The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (38 page)

Later that day the police searching the area found a second body just 20 yards from the first. This was identified as Laura Lynn Miller, aged 16, a Clear Creek High School sophomore. She went missing on 1 September 1984, shortly after the Miller family had moved to League City. Their phone had not been connected, so she had gone out with her mother find a payphone to call her boyfriend. The one she found was the payphone in the same convenience store where Heidi Fye had last been seen. Her mother wanted her to come home, but Laura insisted on finishing her call, saying she was old enough to walk home by herself. When she did not turn up the police said that she was a runaway. But when her father heard about the discovery of Heidi Fye’s body, he insisted that the police check the same area for his daughter. At that time nothing was found. It was only when they were looking for clues to the Jane Doe murder that they stumbled across her. She had been shot in the head.

For over five years there were no new discoveries at Calder Drive. Robert Abel continued to rent the property for his Stardust Trail Rides, then bought a lot at 3001 Calder Drive to stable his horses. His stepdaughter was riding on 8 September 1991 when she came across another set of skeletal remains a hundred yards from where the other bodies had been found.

This second Jane Doe died between a month and four months before her remains were found. She was too badly decomposed to determine the exact cause of death. There was a possibility that she had been strangled using a curtain cord found nearby. However she had also been beaten with a club and this was the most likely cause of death. Interestingly, she had two poorly healed fractured ribs like the first Jane Doe. She had been about 31 years old, between 5 feet and 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed about 100 to 130 pounds, with a small frame and long, fine, light brown hair. All four women were left lying on their backs with their arms folded across their chests. Although there is not an exact match between the four “killing fields” murders – two had been shot, two beaten to death – the positioning of the bodies, along with the fact that the two identified victims had disappeared from the same payphone in the same convenience store, indicated that the murders were all the work of the same man.

Robert Abel, who has since died, was one of a raft of suspects, as was his one-time employee, Mark Stallings. After being fired by Abel, Stallings ended up in jail. There, in 2001, he confessed to some of the I–45 murders. However, the police could find no physical evidence to connect Stallings to the murders and could not substantiate his claims. Indeed he would only have been 15 or 16 at the time of the first murders. Investigators consider it unlikely that he is involved and only made his claims to improve his reputation in jail, where he is currently serving 489 years for aggravated assault and attempting to escape.

A search of Abel’s property turned up nothing. Tim Miller, Laura’s father, conducting his own search, used trained dogs and heavy equipment to dig up the sector where the victims had been found. Even a small retention pond in the old oil field was drained, but only the remains of a purse and some rotting clothes were found.

In an attempt to clear his name, Abel took a polygraph test on a national news show and passed. The FBI eventually eliminated Abel from their investigations, though some League City cops still have their doubts. But with only scant physical evidence and no eyewitness, the police were stymied. They even resorted to putting a billboard up on I–45 asking for help with the case. No new information came in and the case seemed dead.

Then in December 2005, Tim Miller received a letter from someone claiming to be the man who killed his daughter and others.

“Tim Miller, boo,” it read. “It’s me you’re looking for, but I’m the last man your Laura saw and many more.”

It was composed from words cut out of newspapers and magazines, like a ransom note. When Miller first opened the enveloped, he dismissed the contents as a messy newsletter. Then he spotted the Corvette Concepts’ logo.

On 2 November 1983, someone had entered the business office of Corvette Concepts garage at 595 West Main Street in League City and stabbed Beth Wilburn over 100 times, killing her. When Tommy McGraw arrived at work he was stabbed multiple times. The implement used to stab him was left impaled in the dead man’s spine. Then James Oatis, an electrician working at the rear of the business, was shot several times. He, too, died. The triple murder remains unsolved.

The letter boasted about the I–45 deaths and its author bragged that he was too smart for the police to catch. After receiving the letter Miller was so angry that he went out to the spot where Laura’s body had been found. After it had been removed by the police, he had put up a wooden cross in her memory. The cross had been knocked down and broken apart, though he later repaired it. Nearby he found some pornographic videos. One featured a 16-year-old girl. Laura was 16. Miller believes that whoever sent the letter left these as a calling card for him to find and, in 2006, he had a public appeal for the man who wrote the letter to contact him again.

However, the police remain sceptical. It came just five months after Robert Abel died and it may have been sent by a friend or relative of Abel who was seeking to clear his name. Nobody has ever been charged with these murders.

The Occult and Violent Ritual Crime Center, Inc., have analyzed the I–45 murders and believe that four serial killers are at work. The first offender was responsible for the abduction of 13-year-old Colette Wilson. She went missing on 17 June 1971 after the leader of the band she was in dropped her at a bus stop in Alvin, Texas, some ten miles from the I–45. Her naked body was found five months later in November 1971, 40 miles away near Addicks Reservoir in West Houston, on I–10 and Highway 6. The cause of death was a gunshot to the head. Her musical instrument was never found.

Next came 14-year-old Brenda Jones, who went missing two weeks later. She disappeared on 1 July 1971 while walking to Galveston hospital to visit an aunt. The hospital was close to I--45. Her body was found the next day floating in nearby Galveston Bay, close to the Seawolf Parkway, which was also near the I–45. The cause of death was a head wound and a slip stuffed into her mouth.

On 28 October 1971, 19-year-old Gloria Gonzales went missing near her home in Houston. Her body was found in November 1971 near Addicks Reservoir, 35 yards from where Colette Wilson’s body had been found. Again the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. However, the Occult and Violent Ritual Crime Research Center think this is the work of a second killer, possibly the same man who killed Heidi Fye in 1983.

On 9 November 1971, 12-year-old Alison Craven’s mother had to go out to run an errand. She was away for about an hour. When she returned to their apartment near the I–45, her daughter was missing. Two hands, the bones from an arm and some teeth were found in a nearby field. On 25 February 1972 the rest of her skeleton was found in a Pearland field, five miles from I–45 and ten miles from where she had last been seen. Her murder does not make the OVRCRC list and may have been a one-off.

Then came a double murder which the OVRCRC ascribe to the first killer. On 11 November, two 15-year-olds went missing in Galveston. Ball High School students Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson left Ball High School to shop for Thanksgiving gifts at a Galveston mall. Two days later, fishermen saw their bodies floating in Turner’s Bayou in Texas City, close to I–45 and Highway 3, and ten miles from where they had disappeared. Both girls were shot twice in the head before being dumped in the water. Their hands and feet were bound and both were partly naked.

Sixteen-year-old Kimberly Pitchford was last seen at a driving school in Pasadena, Texas, near I–45 on 3 January 1973. She was supposed to phone home to get picked up, but the call was never made. Two days later, her body was found two days later in a ditch on Highway 288 near Angleton, some 30 miles south of where she had last been seen. She had been strangled. Her uncle Ray Pitchford maintained a suspected serial killer was known to have attended the driving school about the same time. The OVRCRC believe that Kimberley’s murder was the work of a third serial killer, who went on to kill again in the 1980s.

The OVRCRC link the first killer to another unidentified woman, whose body was found in a wooded area on the east side of Houston on 19 September 1989. She had been dead for between one and three months. She was a brunette aged between 14 and 19, weighed between 110 and 130 pounds and between 5 foot 2 inches and 5 foot 5 inches tall. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head.

The same killer was thought to be responsible for the abduction and murder of 14-year-old Lynette Bibbs and 15-year-old Tamara Fisher. The two friends disappeared from a teen club in Houston on 1 February 1996. Two days later their bodies were found on the side of a rural road near Cleveland, Texas, some 40 miles to the north. Lynette was partially clothed and shot twice in the back of the head and once in the thigh. Tamara was fully clothed and died from a gunshot wound to the head.

None of these victims seems to have been sexually assaulted and the use of a gun by a serial killer is unusual. They usually prefer to strangle, bludgeon or stab so that they can savour their victim’s pain, panic and death throes close up. Guns kill from a distance. They can kill quickly. They make a lot of noise and can be traced easily. In this case, the killer clearly had somewhere private where he could take his victims to kill them.

It is thought that the killer got his pleasure from hunting his victims. There is even a theory that he is some type of law enforcement officer, some other authority figure, or someone posing as one. The OVRCRC believe that he may have stopped killing because he no longer found hunting his victims fun.

On 6 September 1974, 12-year-old Brooks Bracewell and 14-year-old Georgia Geer skipped school. They were last seen in a convenience store in Dickinson, just four miles down the I–45 from League City. Both had been beaten to death and their bodies were found in a swamp near Alvin.

Other profilers connect these two killings to those above. All the victims were 19 years old or younger. They were all dumped in or near bodies of water, and all had died from either a gunshot to the head or some sort of head trauma. And the killer showed a distinct preference for pairs. Only Brenda Jones was abducted alone and found alone.

There was even a link between these cases and those found in the “killing fields”. Brooks Bracewell and Georgia Geer were last seen at a convenience store pay phone, just like Heidi Fye and Laura Miller. Both sets of victims show the same mixture of murder methods – some being beaten to death or shot. However, the method of body disposal is quite different. In the “killing field” they were laid out on land. The others were dumped in or near water. The “killing field” victims were naked and had been sexually assaulted. The others were fully or partially clothed and showing no signs of rape.

The OVRCRC tie three other murders to the killer of Kimberly Pitchford, as strangulation was the method of murder. On 1 November 1980, a truck driver found the naked body of an unidentified brunette aged between 14 and 17 dumped on I–45, about five miles north of Huntsville. She had been strangled with pantyhose and there were human bite marks on her body. She was 5 foot 4 inches tall and weighed 110 pounds. On 7 June 1987, 14-year-old Erica Ann Garcia went missing from a teen club. This showed a similarity with the abduction of Lynette Bibbs and Tamara Fisher. However, they had been shot. When Erica Garcia’s body was found, she had been strangled.

Another victim of strangulation was 13-year-old Krystal Jean Baker, the great niece of Marilyn Monroe, aka Norma Jean Baker. On 5 March 1996, the dark-eyed blonde disappeared after making a call from a payphone in a convenience store in Texas City, ten miles from Dickinson and 14 miles from League City. She had phoned to get a lift to a friend’s house in Bayou Vista, four miles away on the I–45. Her body was found a few hours later under the I–10 Bridge over the Trinity River near Galveston Bay in Chambers County. Her face was pulverized. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted and despatched with a ligature. The OVRCRC believed that the killer had been building up to the sexual assault of Krystal Baker as the Huntsville victim had been found nude. On earlier occasions he may not have managed to become sexually aroused, finding himself impotent or disturbed before he could attempt the act.

It is thought that Trellis Sykes and Maria Isabel Solis might share a common killer. Sixteen-year-old Trellis Sykes did not show up at Worthing High School in Houston on 13 May 1994. Her loved ones went out to search for her and found her dead body in the undergrowth on a vacant lot on Redbud Street. Maria Isabel Solis was also 16 when she went missing on her way to school in Houston. She lived with her father and grandmother on the south side of the city. Her mother, Blanca Ortiz, still lived in Mexico City. At 8.40 on the morning of 3 March 2003, she left home to go to the George I. Sanchez High School where she was an honours student. She was last seen getting off the city bus near her school. Students and the manager of a nearby motel heard screams. On 13 August 2003, a body was discovered in a wooded area near a closed US 59 turnaround at the Brazos River not far from Sugar Land, Texas, some 20 miles southwest of Houston. However, the remains were only identified as those of Maria by the forensic laboratory on 9 February 2005.

Other murders in the area might be linked. On 10 May 1978, when Robert Pretty arrived home from work at his house in north Houston, he found cold toast and a half-empty glass of milk on the breakfast table. He heard water dripping in the front bathroom and, when he went to investigate, he found his sons, five-year-old Mark and seven-year-old Scott, face down in the bathtub. In the master bathroom he found his 28-year-old wife, Karen, bound hand and foot, underwater in the bath. The medical examiner said that they had died from a combination of strangulation and drowning. Karen had a telephone cord around her neck. The two boys had been strangled manually. Mark had fought back and been beaten by his assailant. The murders seemed motiveless. Nothing had been taken from the house and only one drawer was opened. Nor had the victims been sexually molested. Karen was still wearing her flowery bathrobe and the boys still had their pyjamas on. The only clue was that the family car, a 1978 Mercury Marquis, was found in an unassigned parking spot at an apartment at 198 Goodson Drive. There is a theory was that the murder of Karen and the two children was a case of mistaken identity. A local drug dealer had been arrested on evidence provided by an informant who lived in the neighbourhood.