Killing Fields Trilogy /// Part 3 /// 134 | Forensic Files

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

Part 3 of 3

TrueCrimeGarage.com

There is a large plot of land about a mile from interstate 45 in south Texas called the Killing Field. This spot along with the stretch of I-45 that runs from Houston to Galveston have claimed many victims and held many secrets. Since 1971 homicides of girls and young women have occurred here at an alarming rate. There have been over thirty murders and several women who have vanished. This story will span three different Texas Counties. Twelve different law enforcement agencies worked these cases. Join us as we take a trip to one of our favorite states to discuss one of America's most notorious serial cases.

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Brief Summary

The episode covers the Texas Killing Fields, focusing on victims and investigations from the 1990s, including confessions and ongoing search efforts.

Key points

The Killing Fields: A Notorious Plot. Discover the dark history of the Killing Fields and the lives lost within.
Tim Miller's Descent into Anger. Tim Miller's grief leads him to confront a suspect in his daughter's murder.
Confession from a Life Sentence. A prison inmate claims to have information about multiple murders linked to the Killing Fields.
The Janet Doe Murder Confession. Stallings claims he picked up a girl who wanted to die during sex.
The Discovery of Laura Smither. Laura Smither, 12, went missing after jogging and was found dead 17 days later.
Sandra's Narrow Escape. Sandra was abducted but managed to escape and provide a detailed description of her attacker.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Sometimes evil is a place.

3:21WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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