GUILTY! Texas Killing Fields! 30+ WOMEN! 40+ YEARS! Who Killed Laura Miller?!

0:10 When I was a death investigator, I got to the point in my mind and I think probably in my soul. I was so burned out where I would begin to imagine, and this had to do with a diagnosis of PTSD, that death was my companion. And everywhere I went, death was with me. And you know, when you have PTSD, you think about these horrible things. You know, you get agoraphobia, and you become kind of paranoid. A heightened sense of guarding, I guess, as they say. Death seemed like a constant companion.

0:56 But can you imagine, in reality, that you're sitting across the table from someone that you knew had something to do with your precious daughter's death. And you had developed a relationship with them for the purposes of trying to elicit information, just to get some scrap, some understanding. Today on Body Bags, we're going to talk about a case or cases that and also one such person, Tim Miller.

1:41 I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Brother Dave, it goes without saying that you and I have spent time with Tim Miller. I'm not a personal friend of his. However, I can tell you, and you've spent far more time with him than I have, we've been on a number of shows over the years. Tim has a heart for searching for those that are missing. But the root of that, I don't know what you would call it, that impetus that drives him forward every single day has to do with the death of his precious daughter. And we've kind of seen this unfold. I don't Again, I always use this, always allude to this. I don't think you could walk into a Hollywood studio and try to pitch the story and they would believe it. But that's where we are

2:36 right now.

2:37 I thought for years, Joe, and I mean this, I thought for years we're never going to have a resolution for Tim. Tim Miller is, the reason you might recognize his name is Texas EquiSearch. When we're searching for people, Texas EquiSearch is popular. They are the premium. They're the one everybody else looks to. Now, granted, there are other organizations.

3:03 Most of them are just incredible groups of volunteers who have spent time and money, you know, searching, helping families find some kind of resolution. And with Tim Miller starting Texas EquiSearch, it began, believe it or not, with his own daughter being part of what has now been called the Texas Killing Fields. And, you know, when we say the Texas Killing Fields, it's talking about 30 murders, 30 women, more or less, because it's an area, and I pulled this up because I wanted to be very specific. While you have a lot of women, 30 or more, and yet, there's probably more than one person involved in the killings, kind of like with what's happening at Gilgo.

3:59 You know, a.

4:01 Lot has been made about Rex Heuermann. Oh, got the guy, got the Long Island serial killer.

4:06 No, you don't.

4:07 You got one, because I don't think Heuermann was the only one working in that area, and we still have people who are not directly attached to him. Well, same thing is true here with the Texas killing fields. It refers to a stretch of area called Notorious, an area near League City, along I-45, the corridor between Houston and Galveston.

4:35 Most of us, unless you're living in Texas in that area, we know Galveston from the song by Glen Campbell. And yet, or if you study hurricanes, the Galveston hurricane in the early 1900s. And yet the name Texas Killing Fields is used very broadly in the sense that it's about a number of women found in a fairly broad area. OK, we're talking about four today. In particular, actually, we're talking about two, Laura Miller and Audrey Lee Cook.

5:12 So I was going to say four.

5:14 There are four that are kind of all put together in the same grouping. Also includes Heidi Villareal Fry and Donna Prudhomme.

5:25 So along with Laura.

5:27 Miller and Audrey Lee Cook, those are the four that kind of all get put together. And we'll see how they attach as we go. Today, though, focusing on two. And the reason is in the last 12 months, after all these years, because we're looking at stuff from 1984. after all these years, Joseph Scott Morgan, we now know who killed Laura Miller. We now know who probably killed Audrey Lee Cook. Um, we actually have somebody who has been on trial for being involved in those two homicides, something I thought we would never see Joe. And the reason we know a lot about is because of Tim Miller.

6:12 Yeah, because of Tim. And I, um, I was reflecting back because, you know, these cases started, the so-called Texas killing fields cases start, you know, they trace their origins back to the early 70s, actually, you know, where you've got this field or fields that are littered with these remains. And, you know, one of the names or two of the names that came up in my mind as soon as I heard about this, I was thinking about Henry Lee Lucas.

6:46 an honest tool because they were active during that period of time as well. And they were in Texas, um, and you know, Florida, a couple of other places as well. And of course they use that to great effect to get free trips, to go out and say, yeah, yeah, yeah. I took responsibility for this, but they did kill people.

7:04 And many times they did it, um, together. And again, this is one of these anomalous kind of serial events. Where you've got individuals that are paired with one another. So I don't think that it's beyond the scope to believe that there is certainly more than two people that were maybe making these depositions, if you will, in these locations.

7:36 And the problem is, is that for a long, long time, and Tim has spoken about this, I don't want to put words in his mouth. To say that he was dissatisfied with the way investigations were going and probably his view from behind the curtain as to how other investigations had been going related to all of these cases, you know, left him somewhat frustrated. And this evidence that you might recover at a scene like this that is, in fact, so vast, Brother Dave, it's easy to lose things. and particularly when you do not begin as an investigator to see patterns developing. And look, I'm not casting aspersions upon those individuals that started working these cases all those years ago, okay?

8:29 You have to have a certain number of cases before pattern recognition kicks in. And what am I talking about? Well, You know, when the people that do profiling and whatnot, they begin to tick boxes relative to similarities between cases, right? Well, if that's the route you're going to go down with that group of people doing what they do, and I think that it can be dangerous for forensics, actual forensics people, because you'll get locked into a mindset relative to what you're looking for. Like, if you're doing pattern recognition as an investigator at a scene, It's fine to make note of what you're seeing, but don't paint yourself into a corner intellectually and say you're discarding all of the possibilities.

9:18 Because if you do that, it's going to lead you down a path of exclusion, where you're essentially discounting everything else that is kind of swirling around you. And one of the problems is that, Dave, from an investigative standpoint, if you look at investigators, from a familial standpoint and a kind of a family tree of investigators, 30, 40 year period, how many investigators have come and gone? And with the descending lines, again, going back to this idea of almost genealogical connection, you know, professionally, who passed on what information at one point in time, who had developed leads or thoughts about a particular crime, and it may have influenced investigators, you know, down the road, you know,

10:10 to come in. We don't exist in a perfect world. So, this is how things can get sideways sometimes, okay, with investigations.

10:17 We get that way. When we're reporting these things.

10:20 We do.

10:20 We'll see it.

10:22 In particular, when you and I are on a show together on a story we've dealt with, and we'll hear people say things on the show, and both of us are going, come on, man, really?

10:33 Are you watching TikTok all day? Is that what you're really doing? Because that's not investigation.

10:38 Right, right.

10:38 And so it is something that happens. People get tunnel vision and think of one thing and one thing only. But what we have here, With Laura Miller in particular and Audrey Lee Cook, and this is the interesting, not interesting, it's all, again, whenever I say this is fascinating or interesting, I feel like I am being cold to the victim's families, and I'm not. I'm trying not to be. It's just we're trying to figure out who did this, and to be honest with you, I try to figure out why.

11:08 What drove this person or persons to doing this heinous crime? And Laura Miller and Audrey Lee Cook Laura Miller went missing September of 84.

11:21 She left her house. She's 16 years old. Joe leaves her house to go make a phone call.

11:25 Okay.

11:25 Or at least that's what she said.

11:27 Hey, I'm going to make a phone call.

11:30 She vanishes.

11:32 She's gone into thin air. A 16 year old girl. Think about that for just a minute. If you have a child, you know, that went through those teen years or anyway, when she went missing, It took almost a year and a half before they found her. Her remains were not found until February of 86. So think about that from September of 84 to February of 86.

12:03 And when they found her, she wasn't alone.

12:09 They found the remains of Laura Miller with the remains of Audrey Lee Cook.

12:15 Yeah.

12:17 Now, they didn't identify Audrey Lee Cook right away. Matter of fact, Joe, she was a Jane Doe for decades. And as we look at today's episode, that's what we're breaking down are the the two victims found in the same spot, which. Mathematically, what are the odds that it was somebody different, you know, that I can't imagine?

12:42 I mean, do you?

12:43 Have you ever found remains near one another that were by two different sets of murderers?

12:49 Has that ever happened?

12:50 Well, I have found, yeah, and I've been present when adjunct remains have been found at a location. One of the problems, though, particularly in such an isolated area and such an unguarded area, is thinking about, you know, how did those remains wind up there? And if you're trying to assess it, What condition were the remains in? Had the remains been, I don't know, positioned in any particular way?

13:20 And still, after all this time, could you actually have appreciated positionality? You know, if there's any kind of posing going on and this sort of thing. Because, Dave, I've got to tell you, this is, to me, thinking about this. These remains are not, how can I say this? They're out for preservation. Try not to be disrespectful. They're out for display. Okay, this is not something where you're going in and you're trying to hide. And that might be the most sinister part to this. But as we move through this horrible, horrible tragedy, let's keep in mind, has the killer actually been caught? Or are they out there still somewhere? Or, Are they long since dead? Oh, brother Dave, there's, uh, you know, there's a couple of things you look for, um,

14:31 relative to serialized events. Um, and when you show up at the scene where a remain has been found and keep in mind, um, it's been my experience. Well, I've had to, I've had, I've had individuals that I believe killed on the site where the remains were found. And then I've had other individuals that have killed at another site and removed those remains to the dumping location. All right.

15:00 So you're going to have, and I've traveled on about this, uh, many times, certainly in class. Um, over the years and on air too, you know, where you have these levels of scenes, you have primary scene, secondary scene and tertiary scenes. And that's kind of the way you have to figure things out or to try to understand if you have enough evidence that will kind of be the key to open the door here. If you have an individual that is, say, deposited and posed, okay, And when I say posed, you can have individuals that are resting against things. You can have...

15:42 I've had individuals that are literally laid on the ground and spread eagle, nude or partially nude. And this is intentional. You know, when you see these, you'll see them either in a supine position, sometimes means face up or prone position, face down. Legs will be spread apart. Arms will be spread.

16:04 I have not had one of these, but I've had people... friends of mine that have worked cases where individuals were bound in almost a fetal-like position, and they're deposited. And you see this lots of times with bindings, you know, like on the wrists, the ankles, and maybe they're kind of hogtied, you know, when you find them. And without going too far down this road, it really gives you kind of an insight into, I think, the thinking of the perpetrator that's doing this. And Many profilers say that the more complex the posing, the the intentional nature of these events gives you an insight into the level of of intellect for this person. I know that people would say, well, intellect, they're stupid for doing it. Look, man. The Marquis de

16:58 Sade was brilliant. I mean, he really was. And that's what kept him going, I think, for all the crimes that he perpetrated over the years and even documented them, wrote about them extensively. And he was an animal, okay? So don't misconstrue this, okay? Because many times these people have real high intellectual abilities. It's just that that ability is directed in one specific area. You know, we sit around and we think about, well, I got to pay the light bill this month. I got to feed my dogs.

17:31 I got to take care of myself. I got to go to the doctor. These people, all that stuff is, even if they have it as adjunct to the behavior that they're focused on, they're laser focused on going out and killing people. And, you know, you think about what kind of thought goes into this preparation. And again, if you're a police officer or an investigator and you're showing up at the scene, it's important that you take care.

17:57 at the scene, because if that is the primary scene, am I stepping over any evidence in my grounding or grinding, you know, spent casings into the ground? Am I missing some kind of fiber evidence or anything like this? Yeah. And then if it's a not the primary, but the secondary scene where they've been taken and deposited, well, am I brushing up against anything where maybe they left a bit of thread tied in a tree?

18:26 And when you're talking about posing two people in a field, you're talking about a lot of area that is going to be touched by the evidence, by the human being who is still alive, moving the dead, decomposing body. But in this case, Joe, we've got Laura Miller, 16 years old, and Audrey Lee Cook, who's 30-ish. Were they killed where they were found and posed?

18:51 Yep. Both of them?

18:52 Or were they killed somewhere else and taken to where they were found? Because that gives you a whole new pathway of possible evidence.

19:02 Yeah. We've thought about this a lot, like with overrode. I know I'm not picking on these guys because they make America roll. But we've talked a lot about, you know, overrode truckers, you know, and One of the reasons they come into focus many times is because they literally have a crime scene on wheels where they can if they want to, you know, like choke out a prostitute and a sleeper. Well, they can do that and then they can drive somewhere and deposit the remains.

19:29 Right.

19:29 So that would be the primary scene inside of that sleeper. And then depending upon where they place the body, that can be the secondary scene. And then you can have tertiary things, too, where they're throwing stuff out of the window and, you know, all of that. um so in talking about this where these two young ladies and you know again we mentioned a third um that what what type of pathway was taken to get to that location and because you mentioned this i've got to address this real quick the league city area and they're calling this league city okay it's galveston county i think Dude, this is an isolated area, and particularly back when this was really cooking, when these bodies were being found, very isolated, rural.

20:24 You'd have cattle, that sort of thing. It's kind of overgrown scrubland. Who would have knowledge that this place even existed? And how would they know to access this area? And there's been one other troubling hypothesis through, well, let's say intriguing. I don't know if troubling is a term, but intriguing in the sense that somebody at one point in time, I love it when somebody says something, actually proffered this idea.

21:09 this view that bodies had been placed out in these various locations, almost like a walking path. So that they were in specific areas so that you could go back and almost like, you know, night gallery with, you know, Rod Serling, you know, he's walking through the gallery. It's almost like, you're taking a look at the handiwork as you go along. You don't want it obscure. You don't want it not visible because you can go back out there and the profilers always say they love to go back and fantasize about these things and think about them, all these sorts of things. And again, that offers up a whole new level of horror here. But you have to kind of extricate yourself from that as a forensic science and crime scene processor relative to What kind of

22:07 evidence can you collect out here that is going to point back to somebody? And when you get remains that are degraded to a great degree, it's really hard to make fatal diagnoses. And we've got kind of a combination here. Some of these cases we've got involving blunt force trauma. There are cases involving gunfire. So, again, you're getting this overlap with all of these cases because you think about a serial perpetrator generally sticks with a single methodology. Right.

22:40 There are those outliers that will do multiple things in order to bring about death. But some of these people get very, very comfortable with it. That might be one of the reasons, I think, that you– they believe you can think about people working in tandem with one another, right? Because one person might do something the other person might not do, but they're the same result at the end.

23:02 I was looking at this because there are certain things that I was telling you before we started that every show you surprise me with something. It's like you have information stored that I can't find. It's like a file in your head. But in this case, because of Tim Miller and because of our knowledge of Tim, It has been on our radar for years. When Laura Miller was found and Audrey Cook, they were found by two teen boys riding bikes through the field, okay? And this is what frustrates me, Joe, and I'm not knocking anybody with this, but the area where Laura Miller was found, you know, in the field and was found by these two kids bicycling through the field, it was an area that Tim Miller...

23:51 had suggested that searchers search. We're trying to find out, again, resources and everything. I don't know what all was going on. And this is, as you mentioned, this is an area that has a lot of, there's a lot of area to look. You know, it's not, you're not talking about a football field. I'm talking about 20 football fields. And you can overlook things in that. It's almost happenstance that these two boys riding their bicycles, came across the remains.

24:25 And all I could think of is, as you were talking, Joe, is how much evidence did the boys disturb? Not knowing, not intentional, not willful, but, you know, just by accident. How much would I disturb if I was just walking through a field and came upon something, you know?

24:42 Yeah, well, yeah, and I hear what you're saying. Actually, I had a discussion about this recently in class with my students. At the end, I think when you're taking a long view of it, you have to take the good with the bad. If, in fact, you do, if you're on your bike or if you're on foot and you're walking through this area or riding through this area on a bicycle, could you have rolled over something? Could you have stepped on something? Many people remember where humans are tactile creatures. You might not believe it. Many people have to go up and touch things. You know, they'll actually put their hands on skeletal remains many times. Because here's the one thing about skeletal remains that I have

25:25 heard consistently throughout my career. One of two things. People either say, I thought that it was something from Halloween or something like that, or I thought it was an animal, non-human.

25:39 Right.

25:39 And so they'll go up and they'll attempt a verification. They're not thinking Friday the 13th horror movies here. They're thinking, I'm trying to understand what I'm seeing and how does it compute. Now, the horror might descend upon them later. But, you know, when they walk up, they'll. And so and Lord only knows how many other people had walked through the area. And we're talking about when you have remains that are degraded to this point. Think about, you know, how long Laura's body had been out there. How many other folks, how many other animals, you know, had walked through this area, tramped along? Not to mention, were any of the serial perpetrators, did they go back and revisit?

26:25 Did they adjust anything at the scene? Because they will do that periodically. And then they've just gone about their business. Maybe they're depositing something else out there. You just never know. And so you have to take all of that into consideration. So in answer to your question, I would rather say, okay, yeah, you might have disrupted it, but we have the body.

26:49 And then I can go back as an investigator, if I can speak to that person, our finder, right? If I can speak to that finder and say, what did you do? Did you touch the remains in any way? Show me where you walked, okay? Like, what was your first reaction? And you're not, and particularly if you're talking to a kid, you don't want to scare them. But you want to say, hey, man, look, I know this is really tough, but can you and I'm not going to take you back out there. But can you just kind of describe to me, first off, how you saw how you first recognized that you thought that it might have been a body? And then what was your next action?

27:28 What did you do at that point? Show me how you walked, where you walked. Tell me what you did once you got up on the body. Did you touch it with your foot? Because some people will do that. They will. Did you bend over, put your hands there or did you automatically see that it's a human remain and you do an about face and you get out of there as expeditiously as possible? I'm trying to find a cell. Well, it wouldn't been a cell phone. I'm trying to find some house that I can go to or some home or or a pay phone or something just to, you know, call 9-1-1. So all of that stuff is factored in when you're beginning to process a scene.

28:10 And it's good to have that knowledge when you're first advised or the thing is broken down for you because you're showing up cold to it as an investigator and you don't know what kind of elements have been put into the equation prior to you trying to figure this thing out. So, Dave, here we are. I think one of the things that's fascinating about this and always fascinates me regarding old cases, you know, kind of how do we get from that day when we'll focus on Laura here, when she just vaporizes. She's no more. Tim doesn't have her at the dinner table anymore. He actually made a comment like that, talking about that there's always an empty chair.

29:07 God bless him. There's always an empty chair. And that's just as real to him today as it was back then.

29:13 I'm glad you brought that up about Tim because, friends, look, when Tim Miller founded Texas EquiSearch, it was to help other families find their missing loved one. He did not know where his daughter was. When he started Texas EquiSearch, he did not know where his daughter was.

29:34 Think about that for a minute because He's looking. And I say the.

29:40 He founded it then because as he started looking, he realized how little was available. You know, he's out there and he's looking and trying to figure out how can I help in the future to prevent another dad from having to get out here and look on his own? And so that was when you look back at the history of Equisy, it began with Tim Miller looking for his daughter. And then after she's found, after her remains are found after 17 months, Joe, and you said that in the first segment, you said that they were posed.

30:12 We're talking about two bodies, the remains of two people, Laura Miller and Audrey Cook. Did they die about the same time, Joe? Do we know that? I know when their bodies are found, it's, you know, But do we know that?

30:26 Not necessarily. And that's really that's where because the bodies are in such an advanced state of decay that all of a sudden your timeline gets blown. So that's why it's really important that when you go back in time and you begin to think about what data did you have relative to when they were last seen, you try to marry that up with the level of degrading. the remains that exist and can you compare the two the two remains there to the same level of decompositional change very very difficult stuff to do particularly when you're you're absent major pieces major data points along the way you know like for instance you know any kind of soft tissue that could give you an indication of what kind

31:16 of trauma was involved in a particular case, those sorts of things. And it makes it makes it very, very difficult.

31:22 Well, we know that, you know, we know Laura left her home to, you know, in September of 84. With Audrey Lee Cook is a little bit different. She was from Tennessee and she regularly back then, again, is in the days before cell phones. And it was at a time back then. Those of you who are under 40 probably don't know this. We used to have a telephone in your house. And when you wanted to call out of your local area, it was a long distance call.

31:52 And they could be expensive.

31:54 Back in the early 80s, calling from Texas to Memphis, Tennessee would be a long distance call.

32:00 It would be.

32:00 And it would be expensive. So we used to do something. It's really kind of neat. I know that when we talk about writing a letter, you're thinking about an email. But see, back in the day, we used to use pieces of paper. And we would use a writing utensil, a pencil or a pen, and we would write words and create sentences. And we would then sign that, you know.

32:22 Yeah.

32:23 And then we would go to this thing called the post office where they sold stamps. And we would put it on and we would mail the letters.

32:33 Yeah. And our family would get them.

32:35 Well, in the case of Audrey Lee Cook, her family, she regularly wrote her family. I mean, really, like they... They knew to bank on it, Joe. She stopped writing just prior to Christmas of 1985. And so that's when it is believed that something happened to Audrey Lee Cook because the letter stopped around.

33:00 Christmas of 85.

33:01 And we know that her remains were found, you know, February 2nd of 86, along with Laura Miller, who had been missing since September of 84. So we've got two women who, well, one child, 16, and the other 30-ish. And they both vanished at very different times, but are both found at the same time.

33:25 Yeah. Yeah, what a shock that would be, too, for those investigators, right? You know, because you go out there and you find one remain, one set of remains. And then you realize that this thing is going to expand. And maybe even geometrically, you don't know what else is out there. And are they connected? And again, this goes back to the idea of trying to understand the nature of how they died, what brought them to their end. Because, you know, just looking at the skeletal remains at the scene in both of these cases, Dave, you could tell just a quick glance that neither one of these individuals are advanced in age. So you know that they're young.

34:09 and what are the odds that two young people would drop dead? And I know that one is 30 and one is 16, but trust me, 30 years of age is very, very young when it comes to just somebody spontaneously dying, again, stating the obvious. So if that is not where our question or where our answer lay, we have to consider other possibilities. When... I'm at a scene and I'm trying to assess skeletal remains. I'm going to look for anything out there that might be an indicator. Now, I can't do a, let's just say we're talking about potential gunfire-related death, okay? So, before I ever begin to handle the remains at all, because generally with homicidal cases, gunfire is going to be the number one cause of death, okay,

34:58 wherever they're shot. So I want to sweep the area with a metal detector and just determine if there's any kind of lead projectile, if there's any kind of casings or anything like that before I'm ever going to try to remove these remains. Because one of the primary things is going to be orientation. Okay. orientation of the remains that are left, the core bit of the body that is there relative to any kind of spent casings, lead core projectiles, anything that's out there, or maybe a knife has been left behind. So I need to go down the checklist and kind of rule this out so I can contextualize everything. But, you know, when you're at a scene, you don't have obvious head trauma, you know, with a skeleton.

35:42 You don't have like if you find the sternum, you don't have a press contact wound because it's a flat bone. I've had those where a weapon is placed up to a sternum and discharged. You don't have any of that and you don't have like a noose tied around the neck of the skeletal remains or what remains therein. You got to scratch your head. Because sometimes you're just not going to have answers as to what's been left behind.

36:14 Now, how did Laura Miller die and how did Audrey Lee Cook die?

36:18 Well, when you think about Laura Miller, I think one of the chilling things is that you cannot come away from that at the scene with definitive answers. Oh, wow. Her cause of death rests in eyewitness testimony that came up much later, Brother Dave. And it, of all things... involves cocaine, which to me, there's a certain level of, you know, I'd mentioned the Marquis de Sade a few moments ago. There is a real sadistic bent to this.

36:54 Just think about that just for a second. You're 16 years old. You're being held, you know, by an individual that is, in fact, you don't know it, but they're about to end your life. And they might even be displaying the syringe to you for whatever sadistic reason they have. You've got, in this case, two individuals. One is prepping an injection. They're demonstrating it to you. They're threatening you.

37:29 And then they take a syringe and they draw it up. They draw it up. And you're 16 years old. You're deathly afraid of needles. All kids are, right? It's not some, oh yeah, I need a shot. I'd love to have a shot. Something that is within us anyway. And then you're injected. And then as you're injected, the cocaine begins to take hold. It begins to burn in your veins.

37:51 There's been certain people that inject cocaine and they describe it like a fire in their veins. And this is something that's completely foreign to someone of 16 years of age that has never abused drugs. And you feel this flush coming over you. You can feel your Your heart begin to race. You've got a crushing headache. Vessels are changing in your body. And all of a sudden, you become short of breath. Can't breathe. And you're probably being restrained on top of her.

38:27 Oh, my gosh.

38:28 And then you've got a perpetrator that later admits, Dave, that he's staring into her eyes. and watches her seize. And her eyes close, and he watches her die. That's the kind of horror that we're talking about here. You know, and I hope that that little descriptor brings that home. But Dave, I'm fascinated how we came to this place relative to having an understanding of all of this, because this is a rarity, man. This is a real rarity.

39:02 Think about this for a minute. We started off talking about the Texas killing fields and how there were 30 about 30 women that had been found in this general area, all killed and investigations that overlapped one another, trying to identify people and who did this or that. And it finally came down to, there was a guy, there are actually two guys. Um, Clyde Hedrick was one of them and James Elmore is the other. Uh, Both live in the area. And they are part of the investigation. Detectives zeroing in on them. But it really came down to Tim Miller, Joe. Tim Miller was going to find out what happened to his daughter. And Tim Miller, after years, by the way, years, and years and years.

39:51 Decades going by. Tim is out working.

39:54 By the time Tim Miller finds out what happened to his daughter, Joe, Texas EquiSearch had become a legendary source of help for finding people and offering families some type of resolution that Tim Miller did not have yet. In 2022, he finally sits down with James Elmore, starts talking to him, interviewing him, Hours and hours. And James Elmore finally starts talking to him, Joe. And it's James Elmore who actually described what happened. What you described happening to Laura with a hot shot of cocaine, how her heart was rapidly beating, her body begins to seize, and the eyes, the light goes out of them, is because that's what James Elmore told Tim Miller. And Tim Miller was wise enough to record it. Sully James Elmore was not in great health.

40:57 And so in 2022, Tim Miller recorded James Elmore giving a confession to what happened to Laura Miller. Well, it still took years to get this in court, Joe.

41:12 Matter of fact, Tim Miller filed a civil lawsuit.

41:18 So that he could have some kind, because he didn't see a criminal prosecution coming. So he filed a civil lawsuit in 2022. He believed Clyde Hedrick was responsible for the death of his daughter, Laura.

41:36 You know, I mentioned James Elmore.

41:37 See, James Elmore admitted to loading the cocaine into the shot, into the needle.

41:46 But James Elmore didn't. said, well, I didn't poke her with it. Clyde did it.

41:52 Clyde Hedrick is the one who, I was just doing what Clyde told me to do. That's all I was doing. Well, Clyde Hedrick was in prison, Joe. He had already been convicted. Bragging about killing, by the way, in 2014, there was a prosecution of Ellen Beeson, another woman, part of the Texas killing fields. And Clyde Hedrick was convicted. Guy's bragging about killing people, man.

42:28 You know, it's going to come back to bite you.

42:31 So as this case was moving forward, Tim Miller has the civil lawsuit against James Elmore, against Clyde Hedrick, because he believed that's who was responsible for his daughter's death, having talked with James Elmore. Well, police finally, as it moves forward, the prosecution develops a case, Joe, and they go to court and present it. This past spring, James Elmore was indicted, Joe. And do you know what happened in March when the indictment comes down against James Elmore?

43:05 Clyde Hedrick was next because the case is all coming together, Justice Scott Morgan.

43:10 Do you know what happened to Clyde Hedrick?

43:13 Yeah, he's depended upon an oxygen supply, which he deprived himself of because he removed his breathing tube.

43:20 While in the hospital, by the way.

43:22 Yeah, while in the hospital. And he's, I guess, standing before his maker, awaiting whatever sentence will be passed on there. But, you know... Think about it. He got it easy. When we were talking about Laura's death, you know, Audrey, who was found immediately adjacent, had remained unidentified for a long, long time. All we had were skeletal remains. She was executed by a gunshot wound. And that's why early on I had said, you've got multiple actions going on here that are all fatal, right?

44:01 Wait a minute. So Laura Miller was overdosed with cocaine.

44:04 Yeah.

44:05 Killed with it, murdered with it.

44:07 Yeah.

44:08 And Audrey Lee Cook was shot.

44:11 Yeah, she was. Executed. Yeah. And she's got like broken ribs as well. You know, they made note of that. You know, the anthropologist is they were examining her remains. So that's what makes this also just nutty. There is another batch of cases that are out there. You know, we're like blunt force trauma is perhaps involved in some of these cases. And it's really hard to know because, again, I go back and it's very dissatisfying, I think, on one level intellectually because these remains are degraded to the point where you might not ever know. And many times prosecutors, when they're moving forward, and you and I have covered these cases, brother, where they'll say, yeah, we don't have a cause of death, but we're charging you with homicide.

45:05 And even medical examiners and coroners will rule cases as homicide. They'll rule a manner as homicide with the cause of death left undetermined. It's the circumstantial data that comes in where you kind of have to make these intellectual leaps. Because, you know, again, you go back, you're not supposed to have these young women that are just you know, got called, they just fell over dead. That doesn't happen. And then you look at the concentration geographically, you know, in these cases, all the cases, not just these that we are specifically mentioning today.

45:44 Right.

45:45 And I guess it, it all kind of comes back down to this brother day. When I think about what we were talking about earlier, how many more are there out there? You know, I mean, that have, have never been accounted for. Um, Or maybe whether animals, maybe even a perpetrator, had gone back out and collected remains. You had predation by animals that drug remains off. Things that no one will ever be held to account for. We do know this, though. At least we have an accounting now.

46:29 that is credited to one individual who is going to face the music, I guess.

46:38 Well, to a degree, yeah. No, you're right. Look, Clyde Hedrick's dead, okay?

46:45 He killed himself, and so he's not going to face any kind of charges like this, even though it's believed that he gave the shot based on James Elmore telling what happened.

46:55 James Elmore, in the last weeks— was convicted. Specifically, he was trying to get the, I want to make sure I don't get this wrong because.

47:11 When he was indicted, you know, in the spring, Clyde Hedrick killed himself. So all we had left was James Elmore to actually try to get a case on. And he was convicted. He did go to court. The trial just ended. He was convicted in manslaughter, felony manslaughter in the death of Laura Miller. He also was charged with tampering with evidence, the body of Laura Miller, and tampering with evidence, moving the body of Audrey Cook. By the way, when James Elmore was helping to move the body of Laura Miller, Joe, he said that he didn't know he was.

47:48 Moving Laura Miller. He thought he was just moving trash. Now, based on him.

47:55 Admitting to so many other things, I don't know why he would not be truthful with that.

48:01 I don't know. There's always, again, going back to Lucas and Tool, and you'll find this, there's a thread that runs through what a lot of these perpetrators do. There is a dash of truth coupled with misdirection. And I think many times it's, and I don't know, maybe, I mean, that's between him and, you know, whether or not he's telling the truth or not. And you cannot, you know, what are you going to do to try to force it out of him? There's no way, you know, if he is not telling the truth in this particular instance.

48:44 I'll be curious to watch his stay in the correctional facility as it is, or now as He's been a convicted felon. I mean, he's been in the joint before. But now, in light of this, he has money to play with, if you will. He has capital in this. Because if he gets a sense that he can play any card here to maybe improve his situation, he might.

49:14 Keep in mind, how long did he interact with Tim?

49:19 It was.

49:20 was years. He interacted with Tim.

49:23 Three years.

49:24 Yeah, and just kind of teased it out over a period of time. I don't know. I mean, Tim's a much stronger guy than I would be.

49:34 He just wanted to know, Joe.

49:36 He just needed to know what happened to his daughter. And by the way, For those of you who might take a path of going, well, she was using cocaine. No wonder she overdosed.

49:44 No, no, no.

49:45 Just so you're clear on this. The shot that was given to her was not for enjoyment. According to James Elmore, mixed up two grams of cocaine to shoot into one gram of cocaine. If you're partying, chopping it up and snorting it, you're talking about a night out.

50:04 Just one.

50:05 For two grams to go into one person in one shot, it's there to kill them.

50:09 It's not there for fun. A 16-year-old that has no tolerance whatsoever for it. And two grams. It's going to kill you. Yeah. And so in this particular case, we've kind of chatted about this before, Dave, in cases involving drugs, if they can be weaponized to the point. We have people that do poisonings and this sort of thing. And that's what we're looking at here. It's just such a horrible thing. way to go. But I pray for the peace in Tim's life now and the rest of his extended family. And as I always say, there never will be closure. But I can tell you what there always will be. An empty chair at the dinner table because of these circumstances where somebody would be this much of a monster. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body bags.