LEAGUE CITY, Texas – Investigators with several Galveston County law enforcement agencies are helping with a new search in the “Texas Killing Fields” in League City. Investigators with League City, Dickinson, Santa Fe and Hitchcock police departments are monitoring the search for a potential body buried in this field in the late 80s.
Several Texas EquuSearch volunteers are heading up the search off Calder Drive.
This search is connected to April’s arrest of James Elmore, Jr. Elmore has been charged in connection of two of the so-called “Killing Fields” cases; Laura Miller and Audrey Cook.
EquuSearch founder and Laura Miller’s father, Tim Miller, said Elmore approached him four years ago and said he had information about the bodies buried off what was then Calder Road. Miller said Elmore stated there was another body buried in the area, but he didn’t have a name of a victim and couldn’t remember the exact spot where the person may have been buried.
“Four years ago, when Elmore got a hold of me, I can’t tell you how many times I brought him out here; he wanted to come out here and he kept saying, ‘there’s another body out here,’” said Tim Miller. “He’d come out and look around and everything and he said, ‘man, you to realize we were stoned so much and it was 38 years ago.”
Investigators said Elmore was friends with Clyde Hedrick, the man considered the prime suspect in all four “Killing Fields” murders. Hedrick committed suicide in March.
Investigators said Elmore implicated himself in helping Hedrick dispose of Laura Miller and Cook’s bodies. Elmore is in the Galveston County jail awaiting trial on manslaughter and evidence tampering charges.
Tim Miller concedes there is a slim chance anything will be found after 4-decades, but said they have to follow every lead. Nothing was found during Friday’s search.
Laura Miller, Heide Fye Villareal, Audrey Cook and Donna Prudhomme were all found in the same field between 1984 and 1991. The so-called ‘Texas Killing Fields’ are now on the property of the Magnolia Creek Baptist Church.
The pastor, Brett Dutton, told 2 Investigates when he purchased the property he promised Tim Miller he would never touch the field where memorials stand, honoring the four lives lost.