Missing Welch Girls: Investigators to Excavate Cellar in Search for Remains of Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible

Authorities in Oklahoma say they are going to excavate a cellar in the Tar Creek area of Ottawa County to search for the remains of Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible, two Craig County teenagers who have been missing for 20 years and are presumed dead, officials said.

Police's decision to perform the excavation came after the only living person involved in the case mentioned the cellar.

Ronnie Busick, 68, pleaded guilty in July to a reduced charge of accessory to murder in the Dec. 1999 deaths of Danny and Kathy Freeman, their 16-year-old daughter, Ashley, and her friend Lauria, who was the same age.

The remains of the two teenage girls have never been found, leading authorities at the time to believe that they were missing, but cops later said they believed the girls are dead. 

An investigator said he told the Bible family that Busick said "there's a 75% chance" the girls' remains in that cellar, according to Tulsa World.

Over the years, police have searched high and low for the remains of the two teenagers in the dark depths of mine shafts, various basements and wells, open fields, as well as the Grand Lake and nearby ponds.

Investigators say that Warren Phillip Welch II, David Pennington and Busick shot the Freeman parents and kidnapped the teenagers, then set the Freemans’ mobile home on fire. The girls were taken to a mobile home in nearby Picher, where they were bound, tortured, raped and then killed, investigators said.

Welch and Pennington are both dead.

Busick last month was sentenced to 15 years in the case. However, if the remains turn up before his formal sentencing on Aug. 31, his sentence will be halved.

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