Answers still elusive in decade-long mystery

Freeman-Bible murder case still troubles Oklahoma families

By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

Ten years after their disappearance, little hope remains that Ashley Freeman or Lauria Bible are alive somewhere today.

The two good friends disappeared the night of Ashley’s 16th birthday on Dec. 30, 1999, when her parents, Kathy and Danny Freeman, were shot to death inside their trailer home near Welch, Okla., and the residence torched.

Since that day, various theories as to who killed the Freemans and what happened to the two missing girls have come and gone.

Two suspected serial killers laid claim to the crime from cellblocks in other states. The braggadocio of Texas death row inmate Tommy Sells wore thin years ago, while the Alabama jailhouse “confession” of Jeremy Jones, a native of Northeast Oklahoma, still retains some credibility among investigators despite timing issues raised by public record.

Jones claimed to have sexually assaulted one of the girls before killing them both.

“Even though we’ve heard all that stuff, you always do (retain some slight measure of hope),” Lorene Bible, Lauria’s mother, told the Globe in a telephone interview this past week.

With the 10th anniversary of the murders and the girls’ disappearance approaching, Lorene Bible finds herself in a position she remembers praying 10 years ago that she would not wind up: still wondering what happened to her daughter.

Over the years, there have been numbers of purported sightings of Ashley, many of them emanating in Florida, each of them proving to be erroneous, according to law enforcement. In the early years, there had been searches, of the creek bed and woods near the Freemans’ home by family and friends, of more remote woods in western Arkansas by investigators working a tip. Five years ago, there was an extensive search of an old mining site near Galena, Kan., based on information obtained from Jones.

All to no avail. No bodies. No remains. No answers.

Vigil

This Wednesday, a 10th-anniversary prayer vigil for the victims in the Freeman-Bible murders will be conducted at First Church of God in Vinita, Okla. The vigil will start at 7:30 p.m.

Lorene Bible and her husband, Jay, will attend. Lorene’s brother, Lindey Leforce, a minister, will preside at the service with the assistance of Rev. Eddie Wrinkle, of the First Church of God. Lorene Bible said the vigil is meant to honor the lives of the victims and to keep the unsolved case forward in the public mind.

“You have to,” she said. “If you don’t keep the word out, nobody is going to search for your daughter.”

Each new lead and theory of the crime that has surfaced over the years has taken surviving family members down what seems like nothing but dead-end roads. Still, they go down each road that opens up, Bible said, “because you never know if it may be something that finally solves the crime.”

Dwayne Vancil, Danny Freeman’s brother, expects to attend the vigil. Vancil said Danny’s stepmother died in January of this year and her death has left him wondering how many other family members may die never knowing the truth of what happened to Danny, Kathy, Ashley and Lauria. The not knowing haunts him every day of his life, he said.

“You never know who you run into who might have been involved in it,” Vancil said.

Convinced

Craig County Sheriff Jimmie Sooter has not spoken with Jeremy Jones since he and an agent from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation interviewed Jones in an Alabama jail in January 2005. Sooter and the agent came away from those 17 hours of talking with Jones convinced that he played a role in the Freeman-Bible murders.

“My personal opinion remains that (Jones) did the crime,” Sooter told the Globe this month.

Jones claimed to have killed the Freemans over a debt. Danny Freeman owed a friend of Jones some money and had not paid up, according to Jones. He told the Oklahoma investigators that he went there to kill the Freemans that night as a favor to his friend, although the friend did not know he intended to do that.

Jones claimed he shot the Freemans, set their home on fire, and then drove the girls to Kansas and killed them.

Sooter has said that Jones showed a knowledge of the interior of the Freemans’ home and accurately described various features of their kitchen. He also knew what type of accelerant was used to set the fire, a detail investigators never released to the media.

Less impressively, Jones knew what type of shotgun was involved and the fact that Kathy Freeman was discovered face down in the burnt remains of their waterbed, details that had made their way into media coverage before his confession.

Doubts

There was initial skepticism regarding the confession because of public records that showed Jones was arrested at 4 a.m. the day of the slayings on the outskirts of Miami, Okla., and remained in jail until after 10 a.m. The fire at the Freemans’ home was not reported to authorities until shortly before 6 a.m.

But investigators believe Jones still could have committed the murders the way he said he did before his arrest. Under this particular theory of the crime, the fire may have smoldered several hours before finally flaring up and attracting notice.

There are other problems with the confession. A former girlfriend of Jones claimed she was with him the day in question at a motel near the point of his arrest, and that he had no opportunity or means to have committed the murders. She claimed his truck was not even operable at the time.

Vancil believes investigators have used Jones as an excuse not to pursue other leads.

“We’re pretty confident Jeremy Jones did not go out there by himself and kill Danny and Kathy, and take the girls,” he said.

He believes Jones knew others who were involved and may even have been with them at some point during the commission of the crime. Vancil believes the girls were held for a couple of days at a home in the area of Twin Bridges State Park before being killed and their bodies hidden. The family received information to that effect shortly after the crime, he said.

While family members and the sheriff see the mystery from different perspectives, all involved believe it’s important that the case be kept alive in the media.

“If the girls are out there somewhere, it’s going to take something from the public to find them,” Sooter said.

Vancil said: “All it takes is one person to come forward, and this can be solved.”



Reward

A $50,000 reward remains in place for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for the murders of Danny and Kathy Freeman and the disappearance of their daughter, Ashley, and her friend, Lauria Bible, both 16 years old.

The reward money was raised two months after the crime on Dec. 30, 1999, and has gone unclaimed for 10 years.

Text Only