Criminology - The Texas Killing Fields Part2

Episode Date: May 16, 2020

We continue our discussion of The Texas Killing Fields case. So many people have been killed over the years along a stretch of I-45 in Texas between Houston and Galveston. In this episode, we discuss other cases that have been linked to the series. We also discuss possible suspects that have hit police radar through the years. Join Mike and Morf as they wrap up their discussion on the unsolved Texas Killing Fields cases. So many questions surround this case. How many perpetrators were operating in this area throughout the years? Is there any possibility that one serial killer was responsible for a large number of these murders? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch.

Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 112 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mike Morford. How are you today?

I'm doing as good as can be. I'm feeling a little bit of the blues being stuck in the house. It's starting to get to me, but I'm trying to power through. How about you? Yeah, same here. I mean, I think everybody is. I've probably said this before, but I do think it's been harder on my daughters than it has been for me. You know, when you're talking about boyfriends and just not being able to get out, I'm kind of a homebody anyway.

But, you know, it's tough on everybody, no doubt about it. Yeah, we try and go for a ride every day or go out in the backyard or just do something to get out of the house, even if it's for an hour or something. But it's still not the same as being able to come and go as you normally would. Right. to be able to do everything you want to do, it is different, definitely. We continue to have an amazing amount of new Patreon support. So we definitely want to give some shoutouts. We had Paul Lee, Matthew Martinez, Michelle Pierce, Vanessa Mayo, James Price, Jessica

Miller, Stephanie Rich, Ashley, Gary Arkell, and Donna Bashline. So like I said, Morf, that's an amazing amount of new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, we've really got a generous, a bunch of listeners and for them to support us through Patreon is very nice of them. And if anyone out there is thinking about supporting criminology through Patreon, they can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. Don't forget about Stitcher Premium. That's where you can find all of our older episodes of criminology. got some really good ones out there, Golden State Killer, Zodiac. There's a bunch. So check that out.

And they have a free 30-day trial. All right, buddy, let's get into this second episode, second parter on the Texas killing fields. I think as we start off, let's do a quick recap from part one. In the last episode, we detailed the cases of several women and girls whose bodies were found in secluded areas, along a deadly stretch of I-45 along the route from Houston to Galveston, Texas. A majority of these cases in the Texas killing fields were very close to the league city area. We talked about some possible suspects. In this episode, we will talk about some more suspects. One of them was heavily pursued by Tim Miller, the father of Laura Lynn Miller, who was one of the killing fields victims,

we'll also explore the cases of some other missing victims whose remains have never been found. And we'll talk about some other murder victims that are not officially related to the Texas Killingfields series. But when you look at the timing, the location, and some of the details, I think some people can make the case, or at least ask the question.

question. Are these related? Are these not related? They're worth talking about for sure. Morph, one of the questions that we asked in the last episode was, are all of these missing and murdered women, the victims of one serial killer who operated in this area for over three decades? Or are we dealing with multiple predators? One of the cases considered by some not to be an official part of the Texas killing field murders is that of 15-year-old Michelle Garvey, who left her new London, Connecticut home in June 1982. A month later, on July 1st, her body was found in Harris County, Texas. At first, police couldn't idea her remains.

Searchers found some of her clothing, with the exception of her shoes and braw, and they didn't find any ID or purse with her body. Authorities noted physical traits such as red hair, uninverted nipple, a scar on one foot, and type O positive blood. She had been strangled and possibly sexually assaulted. Since there was no other way to ID the remains, she was buried in a Texas grave. It wasn't until 2011 that her remains were exhumed and using modern DNA techniques. Her body was officially identified. Police were never able to figure out how she got to Texas, but the theory is that Michelle hitched her way to.

there. This may be one reason why not everyone believes she's part of the same series, because it's possible that the person who drove her to Texas also killed Michelle. The remains of two other young people are buried in graves beside Michelle, and they have still not been identified. They are known as Harris County Jane Doe and Harris County John Doe. Both victims were found together on January 12, 1981 in a wooded area near 13500-0-0-Wallisville Road in Houston. The estimated time of death was about six to eight weeks prior to their discovery. Jane's estimated age is between 15 and 25 years old. John is estimated to have been between 16 and 30 years old.

Both victims had been beaten to death. And it appeared as the. though Jane was also strangled. John Doe had been bound and gagged. The reason why this couple is not considered by some to be part of the Killingfield series is because it's the only case in which both a male and female were found dead together. That detail clashed with all of the others. Hopefully they will one day be identified with DNA and genetic genealogy.

Sandra Kay Ramber, who was just 14 years old, disappeared on October 26, 1983 from her family's Santa Fe, Texas home. Santa Fe is a small town close to League City and Friendswood. When her family arrived home, the door to the house was open and biscuits were baking in the oven. Sandra's coat and purse were still inside the house. At first, they thought she ran to the store for a few minutes, but Sandra never came home. Her father reported her missing to police the following morning. Police first classified her as a runaway, and some investigators do believe she left on her own accord, but that her case may also be related to the I-45 killings.

Sandra Ramber has never been found. Like Sandra Ramber, 17-year-old Michelle Dordy Thomas also lived in Santa Fe, Texas with her family. On October 5, 1985, Michelle returned home after working at a day. a Galveston gas station. She then left with two male acquaintances, Carlos Garcia Jr. and Warren Lynn Richardson. Michelle was supposed to meet friends at the Cave Club on Stewart Beach in Galveston later in the evening, but she never arrived. Garcia and Richardson said they stopped at a convenience store on the way to the club and Michelle got into another vehicle with two men and disappeared. Her family reported Michelle missing on October 7th. Although she was only 17 at the time she vanished,

Michelle was married, and she had a young son who was about to celebrate his first birthday. Michelle and her husband were separated at the time of her disappearance. In Michelle's case, there may have been another possible reason for her to go missing, other than a random encounter with a dangerous predator. According to the Charlie Project website, Michelle and her husband served as police informants during a March 1985 drug bust. Michelle was facing burglary charges and agreed to become an informant so the court case against her would be dropped. Prior to her disappearance, Michelle heard rumors that her life was in danger because of her involvement with the police. In December 1985, just two months after Michelle went missing, Garcia and Richardson, the two men who reportedly last saw Michelle,

were indicted for aggravated kidnapping. They changed their stories at that point and said Michelle was taken forcibly from her vehicle when it was stopped at an intersection. But the case against them never made it to trial. Today, law enforcement officials believe Michelle may have been abducted and murdered, but there is very little evidence in her case.

And Michelle remains classified as a missing person. Two years after Michelle Thomas disappeared, Suzanne Renee Richardson vanished. She was a student at Texas A&M University in Galveston and employed as a night clerk at Casa Del Mara Condominiums or resort on Seawall Boulevard. Suzanne was last seen at work at around 6 a.m. on October 7, 1988. She was scheduled to work until 7 a.m.

The resort's security guard was scheduled to work until 6 a.m. And he claimed when he punched out, Suzanne was sitting at the desk in good health. At 6.18 a.m. A couple arrived in the office to check out, but there was no one there. The couple dropped their room key on the front desk and they left. The morning clerk arrived at 645 to relieve Suzanne of her duties, but Suzanne was not there. There was no sign of a struggle and Suzanne's books, her purse, and her car were all still at the resort, undisturbed. A maintenance man found one of her shoes in the parking lot later that morning, and scuff marks were found

near the resort's entrance. At least two guests reported hearing a woman screaming, which prompted one of the guests to look down the hall until the screaming stopped and he heard a door shut. About two months after Suzanne disappeared, one of her friends received the first of several anonymous phone calls made to people in Suzanne's life. The caller, taunted the recipients of the phone calls and said he was involved in Suzanne's abduction. In July, 1989, a private investigator hired by the Richardson family reported on a local radio show that the anonymous caller cried and said he was with two men when they kidnapped, murdered, and buried Suzanne, about 15 to 20 miles west of Hitchcock, Texas.

The aftermath of Suzanne's disappearance was hell for her parents. In the months that followed, her family received a series of prank phone calls, as well as calls from police, each time an unidentified body was found. Every time the phone rang, their heart sank. A death certificate was issued for Suzanne in January 1997. A man named Gabriel Soto was a suspect in her case. He died from a drug overdose in late July 2002, before he. his death, he was arrested for trying to run over another person with his vehicle. According to the Charlie Project, investigators said that the victim told him to avoid another person who allegedly witnessed Soto and Richardson speaking on the night of her abduction. In May 2001, investigators questioned two cousins in Suzanne's case.

The media reported officials had located circumstantial evidence that connected the two men to her disappearance. The men resided in Galvest. in 2001, but denied having any involvement in Suzanne's disappearance. Three years later, a witness said she saw two men digging up Suzanne's remains in 1992 and moving them to another location. Police located that set of remains that these two men allegedly moved, and the bones turned out to be from an animal. Another case that may be related to the Texas killing fields is the 2001 disappearance of 57-year-old taught Totsie Tran Harriman from League City. Totsie resided in Florida, but was visiting family in Texas

and decided to purchase property there to be close to them. Between 5 and 530 a.m. on July 12, 2001, Totsie left her son, Men's House, in League City. She was heading off for a trip to Corpus Christi to scout for property to buy. Before she left, she went. She went. She was heading off for a trip to trip to buy. Before she left, she went into men's room and kissed him goodbye. A neighbor noticed the trunk of her 1995 Lincoln Continental open as she was packing, but the neighbor never saw her leave. At 8.30 a.m., a friend tried calling Totsie's cell phone. The phone rang and eventually went to voicemail.

The friend tried calling again at 10.30. And again, this time the call went. straight to voicemail. When Tatsy had not contacted her children, by that evening, one of her son's phoneed a friend Totsie planned to stay with on July 12 and found out that his mother never arrived. Her family reported her missing soon after. There were sightings of Tatsy's car, a Lincoln Continental, in Houston after her disappearance. The car stood out. It was a distinctive metallic rose color and bore floor license plates that read Totsi. Some witnesses said the car was driven by a small woman who appeared to be confused.

One man remembered seeing the distinctive Totsie on the license plates. But these sightings didn't lead to any breaks in the case. Totsie and her car had never been found. Another case considered by some, but not all, as being part of the series, is the case of 13-year-old Crystal Jean Baker. On March 5, 1996, Crystal left her grandmother's home in East. Texas City at about 1 p.m. to walk to a friend's house in Bayou Vista about five miles away. She never arrived. She was last seen at a Texas City convenience store. That same day,

the body of a teenage girl was found 60 miles northeast of Texas City in Chambers County near I-10 and the Trinity River. The discovery happened around 5 p.m. The body was found face down, clad in a flowered print dress and underwear, but no shoes. The victim had abrasions, cuts, and scratches on her face, legs, feet, and knees. There were visible contusions on her throat, but it wouldn't be until the next day when the body was identified as that of Crystal Jean Baker. A medical examiner determined that she had been raped and strangled. 14 years later in December 2010, police arrested 45-year-old Kevin Edison Smith for Crystal's murder. Smith was linked through a national DNA database after he was arrested in Louisiana on a drug charge earlier that year.

In a taped confession, Smith admitted he gave Crystal a ride, then choked her with a leather strap when he started to freak out on him. He denied raping Crystal, but during his trial, lab technician Christy Wisemant testified that she extracted DNA samples from stains found on Crystal's dress and panties and compared the profile to a sample that was taken from Smith. She said on the stand that it would be a one in 322 sextillion probability that another random subject would match this profile. In 2012, it took a jury only 30 minutes to find Smith guilty of capital murder. He received an automatic life sentence. Crystal's murder has been dismissed by some as being part of the Texas Killingfield's murders because her body was found dumped 60 miles

east of most of the other bodies. In 2016, a man named William Lewis Reese claimed responsibility for the murders of Jessica Kane, who we talked about in part one of this series, and another young woman named Kelly Cox. He agreed to lead authorities to their bodies. Beyond confessing to these murders, police believe that Reese may have been connected to the attacks of at least seven women,

including Laura Smithers, who we also discussed in the last episode. 20-year-old Kelly Cox vanished from Denton, Texas on July 15, 1997. Denton is about 40 miles northeast of Fort Worth and over 300 miles north of the killing fields. Kelly was a student at University of North Texas, majoring, in psychology and the mother of a small child. On July 15th, she had toured the Denton jail with her criminology class after the tour. She called her boyfriend 19-year-old Lawrence Harris from a nearby payphone to tell him she locked herself out of her car and she needed his help. Lawrence lived in Farmers Branch and by the time he arrived in Denton, Kelly was gone. She had vanished.

On July 26, 1997, 18-year-old Tiffany Johnston was abducted from the Sunshine Car Wash in Bethany, Oklahoma. Her car was found the same day at the car wash with the keys still in the admission. The following day, Tiffany's partially clothed body was found on a tall patch of grass in Yukon, Texas, near Gregory Road and Interstate 40. The location was near where William Reese had grown up in Yukon. Tiffany had been strangled to death. In March 2016, Reese led authorities to skeletal remains in Brazoria County that were later identified as those of Kelly Cox. He also led authorities to East Orm Drive in southeast Houston, where the body of Jessica Kane was buried. In May 2016, Jessica's remains were identified through DNA testing.

There wasn't enough evidence to determine the cause of death. As we mentioned, Reese had long been a suspect in Laura Smither's murder. But there was not enough evidence to convict him a few months after Laura went missing. 19-year-old Sandra Seypaw was kidnapped. Sandra was at a pay phone at a gas station in Webster, Texas when she saw a man staring at her as she got into her vehicle. This made her feel very uncomfortable. She drove across the street to the Waffle House, but realized that something didn't feel right with her car. When she got out, she noticed that someone had slashed her tires.

A man in a duly pickup truck pulled up behind her, nearly blocking her in, and asked her if she had a flat tire, to which Sandra replied yes. The man offered to help. That man was William Reese. He then abducted Sandra and headed down I-45. But as the truck was moving along, Sandra jumped out onto the freeway. suffering severe injuries. While she was recovering in the hospital,

she had difficulty remembering details of the abduction, so they put her under hypnosis. Sandra was then able to describe the inside of Reese's truck, the color of his truck, and Reese himself. She told police that he had a pockmarked face and wore a black cowboy hat. The case went to trial.

in 1998, and Reese was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 60 years in prison. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. But Oklahoma wanted a crack at William Reese. They were going to put him on trial for the murder of 18-year-old Tiffany Johnston. So to avoid the death penalty. Because remember, he already has 60 years in Texas, but he wants to avoid the death penalty in Oklahoma. That's when Reese confessed to Laura Smithers' murder.

and also led authority to Kelly and Jessica's burial sites. In the fall of 2017, the A&E Network released a documentary called The Eleven that took a fresh look at who may have killed 11 young women in and around Galveston in the 1970s, all of which we mentioned in the last episode or in this one. The 11 are Colette Wilson, Brenda Jones, Rhonda Johnson, Sharon Shaw, Debbie Ackerman, Maria Johnson, Gloria Gonzalez, Kim Pitchford, Georgia Gear, Brooks Bracewell, and Suzanne Bowers. A possible 12th victim is a Jane Doe, whose bones were found in Brazoria County in 1980. It was estimated that she was likely killed in 1975.

Lisa Olson, an investigative reporter for The Houston Chronicle, and Fred Page, a former Galveston homicide detective, joined forces, and they believe that one man is responsible for the 11. And that man is convicted killer Edward Bell. In 2011, Bell confessed to killing two Galveston teenagers in the 1970s. Bell had long been a suspect in the 1971 murders of Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson. He was sent to prison for 70 years in 1993 for the 1978 murder of, of Larry Dickens from Pasadena, Texas. Dickens witnessed Bell exposing himself to a group of kids.

Dickens tried to intervene, tried to stop Bell, bell shot him to death. Then he fled the country after posting bond. But in 1992, police received a tip that he was living and working at a boat shop in Panama. Police arrested him and extradited Bell. back to Texas. There's a memorable Unsolved Mysteries episode in which Matthew McConaughey portrayed Larry Dickens. Did you see that episode, Mike? No, I don't remember that. It must have been back in his early

acting days, obviously. Yeah, it was very memorable and they reenacted the scene. And I think, I think Larry Dickens' real mother, if I remember correctly, may have actually played her own part. and Matthew McConae, the typical go-for-it actor he was, was really putting in an effort to sell his acting chops in that scene. It was very memorable, and it was really tragic because he was shot to death right in front of his mom. Well, he is from Texas. Matthew is.

Maybe that's how he got his big break. I think a lot of listeners that watch Unsaught Mysteries will probably remember that episode, but essentially, Larry Dickens was actually, home with his mom and she saw a commotion going on out in front of their house and Larry went out to check to see what was happening and there was a man standing there which was Bell and he was exposing himself to a group of kids and Larry was an ex-marine who wasn't going to sit around and let something like that happened so he confronted the man and actually took his keys out of the truck and

Bell got furious and told Larry to give him his keys back and he wasn't going to he was going to to call the police and Bell pulled a gun on him and shot him. And Larry made it back into his house and his mother ran to his side. In the meantime, Bell pulled out a loaded rifle and walked back into the house in the garage, shot Larry and then took the keys back for his truck and drove off and a police chase ensued. Yeah, I'm really surprised that I don't remember that episode. I mean, it sounds like an interesting case, obviously, but the fact that Matthew McConaughey was in it, and I'm a huge Unsolved Mysteries fan, I'm going to have to go find it and check it out. And it's interesting.

I think at the time, they didn't know that Bell might be connected to all of these other cases here. I think that came afterwards. So he was just a bad guy that they're looking for for something else, and it turns out he might be connected to all of this. In 1998, Edward Bell sent a letter to the Galveston County District. attorney's office, claiming responsibility for Debbie and Maria's murders. He also claimed responsibility for the deaths of five other people, including George Aguirre and Brooks Bracewell. His confession wasn't revealed publicly until 2011, when he granted two interviews to reporters. In both

interviews, he claimed he killed 11 people. Bell had access to some of the areas where the crimes had occurred, where bodies were discovered. Witnesses saw two of the victims getting into a van, matching the one that Bell owned before they disappeared. Fred Page found a confession letter that Ed Bell wrote in 1999 that included the names of some of the girls who were killed and details about them. He mentioned something about, quote, sending the 11 to heaven. Bell denied the written confession several times and would not give any details about his claims unless the prosecutors gave him immunity, which they never did.

There's no evidence tying Bell to the murder of the 11, and he passed away in 2019 at the age of 79. But despite the lack of solid evidence linking Bell to the Texas Killingfield's cases, he remains a favorite suspect of some. Tim Miller, who lost his daughter, Laura, on the Texas Killingfield's murders, was zeroing in on his own suspect. After the brutal and senseless murder of his daughter, Laura, Tim Miller was one determined grieving father.

He wanted justice for his daughter, and he would do anything to make that happen. Tim Miller was convinced that a man who owned land adjacent to the Texas killing fields was responsible for the carnage. In 1994, Tim drove to the home of this man, Robert Abel, who was a retired NASA engineer. They started arguing, and before Robert had time to read,

react, Tim drew a 357 revolver and pointed it at Robert's head. Tim demanded Robert confessed Delora's murder. He was certain that Robert Abel killed his beloved daughter. In the 1960s, Robert Abel was one of NASA's extraordinary young engineers. He was part of a team that was instrumental in designing Apollo 11. Abel grew up on a ranch in Belleville, Texas, a small community between Austin and Houston. After graduating from Belleville High School in 1957, he married Jane Ross, his high school sweetheart, and the two eventually had a daughter and a son.

Abel attended the University of Texas at Austin and earned a degree in aerospace engineering. In February 1962, he joined NASA, and at night he took graduate courses at the University of Houston and later at UT Austin. He wrote papers with titles such as analytic solutions to interplanetary transfers. In 1978, Abel's marriage crumbled, and he and Jane divorced. Around June 1983, Robert leased about 1,000 acres of land at the edge of town,

approximately three miles from his home, and very close to the killing fields. This worked out well for him because he could still work at NASA, and on the weekends, he could work with cattle. In 1989, he remarried a woman named Cindy Jacobs, a secretary. But after just 41 days of marriage, Cindy left Robert without an explanation, and the two quickly divorced. In 1990, Abel married a woman named Paula K. Myers, who was a secretary at NASA. Not long after the marriage, he bought another 11 acres next to Calder Oilfield and started a business called Stardust Trail Rides, where he offered discount trail rides to charities and youth groups, and often gave free hayrides to toddlers.

Stardust Trail Rides was an immediate success. In 1991, sales hit $250,000. The business had great potential. But that all changed when Robert Abel became a suspect in the I-45 killings. Investigators approached Abel after the discovery of bodies along the... his property. Abel was anxious to help investigators, but his enthusiasm in the case signaled a red flag for detectives. It was almost as if he was too enthusiastic. He asked them numerous questions about the investigation and even offered to help by loaning horses and a backhoe to assist police in their search. It was around the time police were considering Abel as a potential suspect that League City Detective Gary Bittner received the call from Paula Myers, Robert Abel's third wife.

She told them that Robert had eruptive bouts of anger and cruelty. While he never physically laid a hand on her, she had witnessed him beating his horses. This was corroborated by Robert's other ex-wife, Cindy Jacobs, who told the police the reason she left Robert was because she had declined sex with him one evening, and he flew into a frightening rage. But it was one particular and strange detail Cindy told authorities that got their attention. When livestock died on his ranch, he left their bodies out in the open to be eaten by animals. Once Bittner heard that, he wondered if Robert Abel had left the four bodies to rot that were found in his field. There was one problem for investigators. They had zero physical evidence linking Robert Abel to the murders of Heidi

Fye, Laura Miller, Audrey Cook, and Donna Prudon, the four V. The four Ville. victims found on or on the edge of his property, but armed with a search warrant, authority search Roberts House and property for 12 solid hours. They found a gold tooth, but it later turned out to belong to Robert. They took his guns to check them against a bullet found in Jane Doe, but no match. They confiscated his amateur photography in case he photographed his victims, but they found nothing. Authorities even confiscated the courts to his blinds in case he had used them to strangle his victims. But again, there was nothing. But even through all that, Tim Miller was

convinced that Robert Abel killed Laura and he decided to make Robert's life a living hell. Miller parked his car outside of Robert's home and made zero effort to conceal his surveillance. Tim wanted Robert to know he was watching him. Robert Able even. He was watching him. Robert Abel even got a restraining order against him. But not long after the restraining order was issued, Tim confronted Abel and put the 357 to his head. But Tim didn't shoot Robert for a couple of reasons. One, if he had shot and killed him and Robert was a serial killer,

killing him would end to any chance of identifying other victims and bringing closure to their families. And second, killing him would serve no real justice. After that incident, Tim checked himself into the psychiatric ward of a hospital for 10 days. When he was released, he decided to channel his grief in a more positive manner. After Jessica Kane's disappearance, Tim and about 200 locals decided on a unilateral search of Robert's property and they descended on the ranch to search for victims. They found absolutely nothing. And it was around this time, more than I believe Tim started to realize

that Robert Abel was not a killer. One day, Robert and Tim passed one another while driving, and Miller motioned for Robert to pull over. Tim walked up to Robert and said, I'm going to ask for forgiveness, and I know I do not deserve it. He then asked Robert if he could hug him, and they both cried.

Although the two men made peace, the damage was already done. The accusations and suspicions ruined Robert Abel's life and reputation. Robert had lost everything, including Stardust Trail Rides. In 2005, Tim received the call that Robert Able was struck and killed by a train as he drove an ATV over a railroad crossing near his family ranch in Belleville. The engineer later told Tim that Robert was stopped next to the crossing,

watching and waiting for the train, and that he possibly entered onto the tracks on purpose. But Robert Able's death was later determined to be accidental. In 2010, Tim approached an FBI agent named Richard R. Renison and Tommy Hanson, a lieutenant with the Galveston Sheriff's Office, to try to urge them to investigate a man named Clyde Hendrick. Hendrick lived down the road from the Millers when they lived in Dickinson, Texas. Before Robert Abel was a suspect, Tim Miller had suspected Clyde Hedric of killing Laura. Clyde had served a bit of time for an incident that occurred two months before Laura

Miller disappeared. One night in July 1984, Hedrick was introduced to a 29-year-old woman named Ellen Beeson at the nightclub Texas moon, and the two left the bar together. The next day, Ellen failed to show up for work. Clyde told authorities Ellen had drowned while skinny dipping. He panicked and hid the body in a ravine near the Galveston Causeway under an old couch. The medical examiner could not determine Ellen's cause of death. So Clyde was only convicted of abusing a corpse and sentenced to one year in jail. Through his daughter's boyfriend, Tim Miller heard Clyde Hedrick knew Laura and sometimes chatted with her when she passed his house. One time, she and a few friends visited his house to buy pot. Tim took this information to authorities,

but they showed no interest in it whatsoever. Tim took matters into his own hands, and hunted down the owner of the oil field. He persuaded that man to let Tim lease the land for $10 a year. Tim then organized volunteers to canvass the oil field for bodies and evidence. He used cadaver dogs and even drained the pond. But by that time, Robert Abel had become a suspect and police focused on him. But then after Robert Abel's death, Tim Miller thought back to Clyde Hedric as the suspected killer of his daughter. and the other three victims that were found in the same field.

After Tim contacted Renison and Hanson in 2010, they decided to take a fresh look at the Ellen Beeson case. That's when they discovered that in 1993, police had secretly exhumed Ellen's body and sent it to be evaluated by Harold Gil King, a forensic anthropologist at the University of North Texas. Gil King took one look at her remains and saw that her bones had never been properly cleaned. So he cleaned Ellen's skull and found a long fracture, one that could only have been inflicted by the use of a considerable amount of force. In 2012, Renaissance and Hansen ordered Ellen's remains to be exhumed again and sent them back to Gilking for an autopsy.

Gil King changed the cause of death from undetermined to homicide, and on April 4, 2013, Clyde Hedrick was arrested for the murder of Ellen Beeson, 28 years after he was convicted of abusing her corpse. He was ultimately convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison. There wasn't enough evidence to prove that he had intended to kill her. In 2014, Tim Miller filed a $110 million wrongful death suit against Clyde Hedrick. Tim now believes Clyde killed Laura, Heidi Fye and Audrey Cook.

Donna Prudome's body was not posed, like the other three were, leading investigators to suspect that another person killed Donna. But Clyde Hedric has not been charged with any of those murders. We mentioned in the last episode that Tim Miller was moved to become a force for good. in addition to being instrumental in the search for his daughter, after a 1984 disappearance, he organized searches and worked on solving cases of missing women in the area. He soon became an expert at finding missing people or their bodies. Tim Miller's Texas Equalsearch Rescue Group has now assisted with hundreds of missing persons cases

and located over 400 living people and 238 bodies. Equalsearch has taken part in many high-profile missing person searches, including Natalie Holloway and Aruba. Tim Miller's made numerous television appearances on shows such as Larry King Live, Nancy Grace, and NBC's Dateline. He's well known in the true crime community. Despite all the things that he has helped in, and all the answers he has helped provide families in need,

he's haunted by the still-unolved murder of his daughter almost 40 years later. When I hear the story of Tim Miller, it kind of reminds me a little bit, it's different, but a little bit of John Walsh. right both of these men experienced tragedy and it took their lives in a completely different direction neither one of them would have done what they ended up doing had it not been for the loss of a loved one i'm always moved when i hear those kinds of stories where people take something so tragic and turn it into something so positive to help other people well and i think positive is the right word right I mean, if you think about what Tim Miller has done with his Equalsearch group, they've helped a lot of people, a lot of families who without them may never have found the answers they were looking for.

John Walsh, same thing, right? America's Most Wanted did a lot of good, captured a lot of people. Now, some of them have been captured anyway, probably, but the show was instrumental, I think, in getting. people to call in with tips leading to the arrest of a lot of really bad people. In 2011, a fictional movie based on the I-45 Killings was released in theaters. Texas Killingfields starred Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The film, while not considered a commercial hit or a blockbuster by any means, brought the Texas Killingfield's case to a wider audience. Today, the area around the killing fields has been developed considerably since the 1970s when the killings began, the roads around it have been paved and across the street is a housing development. A local church now owns the land and its community members as well as some of the locals have created a memorial

to the four women. Each woman has her own marker adorned with their names, photos, and keeps Tim Miller said in the fall of 2019, they were going to change the name from the killing fields to the healing fields and build a little park there. He said, you know what? That's a wonderful way of remembering and honoring the victims. So Morph, as we wrap this case up, you know, obviously this is a massive case when you talk about all of the victims that we've talked about in these two episodes going back all the way to the 1970s. I think that big question, though, still remains. Is there any chance that one person murdered all these people?

I find it highly unlikely. I mean, to me, it seems much more likely that there were a number of killers at work in this area over the years. Now, did one person kill? the four that we just spent some time talking about now, and then another person killed two or three, four or five. I don't know. But to me, that just seems much more logical. What about you? Yeah, I think you're right that it would be hard to believe that one person could be responsible for all of that carnage over three and a half decades and that it likely was more than one person.

And one thing's for sure. The police had their work cut up for them during that time because they were finding a lot of people out there and there were a lot of cases of missing persons. So in a time before DNA and technology and then the crime fighting tools they have today, it was an uphill battle for them to try and solve all these cases. Well, and very scary too, right? I mean, to give a place the moniker the killing fields, that's a scary thing. But it's apt when there were so many murders that happened in this area, you know, over that period of time, I just wonder if it was so many different killers operating in the area or was it people that wanted to kill, right?

They had that in their heart. They were going to do it anyway. And over the years, they used this because it was well publicized to possibly blend in or mask their killings as being part of the killing fields murders. Yeah, if that's the case, that was a good error to try and do that because. there was just so much of that going on. So someone could blend in and do that. Yeah, I mean, that does make some sense. Now, you can make the argument that if you're doing that and let's say you're a killer and you took the lives of two or three people, if you were caught, I guess it wouldn't matter, but would you be pinned with more murders than you actually committed

by doing that? I guess it was possible. To me, this is just a very sad case. Because, There are a lot of families out there that for many years now just have not found the answers that they've been looking for. You know, what happened to their loved ones? That's tough. I know you and I have talked about it before. That has to be very tough to go decades, three decades, almost four decades in some cases, not really knowing what happened to your little girl.

your daughter, you know, whoever it is, I just can't even imagine that kind of heartbreak. Number one, that you lost them. They're gone. But number two, having to live with the fact that you just don't have any answers. Yeah, and their stories are the ones that you don't hear about a lot of the times. You hear about the victims and the stats and the missing people, the murdered people. But a lot of people don't realize that all the people connected to them, all of their family members, have had to deal with this all of these years. And that's, that's really heartbreaking. And I imagine,

because some of these cases are so old, there are parents that have died, you know, parents of these missing and murdered people that have died in this case because it's, you know, it was so long ago, and they never knew. You know, they died without ever finding out. It's just, it's very sad. If there's one positive, it's that we see these cases that are sometimes 30, 40 years old, solved on a regular basis now. So maybe one day some of these cases will be solved and that might lead to more answers. You know, well, I think there's more hope today, right, than there was 20 or 30 years ago in solving a case that got older, right? I mean, I think we look at cold cases today, especially with some of the technology that's come out. We don't look at them as quite so

hopeless anymore, which I think is a very good thing. There's a a lot of hope that some of these, you know, older cases can still be solved. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode. If you love the show and you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can also leave a review and keep telling your friends, word of mouth is huge in helping new people find the podcast.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology pod. You can also find us by searching criminology podcast on Facebook or by joining our Facebook discussion group, which is criminology podcast, discussion and fans. So Morph, that's it for another episode of criminology. Hope everyone out there staying safe. Morph and I are trying to do our part to help by continuing to put out content. So we'll be back with you next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike. And more. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.