CAPTURED: Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible's Killer

[00:00] Hi, Crime Junkies. It's Britt, and I have big news. One of my favorite seasonal shows, CounterClock, is back with a brand new season, and it is wild. Host Delia D'Ambra is digging into the 2008 Lane Bryant murders. I mean, this isn't just a recap. It is a reinvestigation. She's talking to law enforcement, people from the community, even sources who have never spoken publicly until now. And you know I love a show that asks all the questions. Listen to CounterClock Season 8 now wherever you get your podcasts. [00:32] Hey there, Crime Junkie listeners. This is Mandy and Melissa from the Moms and Murder podcast. We're two moms sitting around a kitchen table talking about some of the fascinating cases in the world of true crime. We keep our show heavy on the levity with plenty of facts, and we occasionally have guest appearances from some well-known names in true crime. You'll get to hear stories that include outrageous details like teenage vampires or reality star killers. [00:54] We release new episodes every Tuesday, so we hope you'll check us out while you wait for the next episode of Crime Junkie. You can check us out on our website at momsandmurder.com, connect with us on social media, and listen wherever you get your pods. [01:05] So [01:13] Britt, guess what I just did. What'd you do? I went and checked our P.O. box, which always makes me so happy because every time I go, we've got some kind of fan mail. And this time I had a couple of letters or notes from listeners. And I even got a package of coffee from one of our Instagram followers, Paul Rez, which is amazing.

[01:39] You come down and visit. But I also got this wonderful letter and a book from some of our listeners who call themselves Junior Junkies. And it's Sophie and Adriana. And I don't know if they're Junior Junkies because they're younger than us or they're Junior Junkies because they're brand new into true crime. But their letter was so sweet. And they were telling me about this serial killer in their backyard. They're from British Columbia. And instead of just telling me I should look into this guy, they actually sent me the book on him, which was just so kind. [02:09] of them. Oh my gosh, that's awesome. I know. So anyone listening, you can get our PO Box on our website. If you just want to even send us a little note, it means so much to us to go to the PO Box and have notes from you guys. It's so encouraging. It keeps us going. So feel free to send us some mail there. We love hearing from you and make sure to keep telling your friends about the show so we can keep this going. [02:39] *music* [03:00] A couple of weeks ago, we all heard about the capture of the Golden State Killer. And obviously, we were psyched about all of that. Like the true crime community was freaking out. We all collectively were freaking out. But what kind of got dismissed is there was another case that broke just days before that that hasn't gotten nearly the same amount of attention that I want to make sure we cover as well. And that is the story of Ashley Freeman and Laura Bible.

[03:30] missing back in December of 1999, and their case has been cold until just a couple of weeks ago. But before we go back to December of 1999, I need to take you back just a little bit further to give you a little history about Ashley's family, the Freemans, who all lived in rural northeast Oklahoma. [03:49] In 1998, the local sheriff's office gets a call from Ashley's dad, [03:54] Danny that his son Shane had run away and he can't get him to come home. The officer tracks down Shane and Shane says yeah I ran away because my dad beat the living crap out of me for disobeying him and he shows the deputy his wounds and they were actually so bad that Shane had blood completely through his underwear like it was all on his legs very bad. So needless to say Danny gets charged [04:24] stay with Laura's family. And Laura's mom said that he was really starting to act out, like stealing stuff from them, getting into trouble. And there was actually this whole phase where [04:36] We didn't know it was him until after what I'm about to tell you, but he was going around impersonating an officer. And he would actually... [04:46] Like he stole a red light and would pull people over all the time. And this is like my – actually a huge crime junkie life rule that I have because I've heard lots of stories like this. And even if you Google this now, like man impersonates police officer pulling people over or whatever, so many stories come up of people doing this. And they're for very sinister reasons. Like usually it's not just for fun. They're like abducting people.

[05:16] road, like there's no one around. [05:18] You can put your flashers on, call 911 to verify that the person pulling you over is actually a cop. Like there's nothing wrong with that. The cop knows your flashers are on. You're not going to get in extra trouble. Or if you're on like a freeway or anywhere where it's dark, it's okay to like pull over somewhere light, somewhere well populated. Again, just turn on your flashers. You don't have to pull over the second that they flip their lights on. It's okay to like make sure they're a real cop. Because I've gotten pulled over a couple of times and I always do this. [05:48] was on like pull over but anyway so he's going around doing this and four months later on Friday January 8th of 1999 Shane has the attention of the sheriff's office again he was spotted on the side of a road with a pickup truck that had looked like it was broken down. [06:07] And all we have to go off of for this interaction is the one deputy's account who was there because there were no other witnesses. [06:14] But what this deputy says happened is that after he pulled over and got out of the car, Shane, like, right away pulls a gun on him. So the deputy shoots and kills Shane in self-defense. [06:27] Shane was found dead at the scene and the judge ruled in fact that it was self-defense and the shooting was justified. [06:33] The gun that he actually pulled on the deputy was one that was stolen from the Bible's home just the day before this shooting took place. And Laura Bible's mom actually says that he was talking to people the day before about how he was planning on either committing suicide...

[06:50] or suicide by cop. So it could have been what he was trying to do. But Ashley's family didn't believe this. They said he would run if he was confronted by law enforcement. So they figured that he had to have been shot while running away. Even though the reports that were later released from the autopsy showed that no, that's not what it was. He was not shot in the back. Everything corroborates self-defense. [07:15] The family, though, would not accept this, and they were telling people that they were going to be filing a wrongful death suit against the sheriff's department. Well, if you do that, you have one year from the date of the incident to file that. [07:28] lawsuit. [07:28] And again, that happened on January 8th of 1999. So they would have had until January 8th of 2000. So now I'm going to jump forward from January of 1999, when the shooting took place, to December. Shane's case will become relevant soon. So just like keep it in the back of your mind. [07:46] But I want to tell you now more about Shane's sister Ashley and her friend Laura. The two were high school age girls and they were absolutely best friends. They grew up together from the time they were little and they actually used to live like right across the street from one another before Ashley's family moved about 20 minutes away. But the 20 minute trip didn't change their friendship at all. They still spent almost every single day together. [08:10] Laura was already 16, and Ashley's 16th birthday was actually on December 29th. They were both on Christmas break when Ashley's birthday rolled around, but she didn't really want to do anything big to celebrate. It was her first birthday after losing her brother, and the one-year anniversary of his death was approaching. So the two girls just decide that they're going to, like,

[08:32] play it low key, they're going to spend the days together, and Laura's mom Kathy takes both of them into town just to like maybe do some shopping, they go to dinner, and then they decide that Laura will sleep over at Ashley's house. [08:43] Kathy takes the girls to stop at Laura's house to get all of her stuff, like a sleepover clothes, and she needs to ask her dad. And they lay it on thick to her dad. Like, it's her 16th birthday. I need to spend the night with her. Like, yada, yada, yada. Of course her dad is going to say yes. Like, we used to lay it on thick to our parents. Like, we would sell slumber parties to them. [09:05] She, her dad of course says yes. She goes inside and grabs some clothes and as she was leaving, her last words to her dad were, I love you daddy. And as she's walking down her driveway, her mom is actually coming home and she says, make sure you're home in the morning because like we have dentist appointments, so don't forget. Kathy takes Ashley and Laura back to Laura's house and they watch some TV together until about 9.30 when Ashley's boyfriend Jeremy comes over to give Ashley her birthday present. [09:31] They all have some birthday cake together and then he leaves. And Jeremy is the last known person to see any of them alive. What happened between the time Jeremy left at 9.30 and 5.30 the next morning is still kind of a mystery all of these years later. It's slowly getting pieced together and I'll fill you in more as the story goes on.

[10:01] fire. Their trailer home was completely engulfed in flames and by the time they're able to put the fire out it had been burnt to the ground and while officials are trying to figure out who lived there and who else might have been in the home word around town is spreading and at 7 30 in the morning Laura's mom Laureen gets to work and she gets a call from her son and he's like mom the Freeman's [10:31] out immediately. And Laura's mom makes contact with the sheriff's office and goes to meet them because she wants to know, you know, [10:39] What did you find? Did anyone get out? Do you have my daughter? And she's like, I know she was there in that home. And is she okay? But they won't tell her anything. So she actually goes to meet them in person since they're not giving her any information over the phone. [10:54] When she gets in, the deputy tells her that from the rubble, they have found just one body— [11:01] This is super confusing, but it at least gives her a glimmer of hope that her daughter made it out. So she calls her husband to pick her up from the sheriff's office, and they go out to the scene together. I'm assuming they did this because they thought maybe if the girls made it out, they would actually be around there somewhere. You know what I mean? Yeah. [11:18] When they get there, they see that the home has been totally burnt to a crisp, and there's police tape surrounding the entire home. But they get immediately agitated because it kind of seems like everyone is just

[11:31] standing around like not really doing anything clearly three people are missing so like what's going on like where's the urgency well when the deputy approaches them he lets them know that they're waiting for osbi which is the oklahoma state bureau of investigations they're waiting for them to get on the scene because they can't investigate themselves [11:52] Why not? Well, the sheriff's office had to call the OSBI because they didn't want to be confused of conflict. So the sheriff's office was the one who had shot the Freeman's son. They knew that there was this like possible pending lawsuit in the background. There was a definite conflict of interest between the families. So they didn't want to be accused if they were to investigate the scene and something were to go wrong. [12:22] if that makes sense. [12:23] Yeah, okay. When the OSBI finally arrives and processes the scene, they tell the family that there is a single body of an adult female. They couldn't confirm right at that moment that it was Kathy, but there really wasn't any doubt in anyone else's mind. And tests later came in that did verify that it was her. [12:40] Once the remains of Kathy were removed, they searched the rest of the home or like the pile of ash that was the home. And by 530 that evening, the OSBI says, listen, there's no more bodies. We've collected all of the evidence. We are done. So this was really encouraging because a lot of people, including Laura's family, hoped that Danny and the girls had escaped and just went somewhere safe to like,

[13:05] either just get away from the fire or maybe to hide from whoever was after them. Did they [13:10] really think someone was after them? [13:13] ... [13:13] House fire obviously isn't normal, but it seems pretty innocent. So it could have been an accident, and that's what they don't know. So there's all these, most people thought like, okay, they just got away from a fire. But there is this question in the back of everyone's mind. If this fire was set intentionally, which we don't know yet, someone had to have done that. So maybe there is someone who did this, and the rest of the family is like in hiding. And while they're trying to figure out what's going on, Laura's parents can't just sit around and wait. [13:43] search with people on horseback and they cover over 40 acres but they come up with absolutely nothing like none of their items no shred of evidence no direction which they might have gone that same night they go to the sheriff's department to be formally interviewed by the OSBI and what comes out of their interview is they said Danny had a history with drugs both using and growing marijuana so the OSBI start to wonder if maybe this was a drug deal gone bad or some [14:13] vendetta that was drug related. [14:15] They also asked Laura's parents if there was any enemies that the Freeman had. And this is when they say, listen, all we know about is this feud that they had with the sheriff's office. [14:24] Yeah, this is what, the 30th now? So they would have had like nine days to follow that wrongful death suit. Yeah, so a lot of people were looking at the sheriff's office and being kind of suspicious of them because...

[14:36] They almost thought it was so weird that they were so quick to bring in the OSBI. But that would be some serious corruption for a sheriff's office to kill someone. [14:44] Or a whole family, just so they wouldn't sue them, right? Right. [14:48] I love a good conspiracy theory, but that just doesn't make sense for me. Oh, I totally agree. And with them being so quick to turn the case over, I don't think they were covering up anything. And additionally, a judge had ruled on their side before, like for that shooting. So even if they went to trial, from what I can tell, all the evidence they had pointed to Shane's death being justified, the shooting being justified. So they likely would have won a trial in court anyways. So... [15:13] you know you're in these moments these like high intense emotional moments I can see people coming up with all these crazy stories but I think their call to call in the OSBI was the right call because if they would have done the opposite people would have been confronting them for that anyways. So Laura's parents leave their interview and they're just kind of more confused than ever. No one's really sure who would want them dead. There's this conspiracy lurking in the background which you know even now we're thinking that there's no way it's real. I'm sure in the moment you'd have to [15:41] you know, at least consider it, right? Yeah, definitely. Well, things get even more confusing because the next morning when news comes out that the cause of death for Kathy was a single gunshot blast from a rifle and she was dead before the fire even started. What? Yeah, and accelerant had been used. So now people aren't thinking that Danny and the girls got away. Danny is becoming a

[16:11] and abducted the girls? Yeah, people were saying the biggest theory was that he went off the deep end. And basically he was saying, I will give you Laura and Ashley if you give me the deputy that shot my son. So instead of going to court, he was like making his own justice. [16:27] I recently learned that after working out, performance and recovery come down to what's happening in your blood. Now, I pay a lot more attention to what's happening inside my body. And here's what most people overlook. Training gives your body the stimulus, but your internal environment determines what happens next. Thankfully, function can help you see exactly what's going on under the hood. Things like your glucose, whether your body is burning clean or running on fumes. Your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, which one is winning the inflammation battle. Your DHEAS, one of the building blocks your body uses to make testosterone. [16:57] one of the first things to quietly decline. When these markers are off, you can do everything right and still feel like you're fighting against yourself. Check in on your health. Function provides over 160 labs for $1 per day and member pricing on MRI and CT scans. Join at functionhealth.com slash crimejunkie or use gift code crimejunkie25 for a $25 credit toward your membership. [17:17] But there were never any demands like that made. It was all rumor, but people kept going with it because people would say they saw Danny driving in a white pickup truck with the two girls. That theory doesn't explain at all why he would kill Kathy, though. Not at all, but it really doesn't even matter because something totally shocking happens that changes everyone's theory about the case. [17:39] By the 31st, police had released the crime scene, so Laura's parents went out to the site, and they just were going to dig through the ash themselves.

[17:47] What did they think they were going to find? Honestly, probably nothing. But I can see the need to just want to do something, you know, like instead of just sitting around. And because of this, I literally want to recheck every crime scene ever. Because when they come back, almost immediately after walking through the debris, Laura's dad... [18:09] finds another body. What? [18:12] Like, [18:13] A whole body. Not like a bone or some teeth. A whole body. He said immediately he knew it was Danny. And now he didn't know what to think because if the girls aren't with Danny, where are they? [18:29] I mean, they could very well still be in that house. How do you miss a whole [18:34] body when processing a crime scene. [18:36] I have no idea, but it makes me wonder what else they missed. Like there is no way you went through everything and got every bit of evidence if you missed an entire life. [18:47] person. Can you imagine where this case would be if they never went back and looked? I would hope that someone would have eventually found it like when they cleared the land but seriously who knows because it's not unthinkable that it would have gotten missed again all these years. I mean if they literally processed that scene air quotes and found that and when Laura's dad was there he said there were literally like boot prints on the body because they walked right over it. So naturally

[19:17] report this body they are pissed and when officials arrive they ask the family to leave and they're like uh no way we are not leaving until we physically watch you with our own eyeballs search every inch of this place to make sure our daughter isn't in there so they do in fact clear the rest of the scene but the girls are not in there so we know for sure that both parents are dead and new suspicions and rumors start to come out but they're not in there so we know for sure that both parents are dead and new suspicions and rumors start to come out [19:46] Apparently, the Freemans had been telling people that they were in fact going to file that lawsuit against the sheriff's office, and they needed to raise about $5,000 to do that. So people start wondering if maybe Danny's drug dealing had gotten a little more out of control and he was trying to make some really quick cash. So maybe he really had pissed somebody off. But that really didn't explain where the girls were. [20:10] So there was another set of people who theorized that the girls themselves had something to do with this. Wait, why? Well, because of Danny's history of abuse with Shane. They thought maybe Danny had been abusing Ashley and something had gotten out of hand. And maybe Kathy had tried to step in. So Danny killed Kathy and then Ashley killed Danny. And then Ashley and Laura ran off together. And a lot of people kept coming back to this because Ashley was saving up for a car.

[20:40] gone when they processed the scene, so people think Ashley could have taken off with the money and run off. Isn't it just as likely that the $4,000 fit into the theory about someone else coming into the home and killing them over drugs or for whatever reason? [20:55] Ashley could have been trying to give them the money to get them to leave, especially if whoever it was was there about drugs or money. Oh, totally. And that's the problem with so much of this. With two people dead and two others simply vanishing into thin air, no one knows what to do with any of this evidence. And so it went cold for a long time. [21:16] And it wasn't until 18 months after the fire that they got their first break. Inmates in a local jail said that they saw the girls at a local New Year's Eve party, at some meth house, the day after they went missing. Basically, they said the girls were kidnapped, raped and tortured in front of a group of people, and all of this was on videotape. [21:39] So naturally, the police serve a search warrant on this house in July of 2001. And they even take cadaver dogs, but they find nothing there. There's a bunch of like buried meth equipment. The cadaver dogs don't hit on anything. There's no videotape. But they do find one spot of what looks like body fluids in that home, likely blood. And so they take that in as evidence.

[22:09] spot tested. [22:10] I mean... [22:11] I know CSI is a lie. [22:14] And it's not hours or like the 15 minutes on TV, but I'm assuming like weeks or months. Their family had to wait over a year to get that lab report. [22:27] That is insane. There has to be a better way for this stuff. Also relating this back to the other big case that overshadowed this, the Golden State Killer, when they had a possible suspect identified, they turned around his DNA in like a week. I know, and I don't know if it's like a manpower thing or a money thing or what, but the priority of testing this sample just seemed super off to me. Well, when it comes back, it doesn't belong to either of the girls, so that lead just totally dies, [22:57] But another lead pops up. There's a man on death row in Texas named Tommy Lynn Sells. [23:03] He's in prison for stabbing a 13-year-old girl [23:07] One day after Ashley and Laura went missing and he confesses to killing the whole family. He takes police on this wild goose chase where he says he buried them, but there is nothing there. And he was literally just taking them for a joyride. [23:21] Around the five-year anniversary, a new theory starts to emerge. There's a 31-year-old guy named Jeremy Jones who's in custody. He had a history with drugs, and he was now on death row in Alabama for raping a woman, killing her, dousing her in gasoline, and then setting her home on fire. That sounds familiar. Mm-hmm. Want to know something even more eerie?

[23:45] Oh my god, I don't even know. The same night that everything went down at the Freemans, he was arrested in the early morning hours just 10 miles away for being intoxicated in public. So he was right there and has a history of killing people in a similar fashion? Yep. So the OSBI goes to Alabama and starts interviewing this guy. And they go for a couple of days, a couple of hours each day. [24:15] talking. [24:16] For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. [24:35] Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. [24:41] Listen to the deck now. [24:42] wherever you get your podcasts. [24:46] He tells investigators that what happened is Danny Freeman owed money and he went to get it. He said things went bad and he killed Danny first because he was the strongest. Then he killed Kathy. [24:59] Then he said he doubts the house and accelerant to destroy all of the evidence of him being there. And he knew exactly what kind of accelerant was used, even though that was never released to the public. As he was leaving, he said that the two girls came running out of the house and his first thought was, oh crap.

[25:16] witnesses. [25:17] But he said they had no idea what was going on. They see him and they start running towards him asking him for help. [25:24] So he lets them get in his truck and he says once they're in there, he points a gun at them and they start crying. And then he starts crying because he had no idea what to do with them. But he says eventually he tied them up in his car, drove them out to one of the mine shafts in Kansas, killed both Ashley and Laura, and then drove back to Oklahoma and got high. And that's where he was arrested that night. [25:54] because not only did he tell them the story and know about the accelerant, but he knew exactly what kind of shotgun was used as well. In June of 2005, five and a half years after the girls went missing, the OSBI go out to do this search. They bring cadaver dogs. They bring manpower, enough officers for a full ground search, and they get out to the mine shaft, and their hearts sink. [26:20] When they realize there's literally hundreds of shallow mines, all underground, and they're all linked. So when you drop, like, a body in one of them, there's, like, water underneath. It can just float anywhere. So even if he told them exactly which one it was at, there's no way that they could actually find them. So note to self, if I ever need to get rid of a body. You know, I had the exact same thought as I was watching one of the documentaries on their case.

[26:50] telling everyone who watches TV how to get away with murder. [26:54] So anyways, they drop cameras down these mine shafts, but despite all of Jeremy Jones' detailed instructions, they find nothing. And when no evidence is found, he ends up recanting his entire confession. For the longest time, that's where things stood. This was all the way back in 2005. So for all those years between 2005 and when the case broke a couple weeks ago in 2018, did the family believe that Jeremy Jones did it? [27:24] scene, they would often bring him up because it just didn't make sense that he knew what [27:28] so much that wasn't released. I don't know for sure if they thought he did it [27:33] Because they were also had a private investigator and were getting a lot of information as well. But they definitely kept pointing back to him like he was a question mark for them. That is so strange. Right. But there were some doubts, at least within law enforcement, because the timeline was like it was really tight. He was arrested at 4 a.m. on the 30th, which means based on where he said he left the girls, the latest he could have left was 3 a.m. And I guess with what they know about the fire, it just seemed like it would have been like had to have been the perfect crime. [28:03] doable, right? [28:04] Oh, for sure, otherwise they would have ruled him out years ago. It still baffles me why these people make false confessions. I get false confessions by people who are intimidated by police or whatever, but guys that are already serving life or on death row for murder? Like, why? What's the endgame?

[28:21] I don't know. And I don't know if it's literally just to mess with people, like play games because they're bored. Maybe they want to torment people emotionally because they can't torment people physically anymore. But Crime Junkie Life Rule. Two in one episode? Yes. I've said this before, but don't try and understand crazy. You won't. Leave it to the professionals. We could speculate all day, but I have no idea. You mean the other podcasts? [28:46] that tell us the inside psyche of people they've never met? [28:52] Yeah, leave it to them. So I actually do have a lot of questions about Jeremy Jones still. And normally I would keep asking them, but we don't even need to spend time on him because we actually know the ending now, right? Right. And he isn't in our ending. So in early 2018, there was a press release basically saying that the investigators on Ashley and Laura's case [29:16] inside an office crate in a police department closet. [29:20] It seems there was a changeover in sheriff administrations, and the new administration found this and said, quote, [29:29] These notes and documents have proven to be extremely valuable. This information has produced leads that have produced additional leads, end quote. [29:39] So they make this announcement and then they go away and then nothing really happens in the public until boom, April 2018, when they announced that they have arrested a man that I had never heard of named Ronnie Dean Busick, who is now 66 years old. And we also learned that according to police, he had two accomplices who are both deceased now, Warren Philip Welch II and David Pennington.

[30:09] For example, Warren Welch, who was supposedly the mastermind of this whole murder conspiracy or whatever, was like, oh, he was this super great churchgoing man. He served in the military. I feel like obituaries are the Facebook of like back in the day before there was Facebook. Does that make sense? [30:31] Yeah, totally. Like here are all these great things I accomplished in my life all summed up in my obituary. [30:39] Yeah, I'm going to leave out that I'm a crazy meth head who murders people, but isn't my life perfect? [30:44] So here's what I found out. Apparently, when they found this mystery box, some notes in there pointed investigators to some new witnesses, many of whom told investigators about a pair of private detectives who had worked on the case years earlier. [30:59] like in the very early days of the investigation. The new investigators eventually tracked down one of these old PIs or investigators, whatever he was, named Tom Pryor. Now... [31:10] Tom didn't have his files anymore because it's so many years later. [31:14] But he kept one single super important item, which was an insurance card found at the scene on the day after the Freemans were killed. [31:26] The card belonged to a woman who happened to be living with Warren Welch. He had often drove her car and the insurance car put Welch at the crime scene. [31:37] After they keep questioning more people about Welch, Busick, and Pennington, they hear story after story about how Busick had gone to the Freeman trailer to settle a bad drug deal. And one witness told police the girls were held for days and raped and violently strangled to death. And basically, the girls were never part of the plan, but when they got there, they just decided to take them and have some, quote, fun with them.

[32:07] that when she lived with him in the months after the murders and the disappearances, he had actually decorated the walls of his trailer with missing posters promoting the $50,000 reward for information about the girls. [32:20] That's so sick. Yeah, and, like, again, that's not something that you want to tell police about is your, like, boyfriend... [32:27] Wall papering with missing flyers. Right? So the girlfriend told police that she actually discovered pictures of the girls after Welch was jailed for beating her. And this was a few months after the murders. And basically he had kept these pictures in a leather briefcase. And when she found the briefcase, she knew immediately who the girls were. [32:57] shared with Welch. [32:58] She gets so creeped out that she said she put all of the pictures in the trunk of his car and left him. And when he got out of jail, she said he called her and was like, Listen, I know you've seen those pictures. First of all, I want them back. And don't you ever tell anybody about this or you will end up in a pit just like those girls. [33:16] And she wasn't the only person to talk about these pictures. Other witnesses came forward and said that these guys used to flaunt them almost like they were a prize and they were proud of this. [33:27] So a ton of people have known about this for a very long time. Yes, even the Bible family made a statement on their Facebook page about it saying that the man charged with murder and the other two men mentioned were all names we have heard for years with tips that we've received.

[33:43] They continued to write, The Polaroids mentioned we've known about for years. None of this information was new to us, although seeing it on paper made it very real. So do we know how long the girls were kept alive? I don't know, and I'm sure that is what's eating at everybody. That insurance card that they found was found the day after this happened. The girls were still alive. I cannot understand the communication breakdown [34:13] if the girls were pictured on his bed. Like, obviously, they were there. They had this insurance card, which they linked to him, you know, [34:20] 20-some years later, why couldn't that have happened sooner? Yeah, and you said a private investigator found the insurance card? [34:27] And it wasn't found in a police search? Right. So again, this goes back to the way that they searched the home to begin with. I mean, they missed a body. I don't know if the insurance card was found before police came back for the second time or even after that or why. It was obviously in the investigative notes to begin with. I mean, that's how these new investigators got back to them. So to... [34:50] again, I cannot comprehend the breakdown. You know I'm very close with law enforcement here in Indiana and I often take law enforcement's side but I'm also willing to recognize when a bad job was done and a [35:02] bad job was done here. Everyone at the press conference was kind of doing the pat on the back like, yay, we never gave up. And yeah, good, they shouldn't have given up. But what the heck went wrong back in 1999? And how do we fix that? Yeah. And you know, there's this whole season of a podcast kind of dedicated to the exact same thing. In the Dark season one was all about how there aren't necessarily criminal geniuses just getting away with crimes. There are really just bad investigations. Yeah.

[35:28] And I think this one was a bad investigation. Yeah, I definitely think people should check out In the Dark. I mean, it talks about how just an investigation can go so awry. And something that is solved 20, 30 plus years later really could have been solved day one if the proper measures were taken. So I encourage everyone to go check out In the Dark. They actually just released a season two. And if you want to discuss this case, you can go to our Facebook discussion group. Just search Crime Junkie Podcast Discussion Group on Facebook. [35:58] on Twitter at CrimeJunkiePod, and on Instagram at CrimeJunkiePodcast. This case is still unfolding in the news. We'll try and keep you up to date if there is a trial and as things progress. And until then, we'll see you next week. [36:28] crime junkie is written and hosted by me all of our sound production and editing comes from brit and all of our music including our theme comes from justin daniel crime junkie is an audio chuck production so what do you think chuck do you approve [36:51] *Moooow* [36:56] Okay, crime junkies, you know I absolutely love a twist and a turn, especially when it comes to people who turn out to be someone they're not. That's why I have been obsessed with the podcast Chameleon. Every Thursday, host Josh Dean deep dives into a scam so bizarre, it will leave you wondering, how did they get away with that?

[37:14] It is truly one of my favorite podcasts right now, and I've been listening for years. [37:18] I think you'll love it too. [37:19] Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.