The Sleepover

Ashley Freeman turned sixteen on December 29, 1999, and her best friend Lauria Bible drove out to stay the night at the Freeman family’s mobile home in the country outside Welch, Oklahoma. Before dawn a passing motorist saw the trailer burning. Firefighters found Ashley’s mother, Kathy Freeman, shot dead inside. The next day, Lauria’s parents searching the debris found Danny Freeman’s body. Both girls were gone, and Lauria’s car was still in the driveway.

For years investigators worked on the idea that Danny had killed his wife and taken the girls. The case sat cold until 2017, when a box of old investigative notes turned up and pointed at three men from the local methamphetamine trade: Warren Philip Welch II, David Pennington and Ronnie Dean Busick. Witnesses said the men had talked about shooting the Freemans over a drug debt, holding the girls in Welch’s trailer, and keeping Polaroid photographs of them bound with duct tape. Welch died in 2007 and Pennington in 2015, before either could be charged.

Busick was arrested in April 2018 and charged with four counts of first-degree murder. In July 2020 he pleaded guilty to accessory to first-degree murder and that August drew fifteen years, ten of them in custody. Earned credits reduced that to about thirty-eight months, and he was released in May 2023. Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman have never been found.