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00:01:06
this is true crime garage and this is The Killing Fields [Music] trilogy [Music]
00:01:58
oh [Music] The Killing Fields part three the 1980s was when the now notorious plot of L received the name
00:02:14
the killing field and it certainly deserved it for many parents and loved ones this
00:02:21
was simply a graveyard the killing field joined the other stretches of land around
00:02:27
Interstate 45 as a place to be avoided feared and hated was there no end in sight when does the healing
00:02:42
start when this nightmare began back in 1971 no one would have imagined all of the lives lost to the Killing Fields and
00:02:51
how many years the murders would span but evil has no time limit and evil does not always age as
00:03:00
fast as the rest of us unless you destroy it evil stays by now The Killing Fields have
00:03:10
taught us that evil is not just a guy in a truck trolling the highway looking for
00:03:15
victims or a man with a gun sometimes it's much more than that sometimes evil is a
00:03:25
place in early 1996 Crystal Jee B AK only 13 years old left her grandmother's home walking to
00:03:34
meet a friend in April of 1997 12-year-old Laura Kate Smither went jogging like she had done several times
00:03:44
before on a quiet Road near her home in the summer of 97 Jessica Cain 17 attended a party and later her truck
00:03:56
would be found on I45 but Jessica was nowhere in sight would Crystal Laura and Jessica
00:04:06
simply vanish like so many young ladies before them or would they be found in The
00:04:12
Killing [Music] Fields [Music] in part three we're going to cover the 1990s and Beyond now I know the last two
00:04:44
decades the 70s and 80s were filled with a lot of death and a lot of frustration
00:04:49
about how some of the different police departments handled some of the cases and the missing persons reports I do
00:04:56
want to remind everyone that this was a long time ago and a lot of what took place was taking place in small towns or
00:05:03
rural areas a lot of the time this was going on as populations were starting to grow in these areas between Houston and
00:05:11
Galviston and sometimes these smaller departments are having trouble keeping up but just just as I remind you about
00:05:18
that I want to point out that today is going to be a different day Captain because today we are going to get some
00:05:26
answers there is some light at the end of this tunnel but before we can find that light we all need to hop into the
00:05:33
tunnel together so here we go well I hope everybody showered on September 8th 1991 another female body was found by a
00:05:41
couple of people on Horseback uh this was found in the same area as Heidi fi Laura Miller and Jane Doe which were all
00:05:49
located in an area near CER field in the80s because she would become the second unidentified body located in this
00:05:57
field she was labeled Janet you know yesterday I complained about one of the victims and how there was
00:06:03
practically no information on her and that her case now feels like she's just a name on a list this one is equally sad
00:06:12
and the same with Jane Doe because they are in the same situation but they are not even names on a list here's what we
00:06:20
do know they suspect this victim was about 24 to 34 years of age she was Caucasian with brown hair approximately
00:06:29
one 115 lb and 5' 1 in tall but when Janet doe was found in 1991 League City investigators got a
00:06:38
funny feeling about a retired NASA engineer who owned acreage adjacent to the killing field mhm this is Robert
00:06:46
Abel Robert Abel ran a popular horseback riding range called Stardust Trail Rides
00:06:53
and he seemed almost too eager to cooperate when detectives started asking him about the bodies that kept turning
00:06:59
up near the land that he owned well he's also newer to the area yeah he actually
00:07:05
owned a bunch of land uh quite north of this uh and this was a new plot of land for him so League City lead investigator
00:07:15
Pat Bitner he sought guidance from an FBI agent who specialized in serial sexual homicides uh the agent told
00:07:23
Bitner that the murderer probably lived close to the Comfort Zone and could very
00:07:28
well have insinuated himself into the investigation mhm also the agent said the murderer was in all likelihood
00:07:36
preoccupied with the media accounts about the crimes and perhaps he kept newspaper articles about them based on
00:07:44
that profile Bitner was able to secure a search warrant in 1993 now they turned Abel's home upside
00:07:52
down yeah they found guns in Abel's home um I would say this is probably not uncommon this is a rural area and this
00:08:00
is Texas right uh they also found many newspaper articles uh clipped out of area newspapers regarding their coverage
00:08:09
of the murder cases all of these items were confiscated um I know I sound like a
00:08:15
lunatic here Captain but of those confiscated items I have things like that in my house so I don't necessarily
00:08:21
think that that points to anything but you know don't dare have Kool-Aid in your refrigerator right right so in the
00:08:29
end investigators found nothing linking able to the murders but that would not be the end of it nope not because of two
00:08:37
men the first is someone that we spoke a lot about in part two Tim Miller the father of murder victim found in the
00:08:44
field uh Laura Miller she was found near Robert ael's land in the 80s MH when they did the search warrant on Robert
00:08:53
Abel's house and property the investigators were clearly focusing on Abel and this just fed Tim Miller's
00:09:02
anger and he became convinced that Abel had killed his daughter Laura well and some would speculate he was the reason
00:09:10
why able was getting so much heat to begin with this proved to be toxic fuel for a man that was already in a downward
00:09:17
spiral MH Tim Miller dreamed of killing Abel uh he would park his truck on the street out by Abel's mailbox and damn
00:09:27
near every day when Abel came out to get the mail Miller would harass Abel right
00:09:32
I wouldn't recommend this no uh he would call him names he would accuse him of murder and accuse him of Serial murder
00:09:39
MH now one day in 1994 uh Miller was out Waiting by Abel's mailbox he started harassing the old man
00:09:48
now by this point Abel was fed up with the harassment he was receiving not just harassment from Tim Miller but from
00:09:54
people in town as well um so Abel decided he was was going to shout something rude back to Tim Miller he
00:10:02
said something nasty about Laura Miller and the other dead girls that were found
00:10:07
there well Tim lost it and he jumped out of his truck and he ran up to Abel and he pulled out a gun Tim Miller stood
00:10:15
there and held a gun to Robert Abel's head he really wanted to pull the trigger uh but he didn't thankfully he
00:10:23
didn't Miller had finally hit rock bottom uh and at this point he checked himself into a psych ward where he
00:10:30
stayed for 10 days now nothing would diminish his need to solve his daughter's murder but sometime after he
00:10:37
got out of the hospital he learned to channel into something much more productive and a few years later Tim
00:10:43
Miller created Texas equa search uh the organization has assisted in investigations in 38 States and eight
00:10:51
countries to this day yeah we talked about them back when we covered the Casey Anthony case years later Tim
00:10:57
Miller would admit his role in what he calls the robertt Abel Witch Hunt uh saying that he regrets it right so we're
00:11:05
clear I mean Robert Abel was completely innocent of anything that people were claiming or anything that they were
00:11:11
investigating it was actually Cooperative from the beginning he was cooperative um with Miller himself and
00:11:18
then you know we have a whole system and a and a community of people that turn on
00:11:23
him so much to where he had to move to a whole different state and and still this
00:11:29
case uh haunts him to this day because you know these allegations have followed him wherever you go
00:11:36
so you know I understand that you lose a loved one and you're looking for somebody to blame but you know you can't
00:11:43
make these giant leaps you know it's one thing to leap over a a puddle but when you're leaping over a um a ocean to uh
00:11:52
point the finger at somebody it's very irresponsible and and the amount of damage that uh Miller did to AEL that
00:12:00
that law enforcement did to AEL and the community did to AEL is just really uncalled for well and to put it bluntly
00:12:07
you know in in an interview years afterwards Tim Miller told a reporter that yeah he had helped ruin Robert
00:12:15
ael's life there for a couple of years uh and as you said maybe even after um now before we move on from Janet Doe's
00:12:23
murder I do want to point out that police have a longtime suspect that they like very very much for this homicide
00:12:31
but in a strange twist it kind of leads back to Robert Abel uh this is taken from a Houston Chronicle article by Ruth
00:12:41
renan from 2001 titled man's confession could solve killing field case a Texas prison inmate has confessed to killing
00:12:50
as many as six women in Fort Bend and Galviston counties including some at the infamous site here known as the killing
00:12:58
field Mark Stallings age 34 has not yet been charged with any of the murders however
00:13:05
League City police captain Chris Reed said DNA test will confirm whether Stallings was involved in any of the
00:13:12
slayings of Four Women whose bodies were dumped in the field off of CER Road just
00:13:18
west of Interstate 45 from 1983 to 1991 he confessed to multiple homicides uh Reed would go on to say we don't know
00:13:28
which one at this time we have an idea but we're not real sure because we haven't corroborated anything he has
00:13:35
said Reed said Stallings gave police information that was very believable he said the inmate told officers that he
00:13:43
once lived in a mobile home on the land near where the bodies were found and that he once worked for Robert Abel M
00:13:51
Abel 62 at the time of this article said that he recalls stalling working for him
00:13:58
for his ran operation right but he said he fired Stallings because he was too dumb to even string a
00:14:04
fence okay I'm never strung offense so maybe I'm an idiot you're going to have to throw me in that category with you
00:14:11
Captain League City police uh who interviewed Stallings over a onewe period in midt said it may take a month before lab
00:14:21
tests and results could show whether his DNA sample matches evidence collected from the crime scenes Reed said
00:14:28
Stallings is helping authorities identify at least one of those women uh who have been dubbed Jane or Janet doe
00:14:37
Stallings was brought to the attention of League City police by Fort Ben County Sheriff's officials to whom he had
00:14:45
written during the summer and claimed to have had information about some of the murders in that county with with the
00:14:51
Jane and Janet though I I believe for me it's like it's hard for me to believe that they're Texas Natives and that that
00:14:59
nobody um would claim them or there would be no connection with some missing person report to me it seems like they
00:15:06
would have to be almost somebody from a different state that was transported here somehow or possibly a runaway from
00:15:13
another state Fort Ben County Sheriff said some of the details in the letter suggested that he had to have more than
00:15:21
knowledge picked up from the media investigators and Texas Rangers visited with Stallings in prison and brought him
00:15:28
to this County for about a week saying he took the Rangers and the detectives for some drives pointed out some places
00:15:36
and it became apparent that he knew what he was talking about the sheriff said that although physical evidence is
00:15:42
lacking charges against Stallings were likely for the April 1986 slaying of Bena Bowen 27 and the June 1989 death of
00:15:54
18-year-old April EES he convinced the detectives that he legitimately was there at the time there
00:16:02
are details that only the investigating officers or those close to it would have
00:16:07
known and they stated he knew some of those details he also LED them to the scene which is not an easy scene to find
00:16:17
according to the authority since it is you know it's out in a pasture uh also noting that the area had changed
00:16:24
considerably since the time that the murders had occurred now Eve's body was found in an abandoned mobile home near
00:16:32
Old Richmond Road Bowen's body was found in an underdeveloped area of the county
00:16:37
known as Park westeimer both women described by authorities as crack cocaine addicts working the streets in
00:16:44
Houston's Montrose area they were both strangled and when Stallings had talked about these murders and these cases with
00:16:52
the authorities he showed absolutely no remorse at all Stallings is an inmate at
00:16:58
Clement's unit in amarello uh he is serving a life sentence for aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault with
00:17:05
the deadly weapon he committed the crime in Walker County in August of 1998 he is
00:17:11
also serving a sentence for aggravated assault in possession of a firearm by a felon in bizor county and for burglary
00:17:19
of a building with intent to commit theft in Harris County M records also show Stallings has used a variety of
00:17:26
aliases over the years and has given two birth dates so what's his motive for telling the cops this that's a good
00:17:34
question and we'll get into that uh one of the officers said that he is baffled as to why Stallings contacted his
00:17:41
Department uh saying it is strange in that he waited so many years you'd think this guy was trying to clear his
00:17:48
innocence M um but stating I don't think that a guy like this has a conscience I
00:17:55
they truly don't know what his motive is or what doesn't make a lot of logical sense he
00:18:01
doesn't have a conscious but he's coming forward with this information to give closure to the family possibly or I mean
00:18:08
he's helping out law enforcement he's helping out um you know these families on some
00:18:13
level to give them closure so it's kind of weird to go you know he he feels zero
00:18:19
remorse I felt zero remorse why talk about it well and the thing too is that the investigators were spending just as
00:18:27
much time investigating what he was stating had happened but during this time they're also investigating him as
00:18:33
far as what makes him tick why would he talk about this you know um is HE capable now in the end Captain uh
00:18:42
Stallings was never charged with any of these murders and I'm guessing that none
00:18:47
of the DNA would have matched or they would have charged him with something now Stallings gave a confession in these
00:18:53
cases but he would never actually sign uh sign one in front of anybody right now he stated in an interview years
00:19:03
afterwards uh when asked why would he why would he confess to these crimes well he still says that he did a couple
00:19:12
of these murders but he won't sign anything however he states that it was clear why he he he contacted the police
00:19:21
he was serving a life sentence he thought that if they if he confessed to these crimes they would take him out of
00:19:28
the prison and he would have to go around out in these rural areas with the police on several different trips right
00:19:35
he figured that at some point he would be able to figure out how to escape on one of those trips okay so there's his
00:19:42
motive MH yeah so this guy didn't care and look it could be a case we've seen these cases before I mean you know I
00:19:51
have enough details from possibly a prison another prisoner mhm so you know when they say well he had all these
00:19:59
details that the only the investigators would know well where did he get these details if the DNA doesn't match he
00:20:06
wasn't there and he didn't do these crimes but where did he get that information from to at least make the
00:20:12
law enforcement believe him or was it a simple case of the law enforcement just wanted to believe him mhm um I to be
00:20:21
honest with you Captain I actually I like Stallings for a couple of these cases um but what about the DNA well and
00:20:30
I'll get into that I I don't know anything about this Bena Bowen case um but I do know some stuff about the April
00:20:36
EES case um and he had he had all the details of this actual case uh and he stated in his confession that he didn't
00:20:46
he didn't rape her um so that might be part of the reason why there was no DNA found uh of his now what were the
00:20:54
details that he got right well he stated that he he picked her up she was a working girl
00:21:02
uh he took her to an abandoned mobile home to have sex with her she decided she didn't want to have sex with him and
00:21:10
he got angry with her and he also said that he enjoyed choking women that was something that he was into now um she
00:21:18
was strangled with a leature she was stuffed into a closet and her two there were two dogs inside this mobile home
00:21:26
that he said he left there intentionally um he also said that he broke the handle
00:21:32
off of the door so that nobody could get into the mobile home jamming it shut um
00:21:38
with the dogs inside yeah so what are the things that he got right he he got the mobile home right he got the
00:21:44
strangled strangled with a leature stuffed in a closet inside that mobile home the two dogs and the broken handle
00:21:51
off of the door now according to that's pretty detailed that's pretty detailed also saying that he did not rape her her
00:21:58
so if she didn't fight back in a manner that he would you know that she gained any of his DNA um which might be the
00:22:06
case because he said that she was a drug addict and he knew that and they smoked
00:22:10
some crack together she might have been out of it by the time he was a drug addict yeah she might have been out of
00:22:15
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
00:22:21
details were not in any of the newspapers these were things that um really only the investigators and and
00:22:29
possibly the killer would have known so I think that's one thing that they're referring to as that he had some some
00:22:35
knowledge now these two cases are not considered part of the Texas Killing Fields story well he's probably not he's
00:22:43
probably not signing that uh confession because that would probably put him on the chopping block for uh the death
00:22:50
penalty yeah and then to top that off if his whole motivation was to try to escape M well once see and the thing
00:22:57
here here is too he said in a later interview he's like well I I just thought that they would keep taking me
00:23:03
out and keep taking me out on these trips and he said after about a week they didn't seem to want to talk to him
00:23:09
that much anymore there's a chance that those investigators those police officers got a vibe from him like this
00:23:15
dude is dangerous we don't want to take him out of the prison if he's or he's just really annoying yeah if he's going
00:23:21
to tell us anything he needs to sign he needs to sign an official document before we're going to work on this
00:23:26
anymore yeah but cops normally most cops aren't going to you know take a guy out
00:23:32
that is cuffed you know they got a you got your billy club on you right you got this guy that's a giant turd bag right
00:23:42
I'd love to take this guy out we go out in the fields and and the whole time I go you want to run I wish you would I
00:23:50
wish you would cuz I'd beat the living hell out of him with the billy club well like I said two of these two cases the
00:23:58
Bowen's case and the Eve's case are not considered to be part of the Texas Killing Field story but if Stallings is
00:24:05
the killer of one or more of these girls in our story well then of course he is part of this story and I like him for
00:24:12
this Janet doe murder uh at least and it sounds like the police do too this is the one where well no but the the one
00:24:21
that you just talked about um I like him for the eaves murder and I also like him
00:24:26
for this unidentified girl Janet do at least those two yeah and I'll tell you why I like him for the Janet do murder
00:24:33
um and it sounds like the police do too they still have him in some interviews I've heard to this date he's considered
00:24:39
the number one suspect for Janet doe here's the thought um and this is what he has said in some of his confessions
00:24:47
regarding Janet doe so who was she um we we have no name uh he says that he picked he picked up a girl on the side
00:24:56
of the road uh he said he says in his confession I don't know her name I didn't I didn't care what her name was I
00:25:02
pulled over to pick her up I thought she was a working girl it turns out she was
00:25:07
when we got to talking uh she was clearly a crack addict and she wanted to smoke a bunch of crack have some sex and
00:25:16
she said that she she tells him now this is a very sick man so who knows what where the truth is in this but he says
00:25:23
that she told him that she wanted to die during sex what yeah and he says in his confession
00:25:31
to these are just really high this is just to reporters now not to police he says well when she told me that I
00:25:38
thought well you've you've bumped into the right guy baby I'm your man well he was looking for someone to kill
00:25:46
according to according to Stallings and this is going to sound strange but he worked for Robert Abel and he was
00:25:53
technically he says he was hired to be the foreman of Robert Abel's property and for a time he lived in a mobile home
00:26:00
or a cabin it's been referred to as both uh this is the guy that can't string offence right but he he lived in one of
00:26:08
these places on what is labeled the killing field you know out near Robert Abel's property and he said that
00:26:17
eventually he was fired by Robert Abel he also says that Robert Abel was an evil man um he when asked if Robert Abel
00:26:26
put those bodies in The Killing field and if Robert AEL killed them Stallings actually said he didn't know anything
00:26:32
about those three murders he didn't he didn't know that Robert Abel he said Robert Abel would have been capable of
00:26:38
killing women but he didn't know if Robert Abel put those three women there right throwing Abel under the bus with
00:26:45
no evidence yeah but he says that when he worked for Abel Abel seemed to be very concerned about the bodies popping
00:26:51
up in the area which I mean I guess because you're a business owner well and any regular person would be concerned
00:26:57
concerned about bodies popping up anywhere yeah when they when that body was found you know about a mile from my
00:27:03
house in the park I mean that's all you could talk about or think about so he said that when Robert Abel was being
00:27:11
investigated to be this possible serial killer MH well he fired Stallings and Stallings being a guy an evil man anyway
00:27:20
he decided he was going to he was going to get even with Robert Abel so he was looking for a girl to kill and he going
00:27:27
to place her on his property this guy's a real bucket of turds well the other thing here Captain evidence pointing
00:27:35
toward maybe he did this Janet do murder he got her description very accurate um
00:27:41
with the exception of her age he in his confession he states that he thinks she might have been 20 years old where we
00:27:49
have you know the the experts are saying she was more likely 24 to early 30s um who knows you know with her with her
00:27:57
being a drug addict with being a crack addict like he said if she was in fact a crack addict it may have been hard to
00:28:04
determine age when he picked her up on the side of the road well he might have ask her how old are you oh I'm 20 M and
00:28:11
and and maybe you know again maybe she was closer to 30 but she knew you know as a sex worker or something that hey if
00:28:18
I say 20 that you know it gets me more money or something I don't know and personally and I think you will agree
00:28:24
with me here Captain I just don't get the vibe that Robert AEL was involved in killing anybody no he worked for NASA I
00:28:32
mean he was a smart guy it makes it um what Miller says is like you know this guy moved into the area he bought land
00:28:40
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 to
00:28:47
feel bad for I feel bad for him yeah and we you you and I were watching an interview with Tim Miller where he says
00:28:52
you know Robert Abel was a victim in this whole thing partly because of Tim Miller's doing
00:28:58
um but you know Tim Miller says he didn't kill anybody and I tell you what there was nobody pointing more fingers
00:29:03
at Robert AEL than Tim Miller so I I just I just don't my my gut tells me Robert Abel did not kill anybody yeah
00:29:10
and I think I misspoke and said he moved out of state he I think he just moved within the state but uh well it's a big
00:29:17
state so it feels like you moved to a whole another country right it's a country on its own got to love Texas God
00:29:23
Bless Texas we'll get right back to part three of The Killing Fields Trilogy after the quick beer
00:29:28
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[Music] 2023 and we're back cheers to everybody out there Crystal Jean Baker aged 13 she
00:31:54
lived with her grandmother and on March 5th 1996 this is after an argument with her grandmother Crystal left the house
00:32:02
she went off walking to a tire store where she asked to use the phone now the people working there they let her use
00:32:09
the phone but uh she kind of abused the favor uh she was there for a considerable amount of time and she
00:32:15
called several people it's believed that she was looking for a ride to a friend's
00:32:20
house and buay you Vista which is a short distance from where she was well then the workers at the store they told
00:32:28
her that she couldn't tie up the phone line all day long you know she needed to move on they have a business to run from
00:32:34
there she went walking down the street uh this is Texas Avenue in Texas City this is where she would be last seen 5
00:32:43
hours later her body was found under the I 10 bridge over Trinity River in Chambers County she had been beaten
00:32:51
sexually assaulted and killed by legure strangulation now her face was badly beaten um the closest highway to where
00:32:59
she was last seen is the I45 they were able to collect some DNA from the body now DNA at this point is
00:33:07
still pretty primitive of course but at this point they made all of the proper precautions to collect DNA and preserve
00:33:14
it for later but they had no eyewitnesses to her disappearance or her abduction so like many of these other
00:33:22
cases the police really had no leads to go on and there's going to be another victim in April of 1997 yeah Laura Kate
00:33:30
Smither she's just 12 years old she lived with her father and stepmother now Laura's mother had passed away years ago
00:33:37
from breast cancer when Laura was only about 2 years old it took Laura's father some time but he eventually remarried
00:33:45
and he and his new wife had a baby Laura's stepmother raised Laura as her own as her like her first child uh Laura
00:33:53
was aspiring to be a ballerina um and even even at the young age of 12 she was into physical fitness so on the morning
00:34:02
of April 3rd 97 uh Laura went jogging near her home in Friendswood Texas uh again this is near
00:34:11
I45 uh she would go out jogging while her parents made breakfast and she would return in time to sit down with them for
00:34:18
a nice meal that was the typical weekend thing right just doesn't seem like a place you want to let somebody go
00:34:25
running well her parents made breakfast and they waited for a while and yet Laura had not
00:34:31
returned 17 days later her body was found in 3 ft of water in a drainage pipe in a retention pond in Pasadena
00:34:40
near I45 MH she was nud except for Tan socks and a ring uh she had been decapitated a dark colored pickup was
00:34:50
observed in the same area as where she was last seen and a composite drawing was done of this driver of the the truck
00:34:57
so at least we have a lead here yeah and the thing here is unlike most of these other cases there were some suspects in
00:35:05
the beginning of this investigation now police quickly started working on one suspect in particular and this is
00:35:12
William Reese well who is William Reese he is a guy that five months just five months before lore disappeared Rees was
00:35:20
paroled out of an Oklahoma prison for serving 10 years of a 15-year sentence for kid napping and rape on the day that
00:35:29
she went missing reys was in the Smithers neighborhood working as a bulldozzer operator due to weather that day reys
00:35:38
was sent home he sent off of the job site and sent home for the day this would be about the same time that Laura
00:35:45
would have been out on her run now reys was picked up for this and he was polygraphed multiple times but the
00:35:53
results were always inconclusive the test administrator complained that Rees was not cooperating with the test that
00:36:01
they tested him multiple times and they had the same problem over and over again
00:36:05
what William Reese was doing was during the test he would constantly cough uh he
00:36:10
would be moving around and fidgeting during the test and when they would ask him to take the test again he would just
00:36:16
continue to do this time after time right results inconclusive uh the police were going to
00:36:22
continue to work on William Reese but for now they didn't really have anything that would lead to an arrest it's like
00:36:30
this double-edged sword he's willing to take the test but he's not willing to like actually cooperate with him and for
00:36:37
ree it might just be you know he's he's on parole uh you know he might not have the opportunity to decide whether he
00:36:44
wants to cooperate or not um around 1 a.m. now this is on May 16th just shortly after just uh less than a month
00:36:55
or sorry just a little over a month after The Disappearance of Laura Kate Smither Sandra sapal stopped at a
00:37:01
convenience store to use a pay phone to call a friend now sandre planned to stay
00:37:06
at a motel that night she had just split up with her boyfriend well while on the
00:37:12
phone she noticed a man get out of a white truck he was wearing a white T-shirt jeans and a cowboy hat she saw
00:37:20
him watching her she complained about the guy to her friend on the phone after she was done chatting she hung up the
00:37:28
phone and she got in her van and she pulled off onto Nasa Road 1 she wasn't driving for too far when she realized
00:37:36
that she had a flat tire so she pulled off to the side of the road then convenient flat tire yeah because then a
00:37:43
truck stopped behind her at first she was thankful because she didn't have any idea of how to change her Tire uh but
00:37:51
she was quickly startled when she saw it was the man from the convenience store parking lot he came up and he offered to
00:37:58
help her but she still had a really bad feeling about this whole situation while
00:38:03
he prepared to change the tire he asked sandre to retrieve something from his truck he had left the door open on his
00:38:11
truck so she went up to the truck and then she felt a knife to her throat he then forced her into the truck he drove
00:38:19
off with her and after a while they were heading north on I45 the man yelled threats at her and
00:38:26
fondled her as he drove the truck now SRA realized the passenger door was unlocked so she flung the door open and
00:38:35
she attempted to jump onto the highway that raced below her instead the man caught her by the blouse she fought him
00:38:43
as she was hanging out of the truck eventually her shirt ripped and she fell to the pavement now she's very badly
00:38:50
hurt by this time but she's going to have to get up and run the man slammed on the brakes she heard the truck come
00:38:57
to a stop but then she saw the headlights of an oncoming car now she jumped in the middle of the road and
00:39:04
waved her hands SRE was able to give a very good description of the man after being saved by the passer buyer um she
00:39:12
was able to give a good description of the man and the truck uh she said the man was white uh 5' n about 200 lb with
00:39:21
dirty blonde hair he had a mustache and he had bags under his eyes uh she said that the truck was a white
00:39:28
duy truck pay for her plastic uh and she stated that she believed that the truck was probably a
00:39:35
diesel and probably a Ford um eventually well there's there's your problem well the thing here is Captain
00:39:44
you know she got very lucky to escape him that night and she got lucky that somebody was was driving on the street
00:39:51
late that night to pick her up well after giving this great description now we have several months of this
00:39:58
investigation go by of this possible Abduction of sandre and police don't really have any leads on this but they
00:40:05
have this description that was done with one of those identic systems that they have right well we have two Law
00:40:13
Enforcement Officers they're meeting for lunch and one of them is investigating or has been investigating the lore Kate
00:40:21
Smither case the other is investigating this possible Abduction of sandre mhm well they're kind of comparing notes and
00:40:29
they're talking about their open cases and the cases that are most on their mind at this time and it's through this
00:40:35
lunch meeting that the one law enforcement agent she figures out that the person that she is looking for she's
00:40:43
looking for this person that's just been described to her mhm she figures out that it's the same guy that is a suspect
00:40:51
in this other case and when you look at the picture the real life picture of the
00:40:56
this dude and compare it to the sketch mhm I mean rarely do you see it like this where it matches the guy to a te
00:41:05
well later um he is identified we have William Reese uh this is the guy that was fidgeting and coughing during the
00:41:13
polygraph test now he is identified by Sandra as her abductor and identified by persons at the convenience store as well
00:41:23
as being the guy that hopped out of the truck and was watching her as she was on
00:41:27
the phone gotcha that's right eventually reys was charged with aggravated kidnapping of Sandra and the thing here
00:41:36
is now is that going to be a life sentence um it took I don't Captain I'm not certain about his prison sentence on
00:41:44
that one um he was found guilty it did take several months though to connect Reese to this
00:41:52
abduction that brings us to another person this is Jessica Lee Kane uh she's age 17 um she is currently still missing
00:42:03
yeah Jessica was last seen leaving a benan I've never been there never tried it I guess it's a is it still around I I
00:42:12
don't know but it was a chain at one time I think it was one of those all day breakfast places I probably screwed that
00:42:18
all up maybe not but I I hope it is well she was there with friends at this benan
00:42:23
restaurant in Webster Texas and she would have left there about 1:30 or 2 a.m. now that seems awfully late for
00:42:30
somebody who's just 17 uh she was an actress in a a school play and this was kind of like a cast party uh after the
00:42:38
play um and this was like the one time that her parents changed her curfew so she could stay out late I I think I
00:42:46
talked about this before uh showing my nerd side I got pulled over for curfew one time um the officer didn't believe
00:42:54
us that we're coming from a Orchestra competition and and both uh me and the driver were wearing tuxedos I'm like you
00:43:02
think we just wear this on a Saturday night that's right this is our McDonald's outfit hey we just we just
00:43:07
wanted to go to IHOP well this was on August 17th 1997 when she was last seen MH okay so she leaves right and about 2
00:43:17
hours later her truck is found along I45 there was no signs of any type of struggle at all uh and her truck was
00:43:26
found to be operational um her wallet and keys were found inside the truck there were eyewitnesses that saw her
00:43:35
walking from her park truck toward a red Isuzu Amigo uh that was stopped behind her but other than this uh in in a
00:43:44
sighting of a white truck being in the area those were really the only two leads that police had to work with and
00:43:52
it might have not been red it might have been pink remember we had that buddy that had a A zuu Amigo yeah and I don't
00:43:58
know if it was pink it but it was definitely not red yeah it was it was a strange I don't even know if they had a
00:44:04
red like a solid red yeah it was a strange color but it but you're right it could have looked red or pinkish uh in
00:44:12
the dark uh anyway I want to jump back to um to somebody that we've talked about a lot here uh Tim Miller this is
00:44:20
in 2005 we're going to fast forward to 2005 now Tim Miller had been in AR Ruba with his EA search Jamaica yeah Aruba I
00:44:30
want to take you with his equa Search Group now he was there assisting with the search for missing high school
00:44:37
student 18-year-old Natalie Halloway wow who had vanished while on her way uh on
00:44:41
a high school graduation trip don't forget this Saturday August 19th on the August Oxygen Channel at 98 Central and
00:44:49
he had been gone for quite some time when he returned home amongst other things that he returned home to there
00:44:57
was a big pile of mail after all this time right he found a very strange letter in this letter had words uh these
00:45:04
were letters and words that were cut out of magazines and newspapers and on it there were demonic symbols and the
00:45:11
number 666 and a message that said Abel is not the devil sought by The League City Blue fuzz the key to the nightmare
00:45:21
field of death Tim Miller it's me you're looking for I was the last man your Laura saw and many more the police won't
00:45:29
find me more bodies and more bones to be found now regarding this strange letter
00:45:35
that he gets um a lot of the investigators believed it to just be some kind of hoax um I think there's
00:45:44
there's I well if it's just a hoax it's coming from a real dick face right and the thing here is Captain um Tim Miller
00:45:51
I think has mixed emotions about this letter I think there there are times where he agrees that it's probably a
00:45:57
hoax and other times he thinks he you know it it meant something and he knew who it could have been from um but we we
00:46:06
will get back to Tim Miller here in a bit because now our story takes us to September of 201 10 um this is when a
00:46:14
Louisiana welder is being held on $1 million bail after being charged in connection with the 1996 death of
00:46:25
13-year-old Texas city girl Crystal Jean Baker she was one of the girls on our list in the killing field story she is
00:46:34
um the second one that we mentioned in this episode now the thing here is Texas City police chief Robert BBY said that
00:46:43
the arrest of Kevin Edison Smith was made through a DNA match Smith was arrested on his four on his 40th
00:46:51
birthday so happy birthday Kevin yeah happy birthday douchebag yeah he was arrested at work and I think one one
00:46:59
kind of thing that's funny here is when they went to pick this guy up like this is a different situation because when
00:47:05
you go to pick up a suspect and you have to question them and you're you're hoping to find evidence to get a
00:47:10
conviction that's M much different than this situation they're going and picking
00:47:15
this guy up knowing that they have a conviction in their pocket uh and they realize the officers realized well I
00:47:22
mean it's not 100% but you have the DNA and that's normally a slam dunk it's normally a slam dunk yeah so one of the
00:47:29
officers on the way to pick this guy up he's at work when they pick him up one of the officers notices that it's his
00:47:35
birthday that day so so so when they're put when they're slapping the cuffs on Kevin Edison Smith MH one of the
00:47:43
officers leaned in and said happy birthday gotcha I like that guy gotcha yeah well um the the Texas City police
00:47:53
chief said that DNA was collected from Smith during a recent arrest uh and this was
00:47:59
matched to uh DNA that they found at the murder scene of the teen girl of the 13-year-old girl he was arrested in
00:48:08
Louisiana uh and he was arrested after being pulled over for a traffic violation just a simple traffic
00:48:14
violation but police found illegal prescription drugs in his car um so when he's arrested they took his DNA they put
00:48:22
it on file sometime after this Crystal's clothing remember we said that they had
00:48:27
saved her items that we had primitive DNA testing back then they saved her items her clothing and evidence from
00:48:34
that they preserved it they were going back and looking for DNA on these items and testing it over the years um and
00:48:42
eventually they were able to pull DNA from this well when they entered it into the National Database if a couple days
00:48:49
later they get a call back saying there's a match on the DNA that you sent in and it turns out to be be this uh
00:48:56
Kevin Edison Smith right or Kevin [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] however you want to say his name it's up to you however
00:49:03
you want to pronounce this but they get this Joker what 14 years later 14 years after
00:49:09
he committed the murder and we and we have you know a decade 7s ' 80s '90s in a lot of these cases I mean we do have
00:49:17
some leads or number one suspects but a lot of these cases we have no leads we don't have any suspects and and let
00:49:25
alone a conviction uh so here we get a conviction Now Kevin got lucky I would say um his case was eligible for the
00:49:33
death penalty however the prosecutor chose to only go for life in prison um now the prosecutor was not being lenient
00:49:41
on Kevin by any means um but stated that they think he is possibly connected to several other murders from that area and
00:49:50
get this from around the country and they needed to investigate him further um he's he's a guy that lived in several
00:49:58
different states over a short period of time so right their Theory here is if we
00:50:02
keep him alive then we can get them to talk more often MH um now that brings us to the strange story of Edward Bell in
00:50:13
the 11 that went to heaven Edward Harold Bell uh so he's a convicted murderer and
00:50:21
he has claimed that he is also a serial killer and he's behind the deaths of 11 girls from the from the' 70s the cases
00:50:29
that we spoke about in the' 70s in part one of this Trilogy right Edward Herold bell calls his victims the 11 that went
00:50:37
to heaven he has given a chilling confession uh from his prison cell where he was serving a 70-year sentence for
00:50:45
the murder of a former Marine this is Larry Dickens uh from back in 1978 now the way that this went down Dickens
00:50:54
confronted Bell after he had exposed himself and began masturbating in front of a group of girls in Pasadena Texas Mr
00:51:05
Dickens he when he saw the girls frightened and saw what Belle was doing he told his mother to call the police
00:51:12
and he was going to basically go out and beat this guy up and keep him there until the police arrived right good for
00:51:20
him Dickens was unaware that Bell was armed um m Mr Dickens mother watched from her house as Belle shot her son
00:51:29
four times with a pistol and then shot him once again with a uh rifle now Bell was apprehended not far from the crime
00:51:37
scene uh he would claim that it was self-defense as that he was attacked um well you attacked cuz you're showing
00:51:43
you're dingy well he gets out on Bale now bell went on the run for 14 years before being caught in Panama in
00:51:54
1993 uh and jailed he went to jail the following year um you know strange connection to last week's story that we
00:52:02
did Most Wanted uh but Bell's Bell's case was featured on America's Most Wanted and I guess Matthew mccon played
00:52:11
the um the Larry Dickens who was killed the victim well all right all right all right Harold Bell he claims he was
00:52:18
turned into a sex offender and Killer by his father in a systematic program of abuse and brainwash Wasing he also
00:52:26
claims that his three Ex-Wives were part of this quote unquote program now Bell says he murdered 11 girls in Houston and
00:52:36
the counties of Galviston Webster and Dickinson uh five in 1971 and six more from 1974 to 1977 including 15-year-old
00:52:47
Debbie aeran and Maria Johnson who disappeared while hitchhiking in Texas in 1971 the two girls were shot as they
00:52:54
stood tied up half naked in a river says Bell their abductor tied them up stripped them from the waist down and
00:53:02
left their bodies in the river at the Time Belle lived in an apartment on a beach and he had bought a surf shop that
00:53:10
both of the girls were have they were known to have visited right and and that's the big thing here because a lot
00:53:17
of people confess to stuff I mean and then have no connection yeah and he had details of how he shot them and was able
00:53:25
to describe the remote bridge where the bodies were recovered Bell also said he had killed a red-haired teenage girl
00:53:33
named Pitchford that he called Pitchford after kidnapping her near a mall now that brings up the question was this
00:53:40
Kimberly Ray Pitchford uh 16 who disappeared after taking a driver's education class before her body was
00:53:47
found in 1973 probably most likely Bell also claims to not know the names of most of the girls that he killed killed
00:53:55
but in some cases he remembers the color of their hair uh Bell also owned a field
00:54:01
near where two middle school students Georgia gear who was 14 and Brooks bracewell 12 where they were last seen
00:54:08
in Dickinson Texas in 1974 now as we said um Bell was well he was a well-known sex offender in the
00:54:17
1970s he was stopped by police at least a dozen times for masturbating and and flashing girls um most of the victims of
00:54:26
this flashing and stuff that he did would have been about 11 to 16 years old um somehow he was able to repeatedly
00:54:34
avoid prosecution in those cases Bell sent that's ridiculous apparently Bell sent prosecutors in Texas letters
00:54:42
containing his confession in 1998 but they remained a secret until 2011 why I don't know you would have to
00:54:53
ask the investigators that this was not information that they wanted to release for some reason senior investigators in
00:54:59
Galviston have believed for a long time that Bell was behind more crimes but prosecutors have not pressed charges
00:55:06
because they do not believe they have enough evidence now in excerpts from the letters obtained by a the Houston
00:55:14
Chronicle it has emerged that Bell claims a brainwashing program began by his father who forced him to be a
00:55:21
flasher to rape girls and to kill right but that's also common sign of like a psychopath is they don't accept
00:55:28
responsibility they always put the blame on somebody else as far as Belle goes um
00:55:33
yeah he had information on these different murders but a lot of the investigators have argued that the the
00:55:39
information that he provided them was all information that was in the newspapers at the time um it's been
00:55:46
suggested that maybe he was looking up the cases uh on the internet yeah but you can't I mean but he's the one that
00:55:53
owned the surf shop right right so I mean you can't make that stuff up no you can't make that stuff up and and one
00:55:59
thing that people have argued you know when they say well all the information he has is what was presented in the
00:56:04
media well they're saying well he's been locked up for a long time before he chose to provide this information and
00:56:12
he's not because of his status he does not have access to the internet um so either he either he read this stuff in
00:56:20
the newspaper and has a a you know an airtight memory and remembers all this stuff or he actually had some knowledge
00:56:29
of these crimes one thing that throws it off though also when you have no evidence and he's making these strange
00:56:34
claims about the program that brainwashed him and turned him into a killer um that really kind of turns
00:56:41
those Confessions on their side we also need to talk about Clyde Hedrick uh he was someone we spoke about in part 2 he
00:56:49
was the one sentenced to 20 years in prison for the 1984 beating death of Ellen Ray be um this he wasn't sentenced
00:56:58
again for this until March of 2014 and since then Hedrick has been linked to the murders of Heidi fi and
00:57:07
Laura Miller and three unidentified women prosecutors had planned to present evidence of Hedrick linking him to the
00:57:15
murders of fi and Miller but as of this date he has not been charged with their deaths he remains in the minds of many
00:57:22
to be the prime suspect and not only the deaths of Miller and fi but Jane Doe who
00:57:28
was found in the same area someone involved in the case said that the problem is this there's no shortage of
00:57:35
women who describe hedri as an absolute monster but when it comes to The Killing
00:57:39
Fields is he the right monster Hedrick it turned out was a former neighbor of Tim Miller this is this is a strange
00:57:49
connection here Captain um they pieced this together after 2014 they figured out that he was a former neighbor of Tim
00:57:56
Millers they lived on the same Block in Dickinson this was before the Millers moved to League City in 1984 Tim Miller
00:58:04
said you know he he he became a neighbor again essentially once they moved and Tim Miller said that back from their
00:58:11
days in Dickinson that Hedrick could have seen Laura every day and given the kind of crowd that Laura had started to
00:58:18
run with there's a chance that she may have known him now Tim Miller believes Hedrick killed his Laura he also
00:58:26
believes that he killed Heidi fi and Jane Doe we also need to Circle back to William Reese as well yeah because
00:58:33
there's been an update on this suspect uh this is coming from news that just came out this month experts say that
00:58:40
William Reese Fitz serial killer profile um this was from an article that came out on August 4th so we have it states a
00:58:49
Texas man suspected in Cold Case killings of two women and two girls 20 years ago fits the profile of a cal
00:58:56
killer because he chose his victims by gender and age and derived pleasure from the control he exerted over them before
00:59:04
they died criminal experts and law enforcement officials said this on Friday August 4th
00:59:10
2017 now William Lewis ree 58 is charged with the deaths of 19-year-old Tiffany Johnson now Tiffany Johnson's death
00:59:21
doesn't have anything to do with the Texas Killing Fields story however he's remained a suspect in some of these
00:59:27
other cases and I'm happy to report that they are pressing charges against William Lewis Reese in the deaths of
00:59:34
17-year-old Jessica Cain and 12-year-old Laura Smither that we talked about today
00:59:40
good hopefully there's some justice en closure for their families Rees is also suspected of but not charged with the
00:59:48
death of 20-year-old Kelly Cox whose remains were discovered outside of Houston and identified last last year
00:59:55
Reese was already serving a 60-year prison sentence in Texas for kidnapping you had asked earlier what prison
01:00:01
sentence he got well he got 60 years for this thing um he has led police to Graves where Cain and Cox's remains were
01:00:10
found uh all four victims disappeared over a 4-month period in 1997 Johnston was from Oklahoma while
01:00:19
the other three were from Texas now Oklahoma prosecutors announced on Thursday August third that they would
01:00:25
seek the death penalty in the Johnston killing and Reese has pled not guilty he faces two more counts of murder in
01:00:32
galvaston County southeast of Houston but authorities say those charges in Texas are on hold pending the outcome of
01:00:40
Reese's Oklahoma trial right but in that trial they're going to find he was connected by DNA yeah and it seemed that
01:00:47
that kind of blew the doors open on this investigation because then we have him leading them to to the bodies of these
01:00:53
two girls that they've not been able to find for decades yeah this case is so difficult cuz one it spans 70s ' 80s 90s
01:01:01
but as we've seen um we have we don't have a lot of convictions but we have a lot of people that they look some of
01:01:08
these people are guilty of sin they just haven't been convicted so we have we have multip we have a handful of killers
01:01:14
we have 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
01:01:23
ultimately what The Killing Fields has been about um you know there have been people over the years that have argued
01:01:29
that this is all the work of one guy and unfortunally I think what we're seeing here is you know maybe it would have
01:01:35
been easier to crack this case and and save some lives along the way had that been the case but I think what we can
01:01:41
see here whether you believe some of these confessions or not it doesn't matter but but it's obvious that we have
01:01:47
the work of many different evil people in the same area well right but you can't argue with the DNA evidence that
01:01:54
that they have found yes and that's what's great that's the light at the end of this tunnel we have William ree who's
01:02:00
going to finally face charges uh in these old cold cases uh we also have Clyde Hedrick who could face charges at
01:02:07
some point and this will start taking these cases off of the books and giving some people some much needed closure
01:02:14
well yeah and so the idea that there's this one Boogeyman haunting the area it makes you wonder if this area is somehow
01:02:22
uh cursed in a way or if there's some like what what is in the water down there that is is C causing all these
01:02:31
killings we may never know but the nice thing is that we're finally getting some
01:02:36
answers to these cases and hopefully they'll continue to work them and we'll get the answers that we
01:02:42
[Music] need hope you guys enjoyed the killing field Trilogy thanks for listening and
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