if(document.querySelector("#ads")){ }); A former scientist and engineer for NASA, Robert Abel owned the land where the Calder Road Killings happened. Was Abel innocent, or wasnt he? Even Ive sat up at nights, wondering if he could have done it., Until this year, despite his pariah status, Abel remained in League City. When you met him, he came across as this country boy, a ranchers son with a thick accent, says Boeings Robert Gottlieb. As if thats not enough, a fourth (and final) nearly decomposed skeletal corpse was located by local residents in the same field on September 8, 1991, which also remained unidentified for decades. Although the police were faced with four complex murder investigations, the leads were quite difficult to come by owing to a sheer lack of witnesses or concrete evidence. let gads_event; At the time of her disappearanceshe had last been seen walking from her parents home to use the telephone at a convenience storethe League City police had conducted a cursory investigation, and they came across no clues as to where she might have gone or who might have wanted to abduct her. . Seventeen days later her nude body was found at the edge of a retention pond in Pasadena. I didnt kill any of those girls. The young cocktail waitress was found murdered in the same location as three other females. Im not saying Robert was the perfect man, the woman said. You see those high weeds? Miller said. I added that Miller planned to keep digging with the assistance of the search dogs, which could easily smell decomposed bodies buried as far back as fifteen years ago. As Miller drove his tractor past the cross that marked Lauras body, the dogs began to fan out. }); Detectives from other agencies, frustrated with their own unsolved murders, began calling the police in League City to ask about Abel. Newsweek has everything you need to know about Abel and where he is now. eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), In2005, he stopped his golf cart on the railroad tracks and waited for a train to slam into him. Thats what hes good atsolving problems. I wondered if she was on her knees, begging for her life. Mark Young, a highly respected FBI criminal profiler from the agencys Houston office, has talked with Abel, and a profiler from the behavioral sciences unit at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, has analyzed his relationships with women. I feel for these girls. The retired NASA aerospace engineer owned land . The medical examiner thought she had been beaten to death with a club. Since 1984, the remains of four young women have been found hereeach one nude, on her back, under a tree, with her arms folded. Patricia Sharpe writes a regular restaurant column, Pats Pick, for Texas Monthly. Have you met this man? Netflix. Lawmen think the retired NASA engineer could be responsible for the deaths or disappearances of several young women who lived in the coastal plain between Houston and Galveston. I told him about the clothes that Miller had dug up and that after a subsequent search no evidence of a body had been found. There are places in the world that are not evil due to any supernatural forces or demonic influences, but rather because },false) After all, it charts not just the way several women have wound up dead along Interstate 45 since the 1970s but [] He had tracked down the owner of the 25-acre oil field and persuaded him to lease it for $10 a year. Nov. 3, 2001. There was no hair evidence. Abel was never charged and Mr Miller went on to found EquuSearch, a search and recovery organisation for the hundreds of missing cases in Texas. In June 1989 he married Cindy Jacobs, a secretary for an accounting firm whom he had met earlier that year at the Hilton hotel bar. Thats where we need to dig.. It is known as the killing fields, and it is a lonely, spooky patch of land: In the stillness of the day you can hear the yips of small wild animals and the distant rumble of traffic along Interstate 45 about a mile away. Then, mere months later, another local resident, Laura Miller, also disappeared from a nearby store. For a brief period of time, there was another person of interest named Robert Abel. When Robert Abel, a NASA engineer who ran the Stardust horseback rides on Calder Road came under suspicion, Tim Miller confronted him with a revolver and accused him of being a serial killer. One man brought his thirteen-year-old son. They greet you at the door, lead you inside, and pull out scrapbooks filled with photos: their girl posing in a soccer uniform, pushing dolls in a stroller, laughing at Showbiz Pizza. He had no conscience.. It was on April 4, 1984, when a womans dog suddenly ran off into the wilderness near the field, but the shocking aspect was that he returned with a human skull in his mouth. According to sources: There was nothing on his faceno fear, no emotion, nothing. Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch, won a default judgment in his 2014 wrongful death lawsuit filed against Clyde Edwin Hedrick. The victim was never identified and became known as Jane Doe. Some law enforcement officials said the beta-blockers he took for his high blood pressure could have affected the results of those tests. The Killing Fields September 18, 2019 Decades Later, Investigators Still Searching for Answers in Murders of Four Women The women seemingly had little in common. In June 1983 Abel moved from Houston into a pleasant middle-class neighborhood in League City. eventAction: 'view' The first one was of 23-year-old Heide Fye, who went missing on October 10, 1983, only to be discovered almost six months later. The police tried hard to incriminate Abel with his home being searched for evidence and him being interviewed by the detectives on the case multiple times only for it all to go in vain. For several seconds Abel was silent before each site, as if he were visiting a church graveyard. Netflix Netflix's new docuseries, Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields, explores the mysterious disappearances and deaths of many young women and girls in southern Texas, dating back to. Tim Miller, the father of 16-year-old Laura who was found in the Texas Killing Fields, was at one point certain that Abel was his daughter's murderer. media-tech companies with hubs around the world. eventAction: 'click_ads' reporters on a platform technologically tailored to meet the needs of the modern reader. Memorial site on Calder Road. Whenever any of them stopped in a certain place and alerted (that is, barked to signify that they smelled something), Miller would head over there and dig. reporters on a platform technologically tailored to meet the needs of the modern reader. But she never made it. The Astrodomes Decline From Eighth Wonder to Eighth Blunder of the World, The Top 50 Texas BBQ Joints: 2021 Edition, The Best Little Steakhouse in Texas Turns Forty, A Backsliding Joint Got New Owners and a Whole New Level of Barbecue, Miranda Lamberts Five Must-have Home Goods, A Fredericksburg Couple Forges a New Path With Their Cast-Iron Pans, Another, Quieter Comeback for Billy Gillispie. He is a former NASA engineer. Instead, a dog would dig up her bones in the. Perhaps we were following the very walking path that the killer had once used to inspect his trophies. For weeks I had felt almost as if I had been part of some parlor game. . The League City Police Department naturally wound up under increasing pressure to nab a culprit, and they came to believe they'd found one, courtesy of an FBI profile that matched a local: Robert. investigators have flown over the site in helicopters and brought in cadaver dogs to look for bodies. Over the years, various suspects have come and gone. From 1971 to 2006, over 30 women were . Abel was never arrested for the murders as there was not enough, or any, evidence to arrest him. Heidi Fye, 23, vanished in 1983, and her remains were located in April 1984, and 16-year-old Laura Miller's body was found close by in 1986. eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), document.querySelector("#google_image_div").addEventListener('click',function(){ When I was working on a story about the murders, I too focused on Abel (Is Robert Abel Getting Away With Murder?, October 1999). In fact, they dont have any. Then finally, in 1993, nine years after Laura's disappearance, an unlikely suspect emerged: Robert Abel, a retired NASA engineer. }); In League City, where Abel has lived for sixteen years, officers have searched his home and questioned his friends and family. I wouldn't know how to kill.". You can spend a week driving through the towns south of Houston, visiting the parents of murdered daughters. eventAction: 'click_adunit' Abel told Grant that if he had been in charge in 1991 when the fourth body was found, he would have searched a nearby pond because the killer might have thrown something in there. Meanwhile, Tim Miller grew convinced of Roberts hand in the homicides and searched the area himself, which is when they found some personal items belonging to the females, according to the Netflix original. In the occasion you've heard of the so-called Texas Killing Fields, there's a correct likelihood that you just occur to be from the Lone Star Dispute. Bell was identified as a potential suspect as early as the 1970s after the League City Police Department and FBI became aware of his activities in the area. Bittner and his team came up with nothing. Every day Bittner would sit behind his battleship-gray desk, flip through his case files, repeat to himself all the relevant details, and then stare at the autopsy photos, hoping that the dead women could tell tales. }) Speaking to Texas Monthly in 1999, Miller said: "There are many days when I think about driving over there, putting a gun to his head, and pulling the trigger. A couple of detectives think youre talking to me because you want to draw attention to yourself, I told him. The Star Dust Trail Rides business once owned by Abel encircles the Killings Fields. Moreover, an organized killer prefers working in what the FBI calls a comfort zone, an area very familiar to him where he receives little or no interference from outsiders. However, he was never arrested because there was never enough evidence to incriminate him. He was hit by a train while traveling on his golf cart. A slightly built sixty-year-old with thinning brown hair and a mustache, Abel walks stiffly because of a bad back, wears reading glasses, and takes pills for his high blood pressure. Between the early 1970s and as recently as 2016, the bodies of 33 murder victims have been discovered in the area. document.querySelector("#ads").addEventListener('click',function(){ So who knows whats still down there?, I had to wonder: Was Abel slyly providing another subtle suggestion about that pond? . Patricia Sharpe writes a regular restaurant column, Pats Pick, for Texas Monthly. Law enforcement investigated Robert Abel, a known sex offender, but was not able to link him to the crimes. But there would be no peace. Theres only one problem: They dont have enough evidence to arrest him. Abel also had no criminal record or had ever been in trouble with the law before. One of Abels friends, a man who sang cowboy songs at Stardust Trailrides, was approached by a private detective who asked several questions about him and then said he was working for one of his ex-wives. One time she wrote about sports. And, indeed, one former girlfriend did tell me that Paula had contacted her, asking that she, too, go to the police and talk about Abels behavior when she had dated him. As it turned out, this was indeed a ghost story, but not the kind that I or anyone else really expectedfor just as the sun was setting that August afternoon, a few of the dogs went into a frenzy, barking and pawing anxiously at one particular clump of dirt. Daniel Vaughn is the countrys first barbecue editor, and he has eaten more barbecue than you have. Read More: William Reece: Who Were His Victims? The first one was of 23-year-old Heide Fye, who went missing on October 10, 1983, only to be discovered almost six months later. Abel died in 2005, when he was 65 years old, when he was hit by a train while traveling on a golf cart. By all accounts, Stardust Trailrides was an immediate success, drawing people from all over the Houston area, including a few couples who came to have their wedding conducted on horseback. Many people who live in the surrounding towns and bedroom communities wont come near the place. We just want the chance to tell our daughter good-bye., It is impossible for an outsider to understand the shattered psyches of parents whose daughters will never grow older. How Hud Began Texass Love Affair With the Bastard, Blue Beetle Belongs in El Paso, No Matter What DC Brass Thinks, The Best Books, Films, TV, Art, and More Coming to Texas This Spring, Forty Years Later, Wrongfully Convicted James Reyos Has Another Day in Court, What Is Left to Say About Waco? Of course hed want the murders solved. When I later asked Abel directly about the photo album, he acted surprised that I was suspicious. According to a . The actors in "Texas Killing Fields' hoped somehow, the film . Paula also said that she had seen several photos of nude women in his desk drawer at the house, and that Abel not only owned handguns but also carried one with him during the later months of 1991. "My life has been destroyed, my reputation ruined," he told Texas Monthly, "I didn't kill any of those girls. ga('ads.send', { "When I'm near him, I feel like I'm in the presence of evil.". Like Jane Doe, this woman was never identified. What Is The Docu-Series 'Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields' About? The three-part series explores the unsolved murders of four young women whose remains were found in and around the same location in Texas. "And there's no doubt they would have kept going up"he pauses,. Law enforcement officials insist that many of the killingssometimes referred to as the I-45 killings because most of them have taken place within a few miles of Interstate 45could have been committed by any number of men, from transients to sex offenders paroled from one of the areas prisons. The Texas Killing Fields is a 25-acre patch of land in the area along the Interstate highway 45 between Houston and Galveston. The chilling discoveries have sparked fears that a serial killer or killers may be on the loose.. Four women were found dead between 1983-1991 and ex-Nasa engineer Robert Abel was among the . As it turns out, Tim Miller might have found an old garbage dump.. With the passing of the years, its harder to deny the probability that a serial killer has been at work since as far back as 1971, when seven young women were murdered over a four-county region in twelve months time. ga('ads.send', { Willie Payne, a respected private investigator hired by some of the parents to help locate their missing daughters, says he cant imagine that Abel would have been dumb enough to leave three of the girls lying within yards of his property line. But Bittner has an answer for that too. 'Sister Wives' star Kody Brown feels ex-wife Christine Brown's engagement to David Woolley is 'staged for TV' amid family drama, Jacob Stevens: Family shares heartbreaking photo of teen who died attempting viral TikTok challenge, 'I'd do the same again': Donna Delbono, who turned in killer teen son to cops, says she has 'no regrets'. Robert Abel died in 2005, aged 65. Tim Miller visited Abel, shortly before the suspect's death, to ask for his forgiveness, and today the father of murdered Laura believes Clyde Hedrick is the man responsible for his daughter's killing. I wouldn't know how to kill, he said. gads_event = event; They were mainly the bodies of girls or young women. Whenever livestock died on his pastureland, she added, he left them out in the open so their rotting corpses could be ravaged by coyotes and other scavengers. The Texas Killing Fields is a 25-acre patch of land in League City, Texas [1] situated a mile from Interstate Highway 45 and approximately 26 miles southeast of Houston. (The rest of the photos were of family, friends, and various people hed shot as an amateur photographer. Subsequently, Bittner contacted the FBIs National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico and provided details of the League City killings to David Gomez, an agent who specializes in serial sexual homicides. McCarthy used his speech in NYC to slam President Joe Biden for doing "nothing" to address the nation's financial crisis. Jos R. Ralat is Texas Monthlys taco editor, writing about tacos and Mexican food. The docu-series has three episodes. But Despite being found civilly liable for Laura Miller's death, Hedrick has never been charged with her murder. A new Netflix docuseries revisits the string of murders near League City. He has received specialized training in homicide investigations and is familiar with the research conducted by the FBIs behavioral sciences unit in Quantico, which has been attempting to compile an accurate composite profile of the type of man who turns out to be a serial killer of women. Apocalypse Sow: Can Anything Stop the Feral Hog Invasion? Most people whose remains were found in the land were little girls or adult women, all between the ages 12 to 25. While the discoveries gripped the city in fear, the police were faced with several challenging murder inquiries, which had more twists and turns than they could ever imagine. Others push their daughters out of sight so that he cant get a look at them. One day a group of teenage boys, hoping to prove their courage when they spotted him cruising through town in his pickup, rolled down their car windows and shouted, Hey, Killer! Over the years, he has become such a focus of fear and hostility that in 1997, nearly two hundred people fanned out over his land without his permission, looking for the body of a pretty college student who had disappeared from a Bennigans restaurant not far from League City and who to this day has never been found. Teenage boys would drive past his stablesand shout out, killer. Was Robert Abel The Texas Fields Killer? And none of them have been more interesting than a former NASA engineer, Robert Abel, who owned a small horseback-riding business outside the town of League City. window.adsContainer = {"position2":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Above_Next_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position3":{"code":"Article_Mobile_300x250_ATF_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position4":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position5":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle1_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position6":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle2_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position7":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle3_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position8":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle4_Rel","max_width":300,"max_height":250},"position9":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle5_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position10":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle6_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position11":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle7_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position12":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle8_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position13":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle9_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position14":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle10_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position15":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle11_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250},"position16":{"code":"Article_Mobile_Middle12_Rel","max_width":320,"max_height":250}} Investigators also flew over his land in helicopters, and Abel was interviewed by detectives in neighboring towns, but nothing was found. Was I the one being paranoid? Whats more, he has never been arrested for any crime, nor is there any known record of a criminal complaint filed against him. ga('create', 'UA-67136960-15', 'auto', 'ads'); He left threatening messages on Abel's answering machine and claimed he held a gun to the man's head after one night of heavy drinking. Without informing the League City police departmentThey think Im a little crazyMiller borrowed a tractor and a backhoe and persuaded the Greater Houston Search Dogs team to join him in his first dig. I suddenly understood why these coastal communities were linked by fear. document.querySelector("#adunit").addEventListener('click',function(){ When I went to visit him at his horse stables, he was certainly odd, but what became clear to me was that there was no evidence he had committed murder.
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