Hell in the Heartland
Page 29
Believing it was going to be a routine deal, Hayes observed Shane sitting in the disabled pickup on the side of the road. “I wasn’t expecting trouble,” says Hayes, who took with him his state-issue twelve-gauge shotgun, got out, “and ordered him out of the truck and on the ground.” Shane didn’t appear nervous, nor did he seem frenzied. “He was distant,” Hayes remembers.
I wonder if perhaps Shane was crashing after his manic crime spree, maybe accepting. Or maybe he was just young and naive, hoping to go to jail. Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all.
“He hesitated a little bit.” David Hayes pauses, his voice thick with disappointment and his words carefully chosen. “I wish he would have tried talking to me.” Instead, Shane exited the truck, closed the door, but didn’t get on the ground as he’d been instructed. Instead, he pulled his jacket to the side and brought up the very pistol he’d stolen from the Bibles’ house the day before.
In a second that stretched on forever, when looking down the barrel of the pistol that Shane held up, “Time slowed down,” recalls Hayes. “And I thought to myself, ‘I can’t believe he’s making me do this.’” Hayes claims to have felt the presence of God around him. “Everything was calm.”
David Hayes shot Shane at exactly 4:20 p.m., just seconds before backup came. The second officer would be Troy Messick, the very officer who’d later deliver the news of the fire to Lorene Bible in McDonald’s and would respond to the Bibles’ discovery of Danny’s body. He was also the man who reported Shane as a runaway upon Danny Freeman’s insistence after the phone-cord incident.
Deputy Hayes, however, thought he’d missed the boy, seeing that the shot of the twelve-gauge didn’t knock him off his feet. Shane slightly turned and headed for the rear of the truck, doubled over. But when David looked through the truck’s windows from the same spot where he had taken the shot, Shane didn’t reappear on the other side, having fallen at the rear of the truck. “He was dead by the time I reached him.”
According to the signed police statements before me, Shane died at 4:20 p.m.
Messick arrived at 4:21.
Lieutenant Jim Herman arrived at 4:33.
Undersheriff Mark Hayes arrived at 4:37 with Investigator Charles Cozart.
And Sheriff Vaughn arrived at 5:24.
These are the men who stood in the cold and saw dusk through to night, with a lifeless teenager at the center of their focus. These are the men who would first arrive at the boy’s home when it burned down less than a year later.
I ask David Hayes specifically if he thought this was a suicide by cop.
“I have no doubt,” he answers. “I have no doubt that that’s what took place.” Some had surmised this in the past, claiming that Shane chose this way out in lieu of returning home, as social workers, and his father, were trying to have him do.
We also talk about the alleged stalking by Danny Freeman, which warranted the allegations of other officers wrongfully arresting Danny and threatening him and his family. To my surprise, David says he had no firsthand experience with Danny’s stalking. “I don’t know he ever stalked me,” says David. “I know he came to my house one evening after that [Shane’s death], and I was notified. And he [Danny] was intercepted by another deputy and taken to the sheriff’s office.” This is the event detailed in the letters written by both Kathy Freeman and her mother, Celesta Chandler.
I ask David what went through his mind when, fast-forwarding a year later, he heard that Kathy and Danny had been murdered.
“It was unbelievable.” And though he’d taken a polygraph test to determine whether or not he had knowledge about the Freeman murders, he never personally heard what the results were. Like his brother, Undersheriff Mark Hayes, he knew that Agent Nutter sought him and other members of the CCSO as potential suspects early on in the case.
“Living with this has been tough,” he says. “But I did what I was trained to do, and my conscience is clear.” His one hope was that the story could finally be put to rest.
“No gun visible,” the Freemans continue to repeat. “No gun visible.”
Standing in the isolated section of a road today where seventeen-year-old Shane gasped his last breath, I see where the prairie meets the hills, and the wind becomes trapped screaming in my ears. A silent prayer on my lips tastes like the dust of the road, and I close my eyes and imagine the withdrawing echoes of a shotgun blast around me. There’s neither a cross nor a flower from Ashley that remains twenty years later—no evidence of anything at all happening here. I think of my husband’s words when I said how I’ve connected most to Shane. Maybe that’s because you were just like Shane when you were his age. I survived the blooms of youth, but I struggle to let go of the idea that one movement, justified or not, intentional or not, could have cut this boy’s life short forever.
I listen to a car in the distance taking long minutes to arrive. “You need any help?” the driver asks. And suddenly I think of the several locals who stopped and asked Shane the same question shortly before his death. No, thank you; help is on the way.
“No, thanks,” I answer before introducing myself. “Did you know Shane Freeman?”
“Sure, I remember him,” the driver answers. “The boy ran like lightning.”
33
* * *
NO END
* * *
In 1999 and on into the nights of a new millennium, a small gray trailer tucked itself away amidst what felt like the endless chat piles and turquoise pools of poison that had bubbled up from the ground in Picher. Carried by a white wind were the sounds of gospel hymns, scratchy from a hand-me-down Victrola found in the left-behinds of the chat rats who were forced to abandon their homes. The music blared all night, for no one here slept. Sound didn’t carry like it did in the prairies. Instead, it was stifled by mountains of toxic waste and the threats of men who kept close to the meth sessions and deluded sermons.
“I still have nowhere to go and pay my respects,” says Lorene, who no longer visits the end of the Freemans’ driveway. Now we bring flowers to a grassy section in Picher where there’s not a single sign of life but for the remembrances accumulating from friends and family. “I virtually have the doorstep of a killer to go to.” And not even a doorstep is left.
I ask the families how they keep the darkness from consuming them.
“Lauria was a beautiful and precious soul,” says cousin Lisa. “To allow the darkness in any of that, it would be tarnishing her memory.”
Nine months after the naming of Ronnie Busick for the murders of Lauria, Ashley, Kathy, and Danny, I sit in The Cow, a small restaurant in Welch. The restaurant is dark and quiet, and I am the only one here as I wait for my order to be wrapped up. I watch the snow come in sideways on the empty street. It feels something like coming home. Something about Oklahoma will stick with me forever.
I can hear where there should be music playing, and sitting in front of me is the familiar shadow, the fear. I ask it if it wants to sit next to me, and in this way, the panic attack is diverted, and the fear fades away. It is because of this approach, largely learned by watching people who suffer more than I can imagine, that my panic attacks disappear.
“The darkness is always there on the sidelines, but we cannot let it in,” says Lorene. “That’s defeat. I will not be defeated.”
My food arrives, and I take the affidavit with me.
But there is one more interview brought up in the affidavit, and it is with Phil Welch himself. In the February 2003 interview, “Welch stated prior to the murder of Freeman and his family, Phil Welch moved to a residence approximately 3/4 mile north of the Freeman residence.”
In the affidavit that only provided so much of this interview, Phil Welch “indicated that he met David Pennington in Chetopa and they became friends.” When learning that the insurance card leading to E.B. was what led to him, he explained that he and E.B. had already talked to law enforcement. “He did not know why the insurance card was removed from the vehicle or why it was found
near the crime scene.”
Another failure by those who literally had the killer right in front of them.
“You know what I wonder?” Alabama death row inmate Jeremy Jones asks me after learning about the card himself. “I wonder if they [the girls] tried getting out at the end of the driveway there. The card just blows away. Hell, maybe they threw it out on purpose.”
We might not know everything.
I pack my darkness, and I leave. As the snow comes down hard, I step out onto the sidewalk, looking across the street to the Welch firehouse, where the fire engines sit silently and the gentle clink of the American flag hitting the pole keeps on overhead. I taste the snow in the air as I head west, making my rounds to see Glen Freeman over at the Freeman farm, where I’m always sure to stop by whenever I visit. Passing the Sherrick ranch belonging to the couple who called in the fire in 1999, I continue up the road to the Freemans’ like I have countless times before. Past the familiar ramshackle white house that sits between the Sherrick and Freeman properties. I remember sitting in the Sherricks’ home and asking them about the traffic that went up and down the road.
“Do you know who lived at the other house?”
“No,” they answered. “No idea.”
If not for the truck parked in front of the house, I wouldn’t suspect anyone lived here. So I stop, then knock on a broken door until the current tenant meets me.
“Hey, I’m sorry to bother you,” I begin, introducing myself. “I was wondering if you had heard about the crimes up the road back in 1999.”
“You want to know when Phil Welch lived here, don’t you?”
I stand frozen. The affidavit was incorrect, and Phil Welch didn’t live north of the Freemans, but south. He lived here. “Yes.” I clear my throat.
The tenant confirms that Phil Welch’s time there did in fact overlap with when the Freemans lived up the road. He tells me that Phil lived out in the sheds (though meeting the landlord later on, I confirm that he did not live in the sheds, but in fact cooked meth in them). The snow comes down as I nose around the several collapsing sheds in the back, full of junk and weeds and broken wood and rusty nails. But as I look around, out to a panoramic view of hills fading into the grayness of falling snow, something strikes me: the sight of Glen Freeman’s trailer down the way.
If I were Phil Welch, I could cook dope with the Freemans’ home in my view. When I get in my car and measure the distance, it is only eight-tenths of a mile away. Well, shit.
I drive farther into the backcountry than ever before to meet the landlord, getting lost over and under the Kansas state line in the myriad of no-name towns. On my way back from meeting the kind elderly woman, the undulating roads and dense forests create stomach lifts and darkness. Dusk makes blind spots, and just before the last flare of the day is extinguished, I happen upon a mailbox that reads “Welch.”
I stop the car and weigh the idea out for a minute.
Up a long and steep driveway are a house, a bonfire, and the shadow of a man moving back and forth outside. But at the foot of the driveway is a KEEP OUT sign on a strip of barbed wire that’s been disconnected from its posts and laid across the ground of the driveway. I leave the car on the road and slowly walk up, the familiar bogie that is anxiety swirling in the pit of my stomach. I try to wave to the man, but he doesn’t see me, taking hauls of firewood in a wheelbarrow between shed and fire, and I fear calling out in case of dogs. I keep my distance and stand still, taking off my black jacket in the freezing cold so that maybe the white of my Metallica tee can catch his eye. It does.
The man takes his time to walk over, and I wonder if he’s seen me the whole time. He comes as slow as the dusk here to conceal the virtues of daytime, in coveralls and the smell of fuel, and when the man comes close enough for me to see, I swear to God I am looking into the eyes of Phil Welch.
All I hear is the heartbeat in my ears, and I feel the sudden need to run back down from where I came.
“Forgive me,” I start. “I saw the name on the mailbox.”
The man, an identical match to Phil, is his estranged brother, a man who cut ties with him decades before. We speak for a while, shivering in the cold until I can’t feel my toes, but he doesn’t go on record. Behind us, the sun sets, taking my shadows with it. And once again, I find myself in the pitch-black hills of the prairie.
I take everything I have and pack it in the rental car, preparing to head back to the East Coast, but it’s far from being my last time in Oklahoma. On the seat beside me, the many writings of Lauria Bible as I cut through the countryside:
I have a special spot down by the old duck pond … I love that in the evening, when the bold sun is setting with its colors glaring at the water how it glistens as the big, powerful, yet calm wind tosses the water around …
Oklahoma changes me forever, and more often than I care to admit, I still talk to Lauria and Ashley, looking to ghosts for reassurance and the silent request to be found. I still return, having made new relationships and the plans to forever keep my ear to the ground, my door always open. Sometimes I just enjoy the drive from the East to the West: when red sunset lingers over the fields after long days, my hair tangling in the thick, hot wind of a speeding truck. I’ll trace my hand over the passing fields and a dirty fingernail along the horizon, remembering all the things that teenage girls live for: the carefree heart, the white-trash kiss, reckless love.
“The sight of it all helps me get my mind off the world and all my worries,” Lauria’s words end.
“This doesn’t end until I find my child and bring her home,” Lorene contends twenty years later. Because while I end the book, this story still continues, and so do the families. There is an immeasurable hope kept by the families in spite of the painful possibility that they might never find the girls.
But like I learned on my very first visit to Oklahoma: the prairie has her way.
Picture Section
Ashley Freeman (left), Lauria Bible (right)
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Lorene Bible
Tiffany Alaniz, Fox23 News
Missing-persons flyer
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
PI License for Tom Pryor
Courtesy of Tom Pryor
Jay and Lorene Bible, 2018
Tiffany Alaniz, Fox23 News
Classroom photo with Lauria (top, second from left) and Ashley (top, center)
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Ashley and Shane Freeman
Courtesy of Lonny Freeman
Lorene and Lauria Bible, 1994
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Ashley Freeman
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Birthday party with Ashley (second from left) and Lauria (second from right, center row)
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Craig County Sheriff’s Office (bottom row, from left to right): Deputy Troy Messick, Investigator Charlie Cozart, Undersheriff Mark Hayes, Sheriff George Vaughn, Lieutenant Jim Herman, around 1999
Courtesy of Mark Hayes
Craig County Sheriff’s Office: Lieutenant Jim Herman (far left), Deputy David Hayes (second from left), Undersheriff Mark Hayes (bottom left), Sheriff George Vaughn (bottom right), Deputy Troy Messick (standing in center), Investigator Charlie Cozart (far right), around 2000
Courtesy of Mark Hayes
CCSO Investigator Charlie Cozart and Undersheriff Mark Hayes
Courtesy of Mark Hayes
CCSO Investigator Charlie Cozart
Courtesy of Mark Hayes
Wedding photo of Jay and Lorene Bible, 1978
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Danny and Kathy Freeman
Courtesy of Dwayne Vancil
CCSO Sheriff George Vaughn
Courtesy of Mark Hayes
CCSO Lieutenant Jim Herman
Courtesy of Mark Hayes
Suspected killer David Pennington
Photos courtesy of Jerri Shelton
The 2001 search at the
Glover property in Wyandotte, Oklahoma
Lonnie Leforce
Murder victim Judith Shrum
Courtesy of Karen Cook
Justin Green (left) and Shane Freeman (right)
Courtesy of Justin Green
Suspected killer Phil Welch
Courtesy of Anonymous
Phil Welch at a dog auction in Kansas
Courtesy of Anonymous
Jax Miller with Glen Freeman
Courtesy of Jax Miller
Jax Miller with Glen Freeman (standing) and Celesta and Bill Chandler
Courtesy of Jax Miller
Former CCSO Sheriff Jimmie L. Sooter
Jax Miller
Jeremy Hurst
Jax Miller
The Bible family, Christmas Eve 1996
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Bible family, 1999
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Lauria Bible, 1999
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Lauria Bible
Courtesy of Lorene Bible
Lauria Bible, age seven
Courtesy of Lorene Bible