Texas Killing Fields

The Texas Killing Fields is a title used to roughly denote the area surrounding the Interstate Highway 45 corridor southeast of Houston, where since the early 1970s, more than 30 bodies have been found, and specifically to a 25-acre patch of land in League City, Texas^[1] where four women were found between 1983 and 1991. The bodies along the corridor were mainly of girls or young women.^[2] Furthermore, many additional young girls have disappeared from this area who are still missing. Most of the victims were aged between 12 and 25 years. Some shared similar physical features, such as similar hairstyles.^[3]

Despite efforts by the League City, Texas police, along with the assistance of the

• Colette Anise Wilson, 13, disappeared from the Alvin Bus Stop on County Road 99 and Highway 6 in Alvin, Texas after she was dropped off by her band director on June 17, 1971. Her body was found five months later on November 26, 1971, near the Addicks Reservoir, close to where the body of Gloria Gonzales was discovered four months later, just 35 yards from where Collette had been located. Wilson had been shot in the head.
• Brenda Kaye Jones, 14, was last seen while walking to Galveston hospital, close to Interstate Highway 45 on her way to visit her aunt on July 1, 1971, in Galveston, Texas. Her body was found on July 2, 1971, floating in nearby Galveston Bay near Pelican Island, close to the Seawolf Parkway and near Interstate Highway 45 the next day. She had a sock lodged in her mouth and had died from a head wound.
• dental records to have belonged to Shaw. Additionally, a crucifix found wrapped around the jawbone
  of the skull was identified by Shaw's mother to have belonged to her daughter. The other body found in the marsh was positively identified as Johnson. The cause of their deaths could not be determined.
• Gloria Ann Gonzales, 19, was last seen on October 28, 1971, near her apartment on Jacquelyn Street in
  Houston, Texas. Her skeletal remains were found near Addicks Reservoir in the same area as Colette Wilson on November 23, 1971.^[7]
  She died from blunt force trauma to the head.
• Allison Anne Craven, 12, was reported missing by her mother on November 9, 1971, when she returned to their apartment in
  Houston, Texas near Interstate 45 after completing shopping errands for one hour. Three months later police found Craven's partial remains in a nearby field, two hands along with bones from an arm and some teeth. On February 25, 1972, the rest of her skeleton was found in a Pearland, Texas field, also near Interstate 45
  and ten miles from where she was last seen.
• Debbie Catherine Ackerman and Maria Talbot Johnson, both 15, were last seen attempting to hitchhike to
  Texas City.^[8]
  An autopsy later determined that both teens had been shot to death before being tied down and thrown into the water.
• Kimberly Raye Pitchford, 16, was last seen at
  Houston, Texas while she was there for a driving test on January 3, 1973. Her body was found by two teenaged boys two days later in a ditch in Angleton, Texas
  around noon on County Road 65 in Brazoria County on January 5, 1973. She was wearing a blue dress, but her watch and shoes were missing. She had died by strangulation.
• Brooks Bracewell, 12, and Georgia Caroline Geer, 14, were both last seen at the UtoteM convenience store off of Interstate 45 on September 6, 1974. Georgia was last seen in an orange outfit. Brooks was wearing plaid high-rise pants and a gold V-neck sweater. In 1976, some of her remains were found by police in Alvin, Texas, but due to neglect, were not identified as hers until a new detective took over the case in 1981. The ditch where they were originally found on April 3, 1981, was reexamined, and more remains as well as the fragments of a gold sweater and plaid pants were found.
• Suzanne “Suzie” Bowers, 12, was last seen walking along a three minute route between her grandmother’s house at the 4000 block of Avenue S and her own home at the 3100 block of Avenue P at around 10:45 a.m. on May 21, 1977, in Galveston, Texas. The seventh grader was going home to get her swimsuit to go to the beach. Her skeletal remains were found two years later in Alta Loma, Texas on March 25, 1979. Her skull appeared to have gunshot holes, but investigators were unable to determine her cause of death.
• forensic genealogists positively identified Dean and Tina, and in 2022, their daughter Holly Marie was located alive in Oklahoma
  .
• DNA for testing in August 2013.^[16][17][18]
• Susan Lee Eads, 20, was a cocktail waitress who left her family home in
  Houston, Texas. A DNA profile extracted from Eads' body was matched to Arthur Raymond Davis Jr., a Vietnam War veteran and a boat captain. He died on January 16, 1984, after a single-vehicle accident.^[20]
• On October 10, 1983, cocktail waitress Heide Marie Villarreal-Fye, 25, was last seen at a convenience store located off of West Main Street and Hobbs in League City, Texas. On April 4, 1984, Heidi's remains were discovered after a dog brought her skull to a nearby house in Calder Field on the 3000 block of Calder Road near League City, Texas. The medical examiner determined that she had broken ribs and had been beaten with a club; she is believed to have died from blunt force trauma to the head.
• Sondra Kay Ramber, 14, was last seen at her family's home in Santa Fe, Texas on October 26, 1983. She was determined to be missing due to the fact that the front door was left open, food was in the oven, and her purse and coat were still in the house. She was initially believed to have gone to the store for a moment, but she never returned.^[21]
• Laura Lynn Miller, 16, was last seen on September 10, 1984, at the same convenience store Villarreal-Fye was last seen at a year earlier in League City, Texas, using a payphone to call her boyfriend. Her remains were found on February 2, 1986, 60 ft away from where police had found Villarreal-Fye the year before.
• Ellen Rae Simpson Beason, 29, was last seen with friends on July 29, 1985, at the Texas Moon Club in
  Galveston County.^[22]
  The medical examiner was unable to determine the cause of death at that time, but upon the exhumation of her remains in 2012, it was ruled that she had suffered several severe skull fractures.
• 17-year-old Michelle Doherty Thomas was last seen leaving her familial residence in Santa Fe, Texas on October 5, 1985, after having returned from work at a Galveston, Texas gas station.^[23] She left to meet with friends at a nearby nightclub located on Galveston Island later that the evening. Acquaintances claimed they had stopped at a convenience store on the way to the nightclub, and Michelle had gotten into a vehicle with two men. She has not been seen since. Authorities believe that she may have been abducted and murdered.^[24]
• Audrey Lee Cook, 30,^[25][26] was last heard from in late December 1985. Cook's remains were found in a field in the 3000 block of Calder Road, on the same day that the body of Laura Miller was located nearby. The victim's bodies were not buried but rather hidden from view. Both were left in a supine position near a tree. Cook had a small calibre gunshot wound to the back, severing her spine, and she had suffered additional injuries to several ribs.^[27] She was identified in April 2019 along with Donna Prudhomme by Family Tree DNA using genetic genealogy.^[28][29][30]
• Shelley Kathleen Sikes, 19, was last seen leaving her job as a waitress at Gaido's Seafood Restaurant on the beachfront in Galveston, Texas just prior to 12:00 a.m. on May 24, 1986. Her car was found the next day, stuck in mud, blood-stained, and abandoned on the side of an Interstate 45 access road, south of the Galveston causeway.^[31] The driver's side window had been broken, and bloodstains were discovered on the door and on the driver's seat. She has never been found, but her killer ^{[clarification needed]} has been charged and convicted of her murder.^[32][33]
• Suzanne Rene Richerson, 22,^[34][35][36] was employed as a night clerk at Casa Del Mar Condominiums on Seawall Boulevard in Galveston, Texas. She was last seen at work at 6:00 a.m. on October 7, 1988, by resort security guards, and shortly afterward another employee who was sleeping in the room above Richerson's office heard a loud female scream. The witness claimed to have then heard a car door slam shut accompanied by another scream and the sound of a car speeding away from the parking lot. A guest arrived at Richerson's office to check out at around 6:30 a.m. and discovered the desk abandoned. One of Richerson's shoes was located in the parking lot later in the morning, but she has never been seen again.
• Donna Marie Prudhomme, 34,^{[25][26][27][37]} was last seen in July 1991 in Nassau Bay, Texas. On September 8, 1991, a local resident came across her badly decomposed body in a field beside Calder Road. A medical examination concluded that she had died at least six weeks prior, yet a cause of death could not be determined. She was identified in April 2019 along with Audrey Cook by Family Tree DNA with the use of genetic genealogy.^[38][39][40]
• On February 1, 1996, Lynette Bibbs, 14, and Tamara Fisher, 15 visited a
  Houston, Texas club for teenagers. A 22-year-old male later claimed to have dropped the friends off at a motel near the city center on Old Spanish Trail. The bodies of the two girls were found dumped by a rural road two days later on February 3, 1996, in Cleveland, Texas.^[41]
  They had both been shot to death, but police suspect by different people.
• Krystal Jean Baker, 13,
  Texas City leaving her grandmother’s home for a convenience store to use the phone after an argument. Krystal was last seen using a phone at a local convenience store to ask her friend if she could stay with her.^[43] Two hours later, her body was found. She had been raped, strangled, and dumped over the Interstate 10 Trinity River bridge. Baker's great aunt was Marilyn Monroe.^[44] Kevin Edison Smith was convicted of capital murder in her death in 2012 and sentenced to life in prison.^[45] In 2019, Governor Greg Abbott signed into law the Krystal Jean Baker Act, which permits the collection of DNA from individuals arrested for certain felonies, prior to conviction.^[46][47]
• On April 3, 1997,
  non-profit organization that aids the search for and recovery of kidnapping victims.^[48] William Lewis Reece was convicted of the murders of Laura Smither, Kelli Cox and Jessica Cain in June 2022.^[50]
• Kelli Ann Cox,[50] 20, was last seen July 15, 1997 at a Connoco gas station and convenience store in Denton, Texas, after locking herself out of her car and making a call to her boyfriend for help using the station's outdoor payphone. Over eighteen years later on March 18, 2016, Kelli's remains were discovered after suspected serial killer William Lewis Reece directed investigators to search an area in Brazoria County, Texas, where her remains were found. Reece confessed to and was convicted of the murders of Laura Smither, Kelli Cox, and Jessica Cain in June 2022.^[50]
• Jessica Lee Cain, 17,
  Hobby Airport. Suspected serial killer, William Lewis Reece,^[53][54] directed investigators to search the area where her remains were found.^[55] Reece was convicted of the murders of Smither, Cox and Cain in June 2022.^[50]
• Tot Tran Harriman, 57,
  League City and Corpus Christi, Texas and planned to drive along Highway 35. She departed at approximately 5:00 a.m. on July 12, 2001, from her son's residence near League City. Tot was last seen driving her 1995 Lincoln Continental
  along Highway 35. Neither she nor her car have ever been found.
• Sara Ann Lewis Trusty, 23, was last seen during the evening hours of the day in
  Texas City in a nearby reservoir by fishermen.^[59][60]
• 'Terressa Lynn Vanegas, 16,[61] was last seen in Dickinson, Texas walking near the Green Caye Subdivision on October 31, 2006. Three days later, her body was found strangled, raped, and with her hair cut off in a field across from Dickinson High School.^[62][63]