WELCH, Okla. — Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible disappeared from Welch, Okla. Dec. 29, 1999.

FOX23 has been covering the investigation for years and reported in 2018 when an arrest was finally made in the case. Bible was staying the night with Freeman to celebrate her 16th birthday that night.

Investigators say Philip Welch, David Pennington and Ronnie Busick killed Danny and Kathy Freeman then abducted Lauria and Ashley. Authorities say they kidnapped Lauria and Ashley and held them for days, torturing them before murdering them and dumping their bodies.

Authorities have yet to find the bodies of the two missing girls. Welch and Pennington have since died. Ronnie Busick is the only person convicted in this crime still alive. He remains in the Lexington Correction Center.

• In October 2021, a search for remains was revived in Picher based on information from Ronnie Busick. The property in question belonged to David Pennington, another suspect in the 1999 arson and shooting deaths of Danny and Kathy Freeman.

• In January 2020, a search crew used an underwater drone and high-tech camera too look down into abandoned mine shafts in Picher.
• Lorene Bible, the mother of Lauria, faced liver failure in 2021 before ultimately getting a transplant. An active participant in the searches for the girls, she had said she feared she would die before getting answers on her daughter’s remains.

READ: New book looks into missing Welch girls case

• Ronnie Busick, was sentenced to what essentially is the rest of his life in prison in September 2020. Busick is in poor health, and he is not expected to survive the ten years he was given.
• Craig County District Attorney Matt Ballard and Assistant DA Isaac Shields offered Busick the chance to reduce his sentence to five years as an incentive to allow him to finish his life outside of prison if he could lead investigators to the bodies.
• Busick pointed investigators to a location where houses used to be in what is now the ghost town of Picher. After searching two root cellars for the bodies, investigators came up with nothing, and Busick’s time to speak up ran out. He received the longer sentence. His attorney said he tried his best to remember where the girls’ remains are, but his brain is fried from heavy drug use in his life.

• Investigators opened up to reporters about what Busick revealed to them during interviews at the Craig County Jail after his arrest. Busick said he and two now deceased suspects went to the Freeman home in 1999 to collect a drug debt from Ashley’s father. After shooting Danny and Cathy Freeman, the men burned down the Freeman home, but Busick said the girls managed to escape the chaos by running into a nearby field. After making a run for safety, two of the men kidnapped the girls, kept them alive for two weeks and then they were killed.
• Busick claimed he simply watched it all play out from the vehicle he was riding in with the men who did the actual killing.
• At one point, he claimed, the girls were held captive in a basement at a home in Picher.

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