TEXAS KILLING FIELDS Ep. 2 | “1980s: Calder Road”

After a pause, the disappearances begin again in 1983 when Heide Fye vanishes after using a payphone in League City, Texas. A year later, Laura Miller vanishes after using the same payphone. They are two of four female victims whose remains are found in a field along Calder Road in League City between 1984 and 1991. While the police try to identity the other two victims, they hone in on two potential suspects. Go to Incogni.com/infamous or use code INFAMOUS at checkout to get 60% off an annual plan with Incogni! Thanks to our sponsor, Quince! Use this link for Free Shipping and 365-day returns: Quince.com/infamousamerica Thanks to our sponsor, Rocket Money! Use this link to start saving today: RocketMoney.com/InfamousA Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com or @blackbarrelmedia on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:11Speaker 00

  À 1 heure de matin, le journaliste américain Sidney Schoenberg pensait qu'il allait être exécuté. Schoenberg, plus un photographe freelance américain, un journaliste britannique, leur chauffeur, et un journaliste local qui a également agi comme le traducteur de Schoenberg, avaient juste quitté un groupe de bureaux d'exploitation d'un hôpital quand ils étaient entourés par des soldats qui commençaient à pleurer contre eux. Les soldats provenaient du régime totalitaire connu sous le nom de la "Camere Rouge". C'était en mai 1975, la Camere Rouge commençait sa takeover de Cambodge, et peu de gens dans le monde occidental prenaient attention. L'évacuation finale dramatique des Américains de Saigon avait juste eu lieu deux semaines plus tôt. Et à ce moment-là, la saison de 1975,

• 0:57Speaker 00

  le monde était saturé par dix années de histoires non-stop sur la guerre américaine en Vietnam. Dans les États-Unis, il y avait beaucoup de turbulence pour dominer les titres sans lire plus sur l'Asie du Sud-Ouest. Donc, peu de gens s'y sont pris comme la Camere Rouge, dirigée par un dictateur viseux appelé Pol Pot, a pris la contrôle de Cambodge et a commencé à tuer systématiquement des gens. Pendant quatre ans, commençant en saison de 1975, la Camere Rouge a tué entre 1 million et 3 millions de personnes. À ce matin de mai, Sidney Schoenberg de The New York Times pensait qu'il serait l'un d'entre eux. Mais le traducteur local, Dieth Prawn, a sauvé la vie de Schoenberg et celle des autres.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Prawn a convaincu les soldats de libérer le journaliste avant qu'il-même ne soit pris à un camp de travail. Cinq mois plus tard, Prawn a échappé au camp et a fait son chemin en Thaïlande, où il continuait à faire éclaircir l'attention des horreurs qui se passaient en Cambodge. Certaines de ces horreurs étaient les zones désolées dans le pays où les soldats ont tiré et tué des milliers de personnes et les ont jetés dans des tombeaux massifs. Le journaliste cambodge Dieth Prawn est crédité pour appeler ces tombeaux de tombeaux éloignés "les champs de la mort".

• 2:15Speaker 00

  A year later, in 1976, Sidney Shomburg won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his stories about the Khmer Rouge and his experiences with his friend Dieth Pran. In 1984, their story became a movie. The powerful and impactful film, titled simply "The Killing Fields," starred Sam Waterston as Sidney Shomburg and Hang No as Dieth Pran. It debuted in theaters in the UK in November 1984 and in American theaters on February 1, 1985. One year later, on February 2, 1986, the remains of two young women were found in a desolate, overgrown field in League City, Texas.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  They were the second and third murder victims who were found in that field. The skeletal remains of the first victim had been found a few yards away from the newest discoveries. All three victims had been placed at the bases of trees, and it seemed pretty clear that a killer was using the field as an open-air grave site. No one knew how many more victims might be found in the field, and so it didn't take long for people to adapt the title of a recent movie to fit the tragic and frightening events in League City. Dieth Pran had called the desolate grave sites in Cambodia "The Killing Fields." Ten years later, a field on Calder Road in League City, Texas, became known as "The Killing Field."

• 3:38Speaker 00

  Over the course of three decades, more than 20 murders along Interstate 45 between Houston and Galveston would take on the name "Texas Killing Fields."

• 3:55Speaker 00

  From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and in this mini-series, we're telling the stories of the unsolved cases of young girls and women who went missing or were found murdered outside Houston, Texas, from the 1970s to the 1990s. Their stories are collectively known as "The Texas Killing Fields." This is episode 2, 1980s, Calder Road.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  In October of 1983, 25-year-old Heidi Fie and her five-year-old daughter were living with Heidi's parents in League City, Texas. Heidi was saving money so she and her boyfriend could buy a place of their own, and they were going to start with a trailer home they found up in Houston. For the moment, Heidi, who was called Heedy by her family, worked as a waitress at the Texas Moon Bar. On October 7th, Heidi's boyfriend was at the trailer home while Heidi helped her father with yard work at the house in League City. That afternoon, Heidi told her father Joe that she was going to catch a ride up to Houston to spend the night at the new place with her boyfriend, and she would come back to League City the next day. Heidi left her family's house and went to a convenience store

• 5:13Speaker 00

  about a half a mile away on the corner of West Main Street and Hobbs Road. She used a payphone outside the front of the business, presumably to call friends to try to find a ride to Houston. The clerk who worked at the store saw her and recognized her. Heidi was a local, and she'd been in there many times. The phone call was the last verified sighting of Heidi Fie.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  That evening, when she didn't show up at the new house in Houston, her boyfriend and her family became worried. As her family searched the area around their home in League City, they learned that she'd been at the convenience store less than a mile from their house. But that was where the trail went cold. Sometime after using the payphone, she disappeared. Naturally, Heidi's family went to the police. Her family received a response that was becoming standard. Heidi was an adult, and she left on her own. She'll come back if she wants to. The police advised the family to, quote, "Give it a few days, and don't put up flyers or go to the media." Heidi's family, led by her 60-year-old father Joe, started a diligent search.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Despite having had a stroke, walking with a cane, and worrying about his memory, Joe trudged through the surrounding fields, searching for his daughter. He made calls, tracked down leads, and conducted interviews all over town. He visited the Texas Moon and other bars late at night and in the early morning hours. When he returned home, he dictated his thoughts and findings into a tape recorder Heidi had given him for Christmas. He presented the police with lists of people to interview, but the leads went nowhere. Heartbreak and frustration mounted for Joe and his family. They couldn't convince anyone in authority that there was no chance Heidi would abandon her daughter, her family, her job, and her boyfriend who was fixing up a new house that

• 7:09Speaker 00

  they had been saving money to buy. Six months passed with no news. And then on April 4th, 1984, a boy was out playing with his dog a few miles from the home of Heidi's family. The boy's family lived in a house that backed up to a field which was overgrown with waist-high grass and brush, and scattered with trees. The dog darted into the field and returned moments later carrying a human skull in its teeth. The family notified the police. Search parties combed the field and found the skeletal remains of a female who was lying on her back under a tree. Dental records confirmed the remains belonged to 25-year-old Heidi Fie, who had lived just two miles from the field.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Advanced decomposition limited the evidence, but the medical examiner ruled the cause of death as "trauma." Numerous cracked ribs revealed that she had been severely beaten, and the initial police assumption that Heidi had left voluntarily was now painfully wrong. Homicide detectives began working the case, but there was little they could do. Heidi Fie had simply vanished after using a payphone at a convenience store a half a mile from her family's house. And then, it happened again. Another female from the same neighborhood used the same payphone at the same convenience store and disappeared without a trace, until she was found in the same field.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  Today, payphones are novelty items to be used as decorations or museum exhibits about the old days. They live on in junk shops, or galleries, or faded film memories. But in the 1980s, they were lifelines, and they were everywhere. The telephone industry deregulated in the early 80s, and America's payphone count doubled from the previous decade. Payphones were at every rest stop, gas station, convenience store, hotel, motel, and roadside diner. There were banks of them at airports, train stations, subway stations, and bus stations. There were payphones standing on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere for emergencies.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  And so, what were the odds that two people who lived in the same neighborhood would disappear after using the same payphone at the same convenience store, and those two disappearances were not connected? One year after 25-year-old Heidi Fie disappeared after using the payphone at the shop on the corner of West Main Street and Hobbs Road in League City, 16-year-old Laura Miller stepped up to the same payphone. Laura's family had just moved one community north along Interstate 45 from Dickinson to League City, and their home phone was not yet connected. Even though the move wasn't very far, it meant Laura would go to a new school.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Laura's parents, Tim and Jan Miller, hoped for a fresh start for their daughter. Laura was a bright student who loved music and excelled in academics and athletics while maintaining a wide circle of friends. But she was also more vulnerable to sickness than other kids. At six months old, Laura contracted a serious illness. Her temperature spiked so high that she slipped into a coma for two days. Her parents watched their infant daughter hover between life and death until the fever eventually subsided. Laura appeared to make a complete recovery, but the high temperature had scarred some

• 10:43Speaker 00

  brain tissue, which set the stage for seizures that would emerge years later.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  For several years, the seizures remained under control, which allowed Laura to live like a normal teenager. She starred in choir, competed in sports, and enjoyed socializing with friends. But then she caught the flu. The fever returned, and with it came the seizures. Laura's lifestyle changed. She stopped choir and sports and began skipping classes. She was scared of the embarrassment she would feel if she had an episode at school, and she became depressed. Daily medication eventually restored some stability to Laura's life, but her parents recognized she needed a new beginning. They didn't want to move her away from her friends, they just wanted a new school district.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  So, the Miller family moved four miles up Interstate 45, from Dickinson to League City, and they settled into a house that was only four blocks from the home of Heidi Fies family. On the morning of September 10, 1984, Laura asked her father if her boyfriend Vernon could visit that afternoon and hang out for the evening. Tim Miller agreed, and said they would barbecue while unpacking boxes. Since their landline telephone had not been connected, Jan Miller volunteered to drive Laura to the payphone at the convenience store less than a half a mile from their new house. Jan was on her way to work anyway, so the quick stop would be fine.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  At the convenience store, Jan waited in the car while Laura used the payphone to talk to Vernon. But as teenagers have done since the invention of the device, Laura and Vernon kept talking. Jan Miller waited as long as possible before telling Laura to wrap up the conversation. Jan needed to get to work. Laura asked for a few more minutes, and she said she could walk home. Jan wasn't concerned. Their house was a straight shot down the road and an easy walk. It wasn't in the middle of the night or bad weather, so she agreed. That afternoon, Tim and Jan arrived home from work to an empty house. They assumed Laura must be out walking with Vernon, as the kids had done all the time at their old house in Dickinson.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  But then the doorbell rang. Vernon stood on their doorstep. He was equally confused about Laura's whereabouts. They had talked on the phone and made plans for that afternoon, but since the phone call, he hadn't seen or heard from Laura. The three immediately searched the neighborhood and checked nearby hospitals. The most likely explanation was that Laura had suffered a seizure while walking home, and someone had taken her to the emergency room. But they found nothing.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  The next morning, the Millers filed a missing person report with the League City Police. They explained that Laura was last seen at the local convenience store payphone the previous morning. And since Heidi's family had followed the instructions of the police and they had not publicized their daughter's disappearance, the Millers didn't know that Heidi had vanished after using that same payphone almost exactly 11 months earlier. The League City Police had found Heidi's remains in a field along Calder Road five months before Laura went missing, but they dismissed Laura as a runaway like Heidi. Heidi had a loving family, a daughter, a boyfriend, a steady job, and a new house to renovate.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Laura had a loving family, a boyfriend, and a medical condition which required medication twice a day. If it was absurd to think Heidi would abandon everything to run away, then it was potentially life-threatening to think Laura would run away without her medication. And then, a few days after Laura disappeared, her father, Tim, learned about Heidi Fie. Heidi's family lived just four blocks away. Tim implored the League City Police to search the Calder Road field for Laura, but they refused. When he asked for the location of the field so he could search himself, they said it was private property and a waste of time. Laura was a missing person. Heidi had been murdered. The police said there was no link between the cases.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  But then, Tim learned of the case of Ellen Beeson, and he quickly had a suspect.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  Ellen Beeson had vanished from League City three months earlier, between the discovery of Heidi Fie's remains and the disappearance of Laura Miller. Ellen was 29 years old, and she lived in the small city of Friendswood next to League City. On the night of July 29, 1984, Ellen went to the Texas Moon nightclub in League City with her friend Candy Gifford and Candy's husband. In what would become another similarity between cases, Heidi Fie had been a waitress at the Texas Moon until she had been killed 10 months earlier. On that night at the end of July, problems started when Clyde Hedrick walked into the Texas Moon. In his signature black cowboy hat and black boots, Clyde had a swagger and a presence,

• 15:55Speaker 00

  and Candy Gifford was having an affair with him. Before long, Candy and her husband were in a fight, and they both left early. But Ellen Beeson stayed at the bar, and she quickly connected with Clyde. Later that night, they left the bar and drove to a sand pit down in Dickinson where Clyde lived. The sand pit was full of water, and according to Clyde, Ellen went skinny dipping while Clyde sat in his truck drinking beer. Sometime later, they returned to the bar, where Clyde said Ellen climbed into a truck with people Clyde didn't recognize and drove away. That version of events, Clyde's first story, surfaced a couple days later when people close to Ellen realized she was missing.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  The Galveston County Sheriff's Department, which took the lead on Ellen's case, believed Clyde Hedrick's account of the evening that ended with Ellen leaving in a truck with strangers. But fortunately, Ellen's friend Candy Gifford did not believe it. For months, Candy pressured Clyde for more information about that night until he finally snapped and screamed at her, "You want to know where your friend is? Get in the car."

• 17:08Speaker 00

  Clyde drove Candy to the Galveston Causeway, which doubled as a dumping ground for unwanted appliances and car parts and all kinds of junk. He pulled back a car bench seat, and Candy stared at the remains of her friend. Ellen had vanished in July. It was now November. Six months of exposure to the elements and animals had reduced Ellen's remains to bones lying among trash in the causeway. Candy recognized Ellen only by the necklace Ellen had worn the night they went to the Texas Moon. Clyde threatened Candy and her family into silence, and his intimidation worked for another six months. But after an explosive fight with Clyde the following July, exactly one year after Ellen's disappearance,

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Candy finally went to the police. She led investigators to Ellen's remains. The decomposition appeared to eliminate any clear evidence and cause of death. But now Clyde could no longer deny knowing Ellen was dead, and his story shifted when police questioned him. This time, he claimed she drowned while swimming. He said that as he sat in his truck drinking beer, he didn't hear any more noises coming from the sandpit. He found Ellen floating on the water, and he panicked. He briefly considered taking her to a hospital, but they'd both been drinking, and he believed he would be blamed for her death. So he drove her to the causeway and dumped her body with the trash. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death "unknown",

• 18:39Speaker 00

  a ruling which would cause problems in the future. But for now, the ruling and the lack of physical evidence meant prosecutors couldn't charge Clyde Hedrick with homicide. They had to settle for a charge called "abuse of corpse", for the reckless manner in which Hedrick disposed of Ellen's body. He was convicted, received one year in county jail, and paid a $2,000 fine. And as Tim Miller learned all of those details about Clyde Hedrick, Tim also learned a startling new fact: Clyde Hedrick had lived just two houses away from the Miller family before the Millers moved. Clyde Hedrick knew Laura Miller.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  Tim Miller investigated Clyde Hedrick and discovered Hedrick had lived only two doors down from the Millers in Dickinson before the family moved to League City. Laura’s friends confirmed that they all knew who Clyde was, and Laura avoided him as much as possible. Heidi Fie’s father, Joe, also named Clyde Hedrick as a suspect. Clyde was a well-known regular at the Texas Moon where Heidi worked. Heidi’s niece Nina remembered Clyde visiting their house, and Nina felt uncomfortable around him. Heidi and Laura disappeared after using the same payphone less than a mile from their homes. And in between their disappearances, Clyde picked up Ellen Beeson at the Texas Moon,

• 20:05Speaker 00

  and she died in his presence later that night. The problem was, there was no evidence to link Clyde to Heidi’s disappearance and murder, or Laura’s disappearance. When Ellen Beeson’s remains were found and Clyde Hedrick was arrested, Laura Miller had been missing for ten months. The helplessness drove Tim Miller to drink heavily to numb the pain. And then seven more months passed with no news. The relationship between Tim and Jan was crumbling. On February 1, 1986, anxiety and alcohol sent Tim Miller to the hospital. The next day, an article in the local newspaper delivered the news no one wanted.

• 20:51Speaker 00

  Two more female skeletons had been found in the Calder Road field. Two kids riding dirt bikes had followed a foul smell to a pile of human bones. When the police arrived and searched the area, the same area Tim Miller had begged them to search a year and a half earlier, they found another set of remains a few yards away from the first. Jan Miller raced to the League City Police Station, demanding to know if one of the bodies was her daughter. After comparing dental X-rays, the police confirmed the second set of remains was Laura Miller. For seventeen months, Laura lay in a field just two miles from her family's home. And because of the decomposition, her cause of death was recorded as unknown.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  The remains found near Laura were not as decomposed, indicating they hadn't been there as long. The medical examiner recorded the cause of death for that female as a gunshot. A .22 caliber bullet was lodged in her spine. She had a distinct feature, a large gap between her two front teeth, and she was estimated to be around thirty years old. With those facts, authorities hoped for an easy identification and that the family might provide information to assist all three investigations. But no missing person reports in the area matched the description, and her remains were labeled Jane Doe. Jane Doe's remains had been in the field for about two months, yet they provided no more clues about the killer than Laura's remains. At that point,

• 22:21Speaker 00

  all hope rested on an article of clothing. A heavily stained, blue, men's western-style button-down shirt was found near Laura's body. But there was little evidence that could be gathered from it at the time. In 1984, forensic DNA technology was in its infancy. It wouldn't become a common and reliable asset for at least another fifteen years. So the shirt could be a valuable clue which could break the case wide open, or it could be nothing. Like the Galveston Causeway where Ellen Beeson's remains were found, the Calder Road field was a dumping ground for anything people wanted to throw away. The shirt could have been discarded by someone who had no connection to the crimes,

• 23:03Speaker 00

  and it was purely a coincidence that it ended up near Laura Miller's body. Tim Miller's fury made him obsessed. His marriage fell apart. He lost his job. He relentlessly searched the field for Laura's clothes, for more clues and for more bodies. At night, he went to the field and fired a handgun in the air to try to bait the killer or to see if the police would show up. No one ever did. For a field so close to civilization, it might as well have been in the middle of nowhere. As Amy Cane and Mann, director of the movie The Texas Killing Fields, put it in an interview at the Tribeca Film Festival. "I understand why, if you were a killer, you would take people there.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  It's right along the interstate, but if you were to scream, no one would hear you. If you were to run, there's no place to go. You're out in the open, but hidden at the same time."

• 24:01Speaker 00

  In the case of each victim at the Calder Road Field, the body had been placed at the base of a tree. The ritualistic nature of the scenes sparked terror throughout League City and the surrounding communities. The term serial killer was now familiar to many people, and it had been applied retroactively to infamous killers from the 1970s like Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, and John Wayne Gacy, all of whom returned to specific places to dispose of at least some of their victims. In League City, by 1986, it looked like an unidentified killer was doing the same thing. Initially, for many people like Tim Miller, the identity of the killer was Clyde Hedrick, even though it couldn't be proved.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  But five years passed with no significant progress on the cases of the Calder Road victims. And then on September 8th, 1991, a couple who were on a horseback ride discovered the body of a fourth female victim in the Calder Road Field. Her body was discovered more quickly than the others, and it clearly revealed her cause of death as strangulation. But other than that fact, police faced the same problems they'd had with Jane Doe. The newest victim had no identification, and there was no missing person report based on her physical description. There were no witnesses to a crime and no clues that pointed toward a killer. The police were forced to call her Janet Doe until they could solve the mystery of her identity.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  At that point, the FBI stepped in to try to shine more light on the identity of the killer. The FBI's criminal profilers listed likely characteristics: proximity to the Calder Road field, highly intelligent, anger issues, cruelty toward animals, troubled relationships with women, and sexual violence tendencies. Clyde Hedrick had all of those traits, except one: high intelligence. But as it happened, a man named Robert Abel lived right next to the Calder Road field, and he had all of the traits.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Robert Abel was a former NASA engineer, so he obviously had the "highly intelligent" characteristic covered. He moved to League City in 1983, just as the murders began. He leased land close to the Calder Road field during the first three killings, and then, in 1990, one year before the discovery of the final body, he purchased 11 acres right next to the field. They were for his business: Stardust Trail Rides, in which he guided customers on horseback through the woods. Robert Abel had proximity and high intelligence. He had three ex-wives and a history of dominant behavior. That checked three more boxes. He was known to beat horses.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  When they died, he left their bodies to rot in the field. He met all the criteria of the FBI profile, and he also inserted himself into the investigation, a behavior typical of guilty parties. He offered excessive help when authorities searched his land. A search of his house revealed newspaper clippings about the Calder Road killings, and a 22 caliber pistol, the same type used to kill Jane Doe. Investigators found what appeared to be a trophy, a tooth that could have been from one of the victims. All the signs pointed to Abel, and those signs satisfied the League City Police. Before thoroughly investigating the supposed evidence, and certainly before arresting or charging Abel,

• 27:34Speaker 00

  the League City Police released a public affidavit that stated: "NASA scientist Robert Abel could be the sexual serial killer who murdered four young women."

• 27:46Speaker 00

  The statement was carefully worded with the qualifying description "could be", but it had the predictable effect of convincing most people that Robert Abel was the killer. It definitely convinced Tim Miller. Tim was the most vocal advocate for the victims, and now he switched his focus from Clyde Hedrick to Robert Abel. Tim found a target for his pent-up rage, and he began tormenting Robert Abel.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  For years, Tim Miller stalked Robert Abel around town, left threatening voicemails, led an excavation on Robert's property to search for evidence, and one time pressed a gun to Robert's head and demanded a confession. Robert refused to confess. Tim spared Robert for one reason. Tim admitted that he said, "Robert, I don't want you dead, because if you're dead, we're never gonna know who these other girls are. I'll remind you every day for the rest of your life what you did." Having survived the incident, Robert Abel filed an order of protection against Tim Miller. And slowly but surely, the case against Robert Abel fizzled out. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that it never materialized in the first place.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  Suspicion ran high, but evidence remained nonexistent. Items found during the search of Robert's property revealed no links to the murders. Robert's 22-caliber gun was common among gun owners, and it could not be checked for a ballistics match to the bullet that killed Jane Doe because the medical examiner had accidentally boiled the bullet while processing Jane Doe's bones. Forensic evidence on the bullet was destroyed. The tooth in Robert Abel's house, the one the police thought could be a trophy from a victim, belonged to Robert himself. And when everything else fell away, the newspaper clippings about the killings and an eagerness to help the investigation didn't seem so sinister.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  After years of suspicion and countless police and media interviews, authorities never arrested Robert Abel or charged him with a crime.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  In August of 2000, after nine years of harassment, Tim Miller recognized he had gone too far. Tim accepted that Robert Likely was not the killer, and he backed off. Tim channeled his anger into positive action and founded EquiSearch, a Houston-based nonprofit that helps search for missing persons. Over the years, it expanded substantially. Today, it uses horses, boats, drones, ATVs, radar, ground crews, and divers to assist with searches. The company has worked on 2,700 cases in 48 states and 11 countries, and it's found 444 people alive.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  In 2001, Robert Abel came close to full public exoneration. Abel's former ranch hand, Mark Stallings, who was incarcerated for other crimes, confessed to killing the fourth victim, Janet Doe, in 1991 and dumping her near Abel's property. He claimed he wanted to frame Abel for the Calder Road murders in retaliation for Abel firing him. Authorities thought Stallings' story was "very possible", but ultimately, they deemed his confession not trustworthy. In early 2005, Tim Miller formally apologized to Robert Abel. The two men hugged and cried, but the damage was irreversible.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Abel repeatedly said that the accusations by police destroyed his life. Abel shut down his trail ride business, relocated to a different part of Texas, and filed a slander lawsuit against League City Police in 1994. But he could never escape the stigma of being named in a public statement. In an interview with Texas Monthly Magazine, he said, "My life has been destroyed. My reputation ruined. I didn't kill those girls. I wouldn't know how to kill." In July of 2005, Tim Miller and Ecliss Search traveled to Aruba to participate in another high-profile missing person case, the search for Natalie Holloway.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  While Tim was there, he learned that Robert Abel had driven his golf cart onto railroad tracks in Belleville, Texas. Robert had been struck by a train and killed. Robert Abel was 65 years old when he died. Officials recorded his death as an accident, but Tim Miller and many others believed it was intentional and the result of nearly 15 years of being branded a possible killer. If Robert Abel told the truth, the Killing Fields had claimed one more innocent life. But that was in 2005. Back in the 1990s, when Tim Miller was fixated on Robert Abel and the police were trying to build a case against Abel, the disappearances started back up.

• 32:46Speaker 00

  Janet Doe's body was found in the Calder Road Field in 1991, and there was a lull in the story of the Texas Killing Fields for six years. But in 1997, it roared back to life with more murders along Interstate 45. New revelations, a new suspect, and the return of an old suspect.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Next time on Infamous America, the police learned the identities of Jane Doe and Janet Doe, but they also have to investigate three more murders. A daring escape leads to a new suspect for multiple homicides. New evidence in Ellen Beeson's case revives the hope that the full truth will come out, and that places Clyde Hedrick back in the spotlight. In the final episode of the miniseries about the Texas Killing Fields, next week on Infamous America.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  To binge all the episodes of a new season and to listen to every episode of the podcast with no commercials, subscribe in Apple Podcasts or sign up through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This episode was researched and written by Mandy Wimmer. Additional research and writing by me, Chris Wimmer. Original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.

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