FORGOTTEN BUSINESS. The Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman affair, these teenagers who disappeared in the flames

It was a few hours in the year 2000, in the small town of Welch, Oklahoma, that the case took root. On the evening of December 29, 1999, Ashley Freeman invites her best friend, Lauria Bible, to come celebrate her 16^th birthday at her house. One sweet sixteen like all the others, which nevertheless took a dramatic turn… Around 5:30 am on December 30, a passerby saw the Freeman’s house disappear in flames and dialed the emergency number. In the ruins, firefighters discover the charred body of Kathy Freeman, Ashley’s mother. She was shot in the head. Danny Freeman, her husband, Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible are nowhere to be found.

At first, the police suspect the father of having murdered his wife before setting fire to his house. But on December 31, this theory falls apart. While searching the house ravaged by the flames in search of clues to find their daughter, Lauria’s parents, Lorene and Jay Bible, find what had escaped the police: the body of Danny Freeman, also killed by a bullet in the head. The thesis of feminicide is abandoned in favor of another: that of a settling of scores between Danny Freeman and the Craig County Sheriff’s Office. A few months earlier, Danny Freeman’s son, Shane, had been shot dead by a police officer after stealing a car and a weapon. Shane’s murder had been deemed justifiable, but Danny Freeman threatened to sue the sheriff’s office. However, this track is dismissed in turn by the Oklahoma Federal Bureau of Investigation.

20 years of mystery

Subsequently, several other avenues are studied: a burglary that would have gone wrong, or even a stroke of blood from young Ashley, who would have killed her parents before fleeing with her best friend. However, none of the hypotheses convinces the police. It was only a few years later that a first twist occurred. Convicted serial killers Tommy Lynn Sells and Jeremy Jones confess to the murders of the Freemans and young Lauria Bible. They nevertheless reconsider their declarations, affirming to have simply tried to obtain new privileges in prison.

It took until April 2018 for the case to find a more credible outcome. 66-year-old Ronnie Dean Busick is arrested. He confesses to murdering the Freemans, who supposedly owed them money in connection with methamphetamine trafficking, and kidnapped the two teenage girls before killing them in turn. According to The Washington Post, “at least a dozen” of witnesses will claim to have heard Busick and his accomplices, Phillip “Phil” Welch II (died in 2007) and David Pennington (died in 2015) bragging about having raped and killed Ashley and Lauria. The criminals allegedly immortalized their actions with a Polaroid camera, but the photos were never discovered. In July 2020, Ronnie Dean Busick was sentenced to 15 years in prison, 10 of which were suspended, for the murder of the Freemans, the kidnapping and murder of the teenage girls and the arson of the Freeman house. It should be noted that no tangible evidence proves to date that these crimes are really attributed to him.

“We’ll take them both home”

Twenty years later, the bodies of Ahsley Freeman and Lauria Bible remain untraceable. In 2010, the Freeman family took steps to declare Ashley’s legal death. For their part, Lauria’s parents continue to tirelessly search for their daughter’s body. “I’m waiting for that moment when I’ll get the right text message, or have the right conversation, that will tell us where the girls areLaurene Bible told People magazine in June 2021. We fight for Lauria. And we know that when we find Lauria, we will find Ashley. We’ll bring them both home.”

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