August 14, 2023 • 40 mins
This story centers on a terrible crime in 1999 rural Oklahoma. Two parents were murdered and two teenaged girls in the same trailer went missing. Author Jax Miller details the story in her book, Hell in the Heartland.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This story contains adult content and language, along with references
to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
All these drugs foster violence. That's I think one of
the biggest themes was just this beautiful Harland ravished by meth.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
true crime podcast Tenfold war Wicked and the co host
of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
(00:49):
crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
stories with details that have never been published. Tenfold War
Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
behind the stories. This next story centers on a terrible
crime in rural Oklahoma in nineteen ninety nine. Two parents
(01:13):
were murdered and two teenage girls in the same trailer
went missing. Author Jax Miller details this very twisty, turney
story that has a surprise ending in her book Hell
in the Heartland what do you think this story is
about At its heart, I think.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's about grief. I think it's about trauma. I think
it's about misdirected anger, police corruption. There's a lot of
things at play here. There's many facets to this story
because you have so many people involved, and I feel
like everyone's coming at it from their own perspective and
they have their own feelings towards it.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Well, this starts in an unlikely place, rural Oklahoma in
nineteen ninety nine. Let's just start from the beginning and
tell the story chronologically. Who who is the family at
the center of this? Tell me about them?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So the story revolves around the Freeman family. If you
have mother and father Kathy and Danny Freeman, ages thirty
eight and forty, respectively, and their sixteen year old daughter,
Ashley Freeman. They live in Welsch, Oklahoma, which is in
the northeastern most part of the state, bordering Missouri and Kansas.
Very rural. They lived in a trailer home that was
(02:23):
very far off from the road. You couldn't see your
neighbor from there virtually. On the night of December twenty ninth,
it was Ashley's sixteenth birthday, and her best friend Laura Bible,
also sixteen. She'd asked her parents if she could sleep
over there for a second night in the road. Now,
they'd been friends for bosh most of their lives, like
since they were in diapers. So the mom was like, sure, yeah,
(02:43):
you know, go on, you can, you know, have fun.
And the girls, Ashley and Laura, they went out, they
got a birthday cake, they went to Pizza Hut, and
then they came home later that evening they had birthday cake.
Ashley's boyfriend Jeremy was also with them that night and
that was the last person to ever see them. The
next morning, between five am and six am, this was
(03:03):
December thirtieth, the neighbors saw a fire. They saw the
Freeman trailer on fire. That was kind of the ground
zero of everything was finding this trailer on fire at
early morning.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
We'll set the scene a little bit for crime rural
Oklahoma in the late nineties. Would this have been Are
we talking about drugs sort of in the area or
is it just really idyllic rurle nothing happening in this
place at all.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I think that was a very interesting time because that
was when meth was really starting to be introduced. Now
a days, we see lots of towns ravished in myth,
But back then it was just starting to trickle in
and the meth related crime was becoming more and more prevalent.
So maybe not as much back then, but it was
starting for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
So the neighbor sees the fire, they obviously call the
fire department. Is this a quick response?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, it's actually a pretty quick response, and they do
get the fire out rather quickly, I want to say,
forty five minute, and it's something along those lines. And
after they extinguish the fire, they find a body, and
that body will transpire to be Kathy Freeman. At this
point in time, nobody knows how she died, and furthermore,
(04:13):
they don't know where her husband, Danny is, and they
don't know where the two girls are. They just have
one body. So the first morning, everyone's scrambling very much.
Laura Bible, the girl who was sleeping over her parents,
Jay and Loreene Bible, they're on the scene right away.
You know, where is my child? Where are the girls?
Where's Danny? And they're waiting in the driveway for answers. Meanwhile,
(04:35):
cops are scrambling, the firefighters and everyone's just scrambling around
the crime scene. What's going on? How does she die?
And they're not getting many answers. But at around this
time they get a tip. According to the OSBI, Oklahoma
State AUROBA Investigation Agent Steve Nutter, he says, we just
got a call. Danny has the girls. He's taken them
hostage and he's not going to give them back until
(04:57):
we give over the cop who shot his son. Oh,
Kathy and Danny had a seventeen year old son who
had died less than a year before this. He was
shot and killed by police. They'd had dealings with Danny.
They know Danny's a hothead. They says, well, let him
pull off for a day, give it twenty four hours,
and then we'll start looking for the girls.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Hold on, what kind of dealings had they had with Danny?
Is this domestic violence stuff or is this him shooting guns.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
In the middle of the night neighbor complaint stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
There were domestic violence issues. There were accusations that Danny
had beat his son, Shane. There were accusations that he
beat his wife. He was an abusive man. Shane kind
of went on the run. He committed a bunch of
petty crimes. And then he had a face off with
the Craig County Sheriff's office and there was a cop.
It was his first day with the county. He shot
him dead.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So Kathy and Danny were up in arms about it.
They said, our son was wrongfully shot. This was a
wrongful shooting. Whether or not it was, I don't think
we'll ever really know again. This could have been just
misdirected grief. But either way, the Freeman's they wanted justice
and there was a lot of tit for tat between
the Craig County Sheriff's Office and the Freeman's. The police
(06:04):
would shine lights on their home in the middle of
the night. Danny would stalk the cops kids like. It
was a lot of back and forth.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah. And that was going on for a year until
this fire started. So they knew Danny because of Shane
Freeman's death, and now they're running on the theory that
Danny has the girls let him cool off. He's a hothead.
I remember speaking to the cops on the scene and
they were like, we actually wondered if Danny was in
the woods with a gun on us while we're you know,
trying to put out the fire.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So the Bible parents, Loreene and Jay, you know, they
go in for questioning and they start asking the parents,
you know, have you seen him in any drug dealings?
Have you ever seen him with large amounts of cash?
And they're like, what are you talking about? Just just
find our kids. We don't give a damn about what
Danny's into. They says, well, we're gonna let him cool
off and we'll see.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Wait, did the Bibles believe that this was possible that
Danny would have taken his daughter and his daughter's best
friend hostage.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
We had known for her whole life.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I think they were just kind of confused, like what
is going on? Is this true? And I think that
they just wanted to know, you know, for sure, is
this the case? They go the next morning, so this
is the second morning, they go back to the crime scene,
right before the break of day, and they were expecting swat,
they were expecting the whole brigade to be there, and
there's not a single person there at the trailer. At
(07:19):
the trailer right at this point, people have trampled the
crime scene. I mean, it's a mess. And the sun
comes up and within moments, moments literally, they find a
second body in the trailer. Is that right in the trailer? Yes,
where they found Kathy. She was face down on a waterbed,
her waterbed of the master bedroom. Her feet, what were
(07:42):
left of her feet because they had been mostly burned off,
were hanging off the bed. Danny's body was found face
up in the doorway of that bedroom. But they knew
it was him right away. See everything from here up,
everything from like the jaw up was missing. He had
a previous surgery. He'd accidentally shot himself in the head
while cleaning his a few years prior. Oh my gosh,
(08:02):
that's the story in and of itself, when he drove
himself with a bullet in his brain to the hospital,
got fed up with waiting, drove himself to a second hospital. Yeah,
he was tough, but anyway, he had a surgery where
they had to reconstruct his sinuses, so there was a
lot of wiring in his face. So when the Bibles
saw him, even though the top portion of his head
was missing, they can tell by the wiring that this
(08:25):
was Danny. And they could also see his genitalia here
that it was a male, So they knew right away
it was Danny that was the same day. They also
learned that Kathy and Danny had both been shot to
death before the fire was set. So now you have
these parents both shot at close range. There goes the
cops theory that Danny has the girls because here he
is dead on the floor. So where are the girls?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Now? Let me ask you, just from a logistics standpoint,
to discover Kathy's body, didn't the police and investigators have
to walk over Danny if he's in the hallway.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yes, And in fact, that was a big part of it.
That the family he's complained about was Steve Nutter, the
OSBI agent. He was the lead on the case. He
was the only one wearing cowboy boots, and they saw
his cowboy boots on Danny's Torso, oh gosh. When I
spoke to a Nutter years later, he's like, there was
no body to see. He was reduced to ash. It
was nothing, But that contradicts what we see in the
(09:17):
autopsy reports and what the Bible's witness. I mean, he
was very much intact. He was missing a hand and
he was missing the top portion of his but he
was mostly very much intact.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yes, So he was tunnel focused on not somebody on
the floor potentially and maybe there was trash I mean,
was this a trash out trailer?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, you know, they said he could have been covered
with debris. I know for J. Bible who was the
first one to find the body, and Loreen was, you know,
right near him. They had noticed Ashley's dog. She had
a Rottweiler named Sissy, and Cissy was at Danny's body
and J. Bible saw her whimpering. They also saw a
big knot on the rottweiler's head.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
So Jay finds Danny's body. Investigators had found Kathy's body
on the waterbed. They are saying, just without an autopsy?
Are they at first blush saying must have been an
accidental fire and we don't know what happened to the
two girls?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
What are they thinking?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
The scene is saying at this point now that there
are two bodies and their suspect of less than twenty
four hours is dead.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Well, I think one of the first things that they
must have looked into was was this a murdered suicide,
which they figured it wasn't because there wasn't a firearm
found near Danny, so they ruled that out. And you know,
just based on the positioning of where they were shot.
And they were shot with shotguns, mind you.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So if we jumped to the autopsy, they were shot.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yes, Kathy was shot in the back of the head
and Danny was shot under his chin, under his third molar,
so kind of on the side of his jaw. And
then from that point on, the Bibles were like, listen,
you missed the body. You know, speaking of law enforcement,
you missed the body. You had your chance. Now it's
our turn. So everyone in the community came to help.
And what they had was they had like this assembly
(10:56):
line of sorts going down this long driveway and they
were sifting through the ashes.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
People came and hung out in the back of their
pickup trucks. People came to hand out sandwiches, and the
families were going around looking for evidence and putting evidence
markers down and then calling the police to come over
and collect it. And law enforce is letting this happen.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Oh my god, they're not.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Saying, you guys can't be on the crime scene. So
now you have civilians trampling this crime scene literally in
the house.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And if you have an investigator that can't even identify
a body and is stepping on a body. Can you
imagine any material that was not recognized by these lay
people being stepped on. Man, what a contaminated crime scene?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yes, yeah, very much so. And one of the things
that they found early on, but this did not come
into play for many years later, was they found an
insurance card. There was a private investigator on the scene.
His name was Tom, and Tom finds this insurance card
and he brings it over to the state agents saying, guys,
this might be something, it might be nothing, but it's peculiar.
(11:55):
I don't know why it's here at the end of
the driveway, but there's an insurance card and the state
agency and I think at this point they were a
bit red in the face because they'd missed a body.
I think, you know, they says, turn that around and
don't you come back to us, or I'm gonna have
your private investigation license revoked or whatever, like oh, they
didn't even have that power. It was just you know,
a threat. But like they were like, don't come at me,
(12:16):
you know, don't don't come here with your evidence. Let
us handle it. But that might have been to say,
for further embarrassment.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So we've got two people dead with shotgun wounds everywhere,
and you've got still two missing girls. One is their
biological daughter and the other one is the girl's best friend.
And the Bibles, of course, are very alarmed because you've
got the authority figures in the house where their daughter
was staying are now dead and the girls are missing.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So I'll just pack up for one second, cause I
know you asked this. Another thing they were looking into
was did the girls do this? Did Ashley and Laura
kill Allarance? Yes, that was something that they looked into
early on.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Wow, what is the next step?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Is the Oklahoma Bureau of the FBI involved at this point?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
So at first the Craig County Sheriff's office, they were
the first to respond on the scene as far as
law enforcement, but because of the background with Shane, they
were like, listen, we have too much bad luck with
this family.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Oh yeah, We're going.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
To call in the state agency. So they called in
the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation the OSBI, and so
Steve Nutter was the lead on the case. The Feds
were never called in. They came in briefly for search
here and there, but they were never you know, actively investigating.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Okay, So the next step besides identifying that these two
people are victims of homicide and clearly somebody set this
place on fire, did they find an accelerant anywhere? Well?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
See, And here's another thing is that there was no
official report, so a lot of it was word of mouth.
They had a retired fire marshall show up. He knew
the Bibles and he was like, yeah, I can see
an accelerant. It started at the fireplace, which was you know,
when you walked in, it was right to the left.
It circled around this table here, but it was not officialized.
It was word of mouth, but that is what people
(13:53):
believe happened was yes, there was some kind of accelerant,
like a gasoline accelerant.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
The Sheriff's department has recused themselves from this case and
it's the OSBI. But the SBI has really botched this
so far because they've allowed lay people to trump all
over the scene. Where do they go from there? Once
they've established that Danny and Kathy are murder victims.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
There's the first of many lulls in this case. There
really wasn't much going on, not to say that they
weren't actively investigating. I don't know because I wasn't there,
but I know that the families weren't hearing much unless
they called to see what's up.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
For example, I know on that third day, maybe to
fourth day, they failed to put the girls into the
missing person's database. So Loreen did that herself. What she
was the one who made Ash's grandmother come down and
get a DNA test. So a lot of this is
like the family's own investigating. They're the ones knocking on doors,
they're the ones doing the investigations, and the Sheriff's office
(14:50):
is kind of backed off from this. The OSBI they're
over in Tulsa and they're distant, and so from there
it's really their own investigation. Quickly, they start getting tips
looking into meth related activity.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Did the Bibles offer a reward and was there just
an established tip line that came out?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yes, the family raised their own reward. They had a
pot luck dinner and it was the community members who
raised this fifty thousand dollars reward, which is still in place.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Okay, so they are getting tips in and now it
seems like they're focusing on some what is it drug
dealers or traffickers or something related to the now burgeoning
meth industry.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
That might be coming into Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
There were a lot of rumors of a New Year's
Eve party that the girls were taking to a home
where they were raped and shot up with meth and murdered,
and that it was videotaped. And so the Bibles really
started looking at this theory, and it brought them to
a town called wine Dot, and wine Dot is very
(15:53):
there are a lot of movers and shakers and wind
dott as far as the meth world. But they were
rumors early on, and they chased every single lead down
the family did. There were several searches on some meth properties.
Then there was a confession of a serial killer named
Tommy land Cells.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
We know that name.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
We've had an author who wrote about him quite a
bit on the show. Yeah, and he was a prolific
serial killer, and these two young girls would have fit
his demographic.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I know that investigators in Oklahoma went down there and
they got him out of prison for a day. I
think he was on death row. I think they got
him out of death row for a day. But he
eventually said that he just wanted a cheeseburger, so you
know he kind of let them on the school's chase.
It ended up with nothing, and then you know they're
chasing these lower to the ground leads and the biggest
(16:40):
one they get is Jeremy Jones. Jeremy Jones will be
their biggest break for several years.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Now, tell me about Jeremy Jones and how he could
have possibly been related to these two young women or
to the Freeman family in general.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So, Jeremy Jones was arrested in Mobile, Alabama on an
unrelated murder. That was the murder of Lisa Nichols. She
was shot to death and her trailer burned, very similar
to them scene with the Freeman family. But what made
this very interesting was that Jeremy Jones came from Miama, Oklahoma,
which is very close to Welch. They start looking back
(17:17):
at the night of the murders and they can pinpoint
that Jeremy Jones was in the area that night. Jeremy Jones,
he was getting high at a nearby motel and like,
this is a really nasty, shady motel and he was
doing mess with some guy named Cowboy. Cowboy went to
go kick his ass because he was annoying him, and
then Jeremy got arrested, and Jeremy was talking all kinds
(17:39):
of nonsense, like cowboys gonna kill me, They're out to
get me, the shadows are out to get me. You know.
He does an overnight er in jail for like a
drunken disorderly something along those lines, depending on who you
believe with when Kathy and Danny were killed, because there
is a lot of question about the exact time of death.
But eventually he goes on the run. He assumes a
(18:01):
false identity, and he is accused of killing several people,
but he's only ever convicted of killing Lisa Nichols. So
he's currently on death row in Alabama.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
So what is the connection?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Just that he's in the area and he can't count
for his whereabouts during the timeframe of when they think
these girls went missing.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
The interrogations were very he was fed a lot of
information and what he would tell me years later, and
I'm inclined to believe this is that you know, listen,
they were offering him more phone time and better things
in prison, So he was like, I would tell him
whatever they want, you know, I just wanted to talk
to my girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
But one of the accounts, he said, and he gave
burying accounts, and he couldn't get it right. He said
he shot him with a handgun, then it was a shotgun.
Then he killed the girls here, then he killed the
girls there, blah blah blah. He couldn't get a story straight.
But he kind of had this version where he knew
a guy that Danny Freeman might have owed him money
for and so he went and killed him, but he
(18:58):
was confusing it with another man Danny, who was also
killed in the area, also shot to death and this
trailer burned down on a waterbed. Very similar crimes.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
What two similar crimes in rural Oklahoma?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
In this area it was another couple, Yeah, shot to
death in their waterbed and they were very into math,
these two Danny and Doris. Yeah, it was very similar,
and Jeremy actually had more connections to that one that
one remains unsolved today.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
So does the OSBI think that these two waterbed murders
are connected?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
How can they say definitively? We don't think.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So. There were similarities to Danny and Kathy's death and
Danny and Doris's death, but when they were investigating Danny
and Doris's death. It was a different group of people.
It was a different list of suspects. Okay, they did
have a strong suspect and he died I believe, with
national clauses during the course of their investigation, but it
didn't look like the.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Same Okay, so what is the next big break?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Because it sounds like the Bibles are very frustrated they're
not getting a whole lot of help from the OSBI.
It doesn't sound like there was a ton of media attention,
was there. I'm just so surprised with two missing girls
that there wasn't a huge amount of pressure from big
cities and people kind of coming in and really wanting
to add publicity.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
You know. That was what really attracted me to this
story too, was like, how is this not out there? Yeah,
so Jeremy Jones on death row. He eventually recanted, so
he was kind of taken off the table, and a
lot of people still believe that he might have had
something to do with it. I personally don't, just based
on my limited knowledge, I don't think he did, and
of course what we know now, But so there wasn't
(20:34):
a break for a long time. But then there was
a lot of things happening at once. There were new
agents on the case, and they were a hell of
a lot better than the former administration. So you have
the District attorney's investigator, Gary Stancil and OSBI agent Tammy Ferrari,
and they're very much hands on. They themselves were not
happy with how the investigation was handled years ago, so
(20:58):
they step in. This is around the time I'm getting
to know the family, and then the family creates the
Fine Laura Bible Facebook page and that opens a door
to a bunch of new tips. Okay, soon people say, well,
you need to talk to a guy named Charlie Crider.
(21:27):
So Charlie Kreider is from Chetaba, Kansas, now in well
To Oklahoma. It's right here, and then Chittoba, KNTS is
the next town north. So even though they're in different states,
they're very close. You could, I mean, if it wasn't
so rural, you can nearly walk there, but you do
have to do with this drive around. But yeah, it's
not far all. And Charlie Kreider was one of the
(21:47):
best friends of Danny Freeman, but he was convicted of
murdering a woman in Chautoka, Kansas, an older woman named
Judith and she was found in a creek half naked.
Believes we've been strangled with the belt or something similar.
So Charlie was convicted of that. I think it was
second degree something, you know, Gonna gree murdered, something along
(22:09):
those lines. So we didn't do a lot of time.
And by the time this push started coming, you know,
with with with the publicity and the Facebook page and
the new agents, it was the time he got out
of prison. So when I started talking to him, he
was still in prison and then when night, you know,
he was let out soon after and a lot of
people were like, well, maybe we should look at him.
So he offers something new, like listen, me and Danny
(22:31):
were into growing pot. We were excellent at it too,
Like we were the guys to go to. So there
was a lot of meth talk in the past and
a lot about metha infetamines, but there was nothing to
conclusively tie the Freemans to meth. There was never anything
found at the scene to suggest that this is what
you know it was. But now we have Charlie saying
it was pot, and you know, he got in a
(22:54):
little bit of trouble and shortly before his murder. This
is according to Charlie Crideror the convicted murder from Chataua, Kansas.
Three people showed up on his doorstep just days before
the murder, and Danny took out a shotgun and said,
get the hell off my property. Charlie never said who
that was. We can only assume that they might have
known something. So Charlie offers this new information and that's
(23:16):
the next biggest lead. So then there were searches at
Charlie's former property. There was a well and there was
a basement, and there was whispers that you know, these
are small towns. There's lots of rumors and there's no
shortage of them. So you know, after doing searches, they
couldn't find the girls. But having the investigators now when Chittoba,
Kansas opens this can of worms and now people in
(23:38):
Chitopah are starting to squalk. And that's where the suspects Pennington,
welch Abusic coming because they were all from Chatouba.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Now, how are they connecting them to Charlie Kreiter to
Danny Freeman. Is there a definitive connection.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
There's not a definitive connection. There's silly little connections. David
Pennington and Charlie Krider been in school together since kindergarten.
But that doesn't prove anything, right, It was just being
in that location that people started to come forward. That
was the real thing, was that all of a sudden,
we have this new group of people from Chetopah saying
we know something, we know something, we know something. So
(24:18):
eventually and he has to come public. So in the Ethidavid,
he's known as R E. R E, comes forward and
he's like, listen, my mom dated this guy named Phil Welch.
Phil Welch had some polaroid pictures of the girls from
a New Year's Eve party and the girls were duct taped,
they were gagged, they were bound, and you know, he
bragged about the killings, as did two other men named
(24:39):
David Pennington and Ronnie Busick. So now we have these
three guys. They all have ties to Chataupa.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
You.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Sick and Pennington are from Chetopah, they're raised in Chatopah.
And Welch came from Kansas, you know, more central Kansas,
and he was a big time meth cook. He was
a very frightening individual. He had this group of borderline cultish.
It probably wasn't big enough to be a cult. But
he was very religious, but not in a healthy way,
(25:07):
much more on the fanatical way, and most of it
was driven by meth. Of course, he thought he was divine,
and he had these followers. You know, Pennington and Welch
were more like scragglers, just you know, they were there
for the meth. Now, all of them had history of
beating their women. Welch especially was very, very horrible to
his wives and children. He was really a dangerous, dangerous guy,
(25:30):
and there were always rumors that he'd killed many people.
I personally wouldn't be surprised one bit.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So our police, the OSBI, then making a bee line
to Kansas to have a discussion with these three men
plus Charlie Kreiter about all of this new information and
where are we in time if the girls have been
missing since December thirtieth of nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
So this all comes to a head in early twenty eighteen,
now that they get the names around seventeen. Now, around
this time, miraculously, the Craig County Sheriff's Office finds a
crate of evidence that's been lost since nineteen ninety nine
and inside is Phil Welch's name. And then this private
investigator Tom comes forward. Do you remember I told you
(26:15):
they found the insurance card at the crime scene. Well
that has Phil Welch's girlfriend's name on it. So all
these things had they followed up in their card, there's
a very strong possibility they could have found the girls.
Now what we know now is that the girls were
kept alive for two weeks.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Oh my gosh, So now we really understand what's happening here.
And the Bibles have been tortured for almost twenty years.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, twenty years almost. So after our e comes forward
saying I think Phil Welch, and they start looking at
Phil Welch and they start talking to his girlfriend and
his family. Then people are starting to talk, Yeah, we
know Phil Welch killed those girls. You know, we knew
that he killed those parents, and so did Pennington Abusic.
So word gets around very quickly and then it's like
one tip after another. So the new agents on the case,
(26:58):
Stancel and Ferrari, they you know, kind of hit the
ground running with this information. And in twenty eighteen they say, yes,
we believe that these three men are the ones responsible
for the murders. Now, Phil Welch had died of als
in two thousand and seven and Pennington died in twenty fifteen,
so they just missed him. He had copd you know, emphysema,
(27:18):
So only Busick was left. And Busick is like this
bumbling scraggler. He had been shot in the head, so
he had some form of brain damage. You couple that
with years of methamphetamine use. He's very hard to get
anything out of.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Are they connecting a gun? Who has the shotgun?
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Never found? But do you remember when I said that
the locals were all on the crime scene looking for things.
They found all the guns and they put them out
on the lawn for cops to pick them up. Cops
never picked them up. We don't know who has those
guns or if any of them were used.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
We're not sure based on what Rodney is saying or
all of the information the investigators are pulling together, what
do we know happens these three guys go to the
trailer that night and what transpires aside from of course,
pulling out a shotgun and killing this couple.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
So a lot of what we know is from Ronnie's
testimony and Ronnie you know, he's funny because we don't
know if he's really conniving or if he's really just
you know, because he says, now, they handed him a
deal on a silver plotter, can you tell us where
the girls are? You'll virtually walk And he says, he
says they're here, and I think he believed it, and
you know, I can't see why he wouldn't have given
(28:26):
up the girls. And I wonder if he really knows,
you know, I mean, I phil Welch was the head honchowing.
This now what I think happened. And there might be
people with other opinions, but I think the more common
theory is this. We learned after the arrest that Phil
Welch lived less than a mile from the Freemans. And
it was so wild because I'd passed this home a
(28:48):
million times and like, never knew that this little shock
over here was his house. No one knew it. A
lot of people think Danny might have been into math.
I'm not sure there was never any evidence to say that.
I do think he was in the pot. I think
he was into growing pot, and I think there was
some kind of deal, now whether or not he owed
them pot or owed them money or a drug deal
gone bad. I don't know what we do know from
(29:08):
the autopsy reporters. Right before Danny died, his collar bone
was broken, and I think Danny answered the door. I
think he heard that dog. I think that dog was
barking Sissy. He got up armed because you know, Danny
wasn't taking no shit, and I think Phil was the
same way. He wasn't taking no shit. And I think
they broke his collarbone with the gun. I think that
that's why Sissy had a big bump on her head and.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
They hit her with the butt of the gun.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, they shot Danny. Cathy was running across the bed
because right at the other side of the bed was
a shotgun. She knew where it was. I think she
was going for that shotgun to defend herself, and they
got her in the back of the head. Again, a
lot of variations, but according to Ronnie and then this
is what I believe. I think they didn't know the
girls were there, and they started to leave, and then
(29:50):
the dog started barking and gave the girls up. They
had been hiding in the pasture. They'd escaped the fire,
and they were hiding in the grass and one of
them poked their heads up and they saw it, and
then they corralled the girls.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Is that what Rodney says happened, is that they spotted
the girls after they had escaped.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Oh boy, Yes, And that's what I believe. And I
think it's likely maybe Sissy gave them up or you know,
I know Ronnie said that it was the light of
the fire, but from what we know it was well
too pulled the trigger and Pennington and Busix at the fire,
or maybe just Pennington set the fire, We're not sure.
So then they take the girls. Now, there was a
witness that night who saw a car with men in
(30:28):
the front seat and the girls in the back seat
racing away. They made eye contact with Laura. It really
fit what happened that night that the girls took them
back to Picture Oklahoma. I didn't get into this. Picture
Oklahoma is a ghost town now, but it was a
big lead mining town, full of literally thousands of square
miles and underground freeways and highways, like massive tunnels for
(30:52):
lead mining. It was one of the biggest I think
like ninety percent of the ammunition in World War two
came from Picture Oklahoma. I mean, it was it's huge
and now there's no one there. But that's where Phil
lived and that's where he cooked math. So we think
that they took the girls back to that trailer, Phil
Welch's trailer. They held them down, they gang rate them,
(31:12):
they shot them with math. According to ra they strangled
them to death.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
And we don't know that for certain because the bodies
have never been found. Ronnie, he was sentenced to ten
years in prison, which is nothing for him. He's spent
most of his life in prison anyway, for petty and
drug stuff. But yeah, he was convicted and Loreen Bible
gave a powerful witness impact statement. I was very honored.
I was in the court with them when she looked
(31:37):
him in the eye and said I forgive you. And
she wrote this letter about how she forgives the man
who helped kill her daughter. It was so powerful. It
was so so powerful.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
And Rodney is not able or not willing to give
the location of where the girls are.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Correct. I don't even think he knows.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
You think he was so high that he can't.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
I just don't think he was there for it. I
think he was probably there for the assaults. I think
he was there for the party. Part. But you know,
when Phil Welch got rid of the bodies, I'm I'm
not sure anyone was there for it.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
So Jay and Loreene Bible believe everything essentially that Rodney says.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
They believe that version, the version that you just told.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
They're the most open minded. They're like, we're not going
to believe anything till we you know know for certain.
You know, I think that they've heard so many varying
things over the years that they've kind of learned not
to focus on one thing, you know, not to settle
on one theory. But you know, I know that for them,
these killers being named didn't really offer much closure. You know,
they're they're not going to be satisfied until those girls
(32:39):
are found. That's their their number one mission in life.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
And you said that there is still a fifty thousand
dollars reward offered for the location of where their bodies are.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yes, yes, And I know they're actively looking. I know
that they keep chasing tips and you know they've been
looking in Chatouba. They've been looking. I know on Picture
is a popular place to look because it's very possible
that the girls were disposed of in a mine and
if that's the case, you might never find them because
they're too hazardous to access.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
What does the OSBI say about all of this? Are
they involved at this point at all?
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yes, Tammy Ferrari, the OSBI agent, and Gary Stancil, who's
the DA's investigators, they're very into this and I know
they're working side by side and really they work very hard.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
What about the Freeman's family, Is there anyone brothers or
uncles or anybody parent, grandparents who are able to represent
their side in these witness impact statements at the six trial?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, you have to understand, you know, they came to
this from a very different point of view than the Bibles.
The Bibles were very set out on finding where are
the girls? And I think the Freeman's kind of took
this angle, why did this happen? What caused this? So
they were very focused on Shane, which we didn't get
too much into, but you know, they were very much
(34:01):
into Shane and the police corruption a well, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Is that what you think? Do you think there's anything
to that that?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Now let's go back several years, a couple of decades,
where you have the seventeen year old who seems to
be a little bit of a troublemaker, kind of like
his dad, and he is shot down by a deputy
in rural Oklahoma. And now what we have the freeman's
who are saying, we think this is kind of one
big cover up. Are they accusing the sheriff's office, who
had recused itself of covering up anything or being even
(34:30):
involved with these four potential murders.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
I don't think that their suspicions are unwarranted. I think
they had very every reason to suspect the things that
they suspect. Whether or not they're substantiated, there's nothing yet.
But there was a lot of other factors in this too,
Like you know, Kathy Frman's best friend spoke outwardly about
the cops having something to do with it, and then
she was murdered my god later, you know, you know,
(34:55):
so like there was a lot of like like weird things.
So I totally unders where the freemans are coming from
and why they believe this. Now, when Shane was shot
and killed, there was the question, you know, was he armed,
because that was the official stance was that he pulled
a gun on this cop. The cop shot him dead.
The freeman says, there was no gun or could this
have been a suicide by cop or could this have
(35:17):
been a justified shooting? You know, none of us were there.
We don't know, they don't know. But what we do
know is that the Freeman family were pissed off one
way or another and they wanted to file a wrongful
death suit against the Craig County Sheriff's office. They had
one year to do so. Less than a week before
that window expired, they were murdered.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Though it does lend to a lot of conspiracy theories,
but I don't think that they're not merited. I think,
you know, I think whether or not they're substantiated, it's
a different story. But I don't think it's you know,
unreasonable to ask yourself, was there something involved like that? Here?
Speaker 1 (35:51):
There's an awful lot of death happening. I mean, you're
talking about witnesses who are dying of natural causes. You're
talking about witnesses and people who were involved, you know,
he's best friend and this guy cowboy, who are murdered in.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
An unnatural way.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I mean, this is a there's a lot happening in
this story, which takes place in a tiny little area
in rural Oklahoma. This just seems improbable to me that
there's not a lot of connections happening between these cases.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
But you're right.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I mean, when people die, what are you going to do?
You just have Rodney left.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
It goes back to one of the first questions you asked, like,
what are the themes of this story? And I think
that this is small town America ravish with meth and
the drug epidemic in this country. This is a small
town that could be beautiful, and there are such beautiful parts.
I mean, you know, dripping sunsets and vast prairies. It's
a beautiful place. But when you have the failing of
(36:45):
economies like with what we saw with this led town,
and we have poverty, drugs come in.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Were the Bibles?
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Were they appreciative of your book and of the CNN special,
because you know, this is shining a on a case
that seems to have been forgotten from nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yeah, I think that they were appreciative of it. I
know I was very appreciative of it, and I really
formed a lot of new friendships. I remember I was
actually in Oklahoma when the show aired. I remember Jay,
you know, just like pulling me close and crying and
holding saying that that was like the best version of
the story. I think it was like the most told
in depth version. I don't think that they were surprised
(37:25):
with anything in the book, and I know a lot
of writers don't agree with this. I didn't let one
sentence not go by the families. They said, I was
this chapter? How was this? And I, you know, because
I want to be out for accuracy and I'm trying
to tell their story, so I wanted it to be accurate.
So they knew what was going to be published. It
wasn't a surprise. I've been very blessed to have them
in my lives, you know. Even still, we're all very close.
(37:47):
Even now, you know, right now I'm planning a cruise
with some of the family. Wow, it's a blessing. You know.
It's not even related to work. We're just we just
became very close friends.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Well, when people ask me why my chow and genre
and concentration in journalism is crime, I think that exactly
what you're saying, that example is why it is something
that I think is universally understood. The fear that you're
going to lose your child or your parent, and something
that can't be controlled, that can't be cured by going
(38:17):
to the doctor, taking medicine. There's just a feeling of
being ripped away and that enduring fear. And so I
think when you have someone like you who is saying,
let me help in some way, regardless of your you know,
this is your job. You're making money, you're selling a book,
but there are other ways to sell books, and you're
doing this to really help move.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
This story forward.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
So I can see why they would feel close to you.
And I know that there's always an ongoing debate as
a journalist of how close do you allow yourselves to get?
And I think the more and more the older I get,
the more that I see my contemporaries saying we do
feel comfortable being closer to sources now because we're feeling
the pain that they feel. And it sounds like that's
sort of what category you've fallen in to.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
A lot of people don't realize I had my start
in fiction. I was a fiction writer before this, and
I did well with fiction. I was living in Ireland
when I decided to write this story, so I kind
of came back to America from Ireland, just to write this.
But you know, I made a lot of mistakes along
the way. I think I was very naive going into it,
and I made plenty of mistakes, And there are mistakes
I think that a lot of people in the true
(39:21):
crime community do make, you know, I think it's easy
to become unfocused at why you're there and what you
really want to do. And for me, working on the
story was such a learning experience because it showed me
what I didn't want to be. I didn't want to
be that person who just wants to write a book
and take the money and run. And I didn't want
to be this person who just makes them rip open
(39:43):
their worst times of their lives and run off. I
really feel like, in my heart, I really just wanted
to help them have a voice.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
right production. Our senior producer is Alexis Amerosi. Our associate
producer is Alex chi. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive
(40:24):
produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff, and Danielle Kramer. Follow
Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more Wicked
and on Twitter at tenfold more.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
And if you know of a historical.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Crime that could use some attention from the crew at
tenfold more Wicked, email us at info at tenfoldmorewicked dot com.
We'll also take your suggestions for true crime authors for
Wicked Words
This story contains adult content and language, along with references
to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
All these drugs foster violence. That's I think one of
the biggest themes was just this beautiful Harland ravished by meth.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
true crime podcast Tenfold war Wicked and the co host
of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
(00:49):
crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
stories with details that have never been published. Tenfold War
Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
behind the stories. This next story centers on a terrible
crime in rural Oklahoma in nineteen ninety nine. Two parents
(01:13):
were murdered and two teenage girls in the same trailer
went missing. Author Jax Miller details this very twisty, turney
story that has a surprise ending in her book Hell
in the Heartland what do you think this story is
about At its heart, I think.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's about grief. I think it's about trauma. I think
it's about misdirected anger, police corruption. There's a lot of
things at play here. There's many facets to this story
because you have so many people involved, and I feel
like everyone's coming at it from their own perspective and
they have their own feelings towards it.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Well, this starts in an unlikely place, rural Oklahoma in
nineteen ninety nine. Let's just start from the beginning and
tell the story chronologically. Who who is the family at
the center of this? Tell me about them?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So the story revolves around the Freeman family. If you
have mother and father Kathy and Danny Freeman, ages thirty
eight and forty, respectively, and their sixteen year old daughter,
Ashley Freeman. They live in Welsch, Oklahoma, which is in
the northeastern most part of the state, bordering Missouri and Kansas.
Very rural. They lived in a trailer home that was
(02:23):
very far off from the road. You couldn't see your
neighbor from there virtually. On the night of December twenty ninth,
it was Ashley's sixteenth birthday, and her best friend Laura Bible,
also sixteen. She'd asked her parents if she could sleep
over there for a second night in the road. Now,
they'd been friends for bosh most of their lives, like
since they were in diapers. So the mom was like, sure, yeah,
(02:43):
you know, go on, you can, you know, have fun.
And the girls, Ashley and Laura, they went out, they
got a birthday cake, they went to Pizza Hut, and
then they came home later that evening they had birthday cake.
Ashley's boyfriend Jeremy was also with them that night and
that was the last person to ever see them. The
next morning, between five am and six am, this was
(03:03):
December thirtieth, the neighbors saw a fire. They saw the
Freeman trailer on fire. That was kind of the ground
zero of everything was finding this trailer on fire at
early morning.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
We'll set the scene a little bit for crime rural
Oklahoma in the late nineties. Would this have been Are
we talking about drugs sort of in the area or
is it just really idyllic rurle nothing happening in this
place at all.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I think that was a very interesting time because that
was when meth was really starting to be introduced. Now
a days, we see lots of towns ravished in myth,
But back then it was just starting to trickle in
and the meth related crime was becoming more and more prevalent.
So maybe not as much back then, but it was
starting for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
So the neighbor sees the fire, they obviously call the
fire department. Is this a quick response?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, it's actually a pretty quick response, and they do
get the fire out rather quickly, I want to say,
forty five minute, and it's something along those lines. And
after they extinguish the fire, they find a body, and
that body will transpire to be Kathy Freeman. At this
point in time, nobody knows how she died, and furthermore,
(04:13):
they don't know where her husband, Danny is, and they
don't know where the two girls are. They just have
one body. So the first morning, everyone's scrambling very much.
Laura Bible, the girl who was sleeping over her parents,
Jay and Loreene Bible, they're on the scene right away.
You know, where is my child? Where are the girls?
Where's Danny? And they're waiting in the driveway for answers. Meanwhile,
(04:35):
cops are scrambling, the firefighters and everyone's just scrambling around
the crime scene. What's going on? How does she die?
And they're not getting many answers. But at around this
time they get a tip. According to the OSBI, Oklahoma
State AUROBA Investigation Agent Steve Nutter, he says, we just
got a call. Danny has the girls. He's taken them
hostage and he's not going to give them back until
(04:57):
we give over the cop who shot his son. Oh,
Kathy and Danny had a seventeen year old son who
had died less than a year before this. He was
shot and killed by police. They'd had dealings with Danny.
They know Danny's a hothead. They says, well, let him
pull off for a day, give it twenty four hours,
and then we'll start looking for the girls.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Hold on, what kind of dealings had they had with Danny?
Is this domestic violence stuff or is this him shooting guns.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
In the middle of the night neighbor complaint stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
There were domestic violence issues. There were accusations that Danny
had beat his son, Shane. There were accusations that he
beat his wife. He was an abusive man. Shane kind
of went on the run. He committed a bunch of
petty crimes. And then he had a face off with
the Craig County Sheriff's office and there was a cop.
It was his first day with the county. He shot
him dead.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So Kathy and Danny were up in arms about it.
They said, our son was wrongfully shot. This was a
wrongful shooting. Whether or not it was, I don't think
we'll ever really know again. This could have been just
misdirected grief. But either way, the Freeman's they wanted justice
and there was a lot of tit for tat between
the Craig County Sheriff's Office and the Freeman's. The police
(06:04):
would shine lights on their home in the middle of
the night. Danny would stalk the cops kids like. It
was a lot of back and forth.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah. And that was going on for a year until
this fire started. So they knew Danny because of Shane
Freeman's death, and now they're running on the theory that
Danny has the girls let him cool off. He's a hothead.
I remember speaking to the cops on the scene and
they were like, we actually wondered if Danny was in
the woods with a gun on us while we're you know,
trying to put out the fire.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So the Bible parents, Loreene and Jay, you know, they
go in for questioning and they start asking the parents,
you know, have you seen him in any drug dealings?
Have you ever seen him with large amounts of cash?
And they're like, what are you talking about? Just just
find our kids. We don't give a damn about what
Danny's into. They says, well, we're gonna let him cool
off and we'll see.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Wait, did the Bibles believe that this was possible that
Danny would have taken his daughter and his daughter's best
friend hostage.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
We had known for her whole life.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I think they were just kind of confused, like what
is going on? Is this true? And I think that
they just wanted to know, you know, for sure, is
this the case? They go the next morning, so this
is the second morning, they go back to the crime scene,
right before the break of day, and they were expecting swat,
they were expecting the whole brigade to be there, and
there's not a single person there at the trailer. At
(07:19):
the trailer right at this point, people have trampled the
crime scene. I mean, it's a mess. And the sun
comes up and within moments, moments literally, they find a
second body in the trailer. Is that right in the trailer? Yes,
where they found Kathy. She was face down on a waterbed,
her waterbed of the master bedroom. Her feet, what were
(07:42):
left of her feet because they had been mostly burned off,
were hanging off the bed. Danny's body was found face
up in the doorway of that bedroom. But they knew
it was him right away. See everything from here up,
everything from like the jaw up was missing. He had
a previous surgery. He'd accidentally shot himself in the head
while cleaning his a few years prior. Oh my gosh,
(08:02):
that's the story in and of itself, when he drove
himself with a bullet in his brain to the hospital,
got fed up with waiting, drove himself to a second hospital. Yeah,
he was tough, but anyway, he had a surgery where
they had to reconstruct his sinuses, so there was a
lot of wiring in his face. So when the Bibles
saw him, even though the top portion of his head
was missing, they can tell by the wiring that this
(08:25):
was Danny. And they could also see his genitalia here
that it was a male, So they knew right away
it was Danny that was the same day. They also
learned that Kathy and Danny had both been shot to
death before the fire was set. So now you have
these parents both shot at close range. There goes the
cops theory that Danny has the girls because here he
is dead on the floor. So where are the girls?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Now? Let me ask you, just from a logistics standpoint,
to discover Kathy's body, didn't the police and investigators have
to walk over Danny if he's in the hallway.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yes, And in fact, that was a big part of it.
That the family he's complained about was Steve Nutter, the
OSBI agent. He was the lead on the case. He
was the only one wearing cowboy boots, and they saw
his cowboy boots on Danny's Torso, oh gosh. When I
spoke to a Nutter years later, he's like, there was
no body to see. He was reduced to ash. It
was nothing, But that contradicts what we see in the
(09:17):
autopsy reports and what the Bible's witness. I mean, he
was very much intact. He was missing a hand and
he was missing the top portion of his but he
was mostly very much intact.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yes, So he was tunnel focused on not somebody on
the floor potentially and maybe there was trash I mean,
was this a trash out trailer?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, you know, they said he could have been covered
with debris. I know for J. Bible who was the
first one to find the body, and Loreen was, you know,
right near him. They had noticed Ashley's dog. She had
a Rottweiler named Sissy, and Cissy was at Danny's body
and J. Bible saw her whimpering. They also saw a
big knot on the rottweiler's head.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
So Jay finds Danny's body. Investigators had found Kathy's body
on the waterbed. They are saying, just without an autopsy?
Are they at first blush saying must have been an
accidental fire and we don't know what happened to the
two girls?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
What are they thinking?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
The scene is saying at this point now that there
are two bodies and their suspect of less than twenty
four hours is dead.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Well, I think one of the first things that they
must have looked into was was this a murdered suicide,
which they figured it wasn't because there wasn't a firearm
found near Danny, so they ruled that out. And you know,
just based on the positioning of where they were shot.
And they were shot with shotguns, mind you.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So if we jumped to the autopsy, they were shot.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yes, Kathy was shot in the back of the head
and Danny was shot under his chin, under his third molar,
so kind of on the side of his jaw. And
then from that point on, the Bibles were like, listen,
you missed the body. You know, speaking of law enforcement,
you missed the body. You had your chance. Now it's
our turn. So everyone in the community came to help.
And what they had was they had like this assembly
(10:56):
line of sorts going down this long driveway and they
were sifting through the ashes.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
People came and hung out in the back of their
pickup trucks. People came to hand out sandwiches, and the
families were going around looking for evidence and putting evidence
markers down and then calling the police to come over
and collect it. And law enforce is letting this happen.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Oh my god, they're not.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Saying, you guys can't be on the crime scene. So
now you have civilians trampling this crime scene literally in
the house.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And if you have an investigator that can't even identify
a body and is stepping on a body. Can you
imagine any material that was not recognized by these lay
people being stepped on. Man, what a contaminated crime scene?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yes, yeah, very much so. And one of the things
that they found early on, but this did not come
into play for many years later, was they found an
insurance card. There was a private investigator on the scene.
His name was Tom, and Tom finds this insurance card
and he brings it over to the state agents saying, guys,
this might be something, it might be nothing, but it's peculiar.
(11:55):
I don't know why it's here at the end of
the driveway, but there's an insurance card and the state
agency and I think at this point they were a
bit red in the face because they'd missed a body.
I think, you know, they says, turn that around and
don't you come back to us, or I'm gonna have
your private investigation license revoked or whatever, like oh, they
didn't even have that power. It was just you know,
a threat. But like they were like, don't come at me,
(12:16):
you know, don't don't come here with your evidence. Let
us handle it. But that might have been to say,
for further embarrassment.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So we've got two people dead with shotgun wounds everywhere,
and you've got still two missing girls. One is their
biological daughter and the other one is the girl's best friend.
And the Bibles, of course, are very alarmed because you've
got the authority figures in the house where their daughter
was staying are now dead and the girls are missing.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So I'll just pack up for one second, cause I
know you asked this. Another thing they were looking into
was did the girls do this? Did Ashley and Laura
kill Allarance? Yes, that was something that they looked into
early on.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Wow, what is the next step?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Is the Oklahoma Bureau of the FBI involved at this point?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
So at first the Craig County Sheriff's office, they were
the first to respond on the scene as far as
law enforcement, but because of the background with Shane, they
were like, listen, we have too much bad luck with
this family.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Oh yeah, We're going.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
To call in the state agency. So they called in
the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation the OSBI, and so
Steve Nutter was the lead on the case. The Feds
were never called in. They came in briefly for search
here and there, but they were never you know, actively investigating.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Okay, So the next step besides identifying that these two
people are victims of homicide and clearly somebody set this
place on fire, did they find an accelerant anywhere? Well?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
See, And here's another thing is that there was no
official report, so a lot of it was word of mouth.
They had a retired fire marshall show up. He knew
the Bibles and he was like, yeah, I can see
an accelerant. It started at the fireplace, which was you know,
when you walked in, it was right to the left.
It circled around this table here, but it was not officialized.
It was word of mouth, but that is what people
(13:53):
believe happened was yes, there was some kind of accelerant,
like a gasoline accelerant.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
The Sheriff's department has recused themselves from this case and
it's the OSBI. But the SBI has really botched this
so far because they've allowed lay people to trump all
over the scene. Where do they go from there? Once
they've established that Danny and Kathy are murder victims.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
There's the first of many lulls in this case. There
really wasn't much going on, not to say that they
weren't actively investigating. I don't know because I wasn't there,
but I know that the families weren't hearing much unless
they called to see what's up.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
For example, I know on that third day, maybe to
fourth day, they failed to put the girls into the
missing person's database. So Loreen did that herself. What she
was the one who made Ash's grandmother come down and
get a DNA test. So a lot of this is
like the family's own investigating. They're the ones knocking on doors,
they're the ones doing the investigations, and the Sheriff's office
(14:50):
is kind of backed off from this. The OSBI they're
over in Tulsa and they're distant, and so from there
it's really their own investigation. Quickly, they start getting tips
looking into meth related activity.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Did the Bibles offer a reward and was there just
an established tip line that came out?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yes, the family raised their own reward. They had a
pot luck dinner and it was the community members who
raised this fifty thousand dollars reward, which is still in place.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Okay, so they are getting tips in and now it
seems like they're focusing on some what is it drug
dealers or traffickers or something related to the now burgeoning
meth industry.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
That might be coming into Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
There were a lot of rumors of a New Year's
Eve party that the girls were taking to a home
where they were raped and shot up with meth and murdered,
and that it was videotaped. And so the Bibles really
started looking at this theory, and it brought them to
a town called wine Dot, and wine Dot is very
(15:53):
there are a lot of movers and shakers and wind
dott as far as the meth world. But they were
rumors early on, and they chased every single lead down
the family did. There were several searches on some meth properties.
Then there was a confession of a serial killer named
Tommy land Cells.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
We know that name.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
We've had an author who wrote about him quite a
bit on the show. Yeah, and he was a prolific
serial killer, and these two young girls would have fit
his demographic.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I know that investigators in Oklahoma went down there and
they got him out of prison for a day. I
think he was on death row. I think they got
him out of death row for a day. But he
eventually said that he just wanted a cheeseburger, so you
know he kind of let them on the school's chase.
It ended up with nothing, and then you know they're
chasing these lower to the ground leads and the biggest
(16:40):
one they get is Jeremy Jones. Jeremy Jones will be
their biggest break for several years.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Now, tell me about Jeremy Jones and how he could
have possibly been related to these two young women or
to the Freeman family in general.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So, Jeremy Jones was arrested in Mobile, Alabama on an
unrelated murder. That was the murder of Lisa Nichols. She
was shot to death and her trailer burned, very similar
to them scene with the Freeman family. But what made
this very interesting was that Jeremy Jones came from Miama, Oklahoma,
which is very close to Welch. They start looking back
(17:17):
at the night of the murders and they can pinpoint
that Jeremy Jones was in the area that night. Jeremy Jones,
he was getting high at a nearby motel and like,
this is a really nasty, shady motel and he was
doing mess with some guy named Cowboy. Cowboy went to
go kick his ass because he was annoying him, and
then Jeremy got arrested, and Jeremy was talking all kinds
(17:39):
of nonsense, like cowboys gonna kill me, They're out to
get me, the shadows are out to get me. You know.
He does an overnight er in jail for like a
drunken disorderly something along those lines, depending on who you
believe with when Kathy and Danny were killed, because there
is a lot of question about the exact time of death.
But eventually he goes on the run. He assumes a
(18:01):
false identity, and he is accused of killing several people,
but he's only ever convicted of killing Lisa Nichols. So
he's currently on death row in Alabama.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
So what is the connection?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Just that he's in the area and he can't count
for his whereabouts during the timeframe of when they think
these girls went missing.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
The interrogations were very he was fed a lot of
information and what he would tell me years later, and
I'm inclined to believe this is that you know, listen,
they were offering him more phone time and better things
in prison, So he was like, I would tell him
whatever they want, you know, I just wanted to talk
to my girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
But one of the accounts, he said, and he gave
burying accounts, and he couldn't get it right. He said
he shot him with a handgun, then it was a shotgun.
Then he killed the girls here, then he killed the
girls there, blah blah blah. He couldn't get a story straight.
But he kind of had this version where he knew
a guy that Danny Freeman might have owed him money
for and so he went and killed him, but he
(18:58):
was confusing it with another man Danny, who was also
killed in the area, also shot to death and this
trailer burned down on a waterbed. Very similar crimes.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
What two similar crimes in rural Oklahoma?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
In this area it was another couple, Yeah, shot to
death in their waterbed and they were very into math,
these two Danny and Doris. Yeah, it was very similar,
and Jeremy actually had more connections to that one that
one remains unsolved today.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
So does the OSBI think that these two waterbed murders
are connected?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
How can they say definitively? We don't think.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So. There were similarities to Danny and Kathy's death and
Danny and Doris's death, but when they were investigating Danny
and Doris's death. It was a different group of people.
It was a different list of suspects. Okay, they did
have a strong suspect and he died I believe, with
national clauses during the course of their investigation, but it
didn't look like the.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Same Okay, so what is the next big break?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Because it sounds like the Bibles are very frustrated they're
not getting a whole lot of help from the OSBI.
It doesn't sound like there was a ton of media attention,
was there. I'm just so surprised with two missing girls
that there wasn't a huge amount of pressure from big
cities and people kind of coming in and really wanting
to add publicity.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
You know. That was what really attracted me to this
story too, was like, how is this not out there? Yeah,
so Jeremy Jones on death row. He eventually recanted, so
he was kind of taken off the table, and a
lot of people still believe that he might have had
something to do with it. I personally don't, just based
on my limited knowledge, I don't think he did, and
of course what we know now, But so there wasn't
(20:34):
a break for a long time. But then there was
a lot of things happening at once. There were new
agents on the case, and they were a hell of
a lot better than the former administration. So you have
the District attorney's investigator, Gary Stancil and OSBI agent Tammy Ferrari,
and they're very much hands on. They themselves were not
happy with how the investigation was handled years ago, so
(20:58):
they step in. This is around the time I'm getting
to know the family, and then the family creates the
Fine Laura Bible Facebook page and that opens a door
to a bunch of new tips. Okay, soon people say, well,
you need to talk to a guy named Charlie Crider.
(21:27):
So Charlie Kreider is from Chetaba, Kansas, now in well
To Oklahoma. It's right here, and then Chittoba, KNTS is
the next town north. So even though they're in different states,
they're very close. You could, I mean, if it wasn't
so rural, you can nearly walk there, but you do
have to do with this drive around. But yeah, it's
not far all. And Charlie Kreider was one of the
(21:47):
best friends of Danny Freeman, but he was convicted of
murdering a woman in Chautoka, Kansas, an older woman named
Judith and she was found in a creek half naked.
Believes we've been strangled with the belt or something similar.
So Charlie was convicted of that. I think it was
second degree something, you know, Gonna gree murdered, something along
(22:09):
those lines. So we didn't do a lot of time.
And by the time this push started coming, you know,
with with with the publicity and the Facebook page and
the new agents, it was the time he got out
of prison. So when I started talking to him, he
was still in prison and then when night, you know,
he was let out soon after and a lot of
people were like, well, maybe we should look at him.
So he offers something new, like listen, me and Danny
(22:31):
were into growing pot. We were excellent at it too,
Like we were the guys to go to. So there
was a lot of meth talk in the past and
a lot about metha infetamines, but there was nothing to
conclusively tie the Freemans to meth. There was never anything
found at the scene to suggest that this is what
you know it was. But now we have Charlie saying
it was pot, and you know, he got in a
(22:54):
little bit of trouble and shortly before his murder. This
is according to Charlie Crideror the convicted murder from Chataua, Kansas.
Three people showed up on his doorstep just days before
the murder, and Danny took out a shotgun and said,
get the hell off my property. Charlie never said who
that was. We can only assume that they might have
known something. So Charlie offers this new information and that's
(23:16):
the next biggest lead. So then there were searches at
Charlie's former property. There was a well and there was
a basement, and there was whispers that you know, these
are small towns. There's lots of rumors and there's no
shortage of them. So you know, after doing searches, they
couldn't find the girls. But having the investigators now when Chittoba,
Kansas opens this can of worms and now people in
(23:38):
Chitopah are starting to squalk. And that's where the suspects Pennington,
welch Abusic coming because they were all from Chatouba.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Now, how are they connecting them to Charlie Kreiter to
Danny Freeman. Is there a definitive connection.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
There's not a definitive connection. There's silly little connections. David
Pennington and Charlie Krider been in school together since kindergarten.
But that doesn't prove anything, right, It was just being
in that location that people started to come forward. That
was the real thing, was that all of a sudden,
we have this new group of people from Chetopah saying
we know something, we know something, we know something. So
(24:18):
eventually and he has to come public. So in the Ethidavid,
he's known as R E. R E, comes forward and
he's like, listen, my mom dated this guy named Phil Welch.
Phil Welch had some polaroid pictures of the girls from
a New Year's Eve party and the girls were duct taped,
they were gagged, they were bound, and you know, he
bragged about the killings, as did two other men named
(24:39):
David Pennington and Ronnie Busick. So now we have these
three guys. They all have ties to Chataupa.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
You.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Sick and Pennington are from Chetopah, they're raised in Chatopah.
And Welch came from Kansas, you know, more central Kansas,
and he was a big time meth cook. He was
a very frightening individual. He had this group of borderline cultish.
It probably wasn't big enough to be a cult. But
he was very religious, but not in a healthy way,
(25:07):
much more on the fanatical way, and most of it
was driven by meth. Of course, he thought he was divine,
and he had these followers. You know, Pennington and Welch
were more like scragglers, just you know, they were there
for the meth. Now, all of them had history of
beating their women. Welch especially was very, very horrible to
his wives and children. He was really a dangerous, dangerous guy,
(25:30):
and there were always rumors that he'd killed many people.
I personally wouldn't be surprised one bit.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So our police, the OSBI, then making a bee line
to Kansas to have a discussion with these three men
plus Charlie Kreiter about all of this new information and
where are we in time if the girls have been
missing since December thirtieth of nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
So this all comes to a head in early twenty eighteen,
now that they get the names around seventeen. Now, around
this time, miraculously, the Craig County Sheriff's Office finds a
crate of evidence that's been lost since nineteen ninety nine
and inside is Phil Welch's name. And then this private
investigator Tom comes forward. Do you remember I told you
(26:15):
they found the insurance card at the crime scene. Well
that has Phil Welch's girlfriend's name on it. So all
these things had they followed up in their card, there's
a very strong possibility they could have found the girls.
Now what we know now is that the girls were
kept alive for two weeks.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Oh my gosh, So now we really understand what's happening here.
And the Bibles have been tortured for almost twenty years.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, twenty years almost. So after our e comes forward
saying I think Phil Welch, and they start looking at
Phil Welch and they start talking to his girlfriend and
his family. Then people are starting to talk, Yeah, we
know Phil Welch killed those girls. You know, we knew
that he killed those parents, and so did Pennington Abusic.
So word gets around very quickly and then it's like
one tip after another. So the new agents on the case,
(26:58):
Stancel and Ferrari, they you know, kind of hit the
ground running with this information. And in twenty eighteen they say, yes,
we believe that these three men are the ones responsible
for the murders. Now, Phil Welch had died of als
in two thousand and seven and Pennington died in twenty fifteen,
so they just missed him. He had copd you know, emphysema,
(27:18):
So only Busick was left. And Busick is like this
bumbling scraggler. He had been shot in the head, so
he had some form of brain damage. You couple that
with years of methamphetamine use. He's very hard to get
anything out of.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Are they connecting a gun? Who has the shotgun?
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Never found? But do you remember when I said that
the locals were all on the crime scene looking for things.
They found all the guns and they put them out
on the lawn for cops to pick them up. Cops
never picked them up. We don't know who has those
guns or if any of them were used.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
We're not sure based on what Rodney is saying or
all of the information the investigators are pulling together, what
do we know happens these three guys go to the
trailer that night and what transpires aside from of course,
pulling out a shotgun and killing this couple.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
So a lot of what we know is from Ronnie's
testimony and Ronnie you know, he's funny because we don't
know if he's really conniving or if he's really just
you know, because he says, now, they handed him a
deal on a silver plotter, can you tell us where
the girls are? You'll virtually walk And he says, he
says they're here, and I think he believed it, and
you know, I can't see why he wouldn't have given
(28:26):
up the girls. And I wonder if he really knows,
you know, I mean, I phil Welch was the head honchowing.
This now what I think happened. And there might be
people with other opinions, but I think the more common
theory is this. We learned after the arrest that Phil
Welch lived less than a mile from the Freemans. And
it was so wild because I'd passed this home a
(28:48):
million times and like, never knew that this little shock
over here was his house. No one knew it. A
lot of people think Danny might have been into math.
I'm not sure there was never any evidence to say that.
I do think he was in the pot. I think
he was into growing pot, and I think there was
some kind of deal, now whether or not he owed
them pot or owed them money or a drug deal
gone bad. I don't know what we do know from
(29:08):
the autopsy reporters. Right before Danny died, his collar bone
was broken, and I think Danny answered the door. I
think he heard that dog. I think that dog was
barking Sissy. He got up armed because you know, Danny
wasn't taking no shit, and I think Phil was the
same way. He wasn't taking no shit. And I think
they broke his collarbone with the gun. I think that
that's why Sissy had a big bump on her head and.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
They hit her with the butt of the gun.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, they shot Danny. Cathy was running across the bed
because right at the other side of the bed was
a shotgun. She knew where it was. I think she
was going for that shotgun to defend herself, and they
got her in the back of the head. Again, a
lot of variations, but according to Ronnie and then this
is what I believe. I think they didn't know the
girls were there, and they started to leave, and then
(29:50):
the dog started barking and gave the girls up. They
had been hiding in the pasture. They'd escaped the fire,
and they were hiding in the grass and one of
them poked their heads up and they saw it, and
then they corralled the girls.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Is that what Rodney says happened, is that they spotted
the girls after they had escaped.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Oh boy, Yes, And that's what I believe. And I
think it's likely maybe Sissy gave them up or you know,
I know Ronnie said that it was the light of
the fire, but from what we know it was well
too pulled the trigger and Pennington and Busix at the fire,
or maybe just Pennington set the fire, We're not sure.
So then they take the girls. Now, there was a
witness that night who saw a car with men in
(30:28):
the front seat and the girls in the back seat
racing away. They made eye contact with Laura. It really
fit what happened that night that the girls took them
back to Picture Oklahoma. I didn't get into this. Picture
Oklahoma is a ghost town now, but it was a
big lead mining town, full of literally thousands of square
miles and underground freeways and highways, like massive tunnels for
(30:52):
lead mining. It was one of the biggest I think
like ninety percent of the ammunition in World War two
came from Picture Oklahoma. I mean, it was it's huge
and now there's no one there. But that's where Phil
lived and that's where he cooked math. So we think
that they took the girls back to that trailer, Phil
Welch's trailer. They held them down, they gang rate them,
(31:12):
they shot them with math. According to ra they strangled
them to death.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
And we don't know that for certain because the bodies
have never been found. Ronnie, he was sentenced to ten
years in prison, which is nothing for him. He's spent
most of his life in prison anyway, for petty and
drug stuff. But yeah, he was convicted and Loreen Bible
gave a powerful witness impact statement. I was very honored.
I was in the court with them when she looked
(31:37):
him in the eye and said I forgive you. And
she wrote this letter about how she forgives the man
who helped kill her daughter. It was so powerful. It
was so so powerful.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
And Rodney is not able or not willing to give
the location of where the girls are.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Correct. I don't even think he knows.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
You think he was so high that he can't.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
I just don't think he was there for it. I
think he was probably there for the assaults. I think
he was there for the party. Part. But you know,
when Phil Welch got rid of the bodies, I'm I'm
not sure anyone was there for it.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
So Jay and Loreene Bible believe everything essentially that Rodney says.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
They believe that version, the version that you just told.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
They're the most open minded. They're like, we're not going
to believe anything till we you know know for certain.
You know, I think that they've heard so many varying
things over the years that they've kind of learned not
to focus on one thing, you know, not to settle
on one theory. But you know, I know that for them,
these killers being named didn't really offer much closure. You know,
they're they're not going to be satisfied until those girls
(32:39):
are found. That's their their number one mission in life.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
And you said that there is still a fifty thousand
dollars reward offered for the location of where their bodies are.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yes, yes, And I know they're actively looking. I know
that they keep chasing tips and you know they've been
looking in Chatouba. They've been looking. I know on Picture
is a popular place to look because it's very possible
that the girls were disposed of in a mine and
if that's the case, you might never find them because
they're too hazardous to access.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
What does the OSBI say about all of this? Are
they involved at this point at all?
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yes, Tammy Ferrari, the OSBI agent, and Gary Stancil, who's
the DA's investigators, they're very into this and I know
they're working side by side and really they work very hard.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
What about the Freeman's family, Is there anyone brothers or
uncles or anybody parent, grandparents who are able to represent
their side in these witness impact statements at the six trial?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, you have to understand, you know, they came to
this from a very different point of view than the Bibles.
The Bibles were very set out on finding where are
the girls? And I think the Freeman's kind of took
this angle, why did this happen? What caused this? So
they were very focused on Shane, which we didn't get
too much into, but you know, they were very much
(34:01):
into Shane and the police corruption a well, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Is that what you think? Do you think there's anything
to that that?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Now let's go back several years, a couple of decades,
where you have the seventeen year old who seems to
be a little bit of a troublemaker, kind of like
his dad, and he is shot down by a deputy
in rural Oklahoma. And now what we have the freeman's
who are saying, we think this is kind of one
big cover up. Are they accusing the sheriff's office, who
had recused itself of covering up anything or being even
(34:30):
involved with these four potential murders.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
I don't think that their suspicions are unwarranted. I think
they had very every reason to suspect the things that
they suspect. Whether or not they're substantiated, there's nothing yet.
But there was a lot of other factors in this too,
Like you know, Kathy Frman's best friend spoke outwardly about
the cops having something to do with it, and then
she was murdered my god later, you know, you know,
(34:55):
so like there was a lot of like like weird things.
So I totally unders where the freemans are coming from
and why they believe this. Now, when Shane was shot
and killed, there was the question, you know, was he armed,
because that was the official stance was that he pulled
a gun on this cop. The cop shot him dead.
The freeman says, there was no gun or could this
have been a suicide by cop or could this have
(35:17):
been a justified shooting? You know, none of us were there.
We don't know, they don't know. But what we do
know is that the Freeman family were pissed off one
way or another and they wanted to file a wrongful
death suit against the Craig County Sheriff's office. They had
one year to do so. Less than a week before
that window expired, they were murdered.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Though it does lend to a lot of conspiracy theories,
but I don't think that they're not merited. I think,
you know, I think whether or not they're substantiated, it's
a different story. But I don't think it's you know,
unreasonable to ask yourself, was there something involved like that? Here?
Speaker 1 (35:51):
There's an awful lot of death happening. I mean, you're
talking about witnesses who are dying of natural causes. You're
talking about witnesses and people who were involved, you know,
he's best friend and this guy cowboy, who are murdered in.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
An unnatural way.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I mean, this is a there's a lot happening in
this story, which takes place in a tiny little area
in rural Oklahoma. This just seems improbable to me that
there's not a lot of connections happening between these cases.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
But you're right.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I mean, when people die, what are you going to do?
You just have Rodney left.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
It goes back to one of the first questions you asked, like,
what are the themes of this story? And I think
that this is small town America ravish with meth and
the drug epidemic in this country. This is a small
town that could be beautiful, and there are such beautiful parts.
I mean, you know, dripping sunsets and vast prairies. It's
a beautiful place. But when you have the failing of
(36:45):
economies like with what we saw with this led town,
and we have poverty, drugs come in.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Were the Bibles?
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Were they appreciative of your book and of the CNN special,
because you know, this is shining a on a case
that seems to have been forgotten from nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yeah, I think that they were appreciative of it. I
know I was very appreciative of it, and I really
formed a lot of new friendships. I remember I was
actually in Oklahoma when the show aired. I remember Jay,
you know, just like pulling me close and crying and
holding saying that that was like the best version of
the story. I think it was like the most told
in depth version. I don't think that they were surprised
(37:25):
with anything in the book, and I know a lot
of writers don't agree with this. I didn't let one
sentence not go by the families. They said, I was
this chapter? How was this? And I, you know, because
I want to be out for accuracy and I'm trying
to tell their story, so I wanted it to be accurate.
So they knew what was going to be published. It
wasn't a surprise. I've been very blessed to have them
in my lives, you know. Even still, we're all very close.
(37:47):
Even now, you know, right now I'm planning a cruise
with some of the family. Wow, it's a blessing. You know.
It's not even related to work. We're just we just
became very close friends.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Well, when people ask me why my chow and genre
and concentration in journalism is crime, I think that exactly
what you're saying, that example is why it is something
that I think is universally understood. The fear that you're
going to lose your child or your parent, and something
that can't be controlled, that can't be cured by going
(38:17):
to the doctor, taking medicine. There's just a feeling of
being ripped away and that enduring fear. And so I
think when you have someone like you who is saying,
let me help in some way, regardless of your you know,
this is your job. You're making money, you're selling a book,
but there are other ways to sell books, and you're
doing this to really help move.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
This story forward.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
So I can see why they would feel close to you.
And I know that there's always an ongoing debate as
a journalist of how close do you allow yourselves to get?
And I think the more and more the older I get,
the more that I see my contemporaries saying we do
feel comfortable being closer to sources now because we're feeling
the pain that they feel. And it sounds like that's
sort of what category you've fallen in to.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
A lot of people don't realize I had my start
in fiction. I was a fiction writer before this, and
I did well with fiction. I was living in Ireland
when I decided to write this story, so I kind
of came back to America from Ireland, just to write this.
But you know, I made a lot of mistakes along
the way. I think I was very naive going into it,
and I made plenty of mistakes, And there are mistakes
I think that a lot of people in the true
(39:21):
crime community do make, you know, I think it's easy
to become unfocused at why you're there and what you
really want to do. And for me, working on the
story was such a learning experience because it showed me
what I didn't want to be. I didn't want to
be that person who just wants to write a book
and take the money and run. And I didn't want
to be this person who just makes them rip open
(39:43):
their worst times of their lives and run off. I
really feel like, in my heart, I really just wanted
to help them have a voice.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
right production. Our senior producer is Alexis Amerosi. Our associate
producer is Alex chi. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive
(40:24):
produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff, and Danielle Kramer. Follow
Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more Wicked
and on Twitter at tenfold more.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
And if you know of a historical.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Crime that could use some attention from the crew at
tenfold more Wicked, email us at info at tenfoldmorewicked dot com.
We'll also take your suggestions for true crime authors for
Wicked Words
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
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