We had our rounds, our arguments and fights. 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. Law enforcement investigated Robert Abel, a known sex offender, but was not able to link him to the crimes. Investigators also flew over his land in helicopters, and Abel was interviewed by detectives in neighboring towns, but nothing was found. hitType: 'event', It's the kind of place where you'd be hard-pressed to find activity beyond oil rigs and the. There was no evidence, in fact, that he had committed any crime. Do I really look like someone who would want to kill pretty young girls?. The 25-year-old cocktail waitress disappeared after she left her parents' home to hitch a ride to Houston to visit her boyfriend. Others push their daughters out of sight so that he cant get a look at them. Within a mere decade, the bodies of four women were recovered from a 25-acre marshland along Calder Road in League City, Texas. 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. I sat on the tailgate of a pickup truck with Millers construction buddies watching the late-afternoon sun turn red and then a sullen orange before it began to sink beneath the horizon. 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. Yet despite a variety of sometimes desperate measuresone department followed leads provided by psychics, and another had police officers hide in trees at a cemetery to see if a suspect might visit the freshly dug grave of a murdered teenagerno arrests have been made. The docu-series has three episodes. A few days later I returned to League City. According to one FBI report, an organized killer is in the bright-superior intelligence range and, therefore, potentially a skilled imposterin other words, hes able to fit into everyday society without drawing any suspicion. Abel, however, remained wary: He told me he still worried that Miller would drink too much one night and try to kill him. The medical examiner said she was between 22 and 30 years old and perhaps had been shot to death by a .22-caliber weapon. 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. There was nothing on his faceno fear, no emotion, nothing. Abel took an energetic part in solving the crimes, which only made him more suspicious. The former NASA scientist who also owns the fields, forcefully involved himself in solving the crimes which, for many people involved, only served to heighten the suspicion surrounding him. 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. Born November 25, 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee Last seen in December 1985 Believed to be around age 30 at time of death Lived in the Houston/Channelview/Heights areas of Texas in the years leading up to her death Worked as a mechanic for a golf cart company in Houston, Harrison Equipment Company in Houston, and Balloon Affair in Houston. eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), Mosquito Hawks Are Flitting All Over Texas. }); With such a high-profile case, Texas law enforcement was desperate to find. What made Abel a suspect was that he owned the property right next to the land where the bodies were found. I wondered if the police knew about this person I had read about, and I was going to send the article to them.. In the sixties Abel was one of NASAs great young engineers, part of the team that was instrumental in designing the rocket that would put the Apollo astronauts into Earths orbit. When investigations into Millers missing body were being made, another corpse was found, who wasnt identified until years later as Audrey Lee Cook, a mechanic who was last seen alive in 1985. When she went missing, the police suggested to her father that she had run away from home. (The rest of the photos were of family, friends, and various people hed shot as an amateur photographer. 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? Daniel Vaughn is the countrys first barbecue editor, and he has eaten more barbecue than you have. I couldnt have picked a girl up. We have left it as it was originally published, without updating, to maintain a clear historical record. But not once did I ever think there was anything to fear about him. When I asked her if he abused horses, she replied that she saw him hit one once, when the horse was raring and had her young daughter corneredbut he didnt beat the horse., Still, the damage had been done. 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. So now, lets find out more about him as well as his alleged involvement, shall we? I suddenly understood why these coastal communities were linked by fear. ), The only thing that Bittner found justifying the search warrant was a collection of newspaper articles found about the investigation into the League City murders and one long Houston Chronicle story detailing the life of a serial killer. eventAction: 'render' 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. Even after all that time, Id find myself running in there, calling her name, believing that she was back home with us., The number of mothers and fathers left to grieve is staggering. More than 30 victims have been found since the 1970s and the land is infamously known as the Texas Killing Fields.. 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. As heard in Texas Killing Fields, he remained a suspect in the Texas Killing Field murders until he died. In 1997, Laura Smith was a 12-year-old girl living in Friendswood, Texas. We are one of the worlds fastest growing The Texas Killing Fields in League City, Texas, is a plot of ground where the bodies of four unsolved murder victims of women were discovered. But Abel became furious and very defensive. Earlier Bittner had learned at a homicide seminar that a police department could get a court-ordered search warrant based solely on the FBIs psychological profile of the potential killer. She said that before their marriage, when he had gotten angry with her, he went out and beat a horse named Lancelot. Abel told me his life had been ruinedthat he couldnt even go to the grocery store without someone treating him like he was a serial killer. hitType: 'event', . Chief among these suspects was Robert Abel.Although Abel's potential role in the killings was touched upon in episode 2 . With Netflix's 'Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields' living up to its title in every way imaginable, we get a complete insight into the dark, twisted, sordid side of human nature many times over. Robert Abel was one of the alleged prime suspects in the abduction and murder of Tim Miller's daughter along with the 3 other victims found on Calder Rd back in the 80s. But there would be no peace. let gads_event; What drew him there, he explains, was Galveston Countys lower tax rate, but he also appreciated the availability of nearby pastureland: He leased about a thousand acres at the edge of town roughly three miles from his house. But the fact was that he was one of the brightest people down there., In 1978, after 21 years of marriage, the Abels divorced. . We report on vital issues from politics to education and are the indispensable authority on the Texas scene, covering everything from music to cultural events with insightful recommendations. Was Robert Abel The Texas Fields Killer? However, the man who has been in the minds of everyone who watched the show and read up on the case is Robert Abel. A fourth body was also found six years later in 1991 in the same area and was identified as Donna Gonsoulin Prudhomme in 2019. I dont think people here realize that ol Tim will want to keep digging all night, one said with a grin as he popped open a beer. Seventeen days later her nude body was found at the edge of a retention pond in Pasadena. Matamoros Was Once Relatively Safe for Texans. The young cocktail waitress was found murdered in the same location as three other females. Because of too much deterioration in the bullet the guns could not be matchedin fact, no gun could. Skip Hollandsworth specializes in long-form narratives. Mosquito Hawks Are Flitting All Over Texas. However, there was no evidence linking him to the crime, according to The. "My life has been destroyed, my reputation ruined," he told Texas Monthly, "I didn't kill any of those girls. I wanted him to know that I would never forget what he had done, says Miller, who several times a week had been driving out to the site where Lauras body had been found, standing before a wooden cross he had erected there in her memory. Then, in the summer of 1993, he got a break: He received a phone call from Abels wife, Paula, who told him they had separated the previous year. Abel shrugged, appearing neither anxious nor relieved. During this week in true crime history, Suzanne Rene Richerson was reported missing after she disappeared while working at a Galveston resort in October of 1988. En yi Yardmc Erkek Oyuncu Akademi dl Sinema Sanatlar ve Bilimleri Akademisi tarafndan sinema endstrisinde alan aktrlere verilen dldr. More than 30 bodies have been found in the area between 1971 to 2006 leading to its very unceremonious moniker. However, everything changed once two young boys located Lauras body in the same stretch of land in 1986. Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields, a true crime documentary on Netflix, is one of the top 10 shows on the service, thus it should not be missed at all. He seems like someone who should be washing windows instead of being a police detective.. He also worked on lunar visibility studies (for which he received top-secret clearance) and regularly flew to Cape Canaveral to brief Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, and other Apollo astronauts on lunar landing and visibility. And remember, he had a new trail-rides business going. ' As such behavior from people he believed to be his friends was difficult to bear, he began living a lonely life and ultimately relocated. For a brief period of time, there was another person of interest named Robert Abel. For three decades, the marshy stretch off I-45 between Houston and Galveston kept turning up dead . In June 1983 Abel moved from Houston into a pleasant middle-class neighborhood in League City. While Robert Abel was a prime suspect in the Killing Fields at one point, he certainly wasn't the only suspect. In 1999, Texas Monthly reported that a police detective in a sworn affidavit painted Abel as a "serial sexual offender," who displays the violent behavior seen in serial killers. A couple of detectives think youre talking to me because you want to draw attention to yourself, I told him. Once you hear certain allegations about someone youve known for a long, long time, how do you get them out of your mind? Gottlieb asks. One time she wrote about sports. I was about to pull the trigger when I realized that it wouldnt have mattered, Miller told me. 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 . Its an unforgettable episode in a story that still remains a perplexing and tragic mystery. On a stiflingly hot afternoon in late August, at an abandoned oil field twenty miles south of Houston, more than a dozen people hunted for the bodies of dead women. Just 20 days to my birthday, reads the note written by Laura Smither, an aspiring ballerina from the quiet town of Friendswood. The majority of victims were girls and young women, aged between 12 and 25 years old. Lets start here. Nearby were a dozen search dogs, including four trained to detect the scent of decomposing human flesh. According to sources: Theres no place in the country that has had to deal with something this heinous, says Don Clark, the special agent in charge of the FBIs Houston office. Or was he just trying to be helpful? 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. After Tim Miller read the affidavit, he started parking outside Abels League City home at night. Everyone who knew him was certain he had taken his own life. 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. At the bottom of the box I saw a small photo album with the words Robert Abel printed on the cover. Abel was at the now-padlocked Stardust Trailrides waiting for me. He claimed he was a man with a clean record and someone who had never been on the wrong side of the law before. According to the detectives affidavit, which was filed in a state district court, there is little doubt that a single person was responsible for the four bodies found in the old oil field located just off a rut-filled dirt road on the outskirts of League City. Robert Abel was a "strange character", Miller says, though not one who would strike. 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