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. Some young women have never been found: More than ten years after Ren Richerson, an achingly pretty college student, vanished from a condominium complex in Galveston, her parents are still paying a private detective to search for her. Of course hed want the murders solved. When I later asked Abel directly about the photo album, he acted surprised that I was suspicious. Audrey had disappeared from the Houston area around December 1985, whereas the Nassau Bay resident Donna had gone missing in July 1991. Its an unforgettable episode in a story that still remains a perplexing and tragic mystery. Skip Hollandsworth specializes in long-form narratives. Robert Abel died in 2005, aged 65. He offered discount trail rides to youth groups and charities, provided catered barbecue dinners, hired country music singers to perform cowboy songs, and often threw in free hayrides for toddlers. ga('ads.send', { 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. 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. Again, Abel just shrugged. Why wouldnt I be? he asked me. 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. 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. He seems like someone who should be washing windows instead of being a police detective.. But there would be no peace. Between the early 1970s and as recently as 2016, the bodies of 33 murder victims have been discovered in the area. As far as Im concerned, its a masterpiece.. The cross he had put up for Laura had been knocked down, and he believed Abel had done it just to spite him. Then he turned, got into his pickup, and headed down the dirt road, away from the killing fields, disappearing behind the dust like a ghost. One man brought his thirteen-year-old son. }); Nevertheless, even they could not directly tie Robert to the heinous offenses, driving Tim to back off and the investigation to gradually move in another direction. media-tech companies with hubs around the world. "But we've got another guy on the radar now, Robert Abel." Robert Abel was this brilliant former scientist for NASA. Miller, his eyes wild with excitement, put the backhoe into gear and started scooping up earth over a ten-square-foot area. However, everything changed once two young boys located Lauras body in the same stretch of land in 1986. Texas Monthly interviewed Abel in 1999. The Texas Killing Fields is a 25-acre patch of land in the area along the Interstate highway 45 between Houston and Galveston. You might have been trying to deceive them, to provide false leads, I said. There have been few crimes more haunting in Texas than the killings of several young women who lived in towns located along the fifty-mile coastal stretch between Houston and Galveston. He was hit by a train while traveling on his golf cart. He had no conscience.. 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. Want to Buy a West Texas Ghost Town? 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. Abel was a retired NASA engineer, who was linked to the disappearance and deaths of many young women. Apocalypse Sow: Can Anything Stop the Feral Hog Invasion? I wondered if the police knew about this person I had read about, and I was going to send the article to them.. In fact, Bittner is a bright young man who grew up in Ohio, received a degree in criminal justice from Michigan State University, and moved to Texas to be a police officerhardly the stereotype of the tobacco-chewing small-town lawman. Teenage boys would drive past his stablesand shout out, killer. Within a mere decade, the bodies of four women were recovered from a 25-acre marshland along Calder Road in League City, Texas. Like Jane Doe, this woman was never identified. So now, lets find out more about him as well as his alleged involvement, shall we? Read more here about our archive digitization project. 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. The victims were found in what has become known as the Texas Killing Fields Credit: Netflix. He said the photographs had been taken by a private investigator hired by his attorney. Abel told the police he had started keeping those articles because he was interested in their investigation. [2] But she left him 41 days into the marriageAbel never told anyone whyand the two quickly divorced. He is the prime suspect in the murders of the four women found in the oil field, which is next to property he owns, and his name quickly surfaces whenever a teenager or a young woman disappears or is found dead in the area. eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), Mom, I love you, reads a note on the nightstand in Krystal Jean Bakers bedroom in Texas City. In June 1983 Abel moved from Houston into a pleasant middle-class neighborhood in League City. 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. The medical examiner said she was between 22 and 30 years old and perhaps had been shot to death by a .22-caliber weapon. } 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. Donna Prudhomme was among the victims found Credit: League City Police Department. For weeks I had felt almost as if I had been part of some parlor game. There are places in the world that are not evil due to any supernatural forces or demonic influences, but rather because window.googletag.pubads().addEventListener('impressionViewable', function(event) { (Abel denies this ever happened.) This was despite the fact that an affidavit had Abel marked as a serial sexual offender who showed signs of mad behavior that is often seen with serial killers. He was on me like a duck on a June bug, said an FBI agent who was there. eventAction: 'view' If a local law enforcement agency could identify a suspect that fit the parameters of that profile, a judge could rule that there was sufficient reason to search for more evidence. Despite the theories that Abel is behind the murders of several women, there has been no physical evidence linking him to the crimes, nor any witnesses who can position him ever meeting the young women. Then someone else saw a pair of womens pants with a drawstring waist, which was discolored and nearly shredded from decomposition. ga('ads.send', { I wondered if she was on her knees, begging for her life. But . eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), Yet according to Gottlieb, Abel was successful with women. 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. 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. if(document.querySelector("#ads")){ In her interview with Bittner, Cindy said that she decided to leave Abel during their honeymoon in Germany after they had a fight over sex. The retired NASA aerospace engineer owned land . However, after Tim Miller . And Robert Abel was part of the little band of very bright men who figured out how do it. Today, however, a police detective suggests in a sworn affidavit that Abel is a serial sexual offender who displays the kind of rage and violent behavior thats often seen in serial killers. 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. My life has been destroyed, my reputation ruined, Abel told me when I first met him earlier this year. Despite being found civilly liable for Laura Miller's death, Hedrick has never been charged with her murder. Just 20 days to my birthday, reads the note written by Laura Smither, an aspiring ballerina from the quiet town of Friendswood. Lets start here. Nearby were a dozen search dogs, including four trained to detect the scent of decomposing human flesh. ga('ads.send', { eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), Robert Abel was a retired aerospace engineer who had leased the property and finally bought a portion, 3001 Calder Drive for his horse stable. Does Crime Scene: Texas Killing Fields portray events with accuracy? 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. 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. I had no reason to ask except out of curiosity, Bittner says. I couldnt have overpowered her and gotten her into my car. Abel led many of the trail rides himself over the property and through his leased land. These were bodies found on land next to mine. As for the Chroniclestory, he said, I didnt know anything about serial killers. However, as the show portrays, the investigation soon led to Robert Abel, who was considered a suspect for a long time. Skip Hollandsworth specializes in long-form narratives. With such a high-profile case, Texas law enforcement was desperate to find. Some refer to this stretch of the Gulf Freeway as a. One time she wrote about sports. However, he was never arrested because there was never enough evidence to incriminate him. Just before he shook my hand good-bye, he said, Do I really look like a killer? Another. A retired NASA engineer named Robert Abel was suspected of being one such killer, but few seem to agree on whether Abel was responsible for any of the Texas Killing Field murders. Then finally, in 1993, nine years after Laura's disappearance, an unlikely suspect emerged: Robert Abel, a retired NASA engineer. She said that before their marriage, when he had gotten angry with her, he went out and beat a horse named Lancelot. But Mr. Abel doesnt want to come down here any more to answer them. Authorities associate Richerson's presumed murder with a number of unsolved cases connected to the Texas Killing Fields, for which police suspect several serial killers are responsible. Another person who is interviewed is Tim Miller, whose daughters remains were found in the killing fields. Then, mere months later, another local resident, Laura Miller, also disappeared from a nearby store. Why would she still be paying money to a private investigator unless she wanted the reward? Abel asked. We had to search for suspects, says Pat Bittner, the League City detective who, at the tender age of 30, was put in charge of the murder investigation. Content Warning: Article contains topics of self-harm, domestic violence, and animal cruelty Robert Abel died in 2005, aged 65. Whats more, he has never been arrested for any crime, nor is there any known record of a criminal complaint filed against him. }); There are many days when I think about driving over there, putting a gun to his head, and pulling the trigger, Miller says. It was Robert Abel, the retired Nasa engineer, and he owned a ranch right next to the killing fields. We visited the exact locations where each body had been found. The victim was never identified and became known as Jane Doe. A fourth body was also found six years later in 1991 in the same area and was identified as Donna Gonsoulin Prudhomme in 2019. 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. The three-part series explores the unsolved murders of four young women whose remains were found in and around the same location in Texas. 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. And there were other occasions when I felt as if Abel talked a little too much about the allegations against him. ), 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. And remember, he had a new trail-rides business going. Yet he haunts people. Do I really look like someone who would want to kill pretty young girls?. Abel was at the now-padlocked Stardust Trailrides waiting for me. 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. Why would a whole set of womens clothes be buried way out here? Miller said, turning off his machine. Dozens dead and several serial killer suspects: The haunting reality of the Texas Killing Fields. 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. 23:57 PST, Dec 6, 2022. William Reece: Who Were His Victims? During one of our meetings, Abel loaned me a box of legal documents about the case and about himself. 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. His stepdaughter while out riding located another set of skeletal remains. I know I had my doubts. And if I did kill her, I couldnt have carried her out of my house. It was as if he was giving me a scenario of how one of the murders had happened. MEAWW brings you the best content from its global team of 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. None of the dead womens clothing or jewelry was found. "Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields" is about the victims and the suspects of the famous killings that happened in Texas, mainly around a stretch of I-45 in the late 80s. However, detectives reportedly suspected Robert only because of his proximity to the crime scene and his alleged aggressive personality experts had determined he was a perfect fit for the profile of a serial killer. 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. The actors in "Texas Killing Fields' hoped somehow, the film . 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. On Monday, members of the House Judiciary Committee met in New York for a hearing on violent crime in the city. 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. She was a . Over the years, various suspects have come and gone. Abel, however, remained wary: He told me he still worried that Miller would drink too much one night and try to kill him. A color aerial photograph of "The Killing Field" in League City Texas: A black and white satellite shot of the area : Daniel Vaughn is the countrys first barbecue editor, and he has eaten more barbecue than you have. 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? Investigators have flown over his land in helicopters and brought in cadaver dogs to look for bodies. He was a brilliant scientists who helped get the Saturn rocket to the moon, and he leased a horse stable adjacent to the killing fields. Matamoros Was Once Relatively Safe for Texans. Mike Hall writes about criminals, musicians, the law, and barbecue. eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), He said he was afraid for his lifeone father of a murdered girl even left aggressive messages on his answering machine, at least one of which threatened to kill him. 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. A 2022 Netflix docuseries examined some of the deaths referenced in this piece. MEAWW is an initialism for Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide. "And there's no doubt they would have kept going up"he pauses,. Abel to kill? Is it possible that Robert Abel is a cold, calculating murderer, one who is consumed by a twisted need to prey on young women but also patient enough to wait years between attacksand smart enough to leave almost no clues behind? He claimed he was a man with a clean record and someone who had never been on the wrong side of the law before. 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. When you met him, he came across as this country boy, a ranchers son with a thick accent, says Boeings Robert Gottlieb. Abel also had no criminal record or had ever been in trouble with the law before. Investigators also flew over his land in helicopters, and Abel was interviewed by detectives in neighboring towns, but nothing was found. The 25-year-old cocktail waitress disappeared after she left her parents' home to hitch a ride to Houston to visit her boyfriend. Robert Abel was also once a suspect in the case. pg.acq.push(function() { He grieved until the day he succumbed to cancer. Robert Abel, a former NASA engineer who ran a minor horseback-riding business, remained one of the chief suspects in the Texas Killing Fields Murders case. }); He always denied having any implication in the affair, and no physical evidence was ever retrieved. One of the best films from 2016 and nobody saw it. A few days later I returned to League City. }); He suggested that Abel left the womens bodies on the pastureland because he knew theyd be ravaged by animals. Robert Abel - A retired NASA engineer died in early 2005. 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. Others push their daughters out of sight so that he cant get a look at them. As it turns out, Tim Miller might have found an old garbage dump.. If you fill out the first name, last name, or agree to terms fields, you will NOT be added to the newsletter list. 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