The U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement plans to take part this week in a two-day meeting in a search for two young northeast Oklahoma girls who disappeared in December 1999.
It will be the first time the federal agency will assist in searching hundreds of mines where law enforcement officials have suspected the bodies of teenagers Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman could have been hidden following the murders of Freeman’s parents in Welch, Oklahoma.
Investigators, volunteer experts and agency representatives will hold a two day meeting beginning January 7.
The OSMRE team will deploy a submersible borehole camera and, if needed, auxiliary lighting to examine mine shaft floors and evaluate the integrity of shaft walls, according to an announcement by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the Ottawa County District Attorney’s office.
“Late last year U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, (R-Okla) committed to reaching out to federal agencies in hopes of bringing in additional resources and expertise to bring the girls home. This resulted in OSMRE staff making the plan to come to Oklahoma, meet with investigators and help in the search,” stated the announcement.
The new development of assistance from a federal agency came after the 2018 arrest of Ronnie Dean Busick in Kansas who was eventually transferred to Oklahoma an charged with four counts of murder in the killings of the two teenage girls and the Freeman family.
Along with lead investigators Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation Agent Tammy Ferrari and District Attorney Matt Ballard’s SVU Investigator Gary Stansill; those who have assisted the ramped up investigation over the past two years include:
US Attorney’s Office, Northern District
Craig and Ottawa County Sheriff’s Offices
Miami Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office
Tulsa Police Department Dive Team
Quapaw and Cherokee Nations Marshalls Offices
Jim Martell (Tulsa Police Reserve Officer and engineer with the Tulsa District Corps of Engineers)
Volunteer Ed Keheley, (retired nuclear engineer and expert scientist of the Picher Mining Field)
Multiple additional agencies across Northeast Oklahoma and Southeast Kansas
