The Welch, Oklahoma Fire: What Happened to Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

May 4, 2026

Ashley Freeman turned sixteen on December 29, 1999, and her best friend Lauria Bible got permission from her parents to sleep over and celebrate. Lauria's father told her to be home by noon the next day. The two girls, along with Ashley's family, spent part of the evening at a restaurant in nearby Vinita, Oklahoma, and Ashley's boyfriend, Jeremy Hurst, stopped by later to give her a silver heart pendant necklace as a birthday gift before heading home sometime around 9:30 or 10:30 that night, accounts differ on the exact time. What is not in dispute is that Lauria never made it home by noon, or ever again, and that by the time anyone outside that rural trailer home in Welch, Oklahoma saw what was left of it, two teenage girls and both of Ashley's parents were gone.

The Fire

At around 5:30 in the morning on December 30, a passing motorist saw the Freeman family's trailer engulfed in flames and called it in. When firefighters got the blaze under control, they found the body of Ashley's mother, Kathy Freeman, in the debris. She had been shot in the head. For a short time, investigators floated a theory that Ashley's father, Danny, might have killed his wife and fled with the girls, a theory that fell apart the next day when Danny's own body was found in a bedroom, so badly burned and covered in debris that his wife's family, searching the wreckage themselves, were the ones who found him. Lorene Bible, Lauria's mother, would later say the body had no face left. He too had been shot, execution style. Lauria's car sat undisturbed in the driveway, keys still in the ignition.

Investigators went through the wreckage looking for Ashley and Lauria. They found nothing. No remains, no clear evidence either girl had died in the fire at all. Whoever had killed Danny and Kathy Freeman appeared to have taken the two teenagers somewhere else entirely.

There was a shadow already hanging over the Freeman family before that night. Ashley's older brother, Shane, had been shot and killed by a sheriff's deputy the previous year after stealing a car, a shooting that was ruled justified but that the family had reportedly discussed suing over. Ashley's father had also faced child abuse allegations connected to Shane before his death, and was acquitted of those charges in March 1999. None of that history turned out to explain what happened in December, but it meant the Freemans were already a family the local sheriff's department had some complicated history with, which would matter later.

Years of Nothing, and Two False Confessions

The case went cold almost immediately and stayed that way for the better part of two decades. Two separate men falsely confessed to killing the girls during that time. Tommy Lynn Sells, a convicted serial killer, claimed involvement and then recanted. Jeremy Jones, another convicted killer already in custody for other murders, told investigators he had killed the Freeman parents over a drug debt and taken the girls to Kansas, where he said he shot them and dumped their bodies in an abandoned mine. Searches of that mine found nothing. Jones later admitted he had made the entire story up because confessing got him better food and more phone privileges in prison. Ashley's family, exhausted by false leads and needing legal closure, had her declared legally dead in 2010. Lauria's mother, Lorene, never stopped pushing.

The break, when it finally came, did not come from a confession at all. In 2017, investigators found a box of case notes that had been misplaced for years, notes that redirected the investigation toward three men: Warren Phillip "Phil" Welch II, David Pennington, and Ronnie Dean Busick. Welch had died in 2007. Pennington died in 2015. Neither would ever be charged with anything. Busick, then in his mid-sixties, was still alive, and in April 2018 he was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder.

What the Witnesses Said

What followed was one of the more disturbing evidentiary pictures to emerge in a cold case in recent memory. At least a dozen witnesses eventually came forward describing years of the three men bragging, in various states of drunkenness and specificity, about what had happened at the Freeman trailer. A woman who had lived with Welch gave a sworn affidavit describing conversations in which the men discussed the Freemans owing them money over drugs, and said Welch kept a briefcase of Polaroid photographs showing Ashley and Lauria bound and gagged with duct tape, lying on a bed, with Welch photographed lying beside them. According to accounts relayed by multiple witnesses, the men claimed they shot Danny and Kathy Freeman, set the trailer on fire to cover it, and took the two teenagers with them, where the girls were held for days, assaulted, and eventually killed. Investigators were told the girls' remains might have been left in a mineshaft or root cellar near Picher, Oklahoma, a nearly abandoned mining town not far from Welch.

When Lauria's family learned about the alleged photographs, they released a short public statement: "At this time all focus is on finding Lauria and Ashley. We welcome all information leading to their recovery. Until they are home with us, this will never be over." Busick reportedly expressed willingness to speak with the Bible family after his arrest, and Lorene Bible did speak with him directly. He denied knowing where either girl was.

A Guilty Plea That Answered Almost Nothing

In July 2020, Busick pleaded guilty to being an accessory to first-degree murder in the deaths of Danny and Kathy Freeman, to arson, and to the abduction and presumed killing of Ashley and Lauria. He admitted to knowing what Welch and Pennington had done and staying silent about it for eighteen years. He was sentenced to ten years in prison plus five years of probation. He told investigators at one point that the girls' remains had been placed in a root cellar in Picher. In October 2021, searchers dug through the root cellar of a property once occupied by Pennington, a location Busick had reportedly referenced repeatedly. They found nothing.

Busick did not serve most of his sentence. Classified by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections as a compliant, low-risk prisoner, he received two days of credit for every day served and was released on May 19, 2023, after serving roughly thirty-eight months of a ten-year term. His release drew immediate outrage from both families, who had waited over twenty years for anyone to be held responsible at all and watched the one person charged walk free after little more than three years.

Still Missing

Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible have never been found. No burial, no remains, nothing that would let either family hold a real funeral. Lorene Bible spent years afterward doing what she could to keep her daughter's name in front of people, giving interviews, participating in documentaries, pushing for renewed searches even as her own health declined. Both girls were remembered by teachers and classmates as good students. Ashley was a member of the National Honor Society. Lauria was a cheerleader who wanted to become a cosmetologist. They were sixteen, spending an ordinary night together after a birthday dinner, in a house that would not be standing by morning.

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