Casefile Revisited: Lauria Bible & Ashley Freeman

From journalists to Liviela Voice, the creator of the Hidden Investigative Series, the Bakersfield 3, comes the new case file-present series, Ada. In 2011, the body of a woman was discovered in a California vineyard. For more than a decade, she was known only as Jane Doe. Then, detectives finally discovered her name. But identifying her was only the beginning. Listen to Ada, wherever you get your podcasts. As we enter case files 10th year, we've created a new run of special bonus content. Case file archives, a series of releases revisiting the earliest years of the show, along with previously unreleased premium episodes. This is completely additional content and will not replace new episodes. We'll still be back on March 7 with brand new cases, and we'll be releasing the same number of new episodes this year as we did last year. Case file archives is simply a way to mark the 10th year, revisits some older episodes, and to offer previously subscriber exclusive episodes to the wider audience for the first time. For the re-release episodes, we have fully edited, polished, re-recorded, and freshly produced them from start to finish to match our current production standards. They are not full rewrites. Our aim isn't to reshape the cases or alter the original storytelling, but to preserve them as they were first told, while giving them the level of production they didn't have back in 2016. Where appropriate updates have been added, but the core structure remains faithful to the originals. Because of this, these episodes may sound a little different to our recent work. Today's re-releases Laura Bible and Ashley Freeman, the third case file episode ever produced. On December 30, 1999, a fire tore through a home in Welch, Oklahoma. Inside, police found the body of Ashley Freeman's mother, Kathy. But Ashley, her best friend, Laura Bible and Ashley's father, Danny, were nowhere to be found. Investigators soon confirmed the fire was deliberate and that Kathy hadn't died in the blaze. She'd been killed before the house was set alight. What followed was an investigation filled with missed opportunities and years of unanswered questions. Originally released in January 2016, the case has seen a significant development since then, which has been included in this re-release version. Our episodes deal with serious and often-distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support and for a more detailed list of content warnings, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. On Wednesday, December 29, 1999, Oklahoma teenager Ashley Freeman invited her best friend Laura Bible over for a sleepover to celebrate her 16th birthday. The Freeman's lived in a trailer on a rural property in the small town of Welch in Craig County. Ashley's parents, Danny and Kathy Freeman were also home that evening. It was a relatively uneventful, albeit enjoyable night. The girls ate cake and watched TV and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But just before 6 o'clock the next morning, a passing neighbour reported that the Freeman House was on fire. Emergency services rushed to the scene and found one body among the ashes. But where were the others? Laura Bible and Ashley Freeman both grew up in Veneto, a town in Craig County, Oklahoma that had a population of around 6,500 people. They first met in kindergarten where they formed an instant bond and became inseparable straight away. As time went by, their bond only got stronger. They were best friends about as close as friends could get. They shared the same thoughts and finished one another's sentences. Laura and Ashley attended the same schools and spent every minute of their time together. That was until 1995 when Ashley's parents announced that the Freeman's were moving to Welch, a small town about 32 kilometres or 20 miles north of Veneto. Welch was a rural area with a population of about 600 people. The Freeman's moved into a trailer on a 40-acre property in an isolated, quiet spot. It was a testing time for Laura and Ashley, but they remained close, speaking on the phone at least once a week and seeing each other as often as they could. They were typical teenage girls with a shared interest in hair, makeup, shopping and clothes. Both were excellent students who were in the top 10% of their classes. Laura was a cheerleader with a deep love for animals while Ashley was more of the athletic type. She played in her high school basketball team and had a passion for hunting, having shot her first deer around the age of 12. Ashley had a part-time job at a local convenience store and was trying to save up to buy a car once she turned 16. But while Ashley succeeded in her personal life, not everything was great for her at home. Ashley's mother, Kathy Freeman, was described as a loving and caring person. She was a hard worker and to the main breadwinner for the family. However, Ashley's father, Danny, was known to have a violent temper. After the family moved to Welch, there were reports that both Ashley and her older brother Shane started clashing with their father. In 1998, Shane ran away from home and Danny rang the local sheriff's office to report him missing. The police located Shane shortly after. He explained that he'd run away because his dad had whipped him for being disobedient. Shane's injuries were significant enough that he was bleeding through his underwear and that Danny Freeman was subsequently charged with assault. A court date was set for the following year, but four months later, something happened that irrevocably changed the Freeman household. 17-year-old Shane had started to develop a taste for theft. On January 8, 1999, he stole his neighbor's vehicle as well as a gun. Deputy David Hayes from the Craig County Sheriff's Department later spotted the stolen vehicle on the side of the road. He approached the vehicle and saw Shane Freeman inside. According to Deputy Hayes, Shane got out and pointed a gun at him. Deputy Hayes pulled out his own firearm and screamed at Shane to drop the weapon. When Shane refused to do so, Deputy Hayes claimed he was forced to fire to protect himself. Shane Freeman died instantly. An investigation by the County District Attorney found that Deputy Hayes was acting in self-defense and that the shooting was justified. It was a devastating blow for the Freeman family and Ashley struggled to come to terms with the death of her big brother. The Freeman's also had engraved doubts about Deputy Hayes' version of events. They refused to accept that he'd acted in self-defense, believing it was a cold-blooded murder. Refusing to be quiet about it, the Freeman family started posting signs around town declaring justice for Shane. This started a feud between the Freeman's and the local sheriff's office. About a month after Shane's death, Danny Freeman was arrested after he was caught driving around trying to find out where Deputy Hayes lived. In response, Deputy started sitting outside of the Freeman house in their patrol cars. Tensions were high, with Danny yet to face court on the assault charges against his son. Danny was ultimately acquitted of the charges, but regardless, it had been a tragic and stressful year for Ashley. She was supported by Laura Bible, who played a huge part in helping Ashley come to terms with the loss of her brother. By the time Ashley's 16th birthday rolled around on December 29, 1999, she didn't feel like having a big celebration. Instead, she just wanted to spend the day with her mother. Kathy and, of course, her best friend, Laura. The three went into town and spent the day shopping before having dinner at a local pizza rayer. Afterwards Ashley asked Laura to sleep over so they could eat birthday cake and ice cream together. At around 7pm they drove back to Laura's house to ask permission from her parents. Laura's parents said it was fine, as long as she was back in time for her dentist appointment the following morning. Laura, who already had her driver's license and her own car, happily agreed. She took her purse with her, which contained about $200 in cash. It was a low-key evening. The girls ate cake and watched a hunting show on TV with Kathy and Danny. Ashley's boyfriend, a Jeremy, stopped to buy it to give Ashley her birthday present and then left at around 9.30pm. He didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. It was a normal quiet night with the Freemans and Laura just sitting around and chatting happily. Just before six o'clock the next morning of Thursday December 30, a neighbor called Emergency Services to report that the Freemann House was on fire. It was still dark at this time before sunrise. Volunteer firefighters rushed to the scene and found the house ablaze. Once they managed to extinguish the flames, officers from the Craig County Sheriff's Department determined the fire was arson and declared the area to be a crime scene. At around 7.30am Laura's mother, Lorraine Bible, was at work when she received a phone call from her son saying that the Freemans' house was on fire. After Lorraine got off the phone, a deputy arrived almost straight away to break the news that only one body had been recovered from the fire. Beyond that, there wasn't much else he was able to tell her. Lorraine immediately called her husband and they both rushed to the scene. On their arrival, they were shocked to see that the area had been cordoned off but most of the deputies on site appeared to be just standing around. No one was searching through the debris or looked like they were doing much of anything. The Bible's questioned the deputies about this and they explained that they were waiting for an agent from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation known as the OSPI to arrive before the investigation could begin. The OSPI is the state law enforcement agency for Oklahoma which acts independently of the local county departments. Because of everything that had happened between the Freemans family following Shane's death, the Craig County Sheriff's Department had deemed that investigating the fire themselves would be a conflict of interest. And Steve Nutter from the OSPI eventually arrived at the scene and took over the investigation. By 5.30pm, the officers had collected all of the evidence and concluded their investigation of the crime scene. The body that had already been located was identified as Kathy Freeman. Yet strangely, the police had been unable to find the remains of Danny, Ashley or Laura. They told the Bibles they were 100% certain that there were no other bodies in the house. The Bibles were concerned. As far as they could see, the search had concentrated entirely on the house itself. No one had searched the rest of the Freemans 40-acre property. Laura's father organized a few of the local rangers who searched the property on horseback. There was no trace of Danny or the girls. This raised some serious alarm bells. Four people had gone to sleep in the Freemans house the night before, but only one was accounted for. So where were Danny, Laura and Ashley? Laura Bible's parents were taken back to the police station where they were interviewed extensively by OSPI agents. A million things were running through their minds as they considered all the possible scenarios. The prevailing theory was that Danny had killed his wife and then abducted Ashley and Laura. It seemed to be the only thing that made sense. Otherwise, what else could it be? But there was a problem with this theory. With Danny and Cathy's cars were still parked in the driveway and the Freemans didn't own any other vehicles. Laura's car was there as well, with the keys still in the ignition. Given their remote location, this raised the question of how Danny could have gotten away with the two teenagers if he was indeed the perpetrator. Lorraine Bible informed the OSPI agents that Danny had a history of drug use and had perhaps been involved in some small time drug dealing. This presented another possible scenario. Could it have been a drug deal gone bad? This would explain why all three vehicles were still there. The police didn't think it had been a random attack. The location was too remote, making it highly unlikely that someone would stumble across the Freemans trailer by accident. The possibility that Laura and Ashley could be responsible was quickly deemed unimaginable. There was simply no way they could have done it. Early the next morning of December 31, agent Steve Nutter received some shocking news. Cathy Freeman didn't die from the fire. She died from a shotgun blast to the head. The time of death was estimated to have been around 5am on Thursday, December 30. It was also confirmed that the fire had been deliberately lit as an accelerant had been used. Not long after receiving this information, the police received their first tip off. Someone called in to report that they had seen Danny Freeman in a white Ford truck with Laura and Ashley at around 7am. Police supported the initial theory that Danny had murdered Cathy before abducting the two teenagers, but it didn't explain why all the cars were still in the driveway. Furthermore, it was also revealed that through Ashley's job at the convenience store, she had managed to save $4,000 for a car she hoped to buy. She kept the cash hidden in a Tupperware container in the freezer of her house, but a search revealed that the money was gone. While this pointed to a potential robbery, Laura's purse was still at the scene with $200 cash inside. Whichever way you looked at it, nothing seemed to add up. Early on the morning of December 31, the Bible's returned to the Freeman property. After the assumption that Danny had fled with the girls, the police had cleared the crime scene and released it to the Freeman family, leaving them free to look around. Laura's parents were desperate for answers and hoped that by revisiting the scene they might notice something the police had missed. They needed to know where their daughter was and were convinced the scene would hold some answers. They found an answer alright, a very big answer. Not long after arriving at the Freeman property and sifting through the wreckage of the burnt trailer, the Bibles found the burnt body of Danny Freeman. This was a major problem. There was already friction between the Freeman family and the local Sheriff's Department, enough so that the Sheriff's Department had deemed investigating the crime a conflict of interest and called in the OSBI. Somehow though, both organisations had managed to miss Danny's body, which took the Bibles all of about 5 minutes to find upon sifting through the scene. Somebody had failed miserably. Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Case file to continue to deliver quality content. The Bibles called the Sheriff's again and they returned to establish another crime scene. The OSBI was also called back. The Bibles were told to leave because it was an active crime scene but they refused. Lorraine raised a good point when she said, "We let you do your job yesterday and to look how well you did." knowing that their daughter's body. It could very well be there as well, the Bibles weren't going anywhere. It was determined that Danny Freeman had also been killed with the shotgun blast to the head. His charred body was found in the bedroom near where Kathy was found, but there was no shotgun in the room, ruling out the possibility of a murder suicide. The Bibles were frantic. As the police had missed Danny's body, there was every chance they had missed Laura and Ashley as well. An extensive search was carried out of the scene, but investigators were absolutely certain there were no other bodies on site, and there was still no trace of the two teenagers. The Bibles grizzly discovery put an end to the theory that Danny had murdered his wife and abducted the girls. And obviously the tip off the police received earlier was a false lead, but it did raise the question, could Laura and Ashley be responsible after all? It seemed impossible. These were two loving, caring girls who were good at school and had no history of violence. Nevertheless, it was a possibility the police had to consider. But if there was any truth to it, it still didn't explain how the pair had got away. With all the cars in the driveway and Laura's purse found at the scene with her money and ID inside, nothing added up. It seemed highly unlikely that the two teenagers would murder Danny and Kathy and then run off into the woods, unless of course they had acted in self-defense. It was theorized that Danny and Kathy could have gotten into an argument and Danny had shot Kathy. Ashley could have then stepped in to defend her mother by shooting Danny. After all, she was an avid hunter who owned her own guns. Ashley was also one of the very few people who knew about the $4,000 cash in the freezer. As crazy as it seemed, it had to be considered. And if Ashley hadn't taken the money, then who did? Whoever it was, they had to know it was there in the first place. As the investigation continued, police learned that Danny had a large collection of rifles and shotguns. Around 14 firearms were recovered at the scene, but police wouldn't say whether or not the murder weapon was among them. Meanwhile, some members of the Freeman family had a theory of their own. They were convinced that the local sheriff's department was responsible, finally putting an end to the bitter feud they'd been having with the Freemans since Shane's death. According to one of Danny's relatives, he'd had a conversation with Danny shortly before his death in which Danny had said, "If anything ever happens to me, look at the sheriff's department." He'd been completely serious at the time, pointing a finger in his relative's face. While it was entirely possible that Danny had just been letting off steam during a heated discussion when he made this remark, it emerged that the Freemans were actually trying to save enough money to file a wrongful death suit in relation to Shane's shooting. Local death suits had to be filed within a year of the event occurring. With the one-year anniversary of Shane's death fast approaching, at the time of their deaths, Kathy and Danny had just one week to come up with the money before they'd been eligible to file the suit. Danny's relatives said that local deputies were trying to threaten and intimidate Danny from going ahead with the case. It was his belief that local deputies had killed Danny and Kathy and buried the girl somewhere. It was a pretty far reach. Wrongful death suits are nothing new to police departments, and Shane's death had already been ruled justifiable by the district attorney. But with members of the Freeman family refusing to let this theory go, the OSBI stepped in and subjected local deputies to a lie detector test. All of them passed. Agent Steve Nutter stated, "All cleared themselves as a result of those examinations. The overall conclusion of our efforts was that the sheriff's office had nothing to do with the murders of Danny and Kathy and did not know the whereabouts of the two missing girls." But the information that Danny Freeman was trying to come up with money fast did raise some eyebrows. An autopsy was performed on Danny Freeman and it was revealed that he had a fracture on his right collarbone, indicating there could have been a fierce struggle before he was killed. As mentioned earlier, Danny was believed to be involved in drugs and maybe a little dealing. Could he have gotten in over his head, looking for a big payday to get enough money together for the lawsuit only to have the big deal go horribly wrong? The OSBI didn't think so. According to Agent Nutter, nothing suggested a drug-related crime and if it had been drug-related, he thought the very last thing anyone would want to do was abduct the two teenagers. While investigators are privy to information that we aren't, it was a pretty incredible comment to make. If it was a drug deal gone wrong, why wouldn't the person or person responsible for shooting two people in the head and burning their house down be capable of abducting Laura and Ashley? There could be several reasons why the perpetrator might want to take the 16-year-old girls. On New Year's Day of 2000, the local community banded together and over 500 people performed a large search of the Freeman property, but the search turned up nothing. It was as though Laura and Ashley had disappeared off the face of the earth. On Friday, January 7, a memorial service was held for Danny and Kathy Freeman with over 400 people in attendance. The investigation continued, but the police had nothing. No witnesses, no leads and no real suspects. 18 months went by before they got their first solid lead. A couple of inmates at the local county jail reported that they had seen Ashley Freeman and Laura Bible at a farmhouse in Ottawa County on New Year's Eve of 1999. The day after they went missing. And it wasn't any old house. It was a house well known to police. It belonged to a family who were known manufacturers of methamphetamine. According to the inmates, Ashley and Laura were drugged, raped and tortured at the house, and apparently someone had filmed it. One of the inmates said he saw the tape. Police immediately applied for a search warrant and on July 26, 2001, they raided the house. The only thing they found was evidence of drug manufacture, but they did also find a spot of blood. A sample was taken to the lab, but the lab was busy, and the Bible family was told they wouldn't have the results back for a year. As if Laura and Ashley's loved ones hadn't suffered enough, they now had to wait for a whole year to discover if the story the inmates had given was true. The results finally came back. It wasn't a match to Ashley or Laura's blood. No trace of the girls was found in the house, sending the police straight back to square one. Like a lot of cases that garnered significant media attention, the investigation into the frame and Bible case was hindered by bogus tip-offs and unsubstantiated sightings. These calls only got worse after a $50,000 reward was offered in exchange for information leading to an arrest. Police even received calls placing Ashley and Laura on opposite sides of the country on the same day. Investigators decided to look into other crimes that had been committed around the same time as the Freeman Bible case, both in Oklahoma and in neighboring states, to see if any similar offenses were committed. And they found one case that stuck out. In the early morning hours of December 31, 1999, a 35-year-old man broke into a trailer in Del Rio, Texas after being kicked out of a bar. He launched a brutal attack on two young girls, 13-year-old Kayleen Harris and her friend 10-year-old Crystal Seals. Kayleen was sexually assaulted and stabbed 16 times while Crystal had her throat slit. Kayleen died from her injuries, but miraculously Crystal survived. managed to go to a neighbor's house and call for help, enter its attacker was arrested soon after. The man was identified as Tommy Lynn Cells, a drifter who was ultimately suspected of being involved in upwards of 20 murders across the United States. He was sentenced to death for Kayleen's murder and put on death row in Texas. The attack on Kayleen and Crystal had occurred the morning after the Freeman murders, 716 miles away, roughly a 10.5 hour drive. Agent Nutter and the new Craig County Sheriff for Jimmy Suda made their way to Texas to interview Cells. At first he gave them nothing, but after about six hours of interrogation, Cells confessed to having killed Laura Bible and Ashley Freeman. He claimed he'd buried them at Red River on the border of Oklahoma and Texas. Police took Cells to the site and he pointed out where he thought the bodies were buried, but there was a problem. The site looked completely different to what Cells had described and no remains were found. Cells also lacked any intimate knowledge of the case and only repeated what had already been published in the paper. Cells had a bit of a habit of confessing to murders. All on death row he confessed to over 70. Despite conclusively linking him to at least 20 cases, the police thought he was playing the system by confessing to a whole heap of crimes that he didn't commit. It could have been that he was trying to gain notoriety or perhaps he just liked the attention. There wasn't much else to do on death row after all and confessing to killing Ashley and Laura did get him a day out of his cell. As crazy as it sounds, there are a number of reasons why people make false confessions. And given Tommy Lynn Cells was already on death row, he really had nothing to lose. It became pretty clear to the police that Cells had nothing to do with the Freeman Bible case and he was executed on April 3, 2014 without ever being charged in relation to the crime. But Cells wasn't the only one who confessed. Back in December 2000, 26-year-old Jeremy Bryan Jones was wanted on two separate rape charges in Oklahoma. He fled to Alabama where he managed to steal the identity of a man named John Paul Chapman. Not long after this, Jones got himself into trouble again and was arrested and fingerprinted. The prints were sent to the OSPI and incredibly, their system failed to match Jones's prints to his real identity. A new profile was created for him under his new Chapman identity and he was never extradited back to Oklahoma to face the rape charges. On September 18, 2004, a 43-year-old woman named Lisa Nichols was raped and shot dead inside her trailer in Turnerville, Alabama. Her trailer was then set on fire. Jeremy Jones was arrested after it was revealed that his vehicle was seen out the front of Lisa's trailer on the night she was murdered. Jones admitted to killing Lisa, but that wasn't all. He also confessed to 13 other murders committed across six states. Police could only find enough evidence to charge Jones with three of those crimes and he was subsequently sentenced to death. While on death row in July 2005, Jones confessed to four more murders, those of Laura Bible and Danny, Kathy and Ashley Freeman. What interested police was that on the night Danny and Kathy were killed, Jeremy Jones had been arrested for public intoxication only 16 kilometers or 10 miles from the Freeman home. Agent Nutter and a sheriff's suit are interviewed Jones. At first, he denied any knowledge of the crime, even though he had already confessed to it. That as time went on, he started to admit involvement. Jones claimed that Danny Freeman owed him money for drugs so he shot him, before shooting Kathy and setting their house on fire. He said he didn't realize that Ashley and Laura were there until they ran out of the house upon hearing the gunshots. According to Jones, the girls asked him for help, so he told them to get in his truck. From there, he tied them up, killed them, and dumped their bodies in a Kansas mine shaft. Unlike Tommy Lynn's Solz's confession, Jones knew some things about the case that got investigated his attention. He knew the exact accelerant that was used to start the fire, as well as the type of shotgun that was used to commit the murders, information that had never been released to the public. Police immediately set up a search of the Kansas mine where Jones claimed to have dumped the girl's bodies, but there were issues. There were over 100 underground mines in the area, as well as water tunnels, and anything that got dumped in would float away. Regardless, the area was searched extensively over several days, including the use of underwater camera equipment, but no trace of Laura or Ashley was found. When Jones found out the police had come up empty in the search, he retracted his confession. He said he made it all up in order to get special privileges, including extra phone calls, visitations, and special meals. Police had another look at Jones' arrest for public intoxication. It turned out he was arrested at 4am on December 30, 1999. Kathy and Danny Freeman had been killed at 5am, meaning Jones was already in custody at the time. Ten years after the murders, in 2010, the OSPI released a new piece of information to the public for the first time. They revealed that on the day of the crime, two suspicious vehicles were seen in the area. The first was a dark four-door sedan which was seen travelling east on a rural road towards Welch between 5.30pm to 6am. The OSPI explained they hadn't released it this detail at the time because it was only a vague description and they decided to keep the information within law enforcement circles. This was a potentially detrimental decision. Had they released it earlier, someone might have seen it or known someone who drove a similar car. After 10 years, it seemed highly unlikely that anyone would remember anything about that car. The second vehicle seen leaving the area around the time of the crime was a dark coloured heavy-duty pickup truck heading north towards Kansas. The OSPI said this information had only come about recently as the result of an interview. How reliable that information was 10 years after the fact was anyone's guess. The case remained open and the leads continued to be followed up all over the country, but still there was no trace of Laura and Ashley. Whatever had happened to them, it seemed highly unlikely that two well-behaved teenagers would be able to commit such a horrible crime and then vanish without a trace, taking none of their belongings with them. It's far more likely they were also victims of whoever killed Danny and Kathy. But if that was the case, then why weren't they shot dead and left in the house too? Why were they taken? Who took the $4,000 that Ashley had hidden in the freezer and how did they know it was there? In the decade since Ashley and Laura vanished, Ashley's relatives had heard declared legally dead. That was a step that Bible family wouldn't take, refusing to give up hope that Laura might still be alive. Every night, Lorraine Bible left the back porch light on, just in case Laura came home. Like when Casefile first covered the Freeman Bible case in 2016, our episode ended there. But it turned out, the story was far from over. Casefile will be back shortly. By supporting our sponsors, you support Casefile to continue to deliver quality content. In 2017, the newly appointed Craig County Sheriff Heath Winfrey came across a box of notes documents related to the Freeman Bible case that had been pushed aside by the previous administration. Inside, he found something that immediately caught his attention. In the days following the fire at the Freeman home, two private investigators had combed the property at the request of the Freeman family and found a car insurance verification card in the driveway that belonged to a woman named Susan Bailey, not her real name. The private investigators told the police about the card, and although they never took it as evidence, OSBI agents did go to interview Susan. Susan claimed to have no idea why her insurance card was found at the crime scene. She said she'd never met Danny or Kathy Freeman, nor had she ever been anywhere near their home. At the time, Susan had a boyfriend named Philip Welch, a known manufacturer and a dealer of Methamphetamine. He sometimes used Susan's car. Susan said that Welch knew of Danny Freeman, but did not associate with him. Further documents inside the evidence box revealed that a year after the murders in January 2001, OSBI agents Steve Nutter interviewed a woman named Tracy Ford, not her real name. He told police that just months after the Freeman's were killed, Philip Welch broke up with Susan and began a relationship with her instead. The two lived together in a trailer in Pitcher, a small town roughly 25 miles northeast of the Freeman's. There, Welch often spent time with two of his associates, David Pennington and Ronnie Busek. According to Tracy, the three men said they had killed Danny and Kathy Freeman because Danny owed money for drugs, and they had abducted and killed the two girls. Philip Welch even kept one of the reward posters on the wall in their house. Later on, Tracy said she found a leather briefcase belonging to Welch, which contained several polaroid photographs of two teenage girls lying on Welch's bed. Tracy recognized it from his old bed spread. The girls were both bound and gagged with duct tape and it was clear they were being held against their will. In one photo, Philip Welch was lying alongside them. In another, the girls were duct taped to chairs. Tracy recognized the girls from the missing person poster in their house, Laura Bible and Ashley Freeman. Tracy said she confronted Welch about the polaroids, and he warned that if she ever told anyone, she would end up in a pit in pitcher like those two girls. Philip Welch was interviewed two years after Tracy's claims, but why nothing further came of this line of inquiry is unknown. The box of documents found in 2017 was handed over to an investigator for the district attorney and an OSPI agent who were now jointly leading the investigation into the Freeman Bible case. They began speaking to various associates of Philip Welch, David Pennington and Ronnie Bucic. At least 12 witnesses backed up the claims made by Tracy Ford, saying they too had seen the polaroids of Laura and Ashley. One witness described the girls as looking emaciated. Laura said Ronnie Bucic admitted that the trio had taken the girls to a trailer in pitcher where they had tortured and raped them for several days. Tracy's son said that Philip Welch and David Pennington had shown him the photos and said they had strangled the two girls to death. At one point, Tracy and her son had gone to live with a friend to escape Welch's physical abuse. The friend told the police that Welch had called constantly, saying he was involved with the Freeman case and threatening to kill her and her children and throw them into the pit with the missing girls. According to Tracy's friend, it was Welch who had pulled the trigger on Danny and Kathy before instructing Pennington and Bucic to start the fire, a claim that was backed by several others. Several people said that Welch was the mastermind behind the crimes while Pennington and Bucic had been involved to varying levels. Witnesses either hadn't come forward out of fear or because they thought it was such common knowledge that police already knew. An ex-girlfriend of Pennington's name to Leanne, not her real name, said that during the course of their relationship, Pennington had often bragged that he and at least two other men had killed the Freeman's over a bad drug deal. He allegedly told Leanne that Laura and Ashley had walked into the room at the time and to that the men had decided to "take the girls and have fun with them". Leanne said that Pennington had talked about Laura and Ashley all the time. He said their bodies were in a pit somewhere and warned Leanne that if she ever told anyone or tried to leave him, she would end up in the pit too. She eventually became so terrified of him that she'd gone into hiding. It turned out that the two private investigators who had initially found Susan Bailey's insurance card at the crime scene just days after the murders had interviewed a number of these witnesses in the early days of the investigation, including Philip Welch. They'd even later tracked down Susan Bailey's car at a salvage yard and found documents inside that linked the car to Welch. They had tried to hand over the information they'd uncovered to the Craig County Sheriff's department, but the office had refused to take it. One of the private investigators had since passed away and the information he'd gathered had subsequently been destroyed. However, the other PI still had a copy of Susan Bailey's insurance card and handed it over to the new investigation team. He said he'd stopped looking into the case years ago after a member of law enforcement told him he was interfering and threatened to cancel his private investigator license if he didn't stop. For the current investigators, there was only one thing left to do and that was to interview the three men in question. Phil Welch, David Pennington and Ronnie Bucic, but there was a big problem. Phil Welch died in 2007 and a David Pennington died in 2015. Ronnie Bucic was the only surviving member of the trio. The 65-year-old was called in for questioning three times throughout 2017. While he admitted to knowing Pennington, he initially denied having any association with Phil Welch. That was until police revealed that witnesses had a link to the three of them to the Freeman Bible case. Bucic then admitted that the three men were pretty tight back in those days. Although he said he never liked Welch as he was shady and had a bad temper. Bucic initially said he only knew about the murders from the news, but when pushed, he conceded that Phil Welch was likely responsible because he was, quote, "cold-blooded" and "mean-enough-to-do-it". He also admitted that David Pennington might have been involved, saying he had been acting suspicious and sheepish around the time. Bucic knew that Susan Bailey's insurance card had been found at the scene. He claimed Pennington had told him about it, and that this had added to his suspicions against the two men. At first, Bucic said nothing when the investigate is accused him of being at the Freemans on the night of the crimes. Then, he switched back and forth between outright denying his involvement and claiming he couldn't remember anything. He said witnesses were lying about his involvement, but offered no explanation as to why they would be motivated to do so. During his third interrogation, one of the agents asked Bucic what was keeping him from telling the truth. Surely, they said this whole situation must have been eating at him for the past 17 years. You're scared of what your sister would think about you if you told the truth. That's what it is, right? The agent posited. Bucic's response was simple. Well, yeah. Although he nodded along when the agent said it would bear relief to get it off his chest, he stopped short of admitting to anything. On April 23, 2018, almost 18 and a half years after the crimes, Ronnie Bucic was arrested and charged with four counts of first degree murder, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of first degree arson. Upon his arrest, he said he was willing to talk to Laura and Ashley's families. Laura's mother, Lorraine, went to meet with Bucic one-on-one. She told him that she didn't come to harass or upset him, but as a mother trying to find her child, Bucic replied. "I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell you where your daughter is. I don't know. I don't know anything." He said something similar to Ashley's uncle when he asked where his niece was. "I wish I could," Bucic replied. "I don't have a clue." In 2019, a jury found Ronnie Bucic competent to stand trial, but in July 2020, he accepted a plea deal. In exchange for just 10 years behind bars, Bucic pleaded guilty to the lesser crimes of being an accessory to first-degree murder in the deaths of Danny and Kathy Freeman, the arson of their home, and the abduction and presumed murders of Laura and Ashley. As part of the plea deal, he agreed to assist investigators in finding the girl's remains. If their recovery was successful, Bucic's sentence would be reduced to just five years. According to Bucic, Welch and Pennington had held Laura and Ashley captive for about two weeks during which they were raped and tortured before eventually being killed. He claimed not to know how they were killed or where their remains were disposed of. Around the time of the murders, Bucic said that Pennington had mentioned something about filling in an old root cellar at his former property in picture. In August 2020, searches were conducted of the property in question, but no sign of Laura or Ashley's remains were found. Those on site described Bucic as looking genuinely surprised. His lawyer said that Welch and Pennington had never told Bucic what they did with the girls, and any information he had provided was merely a guess. In the lead up to Bucic's sentencing, Lorraine Biable provided an emotional victim impact statement that spoke of the pain her family had endured for the past two decades. 20 years, eight months and one day ago, on December 30, 1999, you made a choice, Lorraine wrote. You chose to go with two other men and changed the course of so many lives, including your own. You are one of three men responsible for taking two innocent girls' lives. You could have done something to stop it. You could have called and reported that you were a part of something awful, but you did not. Instead, you continued to be a part of the unthinkable things our girls endured before you were a part of ending their lives. You had a choice. They were young and beautiful, but you know that. They were innocent, but you and your other buddies took that from them. They did nothing to you. They did not owe you or anyone else anything. Their lives were only just about to begin. You took that. They didn't have a choice. Our lives changed. The pain you have brought to us is indescribable. It's unfair. Because of your choices, we don't sleep. We don't have a single day that we aren't searching. We don't walk into a crowd, first without looking for her, and then wondering if every person in the crowd could cause us more harm. We don't allow our other children to go to sleepovers, have play dates, or trust anyone to be near them. We have nightmares. We mourn every single day and will continue to do so until the day we can bring the girls home, and then we will mourn in another way. We don't have a choice. Ronnie Busek was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by five years probation, with credit for time already served. Further searches were conducted, but all were fruitless. In May 2023, after serving just 38 months of his sentence, it was announced that Ronnie Busek was being released early for good behaviour. Laura and Ashley's loved ones were furious. Had they known this was possible, they never would have agreed to the plea deal. The decision caused to such an uproar that in May 2025, the governor of Oklahoma passed a new bill requiring felons convicted of accessory to murder, to serve at least 85% of their sentence before being eligible for parole. This legislation is known as Laura and Ashley's law. As of January 2026, the remains of Laura Bible and Ashley Freeman have never been recovered, nor have the polaroids depicting their torture. Laura's mother, Lorraine Bible, continues to advocate for further searches. Like many others, she believes Ronnie Busek knows whether remains of her daughter are located. When Busek was released from prison, Lorraine stood outside waiting for him. While she didn't wish him any harm and forgave him on a fundamental level, she wanted him to know that she would always be watching and questioning his every move. I want him to know that I'm here, she told reporters. And I'm not going anywhere. [Music]