Every Town - 1999 MURDERS of Lauria Bible & Ashley Freeman - Welch, OK

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

The Lauria Bible and Ashleigh Freeman family murder case that went down between December 1999 and July 2020 is a tragic true crime story. Not only were the teenage girls’ lives taken, Ashley’s parents Danny and Kathy Freeman were also casualties of arson and homicide. Then 20 years later, Ronnie Busick confessed to the crime. This murder case has a lot of ups and downs, thanks for tuning in to this episode of Every Town. 🥇 Watch This Episode on Youtube! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUW_ppid9HI🎉 Patreon (videos too hot for youtube) -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJVtrLuIxoI🎧 More Podcasts, we got you - https://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579 Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Every town has a dark side. Today we had to Welsh, Oklahoma, where we learn about Ronnie Bucic and the 2020 confession of the sole surviving suspect in the 1999 murders of Loria Bible and Ashley Freeman. It's often said that time in healing work in tandem for the brokenhearted and the downtrodden. Thus, the oft-repeated adage, time heals all wounds, becomes their mantra, while slowly getting out of the doldrums. It's been tried and tested, too. The time is an accomplice of truth,

especially for those who move heaven and earth to seek justice. And this hasn't been more evident than in the 1999 twin disappearances and murders of best friends, Loria Bible and Ashley Freeman, in the small agricultural town of Welsh in Oklahoma's Craig County. Not only were the teenage girls' lives taken, Ashley's parents, Danny and Kathy Freeman were also casualties of arson and homicide.

The surviving relatives of the victims waited long but not in vain, and in 2020, they finally come to terms with the truth straight from Ronnie Busek, the only surviving suspect in the heinous crimes. Hi, I'm Anavich Gerald and welcome to another episode of Everytown. This week's podcast will take you through the long and tumultuous journey of the Loria Bible and Ashley Freeman Family Murder case that went down between December 1999 in July of 2020. What really happened to Loria and Ashley on the night of the latter's birthday back on December 29th, 1999? What were the speculation surrounding their disappearances and subsequent deaths, including those of

Ashley's parents? And how was the prime? primary suspect and Ronnie Busek finally apprehended almost 20 years after committing the crimes. The sisterhood that bonded, Loria Bible and Ashley Freeman, since they were in kindergarten, was truly admirable. They were indeed two peas in a pod. As Lareem Bible, Loria's mother would put it, what one was thinking, the other was thinking. It's kind of like when two people, one can finish the sentence when the other one starts one. Both girls were born and grew up in the town of Welsh, which is in Craig County, a rural area in Oklahoma's northeast

corner. Loria came to the world eight months earlier on April 18, 1983, and brought joy to her parents, Ray and Lorraine. On December 29th that year, Danny and Kathy Freeman, welcome their daughter, Ashley, in addition to her half-brother Shane. Ashley and Loria's paths crossed in kindergarten, and it blossomed into a great friendship. They could have been mistaken as blood sisters had their physical attributes been close enough. Valoria had hazel eyes matching her brown hair while Ashley's peepers sparkled and blue against her dark blonde hair. Loria's features were distinguished by a mole under her nose, a scar on her head, and pierced ears. In Ashley's case, adding uniqueness to her personality, where her scar on her.

the upper left side of her forehead in an athletic build for her 5-7-inch frame. Their interests in school were diverse, but quite complimentary. Ashley, the taller one, was into basketball while 5-5, Loria excelled in cheerleading. So as one shoots the ball for the win, the other struts are dancing skills to celebrate their victory. And as best buddies, it goes without saying, and Loria and Ashley were perennially present in each other's important in life events like birthdays. On December 29th, 1999, it was Ashley's turn to mark her 16th birthday. And of course, by her side to make it more memorable was Loria. And yes, Ashley's special day was indeed unforgettable, in a dreadful sense, because it served as the best friend's last memory

alive together in the minds of their loved ones. Turning Sweet 16 must be a truly special event for any young lady. And Ashley's parents surely knew about that, as well as her boyfriend, Jeremy Hurst. The celebration started earlier on December 29th with a pizza party at a local pizzeria. Birthday girl Ashley was joined by her mother Kathy and, of course, her bestie Loria. Their fun continued at night with a dinner party at the Freeman's mobile home. Ray Bible, Loria's dad, remembered his daughter asking permission. Daddy, is it all right? if I spend the night with Ashley in the Freeman's home.

To which he replied, well, just make sure you're home by noon tomorrow. Jeremy left at around 9.30 p.m. while Ashley, Loria and the Freeman couple, chilled the night away. The next day on December 30th, Loria didn't return home by noon, and the Freeman's mobile home

was left charred to the ground. It was estimated that between late at night on December 29th and in the early hours of December 30th. A fire erupted at the Freeman's house. At around 5.30 a.m., a concerned neighbor reported the devastating incident to the fire department, but their efforts proved futile as the trailer home was eventually reduced to ashes. By the time, Loria's parents arrived on the scene. The fire was already contained, but they found their daughter's car parked in the home's driveway

with the keys in the ignition. Worse, there was no sign of a single surviving soul. law enforcement immediately canvassed the rubble to check for any hint of life. Lorraine Bible then got an answer from the county coroner, who said only one body was found, and it was the burnt remains of Ashley's mother, Kathy, found lying on the floor of the Freeman couple's bedroom near the waterbed. The more shocking discovery?

The back of Mrs. Freeman's head was shattered by a gunshot, which the autopsy later determined as the cause of her death. death. Investigators also resolved that the inferno was a case of arson. But who deliberately set the home on fire and why was that question left unanswered for so many years? The more unsettling concern was where were Kathy's husband Danny, Ashley and Loria? Even the Craig County Sheriff's Department staff were stumped. We only had one body accounted for, could find no others, yet we had all the cars there at the house. That was a little bit bizarre.

No one could quite piece two and two together on that. It didn't make any sense. Since any remains of Mr. Freeman and the two teenage girls weren't located, local police initially inferred that Danny himself had shot his wife and then fled with Lori and Ashley. But their speculation was swiftly negated the next day, the last day of 1999. Loria's parents were hoping to find any additional clues that the police may have missed,

so they returned to the crime scene. Five minutes after they had walked through the extensive rubble. There they noticed Mr. Freeman's Rottweiler, loyally sitting near a charred piece of debris. Upon a closer look, and was another badly torched, unrecognizable body. Ray and Lorraine notified the police, which then identified the remains of an adult male,

as Danny Freeman's. Lorraine described Danny's shocking state. He did not have anything from the upper teeth all the way to the top of his head was totally gone, like he'd been shot in the face. Sadly, he also suffered the fate of his wife Kathy. Danny had also been shot in the head execution style. The discovery of Danny's remains, though, prompted the authorities to re-examine the crime scene for possible clues of Ashley and Lauria's bodies, but there was none except for finding

Loria's purse, which contained her driver's license and nearly $200 in cash. Lorraine wondered why her daughter would leave her purse unless she and possibly Ashley 2 had been abducted. Her instincts told her, I felt that somebody had gone in there, and for whatever reason, murdered Danny and Kathy and took the girls. This early lead helped the authorities piece together their discoveries and ruled out robbery. Otherwise, Loria's purse and the vehicles would have been taken. Thus, authorities found a reason to believe that Ashley and Loria were abducted. Starting in January of 2000, police immediately mobilized search efforts in nearby Grand Lake, a mine shaft near Pitcher, and a water-filled quarry near Chelsea, but they were fruitless.

On January 1st, 2001, or a year after Ashley and Loria had gone missing without a trace, A memorial service was then held in their honor. Yet, the search for them kept going, and on June 14th that year, a tip from jailhouse snitch led the police to investigate the house of a certain Paul Glover. However, the test done on the patch of blood from his carpet revealed it wasn't related to Loria nor Ashley. A few weeks later, authorities used cadaver sniffing dogs and searching Twin Bridges State Park in Ottawa County, but found nothing. Another search was conducted and we endot,

almost 190 miles away from Welsh, after bones have been unearthed, but alas, they turned out to be horse bones. Then, after a decade of futile attempts to find Ashley, the Freeman family initiated court proceedings to have Ashley declared legally dead in 2010. This leads to the question. Was Ashley's death intertwined with a

fatal shooting of her parents, Danny and Kathy, the night their trailer home was deliberately burned. In the weeks and months after Danny and Kathy Freeman had been found dead, police didn't have any suspects in custody. Ashley's boyfriend, Jeremy Hurst, wasn't considered one, as it was established that he left hours earlier before the crimes were committed. But finding a motive for shooting Danny and Kathy dead wasn't much of a struggle for the authorities, as different theories soon floated. One was based on what Danny told his brother, Dwayne Vancell, months before the crimes occurred. If anything happens to me, look at the Sheriff's Department.

It turned out that the Freeman family had a long-standing rift with the Craig County Sheriff's Department due to the death of Danny's son, Shane. He was shot and killed by a deputy after he was caught stealing a truck and a neighbor's gun. Ruling found the shooting justifiable, but the Freemans threatened to file a wrongful lawsuit against the Sheriff's Department. The family's attempt, thus resulted in the deputy's intimidation of Danny and his family. According to Danny, the deputies could do anything they wanted to him and his family, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it, as revealed by Dwayne.

Following the debts of the Freeman couple, the Craig County Sheriff's Department voluntarily turned the case over to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. They also consented the polygraph test. Special agent, Steve Nutter of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, said the polygraphs were conclusive. 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. It was also speculated the Freeman couple's murder were a result of a drug.

drug deal gone bad, as Danny was allegedly a small-time drug trafficker. Asora said that he met with two unidentified men two weeks before the killings, and he wasn't apparently on good terms with one of the guys. But this theory wasn't in consonance with the disappearance of Ashley and Loria. The killers could have shot them dead too. For what reason would they abduct them? Oddly, others believed Ashley killed her parents because of friction between her and Danny, but authorities believed that the girls couldn't have hidden out for so long if that theory held water. The Bible family also believed that either girl couldn't be capable of killing, and their more pressing concern was the whereabouts of the girls. So were Ashley and

Loria still alive or dead? The Bible and Freeman families made sure the case of their relatives didn't become dormant by consenting to featuring the yet unresolved case on different TV shows. It remained in the public's consciousness, as a search for Ashley and Loria continued, but no one saw a bizarre twist coming a decade following the teenage girls vanishing. Two convicted killers came forward and confessed to the murders of Loria and Ashley, as well as her parents, Danny and Kathy. They were Tommy Lynn Sells, an American serial killer, convicted and sentenced to death on a murder conviction,

and death row inmate Jeremy Jones. Particularly Jones had claimed that he murdered Danny and Kathy Freeman as a favor for a friend over drug debt, which may have given credence to the theory that the killings were linked to Danny's drug trafficking activities. Jones then took the girls to Kansas, where he shot them and threw their bodies into an abandoned mine, but nothing was recovered when the mine was searched. Jones subsequently recanted his story and admitted to fabricating it, in order to get better food and additional foam privileges in prison. It dashed the hopes of Ashley and Loria's relatives

would long want to know their fate and achieve closure. However, in such complicated crime cases, waiting that seems to take forever as part of the package. As most people say, everything unfolds at the right time, especially when time runs in with the truth. And, together, they tread in the same direction. In December of 2017, new investigators, handling Ashley and Loria's case, discovered investigative notes from the original exploration that had apparently been lost.

The investigators, under the then-nually minted Craig County Sheriff Keith Winfrey, immediately began to follow new leads as a result of finding the notes. At last, the Freeman's and Bibles broke the streak of bleak Christmases they had to endure for 18 years. Hope springs eternal and hope for the Freeman and Bible families finally sprang during the spring of 2018. On April 23rd, an important breakthrough in the case was announced. 66-year-old Ronnie Busek was arrested in charge with the murders of Gloria, Ashley, Danny, and Kathy. He was also charged with the girls' abduction and arson of the Freeman's mobile home. Two other suspects, Warren Welsh and David Pennington, were also a lot of the women.

identified as being involved in the case, but they had died earlier in 2007 and 2015, respectively. Investigators believe that Welsh was the mastermind behind the crime, and that Pennington and Bucic were his co-conspirators. Welsh was allegedly a Bible hymn-singing meth cooker, and also described by others as evil, but given to breaking and unhinged preaching rants. Pennington was a kingpin, another witness told investigators. Both had previous criminal records before the December 1999 incident. Bucig had been in and out of prison on drug-related convictions for nearly 40 years. The investigator's affidavit stated that they had been suspects from the beginning

based on an insurance card belonging to Welsh's girlfriend found at the crime scene in December of 99. But it was the witness's accounts that pinned them down, and finally led to Busek's arrest. The prosecutors alleged that the three men came to the Freeman trailer to settle a bad drug deal. Witnesses told police that after killing the couple, the three suspects decided to take the girls and have fun with them, according to the affidavit.

Another witness said Ashley and Loria were held for a few days at Welsh's trailer and were raped and violently strangled to death. The men allegedly said, if they wouldn't have taken off running, they would still be alive. The bodies, police alleged, were then thrown in a pit. Welsh's ex-girlfriend told investigators that when she had lived with him in the months after the disappearance and murders of Ashley and Loria, Welsh actually decorated the walls of his trailer with the missing posters, promising $50,000 for information about the girls. And then there were the damning polaroids of the two teens.

which, Welsh's former squeeze, discovered after he was jailed for beating her a few months after the Freeman murders. Those photos, which, Welsh, kept in a leather briefcase, showed Ashley and Loria bound and gagged with duct tape while lying on a bed. The disgusting suspect was also lying next to the girls in some of the photographs. She was certain the girls in the Polaroids were the same two girls identified in the reward poster, and the bed was the one that was in Welsh's bedroom. The girlfriend threw the photos in the trunk of an abandoned car at the trailer and then fled to a friend's house.

When Welsh got out of jail, he phoned the girlfriend, demanding to know where the Polaroids were. He told her he knew she had seen them. Don't you ever tell anybody or you will end up in a pit like those two girls he allegedly threatened. Unfortunately, she lost the photographs. And furthermore, Pennington's girlfriend also told investigators that he had admitted to committing the murders and that Welsh and Bucic were his co-conspirators. Pennington allegedly threatened a killer if she went to the police.

Another witness disclosed that Welsh and Pennington had also tried to show him the pictures years after the crime, shoving them in his face acting as if they were proud of the images. Several other witnesses came forward, some as recently as 2017, claiming to have seen. seen the photographs and hearing the suspects brag about the murders. Lauria's mother confirmed on April 26, 2018. Three days after, Bucick was arrested that she spoke with the only living suspect in the murder of her daughter and the Freemans, but Bucic denied knowing the whereabouts of the girls. Despite the surge of information about Ashley and Loria's disappearance and murders,

the question, where are there remains still begs to be answered. On June 14th, 2019, Bucic was offered immunity and reward money in exchange for information about the two decades-old case of Loria Bible and the Freeman family murders. But Bucick's lawyers claimed he couldn't remember anything about the slangs and abduction because he was grazed by a bullet in a shooting that happened in 1978. However, Bucic had allegedly told fellow inmates at the Craig County Jail details about the crimes. but his attorneys said they couldn't release any information about that. In July of 2019, an intensive search, centering on the former residents of Welsh and the abandoned town of Pitcher, believed to be the last location Ashley and Loria were seen alive, yielded negative results. Before 2019 ended, a three-man, three-woman jury found Busek competent to stand trial in the murders of Danny, Kathy, Ashley, and Loria.

as well as in the abduction of the two girls. But the best news for the Freeman and Bible families, the investigators and the prosecutors, arrived on July 15, 2020. The sole surviving suspect pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of accessory to murder and an agreement with prosecutors. In exchange for avoiding first-degree murder and arson charges,

Bucic was required to assist investigators with locating the remains of Loria Bible and Ashley Freeman before August 31st, 2020, which was the set date of his formal sentencing. If he could do that, then 68-year-old Busek would be sentenced to just five years in prison and five years probation, but he wasn't able to produce the bodies. And so, he'll now be locked up behind bars for 15 years. It took a total of 20 years to reveal the truth. But hopefully, now the families and loved ones of Ashley and Luria.

can finally get some closure. Thanks so much for tuning in, and if you want even more creepy stories from us, then check out our YouTube channel and podcast called Scary Mysteries. Over there on the YouTube channel, you'll find each episode of Everytown as well, complete with a cool video component if you'd rather watch it like a show. And if you really want to show us some love and support

and watch truly terrifying videos, and check us out at patreon.com slash scary mysteries. There's a new video every week over there, plus the chance to get involved with ideas and picking the videos that we post each week. So head on over there to get involved, and I'll see you soon. So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Tune in next week for another one

filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because who knows? Maybe your town will be next.