Search for missing Welch girls expected to start later this morning

Monday, June 27th 2005, 11:44 am

By: News On 6

GALENA, Kan. (AP) -- An official with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation says there will be a search today in mine pits near Galena, Kansas, for two teenage girls from Oklahoma who disappeared in December 1999.

Special Agent Kyle Smith says the search will begin this morning.

Cherokee County, Kansas, Undersheriff Kent Soucy says search teams will look for the remains of Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible. The two then-16-year-old girls disappeared December 30th, 1999, from Welch after Freeman's parents were found shot to death in their burned mobile home.

Craig County Sheriff Jimmy Sooter has said suspected serial killer Jeremy Jones of Miami has confessed to killing Freeman's parents, then taking the girls to Kansas and killing them, then dumping their bodies in a mine pit.

Jones is jailed in Alabama and charged with murder in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana. He said recently in a newspaper interview that he didn't confess to killing anyone.