five-feet-five-inches tall and weighed one-hundred-thirty pounds when last seen. She had a mole under her nose and a scar on the top of her head. Both of her ears were pierced.

Still Missing 

Both Ashley and Lauria would today be thirty-nine-years-old. If you have any information on their whereabouts or the location of their remains, please contact one of the following agencies:

• Federal Bureau of Investigation
Oklahoma Office
405-290-7770

• Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation
800-522-8017 or email [email protected].

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is offering up to $10,000 for credible information, and a private reward of $50,000 is also offered.

Computer-Aged Images Of Ashley and Lauria

Several of the Freemans’ relatives, as well as those of Lauria Bible, participated in the pilot of the television program What Really Happened?  The show, recorded in 2001, was not purchased by any network and the episode has never been broadcast.

DeAnna Dorsey, a nurse who assisted the Freemans on the night of Shane’s death, appeared on the show. Her daughter was a friend of Ashley.

A few days after DeAnna’s interview was completed, she was shot and killed while working at Vinita’s Craig General Hospital. Police say paranoid schizophrenic Ricky Martin killed her because he was angry over the facility’s downsizing. He was killed in a struggle with police shortly after he murdered DeAnna.

Some people believe there may be a connection between DeAnna Dorsey’s murder and that of the Freemans, but no evidence has been found to support the theory.

DeAnna Dorsey

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13038054/danny-glen-freeman#

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13038073/kathy-eleta-freeman

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13038120/shane-glen-freeman

SOURCES:

• America’s Most Wanted
• Charley Project
• Fox 23 News
• FBI
• KFOR Channel 4 News
• Joplin Globe
• The Oklahoman
• Tulsa World
• Unsolved Mysteries