20K views 3 years ago Since 1971, well over thirty women have disappeared along a fifty mile-long patch of I-45 between Houston and Galveston. Before leaving, Paula told Bittner he needed to talk to Cindy Jacobs, the woman Abel had been married to for 41 days in 1989. . Interestingly, in 2013, a fellow League City resident named Clyde Hedrick was arrested for the unrelated murder of Ellen Beason, only for the ensuing legal proceedings to indicate he could be the Texas Fields Killer. Not exactly the response Id get if Id been beating them, he said. 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. Content Warning: Article contains topics of self-harm, domestic violence, and animal cruelty Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields, the third entry in Netflix's Crime Scene series, suggests many possible suspects responsible for the murders of the killing field victims. Eventually, around July 2005, 65-year-old Robert William Abel was driving a golf car when he suddenly stopped right on the nearby railway tracks, allowing the train to hit him. Since all of the Killing Fields victims were killed by the same unknown killer, his confession may have only been a way to improve his prison rep with other inmates. One time she wrote about sports. Somethings down there!. 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. He has been interviewed by detectives from neighboring towns. For a moment, the only sound was the wind lightly rustling the trees and the low growl of diesel trucks changing gears out on I-45. (Paula and Cindy would not be interviewed, but they have not retracted the sworn statements they gave Bittner.) Abel led many of the trail rides himself over the property and through his leased land. The suspect on a piece of land he owns. 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. My throat suddenly went dry: Was I looking at a serial killers scrapbook? 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. The whole thing seemed fruitless but understandablea way for a father to deal with his grief. But that doesnt mean we will stop looking for her. Whats more, he has never been arrested for any crime, nor is there any known record of a criminal complaint filed against him. By conducting lengthy interviews with many such killers already behind bars, the agents have come up with a list of common denominators seen in the killers childhood, in their behavior as adults, and in the way they carry out their crimes. Because the affidavit about Abel had been filed in open court, it was available for the public to peruse. 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. }); Photo by The Signal reporter Agueda Jimenez In 1993, a search was conducted in Abel's home but no evidence was found connecting him to the murders. Its your way of thumbing your nose at the police, telling them that they wont ever catch you., Sitting across the table from me at a coffee shop, Abel bowed his head. Its hard to gauge whos telling the truth. One long-time suspect, Robert Abel, was fatally hit by a train in what may have been a suicide, despite being cleared by police and despite apologies from Mr Miller, for example, who'd thought him guilty for years. When they met, Paula told Bittner she was afraid of what she described as her husbands fits of rage. Sometimes, she said, he would get so angry during their arguments that hed leave the house and not return for as long as a week. Bittner, meanwhile, insists that a pathological serial killer with no remorse could easily pass any lie detector test. Between 1984 and 1991, the remains of four young women were found on the same patch of land near Calder Road in League City. We are one of the worlds fastest growing It remains unclear if Abel had taken his own life. A 2022 Netflix docuseries examined some of the deaths referenced in this piece. After all, several of his ex-wives as well as partners had accused him of domestic violence and mental torture, with one claiming he even hurt his horses by beating them with a pipe. Apocalypse Sow: Can Anything Stop the Feral Hog Invasion? Read more here about our archive digitization project. In July 2022, Tim Miller won a wrongful death lawsuit against Hedrick for $24 million in liability and damages that he filed in 2014. 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. But The medical examiner thought she had been beaten to death with a club. In February 1962 he took a job at NASA, and in the evenings he attended graduate schoolfirst at the University of Houston, then at UT-Austin, where he wrote papers with titles like Analytic Solutions to Interplanetary Transfers., NASA put Abel to work sizing the Saturn rocket: He determined how much weight should be in each of its three stages and then performed a trajectory analysis to determine the most efficient way to get the third stage and the payload into orbit. He had helped create the modern Saturn rocket that got astronauts to the moon. eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), For weeks I had felt almost as if I had been part of some parlor game. The monkier is chilling enough, but once you delve into the Texas Killing Fields' murderous history, it's easy to fall down a true-crime rabbit hole. 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. If we had any hope of getting man to the moon, we had to get the maximum Saturn payload into orbit, says Robert Gottlieb, a veteran aerospace engineer who now works at Boeing. Texas Monthly interviewed Abel in 1999. The first was discovered in April 1984, after a dog owned by a couple living several hundred yards away carried home a human skull and dropped it at the feet of their three-year-old daughter. 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. Want to Buy a West Texas Ghost Town? Youre the killer. He told me he never mistreated animalsIts ridiculous to think that you can run a horseback-riding business with horses that are scared of human beingsand that he didnt carry a gun. There was no evidence, in fact, that he had committed any crime. Daniel Vaughn is the countrys first barbecue editor, and he has eaten more barbecue than you have. eventAction: 'load' The police tell us that she is probably dead, murdered like the others. 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. However, everything changed once two young boys located Lauras body in the same stretch of land in 1986. The man is linked to deaths of four women but was never convicted, according to Newsweek. Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch, won a default judgment in his 2014 wrongful death lawsuit filed against Clyde Edwin Hedrick. 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 . The suspect is Mark Roland Stallings, 34, who worked on the Calder Road property that came to be known as the "killing fields" after the bodies of four young women were found buried on the. However, there was no evidence linking him to the crime, according to The. For several seconds Abel was silent before each site, as if he were visiting a church graveyard. 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. At the bottom of the box I saw a small photo album with the words Robert Abel printed on the cover. Although he never hit her, she said she had watched him beat horses with pipes and chains until they submitted to his commands. It was Robert Abel, the retired Nasa engineer, and he owned a ranch right next to the killing fields. This story is from Texas Monthlys archives. Family devastated as mom and unborn baby tragically die after 'unexpected' medical emergency, Was Beckett Rex edited out of 'American Idol' Season 21? Thats what hes good atsolving problems. Law enforcement investigated Robert Abel, a known sex offender, but was not able to link him to the crimes. Located near Galveston, the Texas Killing Fields is a 25-acre stretch of land only a mile from Interstate 45. eventAction: 'click_image_ads' Several of Abel's ex-wives and partners had accused him of being aggressive, as well as beating animals, all of which Abel denied. 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. In 1997 one police department ran a computer search of registered sex offenders living between Houston and Galveston, and more than 2,100 names popped up. We had our rounds, our arguments and fights. 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. Several young women were disappearing mysteriously. if(document.querySelector("#adunit")){ But she left him 41 days into the marriageAbel never told anyone whyand the two quickly divorced. ), 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. Everyone who knew him was certain he had taken his own life. His property was next to an. Apocalypse Sow: Can Anything Stop the Feral Hog Invasion? I really do, he told me. MEAWW is an initialism for Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide. Speech, Jim Jordan's Crime Hearing Takes Surprising Turns, China's 'Artificial Sun' Smashes Nuclear Fusion Record, Putin Issues Ominous Warning About How Russian Navy Could be Deployed, Who Is Ralph Yarl? ga('create', 'UA-67136960-15', 'auto', 'ads'); Again, Abel just shrugged. 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. 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. window.googletag.cmd.push(function() { Sometimes, at night, the wind would begin to blow, and the house would start to shift, and the bed in Lauras room would start to squeak, says Laura Smithers mother, Gaye, a gentle woman who sometimes swallows when she talks, trying to keep her voice in control. 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 wondered if the police knew about this person I had read about, and I was going to send the article to them.. . 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. He may sound innocent enough, but he has a dark side. Robert Abel died in 2005, aged 65. He was romantic. Then again, Abel does come from a scientific background, and as his friend Robert Gottlieb says, I think he was very interested in helping solve this problem of the murders. They hadnt. 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. 23:57 PST, Dec 6, 2022. }); In League City, Texas, is where the notorious murder spree known as the "Killing Fields" has originated. Its an unforgettable episode in a story that still remains a perplexing and tragic mystery. Newsweek has everything you need to know about Abel and where he is now. Tim Miller, whose sixteen-year-old daughter, Laura, was found dead in the killing fields, is so convinced of Abels guilt that he has left threatening messages on his answering machine, demanding that he confess. Abel to kill? Long story short, he's the prime suspect in the murder of four women found in an oil field next to property he owns. Perhaps we were following the very walking path that the killer had once used to inspect his trophies. There are places in the world that are not evil due to any supernatural forces or demonic influences, but rather because Lise: By the time Janet Doe's body was found in 1991, Robert Abel owned the land where the Killing Fields was. After all, it charts not just the way several women have wound up dead along Interstate 45 since the 1970s but [] 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}} }); let gads_event; I know I had my doubts. 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. Thats because while attempts to recover her remains as safely as possible were being made on February 2, 1986, local law enforcement came across a third body, which remained unidentified at the time. One of Netflix's latest true-crime docuseries, Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields, tells the story of the unsolved murders of four Texas women that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s in League . 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. But, four women were found dead off Culver Road in League City between 1983 and 1991. . Robert Abel died in 2005, aged 65. But he could never shake loose of the past. 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. A few days later I returned to League City. 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. According to CBS News, the isolated nature of the spot makes it the perfect place for taking someone else's life . The League City police were so convinced he murdered those women and buried them, creating his own private graveyard, that they filed a court affidavit calling him a serial sexual offender who displayed the kind of rage and violent behavior often seen in serial killers. Sales hit $250,000 in 1991, he says. The Texas Killing Fields is a 25-acre patch of land in the area along the Interstate highway 45 between Houston and Galveston. Emily McCullar is a senior editor covering pop culture, news, and Texas history. window.googletag.pubads().addEventListener('slotOnload', function(event) { She became known as Janet Doe until she could be named in 2019 as Donna Gonsoulin Prudhomme, according to Oxygen. }); By Benjamin Hedda Published Dec 10, 2022 Robert Abel was put forth as a potential suspect in the Texas Killing Field murders. The majority of victims were girls and young women, aged between 12 and 25 years old. Its time to try to live out the rest of my life in peace, he says. As the police looked around the field for more clues, they came across the skeleton of Laura MillerTim Millers daughtera mere twenty yards away. And where he is now neighboring towns Abel, a known sex offender, but they not! A ranch right next to the crimes won a default judgment in his 2014 wrongful death filed! 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