}); In Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields, his ex-wife's daughter outlines Hedrick's predatory behaviour when she was . Moreover, there was nothing in common between the four victims except for the location where their bodies had been disposed of their age range, styles, appearances, and physiques were all different. We are one of the worlds fastest growing Do I really look like someone who would want to kill pretty young girls?. Although he has a history of violence and worked for another suspect Robert Abel. In League City, Texas, is where the notorious murder spree known as the "Killing Fields" has originated. Skip Hollandsworth specializes in long-form narratives. His name was Robert Abel, and he was so eager to assist the police the day the fourth body was found that he helped them clear brush in the area and let them use fourteen of his horses and his backhoe free of charge. Teenage boys would drive past his stablesand shout out, killer. She had been reported missing by her family in . The first one was of 23-year-old Heide Fye, who went missing on October 10, 1983, only to be discovered almost six months later. When Robert Abel, a NASA engineer who ran the Stardust horseback rides on Calder Road came under suspicion, Tim Miller confronted him with a revolver and accused him of being a serial killer. I was about to pull the trigger when I realized that it wouldnt have mattered, Miller told me. hitType: 'event', Audrey had disappeared from the Houston area around December 1985, whereas the Nassau Bay resident Donna had gone missing in July 1991. The Astrodomes Decline From Eighth Wonder to Eighth Blunder of the World, The Top 50 Texas BBQ Joints: 2021 Edition, The Best Little Steakhouse in Texas Turns Forty, A Backsliding Joint Got New Owners and a Whole New Level of Barbecue, Miranda Lamberts Five Must-have Home Goods, A Fredericksburg Couple Forges a New Path With Their Cast-Iron Pans, Another, Quieter Comeback for Billy Gillispie. With the passing of the years, its harder to deny the probability that a serial killer has been at work since as far back as 1971, when seven young women were murdered over a four-county region in twelve months time. Or was he just trying to be helpful? Before leaving, Paula told Bittner he needed to talk to Cindy Jacobs, the woman Abel had been married to for 41 days in 1989. The Texas Killing Fields comprise a particular plain near I-45 off Calder Road in League City. Shed walked down there to use a pay phone on September 10, 1984, just to never be seen or heard from alive again. And although two photos were of a semi-nude woman, she later told the police that she had willingly posed for Abel when they were dating. pg.acq.push(function() { "Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields" is about the victims and the suspects of the famous killings that happened in Texas, mainly around a stretch of I-45 in the late 80s. By conducting lengthy interviews with many such killers already behind bars, the agents have come up with a list of common denominators seen in the killers childhood, in their behavior as adults, and in the way they carry out their crimes. Yet, nothing has been officially corroborated, meaning all four homicides, unfortunately, remain unsolved to this day. He always denied having any implication in the affair, and no physical evidence was ever retrieved. I didnt kill any of those girls. He seems like someone who should be washing windows instead of being a police detective.. It was on April 4, 1984, when a womans dog suddenly ran off into the wilderness near the field, but the shocking aspect was that he returned with a human skull in his mouth. A few days later I returned to League City. But the fact was that he was one of the brightest people down there., In 1978, after 21 years of marriage, the Abels divorced. Why wouldnt I be? he asked me. And there were other occasions when I felt as if Abel talked a little too much about the allegations against him. Again, Abel just shrugged. Willie Payne, a respected private investigator hired by some of the parents to help locate their missing daughters, says he cant imagine that Abel would have been dumb enough to leave three of the girls lying within yards of his property line. But Bittner has an answer for that too. The League City Police Department naturally wound up under increasing pressure to nab a culprit, and they came to believe they'd found one, courtesy of an FBI profile that matched a local: Robert. Whenever livestock died on his pastureland, she added, he left them out in the open so their rotting corpses could be ravaged by coyotes and other scavengers. However, after Tim Miller . eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), I had no reason to ask except out of curiosity, Bittner says. This was despite the fact that an affidavit had Abel marked as a serial sexual offender who showed signs of mad behavior that is often seen with serial killers. As per reports, once Robert became a suspect in the Calder Field murder investigation, people began alienating him from their lives. He left threatening messages on Abel's answering machine and claimed he held a gun to the man's head after one night of heavy drinking. My life has been destroyed, my reputation ruined, Abel told me when I first met him earlier this year. ga('ads.send', { if(document.querySelector("#google_image_div")){ Even after all that time, Id find myself running in there, calling her name, believing that she was back home with us., The number of mothers and fathers left to grieve is staggering. Abel also had no criminal record or had ever been in trouble with the law before. All suspicions are based on behavorial clues and psychological profiling by the FBI. Speech, Jim Jordan's Crime Hearing Takes Surprising Turns, China's 'Artificial Sun' Smashes Nuclear Fusion Record, Putin Issues Ominous Warning About How Russian Navy Could be Deployed, Who Is Ralph Yarl? Nevertheless, upon following several clues that led to dead ends, authorities finally zeroed in on local resident Robert Abel, who owned a ranch right beside Calder Field, and was a previous employee of NASA. In the occasion you've heard of the so-called Texas Killing Fields, there's a correct likelihood that you just occur to be from the Lone Star Dispute. They vacuumed the carpet, looking for hairs of the victims; confiscated three .22-caliber weapons to see if any of them matched the bullet found next to one of the bodies; hauled away more than 6,200 slides and photographs; took a gold tooth found on a dresser to see if it came from the mouth of one of the women; and clipped a cord off a curtain to see if it matched a strangulation mark. The four killings remain shrouded in mystery and ex-Nasa engineer Robert Abel was also among the suspects accused. But earlier this spring, he closed Stardust Trailrides (Nobody was coming out any more to ride because they were scared of me), gave up his lease on the thousand acres, sold his cattle, and moved most of his horses back to the family ranch near Bellville, and started spending most of his time there. With Netflix's 'Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields' living up to its title in every way imaginable, we get a complete insight into the dark, twisted, sordid side of human nature many times over. As heard in The Texas Killing Fields, local League City man Robert Abel was linked to the murders, but he has never been convicted. You wouldnt be intimidated by leaving those bodies in your own back yard., Since Bittners promotion to assistant police chief in April 1997, the new League City detective on the case, Marty Grant, has raised the money to put up a billboard along I-45 asking for help solving the murders, and he has had a small retention pond on the old oil field drained because of a single comment Abel made last year when Grant paid him a courtesy call to tell him he was now running the investigation. Descended from a family that came to Texas seventeen years before the Civil War, Abel was raised on a ranch in Bellville, a tiny town between Houston and Austin. Eventually, around July 2005, 65-year-old Robert William Abel was driving a golf car when he suddenly stopped right on the nearby railway tracks, allowing the train to hit him. . Law enforcement investigated Robert Abel, a known sex offender, but was not able to link him to the crimes. He suggested that Abel left the womens bodies on the pastureland because he knew theyd be ravaged by animals. eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), When investigations into Millers missing body were being made, another corpse was found, who wasnt identified until years later as Audrey Lee Cook, a mechanic who was last seen alive in 1985. At one point in the 1990s, former Nasa engineer Robert Abel was a suspect in the Texas Killing Field murders. When I was working on a story about the murders, I too focused on Abel (Is Robert Abel Getting Away With Murder?, October 1999). Once again, without eyewitnesses and only scant physical evidence, the police were stuck. His property was next to an abandoned oil field, known as the killing fields, where the remains of four young women had been found between 1984 and 1991. Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields is streaming on Netflix now. There have been few crimes more haunting in Texas than the killings of several young women who lived in towns located along the fifty-mile coastal stretch between Houston and Galveston. hitType: 'event', A couple of detectives think youre talking to me because you want to draw attention to yourself, I told him. ga('ads.send', { eventAction: 'click_ads' Several young women were disappearing mysteriously. Since he had owned the fields, Robert Abel came under suspicion, especially when he had . Matamoros Was Once Relatively Safe for Texans. He was hit by a train while traveling on his golf cart. His stepdaughter while out riding located another set of skeletal remains. However, there was no evidence linking him to the crime, according to The. Many people who live in the surrounding towns and bedroom communities wont come near the place. He is a former NASA engineer. Then he turned, got into his pickup, and headed down the dirt road, away from the killing fields, disappearing behind the dust like a ghost. In fact, they dont have any. A 2022 Netflix docuseries examined some of the deaths referenced in this piece. (Paula and Cindy would not be interviewed, but they have not retracted the sworn statements they gave Bittner.) Abel led many of the trail rides himself over the property and through his leased land. Tim Miller, whose sixteen-year-old daughter, Laura, was found dead in the killing fields, is so convinced of Abels guilt that he has left threatening messages on his answering machine, demanding that he confess. It's very likely that you're sitting down in front of the TV and are currently searching for something to watch on Netflix. Photo by The Signal reporter Agueda Jimenez In 1993, a search was conducted in Abel's home but no evidence was found connecting him to the murders. Such comments might have sounded incredible to Bittner and his fellow officers. Apocalypse Sow: Can Anything Stop the Feral Hog Invasion? One suspect was Robert Abel, a former NASA engineer, who owned property next to the Calder Road fields. The suspect is Mark Roland Stallings, 34, who worked on the Calder Road property that came to be known as the "killing fields" after the bodies of four young women were found buried on the. The oil field where the four women were found is located next to the property and land that Abel owned in League City. In League City, where Abel has lived for sixteen years, officers have searched his home and questioned his friends and family. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Youtube/TexasEquuSearch100 Intelligent, methodical.sounds exactly like how a scientist would be described. Like Jane Doe, this woman was never identified. During one of our meetings, Abel loaned me a box of legal documents about the case and about himself. },false) It was Paula, he said, who had the fits of rageI was scared to death of her at one point, to be honest with you, and I told the police thatand he said Cindy Jacobs was angry with him after the honeymoon only because he wouldnt put her name on his checking account and didnt let her see his will. The whole thing seemed fruitless but understandablea way for a father to deal with his grief. One afternoon in 1994, unable to contain his grief any longer, Miller called Abel and said that he planned to kidnap him, take him to Las Vegas, and bury him alive in a sand dune outside of the city. However, his life took an even darker turn after suspicion faded. One of the best films from 2016 and nobody saw it. pg.acq.push(function() { Nows Your Chance. Just 20 days to my birthday, reads the note written by Laura Smither, an aspiring ballerina from the quiet town of Friendswood. Hold it! one of the workers yelled, reaching down and pulling up the remnants of a purse. window.adsContainer = {"position2":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Above_Next_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position3":{"code":"Article_Mobile_300x250_ATF_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position4":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position5":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle1_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position6":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle2_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position7":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle3_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position8":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle4_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position9":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle5_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position10":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle6_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position11":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle7_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position12":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle8_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position13":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle9_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position14":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle10_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position15":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle11_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position16":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle12_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250}} He remains unapologetic about his investigation and the statements he made about Abel in the search warrant, despite his admission during a deposition that the bulk of his knowledge came secondhand from [Abels] wives. In 1994 Abel filed a lawsuit against him for slander, but it was quickly dismissed by a judge who said that he had only been identified as a suspect. . Then, mere months later, another local resident, Laura Miller, also disappeared from a nearby store. For several seconds Abel was silent before each site, as if he were visiting a church graveyard. However, he was never arrested because there was never enough evidence to incriminate him. Lauren Larson is a former features writer and editor. But she never made it. What Is The Docu-Series 'Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields' About? That Seems to Be Changing. I added that Miller planned to keep digging with the assistance of the search dogs, which could easily smell decomposed bodies buried as far back as fifteen years ago. Because they were placed within a thousand feet of each other, a private investigator who has studied the scene many times thinks the killer created a walking path for himself to visually inspect his trophies one by one. Indeed, many police detectives and FBI agents are convinced that this is the personal graveyard of a vicious serial killer. I wouldnt know how to kill.. The three-part series explores the unsolved murders of four young women whose remains were found in and around the same location in Texas. The League City killings appear to be the work of what the FBI literature calls an organized killer, someone who carefully plans his brutal acts. MEAWW is an initialism for Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide. Investigators have flown over his land in helicopters and brought in cadaver dogs to look for bodies. All I want to do is prove my innocence, he said. He had wanted to check on the horses he still kept there, all of which came up and nuzzled him. }) robert peters obituary; marion county police scanner frequencies; buffalo, missouri obituaries; mike mcdermott steve wilkos; k028613 cross reference; fedex express employee covid policy; . He lived next to an oil field in League City that is infamously known as the Killing Fields. gads_event = event; But he could never shake loose of the past. None of the dead womens clothing or jewelry was found. Right here, shouted Tim Miller, a grim, wiry building contractor who was at the controls of a large backhoe. Hedrick was released into an unknown halfway house from prison, just eight years into his 20-year sentence. Daniel Vaughn is the countrys first barbecue editor, and he has eaten more barbecue than you have. 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