A cursed stretch of land.
30 dead spanning multiple investigations and possible killers.
Could a confession letter from prison be the key to solving a decades-old cold case?
Located near Galveston, the Texas Killing Fields is a 25-acre stretch of land only a
mile from Interstate 45.
Bordering the Calder oil field and League City, the location is relatively remote and
even more so back in the 1970s.
According to CBS News, it didn't go unnoticed that the isolated nature of the spot makes
it the perfect place for taking someone else's life, unseen and unheard.
The legal ins-and-outs of the area also contribute to its suitability as a location perfect for
getting away with murder.
According to "Deliver Us: Three Decades of Murder and Redemption in the Infamous I-45/Texas
Killing Fields," the fields and surrounding small towns fall under the jurisdiction of
three separate counties.
This meant that, for much of the history of the crimes here, investigations were muddled
and dispersed amongst 11 different departments.
The nearby highway, which can quickly bring people here from far afield and that provides
a quick exit, adds yet another layer of difficulty to solving the crimes committed here.
That's not to say, however, that law enforcement has given up.
"Anything that anybody in the public knows, anything, no matter how small they think it
is, we really want them to come forward, because it may be very significant to us."
Since the early 1970s, the remains of 30 people have been recovered from the Texas Killing
Fields, mainly women and girls.
Some were quickly identified, while others languished for decades without a name to link
them to a past and a family that was surely looking for them.
The killings appear to have stopped around 2006, however.
The FBI explains that this is likely because the area has become more developed and populated
since the 1990s.
Today, it has a paved access road and a housing development has even sprung up nearby, increasing
the number of potential witnesses to any crimes committed here.
The site has also increased in notoriety and today has the attention of law enforcement,
people interested in true crime cases, and those who visit a memorial in the fields dedicated
to some of the victims.
One of the first known victims found in the Texas Killing Fields was Colette Wilson, a
13-year-old girl who was abducted from an intersection in Alvin, Texas.
According to the True Crime Edition, Wilson had just returned from band camp and was waiting
for her mother, Claire, to pick her up.
Mere minutes passed between when Colette was dropped off and when her mom arrived to find
a deserted intersection.
It soon became apparent that she was missing — perhaps taken by a car that Colette's
mother had seen on her way to pick up her daughter.
Police initially assumed that Colette was a runaway, leading the Wilson family to round
up their neighbors and form an impromptu search party.
The police finally admitted that Colette was likely abducted, but seemed to bungle the
search, throwing away potential evidence and squandering vital time.
While searching for Colette, other victims were discovered, including 14-year-old Brenda
Jones and 19-year-old Gloria Ann Gonzales.
Not long after, Colette's skeletal remains were uncovered nearby.
Given the frequency of the killings and the similarities of some of the crime scenes,
it's thought that the Texas Killing Fields have been used by one or multiple serial killers.
Texas Monthly reporter Skip Hollandsworth said that many police detectives and FBI agents
are convinced that this is the personal graveyard of a vicious serial killer.
Haunting details link some of the crimes, including the arrangement of victims' remains
beneath trees in some fields.
It's led to some investigators going so far as to suggest that they formed a kind of walking
trail, used by a single killer to linger over the remains.
A retired NASA engineer named Robert Abel was suspected of being one such killer, but
few seem to agree on whether Abel was responsible for any of the Texas Killing Field murders.
According to The Guardian, Tim Miller, the father of victim Laura Miller, was so convinced
that Abel was his daughter's killer that he stalked Abel and even reportedly held a gun
to the engineer's head in an effort to get him to confess.
Abel maintained his innocence until his death, and no evidence directly connecting him with
the killings was ever uncovered.
Miller later apologized to Abel for the harassment.
In September 1984, Laura Miller was a 16-year-old who had recently moved to League City, Texas.
According to the FBI, she showed promise in music class, but had difficulty managing a
seizure disorder and began to withdraw from both school and social life.
That September, Laura's mother drove her to a payphone so Laura could make a call to her boyfriend.
Laura said she would walk back home after the call but never reappeared at the Miller house.
Police initially told her family that she was likely a runaway, perhaps assuming that
Laura was reacting to the pressures of the recent move and her health problems.
The Guardian reports that in spite of extensive searches, they never found or heard from their
daughter again.
Laura's remains were eventually found more than two years after her disappearance, in
the same oil field on Calder Road where another woman had been found.
More remains, of women both known and unidentified, would be discovered in the same fields.
Some suspect that they were the victim of the same killer, but families haven't gotten
the closure they so desperately desire.
Laura's father, Tim, now runs a nonprofit, Texas EquuSearch, which works to locate missing
people in the United States and beyond.
The organization has helped to find over 400 living people since it was founded in 2000.
"There's always going to be that empty plate at the dinner table, but… her death wasn't in vain."
The Houston Chronicle says that Sharon Shaw and Rhonda Renee Johnson were among the four
so-called "surfer girls," who disappeared in the summer of 1971.
The two friends would often hitchhike back home, and that's exactly what they did on
August 4, 1971, the last day they were seen alive.
Later that year, Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson, who spent time in the same places
as Shaw and Johnson, also disappeared.
All four were killed, their remains later found in nearby bayous.
Michael Lloyd Self, a mechanic, was arrested in 1972 for the murders of Shaw and Johnson,
according to the Houston Chronicle.
It may have been a relief for locals to see him convicted and sentenced to life in prison,
but relief would be short lived.
While Self was locked away in prison, the killings continued.
There were also some serious problems with Self's conviction.
Chief of Police Don Morris reportedly threatened Self during the interrogation process, going
so far as to force Self to play Russian roulette with a loaded gun.
Self died in prison in 2000, with many wondering if the wrong man had been convicted after all.
"I did not kill Sharon Shaw and Renee Johnson.
It was jus all behind politics and wanting a conviction."
Kevin Edison Smith is one of the few killers with a confirmed link to remains found in
the Texas Killing Fields.
In 2012, he was convicted of capital murder for the death of Krystal Jean Baker, a 13-year-old
girl who was abducted from a Texas City convenience store in 1996.
The Houston Chronicle says that Baker, who was a great-niece of Norma Jean Baker, who
was also known by her stage name, Marilyn Monroe, had argued with her grandmother and
stormed out of the house.
She called her mother from a pay phone at the convenience store and then was never heard
from again.
Baker's killer was finally identified when clothing recovered from the crime scene was
tested for DNA evidence.
It matched a sample taken from Smith at an earlier arrest.
Smith admitted to abducting and killing Baker, then leaving her remains beneath a bridge.
Authorities also questioned Smith about other unsolved murder cases related to the Texas
Killing Fields.
As the decades pass, advances in technology are helping to reveal the identities of remains
found in the Texas Killing Fields.
The Washington Post says that in 2019, two women previously known only as Jane Doe and
Janet Doe were identified as Audrey Lee Cook and Donna Prudhomme via DNA testing.
For cases that had seemingly stalled out decades ago, it was a hugely significant development
and one that proved the power of DNA analysis.
Though it's still unknown who took their lives, the news brought some closure to Cook and
Prudhomme's families.
Cook was a 30-year-old mechanic who had moved to Houston for work and, according to ABC13,
last contacted her family in 1985.
Prudhomme was a mother of two who was last seen in the summer of 1991.
Technology may be helping law enforcement to identify the victims found in the Texas
Killing Fields, but the names of perpetrators are even more difficult to pin down.
One man has received plenty of attention for his possible link to multiple crimes in the
area, as Houston Public Media reports.
In the 1990s, Edward Harold Bell was serving a 70-year sentence for murder.
From his prison cell, he claimed that he killed 11 girls linked to the Texas Killing Fields.
He referred to them as the "eleven who went to heaven" and provided names for four of
his reported victims, as well as details like hair color and the years he committed the crimes.
Bell died in 2019, leaving behind little real evidence for authorities to confirm his story.
DNA may have provided some insights, but it was impossible to recover it from some of
the evidence, which had been collected decades ago.
Some have also speculated that Bell falsely confessed to gain attention and notoriety.
Yet, as the Houston Chronicle reports, it's hard for investigators to ignore the detailed
confession letter Bell left behind.
That letter includes details that line up eerily well with the facts of some cases,
and if it means closure for some heartbroken families, well, that's just one more mystery
that may remain buried in the Killing Fields.
"It may be labeled a cold case, that doesn't mean it's just sitting on a shelf, not being
worked; it's being worked actively at FBI."
Authorities are actively looking for leads relating to the Texas Killing Fields murders.
Anyone with information is encouraged to visit tips.fbi.gov, or reach out to their local FBI office.