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This is True Crime Garage. And this is The Killing Fields Trilogy. The Killing Fields
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Part 3. The 1980s was when the now notorious plot of land received the name The Killing Field.
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And it certainly deserved it. For many parents and loved ones, this was simply a graveyard.
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The Killing Field joined the other stretches of land around Interstate 45 as a place to be avoided,
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feared, and hated. Was there no end in sight? When does the healing start? When this nightmare began back in 1971,
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no one would have imagined all of the lives lost to The Killing Fields and how many years the murders would span.
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But evil has no time limit. And evil does not always age as fast as the rest of us.
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Unless you destroy it, evil stays. By now, The Killing Fields have taught us that evil is not just a guy in a
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truck trolling the highway looking for victims or a man with a gun. Sometimes it's much more than that.
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Sometimes evil has a place. In early 1996, Crystal Jean Baker, only 13 years old,
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left her grandmother's home walking to meet a friend. In April of 1997, 12-year-old Laura Kate Smither went
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jogging like she had done several times before on a quiet road near her home. In the summer of '97, Jessica Cain, 17,
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attended a party and later her truck would be found on I-45, but Jessica was nowhere in sight.
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Would Crystal, Laura, and Jessica simply vanish like so many young ladies before
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them? Or would they be found in The Killing Fields? In Part 3, we're going to cover the
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1990s and beyond. Now, I know the last two decades, the '70s and '80s, were filled with a lot of death and a lot of
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frustration about how some of the different police departments handled some of the cases and the missing
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persons reports. I do want to remind everyone that this was a long time ago and a lot of what took place was taking
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place in small towns or rural areas. A lot of the time this was going on as populations were starting to grow in
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these areas between Houston and Galveston, and sometimes these smaller departments are having trouble keeping
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up. But just just as I remind you about that, I want to point out that today is going
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to be a different day, Captain, because today we are going to get some answers. There is some light at the end of this
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tunnel, but before we can find that light, we all need to hop into the tunnel together. So, here we go. Well, I
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hope everybody showered. On September 8th, 1991, another female body was found by a
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couple people on horseback. Uh this was found in the same area as Heidi Faye, Laura Miller, and Jane Doe, which were
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all located in an area near Calder Field in the '80s. Because she would become the second
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unidentified body located in this field, she was labeled Janet Doe. You know, yesterday I complained about
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one of the victims and how there was practically no information on her and that her case now feels like she's just
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a name on a list. This one is equally sad and the same with Jane Doe because they are in the same situation, but they
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are not even names on a list. Here's what we do know. They suspect this victim was about 24 to 34 years of
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age. She was Caucasian with brown hair, approximately 115 lb, and 5 ft 1 in tall. But when Janet Doe was found in
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1991, League City investigators got a funny feeling about a retired NASA engineer
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who owned acreage adjacent to The Killing Field. Mhm. This is Robert Abel. Robert Abel
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ran a popular horseback riding range called Stardust Trail Rides, and he seemed almost too eager to
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cooperate when detectives started asking him about the bodies that kept turning up near the land that he owned.
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Well, he's also newer to the area. Yeah, he actually owned a bunch of land uh quite north of this.
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Uh and this was a new plot of land for him. So, League City lead investigator Pat Bittner, he sought guidance from an
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FBI agent who specialized in serial sexual homicides. Uh the agent told Bittner that the murderer probably lived
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close to the comfort zone and could very well have insinuated himself into the investigation. Mhm. Also, the agent said
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the murderer was in all likelihood preoccupied with the media accounts about the crimes and perhaps he kept
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newspaper articles about them. Based on that profile, Bittner was able to secure a search warrant in 1993.
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Now, they turned Abel's home upside down. Yeah. They found guns in Abel's home. Um I would say this is probably
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not uncommon. This is a rural area and this is Texas. Right. Uh they also found many newspaper articles uh clipped out
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of area newspapers regarding their coverage of the murder cases. All of these items were confiscated.
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Um I know I sound like a lunatic here, Captain, but of those confiscated items, I have things like that in my house. So,
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I don't necessarily think that that points to anything, but you know, don't dare have Kool-Aid in your refrigerator,
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right? Right. So, in the end, investigators found nothing linking Abel to the murders.
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But that would not be the end of it. Nope, not because of two men. The first is someone that we spoke a lot about in
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Part 2, Tim Miller, the father of murder victim found in the field uh Laura Miller.
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She was found near Robert Abel's land in the '80s. Mhm. When they did the search
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warrant on Robert Abel's house and property, the investigators were clearly focusing on Abel, and this just fed Tim
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Miller's anger, and he became convinced that Abel had killed his daughter, Laura.
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Well, and some would speculate he was the reason why Abel was getting so much heat to begin with. This proved to be
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toxic fuel for a man that was already in a downward spiral. Mhm. Tim Miller dreamed of killing Abel.
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Uh he would park his truck on the street out by Abel's mailbox, and damn near every day when Abel came out to get the
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mail, Miller would harass Abel. Right. I wouldn't recommend this. No. Uh he would call him names. He would
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accuse him of murder and accuse him of serial murder. Mhm. Now, one day in 1994,
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uh Miller was out waiting by Abel's mailbox. He started harassing the old man. Now, by this point, Abel was fed up
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with the harassment. He was receiving not just harassment from Tim Miller, but from people in town as well.
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Right. So, Abel decided he was going to shout something rude back to Tim Miller.
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He said something nasty about Laura Miller and the other dead girls that were found there. Mhm. Well, Tim lost
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it, and he jumped out of his truck, and he ran up to Abel, and he pulled out a gun.
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Tim Miller stood there and held a gun to Robert Abel's head. He really wanted to pull the trigger, uh
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but he didn't. Thankfully, he didn't. Miller had finally hit rock bottom, uh and at this point, he checked himself
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into a psych ward where he stayed for 10 days. Now, nothing would diminish his need to
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solve his daughter's murder, but sometime after he got out of the hospital, he learned to channel into
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something much more productive, and a few years later, Tim Miller created Texas EquuSearch. Uh the organization
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has assisted in investigations in 38 states and eight countries to this day. Yeah, we talked about them back when we
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covered the Casey Anthony case. Years later, Tim Miller would admit his role in what he calls the Robert Abel
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witch hunt, uh saying that he regrets it. Right. Just so we're clear, I mean, Robert Abel was completely innocent of
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anything that people were claiming or anything that they're investigating, and was actually cooperative from the
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beginning. He was cooperative um with Miller himself. And then, you know, we have a whole system and an and a
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community of people that turn on him so much so where he had to move to a whole different state. And and still this case
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uh haunts him to this day because, you know, these allegations have followed him wherever he goes. So,
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it you know, I understand that you lose a loved one and you're looking for somebody to blame, but you know, you
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can't make these giant leaps. You know, it's one thing to leap over a uh puddle,
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but when you're leaping over a um ocean to uh point the finger at somebody, it's very irresponsible. And
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and the amount of damage that uh Miller did to Abel, that that law enforcement did to Abel, and the community did did
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to Abel is just really uncalled for. Well, and to put it bluntly, you know, in an in an
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interview years afterwards, Tim Miller told a reporter that yeah, he had helped ruin Robert Abel's life there for a
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couple of years. Uh and as you said, maybe even after. Um now, before we move on from Janet Doe's murder, I do want to
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point out that police have a long-time suspect that they like very, very much for this homicide. But in a strange
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twist, it kind of leads back to Robert Abel. Uh this is taken from a Houston Chronicle article by Ruth Rendon from
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2001 titled "Man's Confession Could Solve Killing Field Case". A Texas prison inmate has confessed to
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killing as many as six women in Fort Bend and Galveston counties, including some at the infamous site here known as
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the Killing Field. Mark Stallings, age 34, has not yet been charged with any of the murders.
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However, League City Police Captain Chris Reed said DNA test will confirm whether Stallings was involved in any of
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the slayings of four women whose bodies were dumped in the field off of Calder Road, just west of Interstate 45 from
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1983 to 1991. He confessed to multiple homicides. Uh Reed would go on to say, "We don't
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know which ones at this time. We have an idea, but we're not real sure because we
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haven't corroborated anything he has said." Reed said Stallings gave police information that was very believable. He
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said the inmate told officers that he once lived in a mobile home on the land near where the bodies were found, and
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that he once worked for Robert Abel. Mhm. Abel, 62 at the time of this article, said that he recalled Stallings
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working for him for his ranch operation. But he said he fired Stallings because he was too dumb to even string a fence.
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Okay. I've never strung a fence, so maybe I'm an idiot. to have to throw me in that category
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with you, Captain. Mhm. League City Police uh who interviewed Stallings over 1-week period
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in mid-September said it may take a month before lab tests and results could show whether his DNA sample matches
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evidence collected from the crime scenes. Reed said Stallings is helping authorities identify at least one of
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those women uh who have been dubbed Jane or Janet Doe. Stallings was brought to the
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attention of League City Police by Fort Bend County Sheriff's officials, to whom
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he had written during the summer and claimed to have had information about some of the murders in that county. With
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the with the Jane and Janet Doe, I I believe for me it's like it's hard for me to believe that they're Texas natives
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and that nobody um would claim them or there would be no connection with some missing person
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report. To me, it seems like they would have to be almost somebody from a different state that was transported
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here somehow, or possibly a runaway from another state. Fort Bend County Sheriff said some of
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the details in the letter suggested that he had to have more than knowledge picked up from the media.
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Investigators and Texas Rangers visited with Stallings in prison and brought him
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to this county for about a week, saying he took the Rangers and the detectives for some drives, pointed out some
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places, and it became apparent that he knew what he was talking about. The sheriff said that although physical
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evidence is lacking, charges against Stallings were likely for the April 1986 slaying of Benna Bowen, 27, and the June
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1989 death of 18-year-old April Eaves. He convinced the detectives that he legitimately was there at the time.
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There are details that only the investigating officers or those close to it would have known, and they stated he
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knew some of those details. He also led them to the scene, which is not an easy scene to find, according to
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the authorities, since it is, you know, it's out in a pasture. Uh also noting that the area had changed
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considerably since the time that the murders had occurred. Now, Eaves' body was found in an
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abandoned mobile home near Old Richmond Road. Bowen's body was found in an underdeveloped area of the county known
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as Park Westheimer. Both women, described by authorities as crack cocaine addicts working the streets in
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Houston's Montrose area. They were both strangled, and when Stallings had talked
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about these murders in these cases with the authorities, he showed absolutely no
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remorse at all. Stallings is an inmate at Clements Unit in Amarillo. Uh he is serving a life
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sentence for aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He committed the crime in Walker County
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in August of 1998. He is also serving a sentence for aggravated assault and possession of a firearm by a felon in
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Brazoria County, and for burglary of a building with intent to commit theft in Harris County. Mhm. Records also show
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Stallings has used a variety of aliases over the years and has given two birth dates. So, what's his motive for telling
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the cops this? Well, that's a good question, and we'll get into that. Uh one of the officers said that he is
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baffled as to why Stallings contacted his department, uh saying it is strange in that he waited so many years. You'd
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think this guy was trying to clear his innocence. Mhm. Um but stating, "I don't think that a guy like this has a
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conscience." I They truly don't know what his motive is or was. Doesn't make a lot of logical sense. He
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doesn't have a conscience, but he's coming forward with this information to give closure to the family, possibly. Or
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I mean, he's helping out law enforcement. He's helping out uh you know, these families on some level
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to give them closure. So, it's kind of weird to go, you know, he he feels zero remorse. Well, if he
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felt zero remorse, why talk about it? Well, and the thing too is that the investigators were spending just as much
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time investigating what he was stating had happened, but during this time they're also investigating him as far as
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what makes him tick. Why would he talk about this, you know? Um is he capable? Now, in the end,
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Captain, uh Stallings was never charged with any of these murders. And I'm guessing that none of the DNA would have
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matched, or they would have charged him with something. Now, Stallings gave a confession in these cases, but he would
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never actually sign uh sign one in front of anybody. Right. Now, he stated in an interview years afterwards,
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uh when asked why would he why would he confess to these crimes? Well, he still says
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that he did a couple of these murders, but he won't sign anything. However, he states that it was clear He was serving
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a life sentence. He thought that if they if he confessed to these crimes, they would take him out of the prison, and he
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would have to go around out in these rural areas with the police on several different trips.
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Right. He figured that at some point he would be able to figure out how to escape on one of those trips. Okay, so
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there's his motive. Mhm. Yeah, so this guy didn't kill. And look, it could be a case we've seen these cases before. I
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mean, you know, I have enough details from a possibly a prison another prisoner. Mhm.
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So, you know, when they say, "Well, he had all these details that the only the investigators would know."
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Well, where did he get these details? If the DNA doesn't match, he wasn't there.
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And he didn't do these crimes, but where did he get that information from to at least make
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the law enforcement believe him? Or was it a simple case of the law enforcement just wanted to believe him? Mhm.
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Um I To be honest with you, Captain, I actually I like Stallings for a couple of these
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cases. But what what about the DNA? Well, and I'll get into that. I I don't know anything about this Benna Bowen
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case, um but I do know some stuff about the April Eaves case. Um and he had he had all the details of
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this actual case. Uh and he stated in his confession that he didn't he didn't rape her.
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Um so, that might be part of the reason why there was no DNA found of his. Now, what were the details that he got right?
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Well, he stated that he he picked her up. She was a working girl. He took her to an abandoned mobile home
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to have sex with her. She decided she didn't want to have sex with him and he got angry with her and he's also said
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that he enjoyed choking women. Mhm. That was something that he was into. Now, um,
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she was strangled with a ligature. She was stuffed into a closet and her two there were two dogs inside this
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mobile home that he said he left there intentionally. He also said that he broke the handle
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off of the door so that nobody could get into the mobile home jamming it shut. With the dogs inside. Yeah, so
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what are the things that he got right? He he got the mobile home right. He got the strangled with a ligature, stuffed
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in a closet inside that mobile home, the two dogs and the broken handle off of the door. Now, according to
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That's pretty detailed. That's pretty detailed also saying that he did not rape her. So, if she didn't
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fight back in a manner that he would, you know, that she gained any of his DNA. Mhm.
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And which might be the case because he said that she was a drug addict and he knew that and they smoked some crack
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together. She might have been out of it by the time addict. Yeah. She might have been out of
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it by the time that he killed her. I I just feel like there's too many details that he got right and a lot of those
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details were not in any of the newspapers. These were things that, um, really only the investigators and and
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possibly the killer would have known. So, I think that's one thing that they're referring to as that he had some
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some knowledge. Now, these two cases are not considered part of the Texas Killing
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Fields story. Well, he's probably not he's probably not signing that uh, confession because that would probably
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put him on the chopping block for uh, the death penalty. Yeah, and then on top that off if his whole motivation was
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to try to escape. Well, once see, and the thing here is too, he said in a later interview, he's
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like, well, I I just thought that they would keep taking me out and keep taking me out on these trips. And he said after
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about a week, they didn't seem to want to talk to him that much anymore. There's a chance that those
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investigators or those police officers got a vibe from him like, this dude is dangerous. We don't want to take him out
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of the prison. If he's going to he's just really annoying. Yeah, if he's going to tell us anything, he needs to
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sign a he needs to sign an official document before we're going to work on this anymore.
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But, yeah, but those cops normally most cops aren't going to, you know, take a guy out that is cuffed, you know.
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Mhm. They got to you got your billy club on you, right? You got this guy that's a giant turd
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bag, right? I'd love to take this guy out with go out in the fields and and the whole time
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I go, "You want to run? I wish you would. I wish you would. Cuz I'd beat the living hell out of him with
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a billy club. Well, like I said, two of these two cases, the Bowens case and the
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Eves case are not considered to be part of the Texas Killing Fields story, but if Stallings is the killer of one or
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more of these girls in our story, well, then of course he is part of this story.
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And I like him for this Janet Doe murder. Uh, At least. And it sounds like the police do, too. This is the one
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where Well, no, but the the one that you just talked about. Um, I like him for the Eves murder and I also like him for
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this unidentified girl, this Janet Doe murder. At least those two. Yeah, and I'll tell you why I like him for the
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Janet Doe murder. And it sounds like the police do, too. They still have him in some interviews
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I've heard to this date he's considered the number one suspect for Janet Doe. Here's the thought. Mhm. Um, and this is
00:23:48
what he has said in some of his confessions regarding Janet Doe. So, who was she? We we have no name. He says
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that he picked he picked up a girl on the side of the road. Mhm. Uh, he said he says in his confession, "I don't know
00:24:03
her name. I didn't I didn't care what her name was. I pulled over to pick her up. I thought she was a working girl. It
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turns out she was. When we got to talking, she was clearly a crack addict and she
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wanted to smoke a bunch of crack, have some sex, and she said that she she tells him now, this is a very sick man,
00:24:23
so who knows what where the truth is in this. But, he says that she told him that she wanted to die during sex. What?
00:24:32
Yeah, and he says in his confession to these are just to high. This is just to reporters now, not
00:24:39
to police. He says, "Well, when she told me that, I thought, well, you've you've
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bumped into the right guy." Baby, I'm your man. Well, he was looking for someone to kill according to
00:24:51
according to Stallings. And this is going to sound strange, but he worked for Robert Abel and he was technically
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he says he was hired to be the foreman of Robert Abel's property. And for a time he lived in a mobile home or a
00:25:04
cabin. It's been referred to as both. But, this is the guy that can't string a fence. Right, but he he lived in one of
00:25:11
these places on what is labeled the Killing Field, you know, out near Robert Abel's property. And he said that
00:25:20
eventually he was fired by Robert Abel. He also says that Robert Abel was an evil man.
00:25:27
He when asked if Robert Abel put those bodies in the Killing Field and if Robert Abel killed them, Stallings
00:25:34
actually said he didn't know anything about those three murders. He didn't he didn't know that Robert Abel he said
00:25:40
Robert Abel would have been capable of killing women, but he didn't know if Robert Abel put those three women there.
00:25:46
We can't throw Abel under the bus with no evidence. Yeah, but he says that when he worked for Abel, Abel seemed to be
00:25:52
very concerned about the bodies popping up in the area, which I mean, I guess you're a business owner. Well, and any
00:25:59
regular person would be concerned about bodies popping up anywhere. Yeah, when they when that body was found, you know,
00:26:06
about a mile from my house in the park, I mean, that's all you can talk about or
00:26:10
think about. So. He said that when Robert Abel was being investigated to be this possible serial killer, Mhm. well,
00:26:18
he fired Stallings. And Stallings being a guy evil man anyway, he decided he was
00:26:25
going to he was going to get even with Robert Abel. So, he was looking for a girl to kill and he was going to place
00:26:31
her on his property. This guy is a real bucket of turds. Well, the other thing here, Captain,
00:26:37
evidence pointing toward maybe he did this Janet Doe murder, he got her description very accurate.
00:26:44
Um, with the exception of her age, he in his confession he states that he thinks
00:26:49
she might have been 20 years old where we have, you know, the the experts are saying she was more likely 24 to early
00:26:57
30s. Um, who knows, you know, with her with her being a drug addict, with being a crack addict like he said, if she was
00:27:05
in fact a crack addict, it may have been hard to determine age when he picked her
00:27:09
up on the side of the road. Well, he might have asked her, "How old are you?" "Oh, I'm 20." And and maybe,
00:27:16
you know, again, maybe she was closer to 30, but she knew, you know, as a sex worker or something
00:27:21
that, "Hey, if I say 20 that, you know, gets me more money or something. I don't
00:27:24
know." And personally, and I think you will agree with me here, Captain, I just don't get the vibe that Robert Abel was
00:27:32
involved in killing anybody. No. He worked for NASA. I mean, he was a smart guy. It makes it, um,
00:27:39
what Miller says is like, you know, this guy moved into the area. He bought land.
00:27:43
And a lot of this was it was after a divorce and he was trying to rebuild his life and then this happens. So, you got
00:27:50
to feel bad for I feel bad for him. Yeah, and we you and I were watching an interview with Tim Miller where he says,
00:27:56
you know, Robert Abel was a victim in this whole thing partly because of Tim Miller's doing.
00:28:01
But, you know, Tim Miller says he didn't kill anybody. And I'll tell you what, there was nobody pointing more fingers
00:28:07
at Robert Abel than Tim Miller. So, I I just I just don't in my my gut tells me Robert Abel did not kill anybody.
00:28:14
Yeah, and I think I misspoke and said he moved out of state. He I think he just moved within the state, but uh, Well,
00:28:20
it's a big state, so it feels like you moved a whole 'nother country. Right, it's a country on its own. Got to
00:28:25
love Texas. God bless Texas. We'll get right back to part three of the Killing Fields trilogy after this
00:28:31
quick beer break. And we're back. Cheers to everybody out there. Crystal Jean Baker, age 13. She lived
00:29:01
with her grandmother and on March 5th, 1996, this is after an argument with her grandmother, Crystal left the house. She
00:29:09
went off walking to a tire store where she asked to use the phone. Now, the people working there, they let her use
00:29:16
the phone, but she kind of abused the favor. Uh, she was there for a considerable amount of time and she
00:29:22
called several people. It's believed that she was looking for a ride to a friend's house in Bayou Vista, which is
00:29:29
a short distance from where she was. Well, then the workers at the store, they told her that she couldn't tie up
00:29:36
the phone line all day long, you know, she needed to move on. They have a business to run.
00:29:41
From there she went walking down the street. Uh, this is Texas Avenue in Texas City.
00:29:47
This is where she would be last seen. 5 hours later, her body was found under the I-10 bridge over Trinity River in
00:29:55
Chambers County. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and killed by ligature strangulation.
00:30:01
Now, her face was badly beaten. Um the closest highway to where she was last seen is the I-45.
00:30:09
They were able to collect some DNA from the body. Now, DNA at this point is still primitive, of course, but at this
00:30:17
point they made all of the proper precautions to collect DNA and preserve it for later.
00:30:23
But they had no eyewitnesses to her disappearance or her abduction. Mhm. So, like many of these other cases, the
00:30:30
police really had no leads to go on. And there's going to be another victim in April of 1997. Yeah, Laura Kate Smither,
00:30:38
she's just 12 years old. She lived with her father and stepmother. Now, Laura's mother had passed away years ago from
00:30:45
breast cancer when Laura was only about 2 years old. It took Laura's father some
00:30:49
time, but he eventually remarried, and he and his new wife had a baby. Laura's stepmother raised Laura as her own, as
00:30:57
her like her first child. Mhm. Uh Laura was aspiring to be a ballerina, um and even at the young age
00:31:05
of 12, she was into physical fitness. So, on the morning of April 3rd, '97, uh Laura went jogging near her home in
00:31:14
Friendswood, Texas. Uh again, this is near I-45. Uh she would go out jogging while her
00:31:21
parents made breakfast, and she would return in time to sit down with them for a nice meal. That was the typical
00:31:28
weekend thing, right? This doesn't seem like a place you want to let somebody go running.
00:31:33
Well, her parents made breakfast, and they waited for a while, and yet Laura had not returned.
00:31:39
17 days later, her body was found in 3 ft of water in a drainage pipe in a retention pond
00:31:46
in Pasadena near I-45. Mhm. She was nude except for tan socks and a ring. Uh she had been decapitated.
00:31:55
A dark-colored pickup was observed in the same area as where she was last seen. And a composite drawing was done
00:32:02
of this driver of the truck. So, at least we have a lead here. Yeah, and the thing here is, unlike most of these
00:32:09
other cases, there were some suspects in the beginning of this investigation. Now, police quickly started working on
00:32:17
one suspect in particular, and this is William Reese. Well, who is William Reese? He is a guy that 5 months, just 5
00:32:25
months before Laura disappeared, Reese was paroled out of an Oklahoma prison for serving 10 years of a 15-year
00:32:32
sentence for kidnapping and rape. On the day that she went missing, Reese was in the Smithers neighborhood working
00:32:40
as a bulldozer operator. Mhm. Due to weather that day, Reese was sent home. He sent off of the job site and sent
00:32:48
home for the day. This would be about the same time that Laura would have been out on her run.
00:32:54
Now, Reese was picked up for this, and he was polygraphed multiple times, but the results were always
00:33:02
inconclusive. The test administrator complained that Reese was not cooperating with the test. They tested
00:33:09
him multiple times, and they had the same problem over and over again. What William Reese was doing was during the
00:33:14
test, he would constantly cough. Uh he would be moving around and fidgeting during the test. And when they would ask
00:33:22
him to take the test again, he would just continue to do this time after time. Right. Results inconclusive.
00:33:28
Uh the police were going to continue to work on William Reese, but for now, they
00:33:33
didn't really have anything that would lead to an arrest. Well, it's like this double-edged sword.
00:33:38
He's willing to take the test, but he's not willing to like actually cooperate with them. A- And for Reese, it might
00:33:45
just be, you know, he's he's on parole. Uh you know, he might not have the opportunity to decide whether he wants
00:33:52
to cooperate or not. Um around 1:00 a.m. Now, this is on May 16th, just shortly after just a less than a month after or
00:34:02
sorry, just a little over a month after the disappearance of Laura Kate Smither,
00:34:06
Sandra Sapol stopped at a convenience store to use a payphone to call a friend. Now, Sandra planned to stay at a
00:34:13
motel that night. She had just split up with her boyfriend. Well, while on the phone, she noticed a man get out of a
00:34:21
white truck. He was wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and a cowboy hat. She saw him watching her. Mhm. She
00:34:29
complained about the guy to her friend on the phone. After she was done chatting, she hung up
00:34:35
the phone, and she got in her van, and she pulled off onto NASA Road 1. She wasn't driving for too far when she
00:34:42
realized that she had a flat tire. So, she pulled off to the side of the road. Then
00:34:48
Convenient flat tire. Yeah, because then a truck stopped behind her. At first, she was thankful
00:34:54
because she didn't have any idea of how to change her tire, but she was quickly startled when she saw it was the man
00:35:01
from the convenience store parking lot. He came up, and he offered to help her, but she still had a really bad feeling
00:35:08
about this whole situation. While he prepared to change the tire, he asked Sandra to retrieve something from
00:35:14
his truck. He had left the door open on his truck, so she went up to the truck, and then she felt a knife to her throat.
00:35:24
He then forced her into the truck. He drove off with her, and after a while, they were heading north on I-45.
00:35:31
The man yelled threats at her and fondled her as he drove the truck. Now, Sandra realized the passenger door was
00:35:39
unlocked. So, she flung the door open, and she attempted to jump onto the highway that raced below her.
00:35:46
Instead, the man caught her by the blouse. She fought him as she was hanging out of the truck. Eventually,
00:35:53
her shirt ripped, and she fell to the pavement. Now, she's very badly hurt by this time, but she's going to have to
00:36:00
get up and run. The man slammed on the brakes. She heard the truck come to a stop, but then she
00:36:06
saw the headlights of an oncoming car. Now, she jumped in the middle of the road and waved her hands. Sandra was
00:36:13
able to give a very good description of the man after being saved by the passerby. Um she was able to give a good
00:36:20
description of the man and the truck. Uh she said the man was white, uh 5 ft 9, about 200 lb with dirty
00:36:28
blonde hair. Mhm. He had a mustache, and he had bags under his eyes. Uh she said
00:36:34
that the truck was a white dually truck. Paper or plastic? Uh and she stated that she believed that
00:36:41
the truck was probably a diesel and probably a Ford. Um eventually, Well, there's there's
00:36:48
your problem. Well, the thing here is, Captain, you know, she got very lucky to escape him
00:36:54
that night, and she got lucky that somebody was was driving on the street late that night to pick her up.
00:37:00
Well, after giving this great description, now we have several months of this investigation go by of this
00:37:06
possible abduction of Sandra. And police don't really have any leads on this, but
00:37:12
they have this description that was done with one of those Identikit systems that
00:37:17
they have. Right. Well, we have two law enforcement officers. They're meeting for lunch, and one of them is
00:37:25
investigating or has been investigating the Laura Kate Smither case. The other is investigating this possible abduction
00:37:32
of Sandra. Mhm. Well, they're kind of comparing notes, and they're talking about their open cases and the cases
00:37:38
that are most on their mind at this time. And it's through this lunch meeting that
00:37:43
the one law enforcement agent, she figures out that the person that she is looking for, she's looking for this
00:37:51
person that's just been described to her. Mhm. She figures out that it's the same guy
00:37:57
that is a suspect in this other case. And when you look at the picture, the real-life picture of this dude, and
00:38:03
compare it to the sketch, Mhm. Yeah, I mean, it rarely do you see it like this where it matches the guy to a T.
00:38:12
Well, later, um he is identified. We have William Reese. Uh this is the guy that was fidgeting
00:38:19
and coughing during the polygraph test. Now, he is identified by Sandra as her abductor, and identified by persons at
00:38:29
the convenience store as well as being the guy that hopped out of the truck and was watching her as she was on the
00:38:34
phone. Gotcha. That's right. Eventually, Reese was charged with aggravated kidnapping of Sandra. And the thing here
00:38:43
is, Now, is that going to be a life sentence? Um it took I don't Captain, I'm not certain about his prison
00:38:50
sentence on that one. Um he was found guilty. It did take several months, though, to connect Reese
00:38:57
to this abduction. That brings us to another person. This is Jessica Lee Cain. Uh she's age 17. Um
00:39:07
she is currently still missing. Yeah, Jessica was last seen leaving a Bennigan's. I've never been there and
00:39:14
never tried it. I guess it's a Is it still around? I I don't know, but it was a chain at one time. I think it
00:39:21
was one of those all-day breakfast places. I probably screwed that all up. Maybe not, but I I
00:39:27
hope it is. Well, she was there with friends at this Bennigan's restaurant in Webster, Texas,
00:39:32
and she would have left there about 1:30 or 2:00 a.m. Now, that seems awfully late for somebody who's just 17. Uh she
00:39:40
was an actress in a a school play and this was kind of like a cast party after the play
00:39:47
and this was like the one time that her parents changed her curfew so she could stay out late.
00:39:52
I I think I talked about this before showing my nerd side. I got pulled over for curfew one time.
00:39:58
Um the officer didn't believe us that we're coming from a orchestra competition.
00:40:04
And and both me and the driver were wearing tuxedos. I'm like, you think we did wear this on a Saturday night?
00:40:12
That's right. This is our McDonald's outfit. We just we just wanted to go to IHOP.
00:40:16
Well, this was on August 17th, 1997 when she was last seen. Okay, so she leaves, right? And about 2
00:40:24
hours later her truck is found along I-45. There was no signs of any type of struggle at all
00:40:32
and her truck was found to be operational. Um her wallet and keys were found inside the truck. There were
00:40:40
eyewitnesses that saw her walking from her parked truck toward a red Isuzu Amigo that was stopped behind her. But
00:40:50
other than this and and a sighting of a white truck being in the area, those were really the only two leads that
00:40:57
police had to work with. And it might have not been red, it might have been pink. Remember we had that buddy that
00:41:03
had a Isuzu Amigo. Yeah, and I don't know if it was pink, it would but it was definitely not red.
00:41:09
It was a strange I don't even know if they had a red like a solid red. Yeah, it was a strange color. But it but
00:41:15
you're right, it could have looked red or pinkish in the dark. Anyway, I want to jump back to
00:41:23
to somebody that we've talked about a lot here. Tim Miller, this is in 2005. We're going
00:41:28
to fast forward to 2005. Now, Tim Miller had been in Aruba with his EquuSearch Jamaica. Yeah, Aruba.
00:41:37
I want to take you. with his EquuSearch group. Now, he was there assisting with the search for missing high school
00:41:44
student 18-year-old Natalie Holloway who had vanished while on her way on a high school graduation trip. Don't
00:41:51
forget this Saturday, August 19th on the August Oxygen channel at 9:00 8:00 Central.
00:41:56
And he had been gone for quite some time. When he returned home, amongst other things that he returned home to, there
00:42:04
was a big pile of mail after all this time, right? He found a very strange letter. In this letter had words
00:42:11
these were letters and words that were cut out of magazines and newspapers. And on it there were demonic symbols and
00:42:18
the number 666 and a message that said, "Able is not the devil sought by the League City Blue Fuzz."
00:42:27
The key to the nightmare field of death, Tim Miller, it's me you're looking for.
00:42:32
I was the last man your Laura saw and many more. The police won't find me. More bodies and more bones to be found.
00:42:40
Now, regarding this strange letter that he gets, um a lot of the investigators believed
00:42:46
it to just be some kind of hoax. I think there's there's I just a hoax, it's coming from a real
00:42:54
dick face. Right. And the thing here is, Captain, Tim Miller I think has mixed emotions
00:42:59
about this letter. I think there are there are times where he agrees that it's probably a hoax and other times he
00:43:05
thinks he, you know, it it meant something and he knew who it could have been from.
00:43:12
Um but we we will get back to Tim Miller here in a bit because now our story takes us to September of 2010.
00:43:20
Um this is when a Louisiana welder is being held on $1 million bail after being charged in connection with the
00:43:30
1996 death of 13-year-old Texas City girl Crystal Jean Baker. She was one of the girls on our list in the killing
00:43:39
fields story. She is um the second one that we mentioned in this episode. Now, the thing here is, Texas
00:43:47
City Police Chief Robert Burby said that the arrest of Kevin Edison Smith was made through a DNA match. Smith was
00:43:55
arrested on his four on his 40th birthday. So, happy birthday, Kevin. Yeah, happy birthday, douchebag. Yeah,
00:44:02
he was arrested at work. And I think one one kind of thing that's funny here is when they went to pick this guy up, like
00:44:11
this is a different situation because when you go to pick up a suspect and you have to question them and you're you're
00:44:15
hoping to find evidence to get a conviction, that's much much different than this situation. They're going and
00:44:21
picking this guy up knowing that they have a conviction in their pocket. And they realize the officers realize
00:44:29
mean, it's not 100% but you have the DNA and that's normally a slam dunk. Normally a slam dunk. Yeah, so one of
00:44:36
the officers on the way to pick this guy up, he's at work when they pick him up.
00:44:41
One of the officers notices that it's his birthday that day. So so so when they're put when they're slapping the
00:44:47
cuffs on Kevin Edison Smith, one of the officers leaned in and said, "Happy birthday."
00:44:54
Gotcha. I like that guy. Gotcha. Yeah. Well, the the Texas City Police Chief said that DNA was collected from Smith
00:45:03
during a recent arrest and this was matched to DNA that they found at the murder scene
00:45:10
of the teen girl, the 13-year-old girl. He was arrested in Louisiana and he was arrested after being pulled
00:45:18
over for a traffic violation, just a simple traffic violation, but police found illegal prescription drugs in his
00:45:24
car. So, when he's arrested, they took his DNA, they put it on file. Sometime after
00:45:31
this, Crystal's clothing, remember we said that they had saved her items that we had primitive DNA testing back then,
00:45:38
they saved her items, her clothing and evidence from that, they preserved it. They were going back and looking for DNA
00:45:44
on these items and testing it over the years. Um and eventually they were able to pull DNA from this. Well, when they
00:45:52
entered it into the national database, a couple days later they get a callback saying
00:45:59
there's a match on the DNA that you sent in. And it turns out to be this Kevin Edison Smith. Right, our Kevin dick face
00:46:06
piece of [ __ ] However you want to say his name, it's up to you. However you want to pronounce it. But they get this
00:46:12
joker what, 14 years later? 14 years after he committed the murder. And we and we
00:46:18
have, you know, a decade 70s, 80s, 90s and a lot of these cases, I mean, we do have some leads or number one suspects,
00:46:27
but a lot of these cases we have no leads, we don't have any suspects. And and let alone a
00:46:33
conviction. So, here we get a conviction. Now, Kevin got lucky, I would say. His case was
00:46:39
eligible for the death penalty. However, the prosecutor chose to only go for life
00:46:44
in prison. Now, the prosecutor was not being lenient on Kevin by any means but stated
00:46:51
that they think he is possibly connected to several other murders from that area
00:46:56
and get this, from around the country and they needed to investigate him further. Um he's he's a guy that lived
00:47:04
in several different states over a short period of time. Right, their theory here is if we keep
00:47:10
him alive, then we can get him to talk more often. Um now, that brings us to the strange story of Edward Bell and the
00:47:21
11 that went to heaven. Edward Harold Bell, so he's a convicted murderer and he has claimed that he is
00:47:29
also a serial killer and he's behind the deaths of 11 girls from the from the 70s, the cases that we spoke about in
00:47:38
the 70s in part one of this trilogy. Right. Edward Harold Bell calls his victims the 11 that went to heaven.
00:47:45
He has given a chilling confession from his prison cell where he was serving a 70-year sentence for the murder of a
00:47:53
former Marine. This is Larry Dickens from back in 1978. Now, the way that this went down, Dickens
00:48:01
confronted Bell after he had exposed himself and began masturbating in front of a group of girls in Pasadena, Texas.
00:48:11
Mr. Dickens, he when he saw the girls frightened and saw what Bell was doing, he told his mother to call the police
00:48:19
and he was going to basically go out and beat this guy up and keep him there until the police arrived.
00:48:26
Right, good for him. Dickens was unaware that Bell was armed. Mr. Dickens' mother watched from her
00:48:34
house as Bell shot her son four times with a pistol and then shot him once again with a rifle.
00:48:41
Now, Bell was apprehended not far from the crime scene. He would claim that it was self-defense as that he was
00:48:48
attacked. Well, you were attacked cuz you're showing your dinghy. Well, he gets out on bail. Now, Bell went on the
00:48:56
run for 14 years before being caught in Panama in 1993 and jailed. He went to jail the
00:49:04
following year. You know, strange connection to last week's story that we did most wanted,
00:49:11
but Bell's Bell's case was featured on America's Most Wanted and I guess Matthew McConaughey played the
00:49:19
the Larry Dickens who was killed, the victim. Well, all right, all right, all right.
00:49:24
Harold Bell, he claims he was turned into a sex offender and killer by his father in a systematic program of abuse
00:49:31
and brainwashing. He also claims that his three ex-wives were part of this, quote-unquote, program.
00:49:38
Mhm. Now, Bell says he murdered 11 girls in Houston and the counties of Galveston, Webster, and Dickinson.
00:49:47
Five in 1971 and six more from 1974 to 1977, including 15-year-old Debbie Ackerman
00:49:55
and Maria Johnson who disappeared while hitchhiking in Texas in 1971. The two girls were shot as they stood
00:50:02
tied up half-naked in a river, says Bell. Their abductor tied them up, stripped them from the waist down, and left their
00:50:10
bodies in the river. At the time, Bell lived in an apartment on a beach and he had bought a surf shop that both of the
00:50:17
girls were have they were known to have visited. Right. And and that's the big thing here because a lot of people
00:50:24
confess to stuff. I mean, and and they didn't have no connection. Yeah. And he had details of how he shot
00:50:31
them and was able to describe the remote bridge where the bodies were recovered.
00:50:36
Bell also said he had killed a red-haired teenage girl named Pitchford that he called Pitchford after
00:50:43
kidnapping her near a mall. Now, that brings up the question, was this Kimberly Ray Pitchford, 16, who
00:50:50
disappeared after taking a driver's education class before her body was found in 1973? Probably most likely.
00:50:57
Bell also claims to not know the names of most of the girls that he killed, but in some cases he remembers the color of
00:51:04
their hair. Bell also owned a field near where two middle school students, Georgia Geer,
00:51:11
who was 14, and Brooks Bracewell, 12, where they were last seen in Dickinson, Texas in 1974.
00:51:18
Now, as we said, Bell was well, he was a well-known sex offender in the 1970s. He
00:51:25
was stopped by police at least a dozen times for masturbating and and flashing girls.
00:51:32
Most of the victims of this flashing and stuff that he did would have been about
00:51:36
11 to 16 years old. Somehow he was able to repeatedly avoid prosecution in those
00:51:43
cases. Bell sent That's ridiculous. Apparently, Bell sent prosecutors in Texas letters containing
00:51:50
his confession in 1998, but they remained a secret until 2011. Why? I don't know. You would have to ask the
00:52:00
investigators that. This was not information that they wanted to release for some reason. Senior investigators in
00:52:06
Galveston have believed for a long time that Bell was behind more crimes, but prosecutors have not pressed charges
00:52:13
because they do not believe they have enough evidence. Now, in excerpts from the letters obtained by the Houston
00:52:21
Chronicle, it has emerged that Bell claims a brainwashing program began by his father who forced him to be a
00:52:28
flasher, to rape girls, and to kill. Right, but that's also a common sign of like a psychopath is they don't accept
00:52:35
responsibility. They always put the blame on somebody else. As far as Bell goes, yeah, he had information on these
00:52:42
different murders, but a lot of the investigators have argued that the the information that he provided them was
00:52:48
all information that was in the newspapers at the time. It's been suggested that maybe he was looking up
00:52:55
the cases on the internet. Yeah, but you can't I mean, but he's the one that owned the
00:53:00
surf shop, right? Right. So, I mean, you can't make that stuff up. No, you can't
00:53:04
make that stuff up. And and one thing that people have argued, you know, when they say, well, all the information he
00:53:10
has is what was presented in the media. Well, they're saying, well, he's been locked up for a long time before he
00:53:16
chose to provide this information. And he's not because of his status, he does not have access to the internet. Mhm.
00:53:24
So, either he either he read the stuff in the newspaper and has a you know, an airtight memory and remembers all
00:53:33
this stuff, or he actually had some knowledge of these crimes. One thing that throws it off though, also, when
00:53:39
you have no evidence and he's making these strange claims about the program that brainwashed him and turned him into
00:53:44
a killer. Um Mhm. That really kind of turns those confessions on their side. We also need
00:53:51
to talk about Clyde Hedrick. He was someone we spoke about in part two. He was the one sentenced to 20 years in
00:53:58
prison for the 1984 beating death of Ellen Ray Beason. Um this he wasn't sentenced again for this until March of
00:54:07
2014. And since then, Hedrick has been linked to the murders of Heidi Fye and Laura
00:54:14
Miller and three unidentified women. Mhm. Prosecutors had planned to present evidence of Hedrick linking him to the
00:54:22
murders of Fye and Miller, but as of this date, he has not been charged with their deaths. He remains in the minds of
00:54:29
many to be the prime suspect in not only the deaths of Miller and Fye, but Jane Doe, who was found in the same area.
00:54:37
Someone involved in the case said that the problem is this, there's no shortage of women who describe Hedrick as an
00:54:44
absolute monster, but when it comes to the killing fields, is he the right monster?
00:54:50
Hedrick, it turned out, was a former neighbor of Tim Miller's. This is this is a strange connection here, Captain.
00:54:58
They pieced this together after 2014. They figured out that he was a former neighbor of Tim Miller's. They lived on
00:55:05
the same block in Dickinson. This was before the Millers moved to League City in 1984. Tim Miller said, you know,
00:55:13
he he he became a neighbor again, essentially, once they moved. And Tim Miller said that back from their days in
00:55:19
Dickinson, that Hedrick could have seen Laura every day. And given the kind of crowd that Laura had started to run
00:55:26
with, there's a chance that she may have known him. Now, Tim Miller believes Hedrick killed his daughter Laura. He
00:55:32
also believes that he killed Heidi Fye and Jane Doe. We also need to circle back to William Reece as well. Yeah,
00:55:39
because there's been an update on this suspect. This is coming from news that just came out this month. Experts say
00:55:47
that William Reece fits serial killer profile. This is from an article that came out on August 4th. So, we have it
00:55:55
states a Texas man suspected in cold case killings of two women and two girls 20 years ago fits the profile of a
00:56:03
serial killer because he chose his victims by gender and age and derived pleasure from the control he exerted
00:56:10
over them before they died. Criminal experts and law enforcement officials said this on Friday, August 4th, 2017.
00:56:19
Now, William Lewis Reece, 58, is charged with the deaths of 19-year-old Tiffany Johnson. Now, Tiffany Johnson's death
00:56:28
doesn't have anything to do with the Texas Killing Fields story. However, he's remained a suspect in some of these
00:56:34
other cases, and I'm happy to report that they are pressing charges against William Lewis Reece in the deaths of
00:56:41
17-year-old Jessica Cain and 12-year-old Laura Smither that we talked about today. Good. Hopefully, there's some
00:56:49
justice and closure for the families. Reece is also suspected of, but not charged with, the death of 20-year-old
00:56:56
Kelly Cox, whose remains were discovered outside of Houston and identified last year. Reece was already serving a
00:57:04
60-year prison sentence in Texas for kidnapping. You had asked earlier what prison sentence he got. Well, he got 60
00:57:10
years for this thing. He has led police to graves where Cain and Cox's remains were found. All four
00:57:19
victims disappeared over a 4-month period in 1997. Johnston was from Oklahoma, while the
00:57:26
other three were from Texas. Now, Oklahoma prosecutors announced on Thursday, August 3rd, that they would
00:57:32
seek the death penalty in the Johnston killing, and Reece has pled not guilty. He faces two more counts of murder in
00:57:40
Galveston County, southeast of Houston, but authorities say those charges in Texas are on hold pending the outcome of
00:57:47
Reece's Oklahoma trial. Right, but in that trial, they're going to find he was connected by DNA. Yeah,
00:57:53
and it seemed that that kind of blew the doors open on this investigation because
00:57:57
then we have him leading them to to the bodies of these two girls that they've not been able to find for decades. Yeah,
00:58:03
this case is so difficult cuz one, it spans '70s, '80s, '90s, but as we've seen,
00:58:10
we have we don't have a lot of convictions, but we have a lot of people that they look, some of these people are
00:58:16
guilty as sin. They just haven't been convicted. So, we have we have multiple we have a handful of killers. We have
00:58:23
we have um so many so many victims, but we have a handful of killers. We don't just have one. Well, and that's
00:58:31
ultimately what the Killing Fields has been about. Um you know, there have been people over the years that have argued
00:58:36
that this is all the work of one guy. And unfortunately, I think what we're seeing here is, you know, maybe it would
00:58:42
have been easier to crack this case and and save some lives along the way had that been the case, but I think what we
00:58:48
can see here, whether you believe some of these confessions or not, it doesn't matter, but but it's obvious that we
00:58:54
have the work of many different evil people in the same area. Well, right, but you can't argue with
00:59:00
the DNA evidence that that they have found. Yes, and that's what's great. That's the light at the end of this
00:59:06
tunnel. We have William Reece who's going to finally face charges in these old cold cases. We also have
00:59:12
Clyde Hedrick who could face charges at some point, and this will start taking these cases off of the books and giving
00:59:19
some people some much-needed closure. Well, yeah, and so the idea that there's this one boogeyman haunting the area
00:59:26
makes you wonder if this area somehow cursed in a way, or if there's some like what what is in the water down
00:59:35
there that is is causing all these killings. We may never know, but the nice thing is that we're finally getting
00:59:42
some answers to these cases and hopefully they'll continue to work them and we'll get the answers that we need.
00:59:59
Hope you guys enjoyed the Killing Fields trilogy. Thanks for listening and thanks
01:00:03
for telling a friend. That's right. And for everything True Crime Garage, make sure you visit truecrimegarage.com.
01:00:10
And until next time, be good, be kind, and don't litter.