Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields (2022) s01e02 Episode Script

1
[eerie guitar music playing]
[Kathryn] In 1991
there was this couple out on horseback
going through the Killing Field.
And they can smell something.
- The police are called.
- [police sirens wail distantly]
And another decomposing body's found
underneath a tree in the Killing Field.
[reporter 1] A fourth body found
in the same location.
She is unidentified at this time.
We know she is a white female,
approximately five foot two inches tall.
Police believe this latest victim,
they're calling her Janet Doe,
was somewhere between 30 and 50 years old.
[Kathryn] You'd already had
these three girls
who'd been found in the Killing Field,
and you had this questionable death
with Ellen Beason.
And it's like déjà vu.
It's happened again.
It was shocking another body was found.
[reporter 2] The body is one of four
that turned up in this League City field
between 1983 and 1991.
[Skip] Some killer was creating a kind
of tour of his own personal graveyard.
What was going on?
[Richard] Had a serious impact
on the community.
Especially young women.
[Marla] It did make you scared.
I can remember watching the news
crying one night
because I didn't want to grow up.
I didn't want to get any bigger,
because I was scared.
Bodies keep showing up.
The girls keep disappearing.
And we got to do something.
[Nina] This person's still walking around,
still snatching ladies up.
Why?
The fear was actually palpable.
It looked like a work of a brilliant
but depraved serial killer.
[ominous music playing]
[birds tweeting]
[somber music playing]
The Killing Field cases on Calder Road
were kind of a black eye for League City,
having these unsolved homicides.
But Tim Miller had a few ideas
about who he thought may be responsible
for the death of his daughter
and the other three victims.
[Tim] Clyde Hedrick worked
for a contractor on Calder.
I mean, Clyde hung out
in League City a lot,
at the Texas Moon
and all the different bars.
[director] Was Clyde
ever looked at as a suspect
in the Calder Road killings at the time?
I couldn't answer that because
of the nature of the open investigation.
There's really not much that I can say.
I can tell you generally that
the police are not quick
to eliminate suspects.
[Richard] As an investigator,
we can't just take
the word of somebody and
run full speed at that person.
We have to do methodical investigation
and continue to follow the evidence.
[ominous music playing]
[Skip] The first three bodies were
discovered within a period of two years,
all within 50 yards of each other.
About five years later,
a fourth body was found
on that same patch of land,
but it was a hundred yards away.
Is she connected to the other three,
or is she some other killer's victim?
Somebody who read
about the Texas Killing Fields
and decided to add his victim to the pile.
Girls' bodies were found
in an advanced stage of decomposition.
They used dental records
to identify Laura Miller
and Heide Fye.
But Jane and Janet Doe didn't match
with any missing person cases in the area.
[Lise] League City had very few resources,
small police department.
They couldn't seem to identify her.
And despite the fact that in 1991,
there is DNA evidence
that could be tested,
the evidence is not kept very well
by League City Police.
They don't have anything to test.
[reporter 1] For now, the key to solving
the Killing Field murders
may lie with these
two reconstructed heads.
[Richard] The League City
Police Department
tried a number of different techniques
to identify Jane and Janet Doe.
One was rebuilding the skull,
try to put clay on the skull to see
what they might've looked like in life,
hoping that would be
something to generate leads.
[reporter 2] If you have any information,
if Jane or Janet Doe look familiar,
call the League City Police Department.
[Lise] A lot of people are really outraged
that these women aren't even identified.
And how can it be that no one
can figure out who killed them?
The attention did have the effect
of putting more pressure
on the League City Police
to do something about those cases.
[newscaster] Tonight, investigators take
a closer look at the similarities
in the cases,
and they take their case to the FBI.
The fact that it was a serial killing case
gave the FBI the authority to investigate.
I went and interviewed the head
of the FBI's task force in Houston.
Now, if you're a reporter,
you never get into the FBI offices.
Why was I being invited
to go talk to the FBI director?
Because these guys didn't know what to do.
They were stuck.
The basic hope
was to get out some publicity
that someone would come forward and say,
"I know who's doing all this."
[reporter] Profiling is a technique where
special agents dissect a crime scene.
They use the information
to identify the killer's characteristics.
The FBI pulled together a profile
of the Killing Fields killer.
It, in many ways, fit this guy
who lived on Calder Road.
[Skip] The profile that the FBI made
suggested that the killer
probably lived close to the Killing Field,
that he kept clippings
from newspapers of the case,
that he had a superior attitude,
and that he had troubled relationships
with women.
The League City Police said,
"We've got a man that owns these two
properties adjoining the Killing Field."
"Who's bright, who's had
bad relationships, who's hit animals."
And the FBI agent said,
"He could be your guy."
League City Police Department called me.
And they said, "Hey, we've been looking
towards this one guy Clyde Hedrick."
"But we've got another guy
on the radar now, Robert Abel."
Robert Abel was this brilliant
former scientist for NASA.
He had helped create
the modern Saturn rocket
that got astronauts to the moon.
[Lise] By the time Janet Doe's body
was found in 1991,
Robert Abel owned the land
where the Killing Fields was.
He turned part of it into riding stables.
Robert drew suspicion
because he was really cooperative.
He offered to help police,
provide equipment, clear brush,
do whatever he could.
[Kathryn] He kept insinuating himself
into the investigation,
which is something
that sometimes killers do.
[Lise] And there were some things
about Robert Abel's history
that made him suspicious.
[Skip] He had three ex-wives.
One ex-wife said
that he said he would kill her
if she did not provide him sex
like he wanted.
[Kathryn] His ex-wives had said
that he used to beat the horses,
and that when one of the horses would die,
he would leave it out in the field to rot
the way the girls' bodies
had been left out in the Killing Field.
[ominous music playing]
Come on.
Come on.
[Kathryn] Tim had really been looking
at Clyde Hedrick
because of the Ellen Beason case.
And he had talked to the police about him.
[Lise] Now, Clyde has always denied
that he committed
any of the Calder Road murders.
The momentum to try to investigate him
for the other crimes wasn't there.
[Kathryn] Because of the FBI profile,
when Janet Doe was found,
Clyde Hedrick was kind of put
on the back burner.
Everybody thought at that point that
Abel was the better suspect in the case.
[Tim] All of a sudden,
a person I had really suspected,
it's like, "Oh my God.
I wonder if I was wrong."
[reporter] Supported by an FBI profile
and testimony from two former wives,
police said the killer
was Robert William Abel.
[Skip] The League City Police Department
writes an affidavit that goes public,
that Robert Abel, the NASA scientist,
could actually be a sexual serial killer,
who had done these killings
to these four young women
in the Killing Fields
next to his trail ride business.
And what happened,
because there'd been so much publicity
at this point about these killings,
in police departments
up and down the I-45 corridor,
detectives were wondering
if Abel was the guy
who had done
one of their unsolved killings.
Are you responsible for the four bodies
that were found on this property?
Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
[Skip] A team of officers
go over his property,
trying to find trophies, locks of hair,
something that would no doubt
connect Abel to the crimes.
[Kathryn] And they found odd things.
Old newspaper articles
about the Calder Road killings.
They found human teeth
with gold crowns.
And there was a gun found,
a .22 caliber gun.
And Jane Doe had been shot
by a .22 caliber gun.
But when the autopsy was done,
the Galveston County medical examiner,
Dr. Korndofer, had boiled the bullet
when he boiled the bones.
And it had stripped it
of any evidentiary evidence,
so they couldn't match it up with the gun.
I don't think there was a smoking gun
that said Robert Abel didn't do this.
I think it was just that they didn't find
any evidence that he actually had.
The police couldn't do anything.
I wanted to meet this NASA scientist
who'd been accused in a court document
of being a serial killer.
So, I called him,
and I assumed he would hang up on me.
And he says, "Come on down."
[Robert] Back in this area here
is the site of the Laura Miller discovery.
[Skip] We went out to the Killing Fields
and went from one grave to another.
That girl, Heide Fye,
was allegedly discovered right here.
[Skip] He had a notebook full of clippings
and four photos he had taken
of where the bodies were found.
And I said, "A lot of people would suggest
you're showing me your trophies."
And he said, "No, I'm showing you
the research I've done
to try to help out."
[Robert] All of a sudden, these people
come along and say I fit some profile
of a criminal, a specific criminal.
The serial killer on these four girls.
[Skip] And he just seemed
haunted as I was.
And I thought,
"Is he putting on a show for me?"
Or is he just being a scientist,
looking for evidence
to try to prove what happened?
What was going on on his property?
At the end of the day,
the police had no evidence
that Abel had done any of this.
[man] He's a suspect.
He may not be responsible
for killing these women,
and he may be responsible
for killing these women.
So he's still in the pool.
He's still swimming
in the pool of suspects.
[Skip] In League City,
he continued to be a suspect.
But what happened? Nothing.
The nightmare, in many ways,
is that the parents still grieve.
I can't tell you how many times
I searched this property
just hoping I could find Laura's clothes
or Laura's little necklace.
I would go out there during lunchtime.
I'd go out at night.
I was out there the middle of the night
screaming at the top of my lungs.
I said, "I am out here.
Come and get me, you coward."
I shot six times in the ground.
[gunshots]
Hopefully somebody would call the police.
Nobody came. Nobody came.
[dramatic music playing]
I remember going out there
many, many times,
and walking up to that cross and saying,
"Laura, please don't hate your daddy."
"I can't come out here anymore."
"I have to say goodbye.
I have to put my life back together."
Literally, I'd be walking away and
I'd just hear a little voice say,
"Dad, don't quit. Please don't quit."
That was kind of like the beginning of,
"Maybe I can do something
to help these families
when they have a missing loved one."
[Kathryn] Once I got out
to the EquuSearch office,
he spent the whole day with me,
talking about Laura's death
and what it'd done to him and his family.
And also, you know,
why he had founded EquuSearch.
He was doing what he was doing
to try to save others.
Why don't you just walk away from it, man?
Just walk away from it.
Everybody knows me as Tim, Mr. EquuSearch.
And I've lost my identity.
I don't know who Tim Miller is.
But I haven't quit.
It's taken its toll, but I haven't quit.
I tried to say goodbye.
Can't do it.
I made that promise to God and Laura
I'd never leave a family alone.
I just didn't know
it was going to be this many.
[crickets chirping]
[ticking]
[Bob Smither] My daughter went, uh,
on a run this morning.
And she's been gone
a lot longer than I expected.
[911 dispatch] She left at 9:00,
and it's 10:04?
[Bob] Right. And she can't run this long.
[Skip] In April of '97, Laura Smither,
a 12-year-old ballerina,
went jogging from her Friendswood home
and completely disappeared.
She was supposed to be back in 20 minutes
because we were making pancakes.
She was gonna be home for breakfast.
She wanted exercise before breakfast.
[Gay] We were so naive back then.
I immediately started making
some phone calls to call people to say,
"Laura's missing. We can't find her.
Please come help us search for her."
Everything was upside down.
Nothing made sense.
We had no idea where she was.
Couldn't find her. Couldn't find her.
[reporter] The day began with
this heartbreaking sight, Gay Smither,
drenched by rain,
passing out flyers and hoping
someone would stop and listen and help.
[Gay] The days
after Laura first went missing,
they're kind of a blur
of real terror in my mind.
It's not something
that anybody wants to admit has happened.
I was just hysterical.
Walking, searching,
and just screaming Laura's name.
Laura!
Laura!
Laura!
We didn't find her.
She was almost 13.
[reporter] Residents say things like this
don't happen in their small community.
This was a town called
one of the ten safest places to live.
People did not lock their doors.
[Lise] Friendswood is
one of these little towns
along the I-45 corridor.
It's a particularly safe town
by reputation.
It was founded by Quakers,
by people who believe
peace is the way, right?
So when this 12-year-old
disappears while jogging,
there is a huge outcry.
[Jared] If you are responsible,
I speak for this team when I say
there is a maximum commitment
to find you and do everything
the law permits.
[dramatic music playing]
Usually, in these cases, it's the,
"Well, your daughter's a runaway."
This was the unusual case
where the police jumped on it right away.
[Tim] Friendswood Police Department,
Harris County Sheriff's Department.
And now the FBI was involved.
When she went missing,
our task force stopped our narcotics work
and began searching for her.
It was a major,
major event in our community.
[officer] Try to form a line.
[reporter] Friendswood community
has banded together to help in the search.
Volunteers are combing
through the thick brush, the mud.
[barking]
[Gay] Whoever has her
could take another child.
We don't want your families
to go through this.
[Skip] The town came together,
and 6,000 people went on a search for her.
Within days, 6,000 people,
including a contingent of Marines.
[woman] I guess it's the fear
of the unknown, what you'll come across.
This poor family,
they need an answer.
[dramatic music playing]
Well, we brought our dogs out
and was gonna run them right around,
you know, for exercise around this pond.
We picked up a, you know, foul odor.
And we thought it was a dead animal
in the water or something like that.
And my son, Jason, he says,
"Animals don't have socks."
[Jared] The evidence at the scene includes
a silver ring bearing her initials,
and it is apparent
that the young woman wore braces.
It is the opinion of my department
the young woman found
is Laura Kate Smither.
[Gay] She went missing
on April the 3rd, 1997.
And it was on April the 20th.
So, 17 days
of hell.
[clocks ticking]
[mournful music playing]
Been a while since we looked at this one.
- Look at that little face.
- Oh yeah.
[Gay] So sweet.
I love that picture.
[laughs]
I do see God's hand in my life,
that I was meant to be Laura's mom.
That was the very first little recital.
And she had four costume changes
that production.
Yeah, I remember.
[Gay] Laura was a year old.
And her mom had died with breast cancer.
Her dad, Bob,
he was an emotional wreck, obviously.
It was just a very,
very hard time in his life.
So, one of the grandmothers said,
"We need to help him find a nanny."
That's how we met.
Laura captivated me immediately,
and we bonded.
I remember sitting on the floor
with her that day that I met her.
It was just a connection.
I just loved her right away.
Little Red Riding Hood, probably.
[Gay laughs]
[ticking]
Four months later, we were married.
Whirlwind.
[laughs]
And I look back on that
and think I was crazy.
I was crazy.
I adopted her the following year.
She was touched by light.
I feel honored to this day
to have been Laura's mom.
I just wish it
had not been cut short the way it was.
When this happened to us,
we were given a life sentence.
Laura's murder is our life sentence too.
[reporter] Laura's murder is only one
of at least 35 still unsolved cases
in a three-county area involving
missing or dead young women.
[Gay] The search for Laura
had shone a spotlight
on our area for the missing.
[camera shutter rapidly clicking]
It awakened so many questions
about what was happening
and how things were being done.
[Lise] A reporter at the Houston Chronicle
writes about those unsolved murders.
She ends up publishing a map,
and she includes
unsolved cases all along the corridor,
really to draw attention
to a larger issue,
which is women being treated as prey,
and that their murders too often
don't get enough attention.
We had learned by then
that there were other cases
that didn't get any help at all.
[busy signal beeping]
[Nina] It really made us feel bad
that my aunt Heide was being portrayed
the way that she was.
Hitchhiker, runaway, cocktail waitress.
Those all tend to have, like,
a negative spin on it.
They really reacted as though
she was not important enough
to use the resources to find her.
[dial tone humming]
[Tim] I never forget some things
that League City Police Department
said about the girls.
Heide was a drug addict,
Laura was a known runaway,
and Jane and Janet were just drifters.
Guess that's given somebody
a license to kill them?
They're throwaway children?
I said, "No, Laura wasn't throwaway."
[Lise] Teenagers who are engaged
in some sort
of criminal behavior or just using drugs,
their disappearances will not
be taken as seriously
as someone who is younger,
who is believed to not be doing
that kind of risky behavior.
That's still true today.
It's implied that that person
did something that caused their murder.
They were a person who,
for one reason or another,
who is less important to our society.
[Skip] Laura Smither
just seemed so vulnerable.
She was a good girl from a good family
and a good neighborhood.
The reaction was so much stronger.
There was this sense of despair,
that if you couldn't save Laura Smither,
who could you save?
These men that come to get our children,
these men who come to get our daughters
cannot be stopped.
[reporter] Flags fly at half-staff
as nearly the entire town of Friendswood
is in mourning over the loss
of the 12-year-old.
This is now a homicide investigation.
[Kathryn] When the news breaks
about Laura Smither
everybody's talking
about the Killing Field again.
And then everybody's talking about I-45.
And everybody's talking
about why these girls keep dying
and why they can never figure out
who's killing them.
There is somebody that's taking children,
that is murdering little girls,
and and it's gotta stop.
It's affected my daughter very much.
It's affected our entire town.
Um, how can it not?
[Richard] It had been six years
since any of the bodies
had been found on Calder Road.
And so there was a fear that,
"Oh my goodness, the person's back."
Women are being abducted again.
No one's being held accountable for it.
So there was a lot of fear
and a lot of anxiety.
If your child ever disappeared,
do you have a sample
of their DNA and fingerprints?
Friendswood was so panicked
that the school district
passed out this kit
where parents could fingerprint
their own children and put a lock of hair,
so that if the child went missing,
they would at least have fingerprints
and hair evidence to use
to help identify the body.
[reporter 1] Who killed 12-year-old
Laura Smither and why?
It's a question that haunts
police chief Jared Stout.
The community needs to get
their level of awareness up.
[reporter 2] Police and firefighters
work on the task of draining the pond.
They're looking for anything that will
place them closer to the elusive suspect.
[Kathryn] The police ran a list
of all of the sex offenders
in Galveston and Harris County
and the adjacent areas,
and they ended up
with a couple thousand or more.
[Gay] I didn't even have that term
in my vocabulary, "sex offender."
It just wasn't part of my reality.
Well, it became my reality.
The volume of sex offenders
that were in our area was huge.
[Marla] Especially being a female
your parents talk to you
about safety, being careful,
going out with your friends,
being on the road
when you did come of age to drive.
[inhales and sighs sharply]
I can remember when
my mother got married to Clyde,
my dad asked me
if Clyde had ever hurt me or my brother.
And at the time,
I really didn't understand.
[gasps] This is them.
When my mother lived
at the apartments in Dickinson,
we would go there to visit.
[gasps]
And there's the pool.
Clyde had taken me
and my brother swimming.
My brother was on one end
of the pool, and I was near Clyde.
And he's like, "Hey, go underwater.
I gotta show you something."
And, "Okay."
[thunder rumbling]
So, I went underwater.
And that's when he pulled
his pants down and exposed himself
underwater.
And I ran back to the apartment.
My brother ran right after me.
I ran into the apartment.
[door opens]
I told my mother.
They got into a fight.
Clyde denied it.
My mother believed
whatever he said to her.
And it hurt because it didn't matter.
I'm done
with this place.
[Lise] If we look at the characteristics
of the people who are the suspects
in the cases along the I-45 corridor,
we do see some themes.
We see men who were dominant,
violent people who were transient.
People like Clyde Hedrick.
Hedrick fits the profile of some
of the people we've been talking about
who were attracted to Houston
in the '70s and '80s
by the construction boom.
He had already done time
in prison in Florida.
He was accused
by various ex-wives and ex-girlfriends
of being very abusive and violent.
[Marla] There it is.
That was it.
This place has changed a lot.
That was never there.
The trailer was there.
I just hate saying his name.
You have no idea what it does.
I moved out after I graduated high school.
And my mother told me
that she had left him.
My mother came to where I was living,
and she said
she wanted to show me what he had done.
So, my uncle and my mother
asked me to go back to the trailer
down in Galveston.
It was absolutely destroyed.
But that's not what they really
wanted to show me.
My mother pointed out
a certain spot on the wall.
She explained that
there was a hole in the wall.
And Clyde would look through the hole,
looking in on me.
All those times that I felt like
somebody was watching,
I wasn't actually crazy.
My uncle took me and my mother
to the police down in Galveston
with the photos that he developed.
One man in his office
took my statement
and then sent me on my way.
I did my part.
They could have arrested him.
I could have testified
about all the things that he was doing.
And nobody did anything.
[ominous music playing]
To me, when a man
has seriously harmed a child,
they should never have
the opportunity to harm another child.
And yet, the man who had taken
and killed Laura was still out there.
[Kathryn] It was
the beginning of a really bad year.
[dramatic music playing]
[Jan] It was just like any other day.
My daughter Kelli,
she did drop Alexis off.
I remember saying,
"I love you, honey. Have a good day.
I'll talk to you this afternoon."
And those were the last words
that I spoke to her.
[reporter] Kelli Cox
is a mother, a daughter,
and she has mysteriously disappeared.
[Kathryn] In July of 1997,
unbeknownst to everybody in Houston,
a woman named Kelli Ann Cox
disappeared up in Denton, Texas.
[Jan] She was going on this tour
of the city jail
with her criminal justice class.
When she got out to her car,
she couldn't get the key to work.
She couldn't get into the car.
[reporter] Kelli used
this phone to call her boyfriend
to bring an extra set of keys.
This is the last place
anyone heard from or saw Kelli.
I mean, it's like she was there
one minute, and then she was gone.
[dramatic music playing]
[reporter 1] Detectives searched her car,
but leads in this mystery
seem very limited.
[reporter 2] Police say while she still
hasn't made contact with her family,
they can't say for sure
if a crime happened.
I think it's really premature to speculate
on whether or not there are any suspects.
What are you doing? What are you doing?
[Jan] And then it was like almost a month
to the day after Kelli's disappearance,
Jessica Cain disappeared.
[dramatic music playing]
[reporter 3] The Tiki Island teenager was
last seen leaving a Webster restaurant.
Her truck later found abandoned
on the Gulf Freeway,
her purse still inside.
[woman] She would not go somewhere
without calling.
She'd call one of us at least.
And that's why we know something's wrong,
and we gotta find her.
[Jan] Jessica Cain was
with her theater group.
After she left,
it was like, poof, vanished.
[Tim] We just started out on horses.
They asked me to run down there
where Jessica Cain's vehicle was found
and see if we can find a spot
for a command center.
Another huge search.
[reporter] Grieving parents,
Bob and Gay Smither, joined the search.
[Gay] I'll never forget
seeing Jessica's dad.
I knew exactly what he was going through.
Of course, at that point,
I was just hoping for a different outcome.
[Marla] In '97,
when Jessica Cain disappeared,
my dad lived on Tiki Island.
She was my brother's
ex-wife's good friend.
She was her good friend.
I joined in the search party.
We'd wear vests,
and we had walking sticks.
Lost a lot of sleep
when Laura Smither disappeared.
Lost a lot of sleep
when Jessica Cain disappeared.
Lost a lot of sleep in the last 38 years.
[dramatic music playing]
[Skip] No matter what they tried to do
and no matter how much
of a police presence there was
My heart is breaking today.
[Skip] someone was able
to get through the lines.
[officer] The search
for Jessica will continue.
How do you explain it?
[newscaster] There's somebody amongst us,
or something, some monster there.
How do we stop him?
Of course I was feeling,
"My God, it's the same person
that got our girls out there on Calder."
You know, how could there be
this many serial killers in one area?
You know, all kind of crazy stuff's
going through your head.
[reporter] The Tiki Island teenager
has been missing since early August 17th.
[Kathryn] When you have a suspicion
growing in a community,
when you have people
looking over their shoulder all the time
and wondering who really is the killer,
it kind of eats away at you.
[Marla] I was in the area of searching
in Jack Brooks Park for Jessica Cain.
She was a young female,
going home from being out.
She was clearly alone.
It made me think of
what happened to my mother.
All the things that he did to her.
I know partly she was scared,
but when he left,
he would take off,
and she would always let him back.
One time, he came back,
and he was covered in blood
and had a bloody knife.
And he
He told my mother, "I did it again."
[ominous music playing]
After what happened to Ellen Beason,
and with his criminal history,
and what he did with me,
I don't know.
[crickets chirping]
[Richard] We didn't know if Laura Smither,
Jessica Cain, and Kelli Cox
connected with the Calder Road killings.
But of course, we had to consider
the possibility that they were.
If it was the same person,
why would there be
such a lapse of time from '91,
when Janet Doe was found, until '97?
He's now utilizing a different M.O.,
not putting the bodies in a field.
We had a lot more questions
than we had answers.
[Gay] After Laura went missing,
thousands of leads were called in
to the Friendswood Police Department.
They had a lot of serious suspects
that they were looking at.
But they had nothing to link them
or eliminate them.
[reporter] With the recent killing
of Laura Smither
and the ongoing search for Jessica Cain,
Robert Abel has been worried police
will try to connect him to the crimes.
Police claimed that he remains a suspect
in the four League City killings.
[Lise] There was still a lot of talk
in the community about Robert Abel.
So, it's understandable that Tim Miller
thought Robert Abel had to be the killer.
We had every reason to think that,
"My God, it could be connected."
[Skip] No one worked harder at trying
to prove Abel was a killer than Tim.
[Tim] That was
that metal building back there.
[Skip] He wanted there
to be lots of excavations
and digs throughout Abel's property.
He wanted the police
to interrogate him harder.
[Kathryn] That 17 months
when he didn't know where Laura was
absolutely tore his heart out.
And the idea that other families
are going through that
and the knowledge that the police
often don't do what they need to do
in order to find people
and find those bodies is so
hard for him to accept.
So he goes out, and he does it himself.
[Skip] A lot of his frustration and grief
got channeled into
this kind of vengeance toward Abel.
And he decided he was gonna torment Abel.
And he'd call him, leave voicemails.
I have a person that was
gonna come out there and take you
to Las Vegas and beat your ass
all the way up there,
and kill you.
And then put you in a sand dune.
Tim was convinced
he was on the righteous path.
[Tim] All right, put a mark
Put a mark right
at the fence line right there.
I searched that property so many times,
thinking now maybe there's some
more bodies that are buried out here.
He got out this sort of ragtag army
of volunteers to do a dig.
We are sifting
through every grain of dirt.
[Skip] He had borrowed someone's backhoe.
Somebody brought a group of cadaver dogs
that could smell dead bodies.
The dogs were let loose,
and they all converged on one spot.
[dogs barking]
They'd found something.
And so, everyone began digging
right around the area.
And they uncover a woman's purse
and women's clothes.
Tim thought that they were items
belonging to another victim.
But he couldn't prove it.
No one could prove it.
Finally, Abel was so horrified and scared
that he filed for an order of protection
to keep Tim away from him.
Abel spent years living this tragic life.
He was the pariah of League City.
Abel finally said enough is enough.
He shut down his Stardust Trail Rides.
Moved back to his family ranch
in another county in Texas
to get out of League City altogether.
[ominous music playing]
[Richard] In the summer of '97,
there was still no arrest made
in the Calder Road cases.
And now we've got
two other young women abducted,
Kelli Cox and Jessica Cain.
I know someone knows something.
Anyone who knows about Jessica,
please take this pain from our heart.
[Richard] And the murder of Laura Smither.
We're coping as best as you can.
Every agency in the area was helping.
It wasn't from a lack of effort.
Houston Police Department
came down to help.
There was Everybody was pitching in,
and just couldn't catch a break at first.
[911 dispatcher] Webster 9-1-1.
[woman] Yes, ma'am.
Y'all need to come to Waffle House.
Somebody just came in and said
that someone was abducted.
[Kathryn] It was all over the news.
A woman had been
at a convenience store that night.
A man was standing there,
kind of watching her.
She got back in her van to leave.
And her car started to act up on the road.
She pulled over.
And the guy from the convenience store
walks up with a smile
on his face and says,
"You've got a flat tire. Can I help you?"
And the next thing she knew
was that he was behind her
and that he had a knife at her throat.
He forced her into his truck
and gunned the engine,
and he started down I-45.
[911 dispatcher]
They're at the Waffle House?
[woman] They're outside
in the parking lot.
She needs an ambulance. She can't walk.
[police sirens wailing distantly]
They got her out of the middle
of the freeway, they said.
The woman's name is Sandra.
What Sandra did was the turning point
of the investigation.
[911 dispatcher] Need units
to route to 959 West Nasa Road.
Female jumped out of a white dually.
Unknown LP,
last seen headed 45 northbound.
[ominous music playing]