New lead prompts fresh dig for Oklahoma girls' remains

Jeff Lehr, The Joplin Globe, Mo.
·4 min read

Apr. 27—PICHER, Okla. — Of the many searches conducted over the years for the remains of missing teens Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman, an investigator still working the cold case thinks a lead generating a fresh dig Tuesday in Picher may be "the most promising."

"I'm more optimistic than I have been about the other locations," Gary Stansill, an investigator for the Craig County district attorney's office, told the Globe on Monday.

Stansill said the latest search will entail digging up two adjacent properties at 629 and 627 S. Ottawa St. in Picher. It is set to begin about 9 a.m. Tuesday with the assistance of the Quapaw Nation.

David Pennington, one of three men believed to have been involved in the Dec. 30, 1999, slayings of Ashley Freeman's parents, Danny and Kathy Freeman, of Welch, Oklahoma, and the abduction of their daughter and the Bible girl, both 16, moved to 629 S. Ottawa St. in January 2000.

Investigators believe the girls were held and sexually abused at suspect Phil Welch's home on College Street in Picher for a couple of weeks before being killed and their bodies disposed of in some manner.

The fact that Pennington, who was living in Chetopa, Kansas, at the time of the slayings and the abduction, moved to Picher just a couple of weeks later has investigators intrigued.

"That's the big mystery," Stansill said. "Why did he suddenly move?"

Ronald Dean Busick, 69, the lone suspect to be charged and convicted of involvement in the case, was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to being an accessory to first-degree murder in the case. Both Welch and Pennington died years ago without ever being charged with involvement in the crime.

New information obtained from the stepdaughter of Pennington and his ex-wife suggests it could be related to what the men did with the missing girls' bodies.

"We're looking for a (root) cellar, something underground, that people say was there," Stansill said of the two properties.

He said the stepdaughter came forward shortly after the April 2018 arrest of Ronald D. Busick and naming of the other two as suspects in the case. She was interviewed again a few months ago about information she had provided about Pennington three years ago.

Stansill said the stepdaughter could recall being told by Pennington when she was just 10 years old not to go near a spot behind their residence on Ottawa Street that she thought might have been a root cellar. She recalled how he had spanked her when he caught her playing near there one day.

The stepdaughter's mother, whom Pennington married in February 2000, was interviewed a couple of weeks ago and recalled that there had been an old root cellar near a shed at the back of lot that Pennington did not want them going near.

Interviews of other former Picher residents and nearby property owners also raise the possibility of there having been a cellar there in 1999, Stansill said. One adjacent property owner recalled seeing Pennington later cover it with dirt before moving away.

There have been two prior searches of properties based on information that the girls had been buried in a root cellar. A search of the property where Welch once lived turned up nothing as did a more recent search of a property on the east side of Picher where Busick had pointed investigators.

Busick kept bringing up a root cellar in his talks with investigators as part of his plea deal, Stansill said.

Busick's insistence on that detail, in combination with the information that the stepdaughter and ex-wife provided about Pennington's behavior and a claim Busick made that he saw Pennington with lime and concrete in the back of his pickup truck a couple of weeks after the murders, form solid enough basis to justify Tuesday's search in Stansill's mind.

He said the property immediately north of Pennington's former residence will be searched as well because some of those interviewed thought the root cellar was actually on the property behind Pennington's lot and not on the lot where he lived.

The searchers will not be using ground-penetrating radar this time before digging.

"We thought we could dig it up quicker than we can use ground-penetrating radar," Stansill said. "We'd have to dig it up anyway" if radar showed any object of interest underground.

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