His daughter’s body was found in the ‘Texas Killing Fields’ decades ago. Now he’ll face a man charged in her death

Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch, has been seeking justice for his daughter Laura since she disappeared in 1984. (Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

The lush grass blanketing this scenic Texas field belies the grisly horrors discovered underneath and the agonizing mystery that has tormented families for decades – until now.

Between 1984 and 1991, the bodies of four young women were found in a rural, isolated 25-acre patch of terrain near Calder Road in the coastal town of League City. The area became the epicentre of the “Texas Killing Fields,” where the remains of about 30 slain women and girls have been found along the Interstate 45 corridor between Houston and Galveston since the 1970s.

The youngest victim found in the League City field, 16-year-old Laura Lynn Miller, vanished from a local convenience store in September 1984. She remained missing until February 1986, when two boys riding their bikes through the field discovered the remains of two females. One of the victims was Laura. The other was a woman who wouldn’t be identified for 33 more years – Audrey Lee Cook.

Now, the man accused of helping dispose of both their bodies and contributing to Laura’s death is about to stand trial. Jury selection begins Monday in the case of 61-year-old James Dolphs Elmore Jr. He is charged with one count of manslaughter and two counts of felony evidence tampering.

Elmore is expected to face the prosecution’s lead witness: Laura’s father, 79-year-old Tim Miller, who has spent half his lifetime hunting his daughter’s killer.

Exasperated by decades without answers, Miller channeled his anguish into altruism – launching a nonprofit that has helped thousands of other families search for missing loved ones. But justice for his own daughter seemed elusive – until a man named James Dolphs Elmore Jr. contacted him.

A timeline of terror

The four young women found in League City came from very different backgrounds, but their fates tragically intersected in the same small field.

The first victim found, Heidi Fye, was a 25-year-old bartender who was sometimes known as Heide and Heidi Fye-Villareal. She was last seen at a local convenience store before she vanished in 1983.

On April 6, 1984, a neighborhood dog “brought partial skeletal remains to its home in the 1300 block of Ervin Street,” League City police said. Investigators searched the woods near Ervin Street and Calder Road and found the rest of Fye’s remains.

Five months later, Laura Miller was last seen outside the same convenience store as Fye, before she disappeared. The high school sophomore dreamed of becoming a singer but suffered from debilitating seizures, causing her to struggle socially and academically.

The Miller family had just moved to League City from nearby Dickinson, and “Laura asked if she could go to a payphone to call her boyfriend since her family’s phone was not yet connected,” the FBI said. “On September 10, 1984, her mother drove her to the payphone, and Laura planned to walk the half-mile back home.”

When Laura didn’t return, “police considered her a runaway and assured the Millers she would call home.”

On February 2, 1986, the bodies of Laura and another female were found feet away from each other in the League City field. Laura’s remains were identified through dental records. But investigators could not identify the other victim, who would be known for the next three decades as “Jane Doe.”

On September 8, 1991, the body of a fourth victim was found in the same field by two horseback riders. Authorities were unable to identify the woman, who would be called “Janet Doe” for almost 28 years.

Between 2016 and 2019, a combination of modern technology, DNA testing and genetic genealogy helped identify “Jane Doe” as Audrey Lee Cook and “Janet Doe” as Donna Prudhomme.

Audrey Cook, 30, was a mechanic at several Houston companies before she vanished in December 1985. She was a free spirit who loved riding a motorcycle and camping, her aunt Shirley Love told CNN affiliate KTRK. So, when Cook stopped sending regular letters to her family in Memphis, relatives assumed she was on an adventure. After 33 years of searching for Cook, Love finally learned what happened to her niece.

Prudhomme was a 34-year-old mother of two. Her first husband was abusive, causing Prudhomme to leave with her two sons, her sister Dianne Gonsoulin-Hastings told the FBI. After another relationship ended, Prudhomme fell on hard times. She left her children with their grandmother and tried to rebuild her life in Clear Lake, Texas, her sister said.

The last time Gonsoulin-Hastings heard from her sister was in 1989. Over the next 30 years, the family kept searching for Prudhomme. Finally, in 2019, Gonsoulin-Hastings learned remains found in 1991 belonged to her sister.

While the families of the four victims knew what happened to their loved ones, they still didn’t know if anyone would ever face justice for the killings.

‘Laura, please don’t hate your daddy’

For the past four decades, Tim Miller has been consumed by his quest to find his daughter’s killer. At times, the frustration and crushing grief have nearly broken him.

“I would go out there where Laura’s body was found and walk up to her cross,” Miller said in 2019. “I put my hand on her cross and I would say, ‘Laura, please don’t hate your daddy, but I can’t come out here anymore. I have to say goodbye, and I have to put my life back together.’ And I would literally be walking away, and I would hear this little voice saying, ‘Dad, don’t quit. Please don’t quit.’”

And he didn’t. In addition to working Laura’s case, he launched a nonprofit, Texas EquuSearch, to help other families whose loved ones disappeared. Since 2000, the volunteer-led group has worked more than 2,700 cases and followed countless tips to help bring answers to hundreds of families.

Then, in 2022, Miller received a call that would change the trajectory of his daughter’s case. The tipster was Elmore, and he wanted to meet the grieving father in person.

“Over the last four years, I spent (a) minimum of 30 times with James Elmore,” Miller told reporters in April. “The first time I met him, he said, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’ And I said ‘Where?’ He said, ‘Let’s go to Calder (Road).’ And that’s where it started.”

At times, Miller said, the details Elmore gave him were too much to bear. “I was as strong as I could be in front of him, but I had to pull over and just sob and cry with the information I got,” he said.

Elmore was a longtime friend of Clyde Hedrick, the man authorities now believe killed all four of the victims found in the field.

“Hedrick has been the prime suspect for the murders of several women in the Calder Road Field,” the Galveston County Criminal District Attorney’s Office said earlier this year.

Hedrick was convicted in 1986 of abuse of a corpse related to the death of Ellen Beason, “another young woman who went missing around the same time as Fye-Villareal and Miller,” the district attorney’s office said.

During that trial, Hedrick testified that he and Beason left a nightclub one night in July 1984 to go swimming, and Beason drowned, according to court documents. Hedrick said “he was afraid, so he drove around with (Beason’s) body, eventually leaving it where it was found” in 1985, next to a causeway in Galveston.

At the time, Beason’s cause of death was ruled undetermined. So, Hedrick was convicted of misdemeanor abuse of a corpse, not for playing a role in Beason’s death.

But over the years, the bodies of more victims were discovered in the “Texas Killing Fields” between Houston and Galveston. Beason’s body was exhumed in 2012, and a new examination revealed she had a skull fracture and died by homicide.

The district attorney’s office secured a murder indictment against Hedrick in 2013 for Beason’s death. A jury later convicted Hedrick on a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was paroled after eight years.

In a 2013 court filing related to Beason’s case, then-prosecutor Kevin Petroff listed a host of alleged offenses or convictions against Hedrick. Among them: the defendant “had sex with Laura Miller and then intentionally and knowingly killed her” back in 1984.

At the time, Laura’s father had not been told his daughter was allegedly raped and killed by Hedrick. In the 2022 Netflix docuseries “Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields,” Petroff said he regretted not reaching out to Miller before the filing.

“Without ever reaching out to Tim Miller, her father, I had now filed a document that said I knew a man had murdered and potentially raped his daughter,” he said. “I regret that. It was the way that I met Tim Miller, which is not a great way to meet someone.”

But Miller would eventually hear many more details on his own – from the man now accused of helping to kill his daughter.

Stunning details revealed

Over the past four years, as Elmore met with Miller dozens of times, the slow trickle of information became increasingly detailed and revelatory.

Miller started sharing what he learned with a local police detective from Hitchcock who had taken an interest in helping solve the “Texas Killing Fields” mysteries. The detective described some of those details in search warrant affidavits filed this spring.

On April 14, 2025, Miller told the detective that Elmore admitted he was present the night Laura was killed, an affidavit states.

“Tim Miller further described … that Elmore admitted that he prepared a vial of cocaine containing a lethal dose, and that Hedrick administered the cocaine to Laura Miller, causing her death,” the detective wrote.

The detective interviewed Elmore the same day, and Elmore confirmed the same information that Miller had shared. Elmore also told the detective that he witnessed Hedrick bury Laura’s body.

In another affidavit, the detective said Elmore told him “on multiple occasions that Laura Miller was underage and that Hedrick sexually assaulted her after he provided Hedrick with the vial of cocaine to administer to Laura Miller.”

Almost a year later, an unexpected suicide led Elmore to “panic.”

A possible plan thwarted

As the detective delved deeper into his investigation, Galveston County District Attorney Kenneth Cusick – who was appointed in October – assigned a prosecutor to a multi-agency task force to re-examine the Killing Fields cases, the district attorney’s office said.

“Based on the task force’s renewed efforts, the District Attorney’s Office decided to seek grand jury indictments against Clyde Hedrick for the deaths of Miller, Cook, Fye-Villareal, and Prudhomme and against James Elmore for offenses related to the deaths of Cook and Miller,” the district attorney’s office announced this spring.

But Hedrick would never be indicted for the crimes. On March 21, shortly before the grand jury’s presentation, Cusick said, Hedrick killed himself. He was 72.

The day after Hedrick died, Miller told the detective that Elmore called him in a panic about Hedrick’s death, the officer wrote.

“Elmore told him that he was panicked because he believed investigators wanted to speak with him and that he is at risk of prosecution since he no longer has any potential immunity protection by providing information against Hedrick,” the detective said.

On March 25, Elmore was pulled over in his hometown of Bacliff. He was overheard telling one of the deputies, “I know this is about the Killings Fields,” according to one of the affidavits. Less than a week later, he was indicted for manslaughter in connection with Laura’s death.

In addition to his manslaughter charge, Elmore also faces two counts of felony evidence tampering, one count of possession of visual material depicting sexual assault and one count of possession of child pornography, court documents show. He has pleaded not guilty. Elmore’s court-appointed attorney, William Agnew, has declined to speak to the media about the ongoing case.

But the man suspected of murdering Laura, Cook, Fye and Prudhomme will never face justice – fueling mixed emotions for Fye’s niece, Nina Jager.

“It’s sad that Clyde didn’t get to pay for what he did,” Jager said. “On the other hand, I’m glad that he no longer breathes the same air that we do here on Earth.”

A father’s 42-year wait for justice

In a phone call with CNN Wednesday, Miller declined to share new comments on the case, citing Elmore’s imminent trial. Miller is listed first on the prosecution’s witness list.

“I don’t want to say anything about this investigation,” Miller told reporters in April following Elmore’s indictment. “After 41-and-a-half damn years, I’m not going to jeopardize anything that all of us have worked for out there. We got other girls to find.”

While some of the Killing Fields cases outside of League City have been solved, many have not.

In 2022, Oklahoma death row inmate William Reece received three life sentences after pleading guilty to three murders in Texas, including the killing of 12-year-old Laura Smither, who was abducted while jogging near her home in Friendswood in 1997.

Reece killed 17-year-old Jessica Cain, who vanished in 1997 after leaving a party in Clear Lake. Her remains were found nearly two decades later, in 2016. Reece also pleaded guilty to killing 20-year-old Kelli Cox, who was from North Texas but whose body was found hundreds of miles south in Brazoria County, next to Galveston County.

The Galveston County district attorney said he hasn’t given up on finding additional suspects from the “Texas Killing Fields” cases.

“There are other active leads,” he said, “that can still be pursued to bring to justice some people who may have escaped justice thus far.”

CNN’s Alta Spells contributed to this report.

By Holly Yan, CNN