Man Sentenced to 20 Years for His Role in Texas Killing Fields Victim Laura Miller’s Death
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On February 2, 1986, the body of a teenage girl was discovered by two boys on dirt bikes on Calder Road in League City, Texas. The remains were identified as those of Laura Miller, a high school sophomore at Clear Creek High School.
Laura Miller disappeared from League City, Texas, on September 10, 1984. She had just moved to the area with her family, and the phone lines to their home had not yet been connected, so she walked to a nearby pay phone to call her boyfriend.
Laura would never be seen alive again, and it would be around 17 months before her body was found.
According to her father, Laura suffered from depression and anxiety as a result of medical issues that led her to have seizures. She loved music but felt unable to follow her passion after an incident where she had a seizure during a solo performance at school. According to her father, she was left with a sadness that led her to fall in with a bad crowd.
He feels the police treated her disappearance as a runaway because of her mental health history.
The area in which Miller's body was found came to be known as the Texas Killing Fields, a long stretch of land that runs along Interstate 45 southeast of Houston, where the remains of over 30 girls and young women have been found since the early 1970s.
Among the victims were: Heidi Marie Villarreal-Fye, a 25-year-old bartender who was last seen in 1983 at a convenience store in the League City area. The following spring, a dog retrieved her skull and brought it to a nearby house.
Audrey Lee Cook, 30, was last seen in December 1985. Her remains were found near Miller's in 1986 in a field near Calder Road. She was not identified until 2019, when investigators used genetic genealogy to finally identify her.
Donna Prudhomme, 34, was last seen in July 1991. She was last known to have lived in Nassau Bay. Her remains were found in a field off Calder Road in early September that same year. She too was identified in 2019.
In relation to his daughter’s death, Laura Miller's father, Tim Miller, had been suspicious of a man named Clyde Hedrick. According to an article in the Guardian (UK), Hedrick was a neighbor who Mr. Miller said could often be found in the local bars talking to female patrons. Through his own investigation, Miller discovered that in the summer of 1984 Hedrick, accompanied by a woman who would later be identified as Ellen Beason, left a bar together.
When questioned by police, Hedrick told them Beason had died accidentally while they were skinny dipping, and that he panicked and concealed her body beneath a discarded couch on a dirt road along the Galveston Causeway
Since the autopsy listed the death as undetermined and police could not present evidence to support a murder, Hedrick was convicted of abuse of a corpse. In 2012, Beason's body was exhumed and, after re-examination, a hairline fracture was found in the skull that was determined to have resulted from blunt-force trauma.
It wasn't until 2013 that a murder indictment was obtained against Hedrick in connection to Beason's death. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2014 and, although sentenced to 20 years, was out on parole after serving eight.
Hedrick committed suicide in March 2026, at the age of 72 while prosecutors were preparing to seek his indictment in connection with several unsolved Killing Fields murders.
On September 2, 2026, James Elmore Jr., 61, was convicted of manslaughter for his role in Miller's death, and on September 3, 2026, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He still faces charges of tampering with evidence relating to the concealment of Miller's body and the body of another woman, Audrey Cook.
Elmore had approached Laura Miller's father, Tim Miller, in 2022, claiming to have information about Laura's death. He told Mr. Miller that he was present when Laura died. Tim Miller is the founder of Texas EquuSearch, a nonprofit volunteer search and recovery organization based near Houston, Texas. He had been working with the families of other missing people while searching for answers about his daughter’s death.
Elmore had accompanied Mr. Miller to various locations associated with his daughter’s death. Videos of them visiting these locations together were shown at trial.
Prosecutors said Elmore shared details of the crime that were not publicly known, and he was eventually accused of preparing a dose of cocaine that was given to the victim by Clyde Hedrick. According to Galveston County District Attorney Kenneth Cusick, Elmore and Hedrick had been friends for several years.
During his testimony at Elmore's trial, Tim Miller said directly to Elmore that he needed to be punished for concocting the drug dose that contributed to his daughter's death.
Through tears he said: “You handed it to Clyde Hedrick. You handed it.”
Elmore also faces additional charges pertaining to possession of child pornography discovered during the manslaughter investigation as well as two evidence-tampering charges.
