Decades after dozens of bodies were discovered in the “Texas Killing Fields,” an arrest has been in connection with two female victims.
James Elmore, 61, has been charged with manslaughter over the killing of Laura Miller, a 16-year-old who disappeared in 1984 after she left home to use a pay phone at a nearby store. Her body was found two years later, according to The Houston Chronicle.
Elmore was also charged with tampering with evidence in Miller’s case and that of another woman, 30-year-old Audrey Cook, who disappeared in 1985. Her body was found a year later, though her remains were only identified in 2019.
The “Texas Killing Fields” refers to an area along Interstate 45 between Galveston and Houston where the bodies of more than 30 women have been found since the 1970s.
Elmore, from Bacliff, Texas, was booked into the Galveston County Jail Tuesday, and has been denied bond. Authorities allege that he helped another man, Clyde Edwin Hedrick, also from Bacliff, hide the remains of Miller and Cook.
Hedrick has been a longtime suspect in the killings of Miller, Cook, and two other women, Heidi Fye-Villareal and Donna Prudhomme. The bodies of Fye-Villareal, Prudhomme, Cook and Miller were all discovered on a stretch along Calder Road in League City, between 1983 and 1991.
The Galveston County District Attorney’s office was preparing to seek grand jury indictments against Hedrick for their deaths, but Hedrick died in early March before he could be indicted.
At the same time, prosecutors sought charges against Elmore for offenses connected to the deaths of Cook and Miller.
“The indictments follow a renewed effort by the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office and local law enforcement agencies to bring justice to the murderers responsible for the deaths of approximately 30 women whose bodies were found in an area commonly referred to as the ‘Texas Killing Fields,’” the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.
Elmore is also accused of preparing a “vial of cocaine” for Hedrick to give Miller, according to the indictment.
Despite Elmore’s arrest, Tim Miller, the father of Laura Miller, expressed outrage that Hedrick had died before he was indicted in connection with his daughter’s death.
“They let a serial killer die peacefully in his damn bed when they had everything in front of them. I’m pretty angry,” Tim Miller, the father of Laura, told ABC13, following Hedrick’s death.
“I’m almost 80 years old. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to stick around and face James Elmore in a courtroom. I’m going to do that.”
The Texas Killing Fields have been the subject of countless books and documentaries, as mystery still surrounds many of the deaths. Texas authorities believe the killings were carried out by multiple people.
Most recently, a 2022 Netflix documentary, Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields, brought the unsolved murders to light. The three-part series centered on the murdered girls and women, but also their grieving families.
It also presented information on several suspects in some of the deaths, including Hedrick, who was previously convicted of the 1984 killing of a 30-year-old woman called Ellen Beason — whose body was dumped on a different dirt road in Galveston County.
Hedrick served only eight years of a 20-year sentence for Beason’s death.
Laura Miller’s father, who appeared in the docu-series, believes Hedrick is responsible for his daughter’s murder and won a wrongful death lawsuit against him in 2014.
Hedrick never faced charges in connection with any Killing Fields deaths.
Officials are expected to provide more information about the case at a news conference Wednesday.
