Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields (2022) s01e03 Episode Script

1
Webster 9-1-1.
Someone came in and said
that she had been abducted
and that she jumped out of a vehicle
Okay.
and that she's bleeding.
Is she
in the parking lot?
She's in the parking lot.
Webster-based Medic One.
Need you en route to the Waffle House.
In May of 1997,
there was a young woman abducted.
She was in his pickup truck,
and they were driving north
on Interstate 45 towards Houston.
And she was able to open the door
on the freeway and jump out.
She had scrapes all over.
She was bleeding.
Turned out the woman's name
was Sandra Sapaugh.
The only thing I was thinking was like,
he's gonna kill me.
I'd rather jump and kill myself
than him doing what he was gonna do.
So, I jumped.
She became
very severely injured,
but she survived.
She went to the police station.
Couldn't remember
the license plate number,
but she described more
of what the inside of the truck look like.
She also described
the man who had abducted her.
A receding hairline,
big bags underneath his eyes,
and a black cowboy hat.
That's him.
The benefit of the case
with the woman who was able
to get out of the truck is
she could identify him.
Having an eyewitness to point out
and say, "This is who abducted me,"
it was a major breakthrough.
The man is believed
to be driving a pickup truck.
He's described as white,
in his mid-thirties, with a medium build.
How do we catch him?
You can easily exit Interstate 45
at night,
throw open the back door,
toss your body out.
The water covers up
your physical evidence.
And you're gone.
Laura Smither and other victims,
all of them happened
along the same stretch of I-45.
The days
after Laura first went missing,
police departments on that I-45 corridor
started comparing notes.
They started collaborating.
One county did a survey
of sex criminals who lived in this area,
and they came up
with the number of 2,100 men.
Near the end of September,
a cop I know,
Sue Dietrich, went over to talk
to the police chief in Friendswood.
He started talking about a suspect
in the Laura Smither case.
I realize that was, in fact, very similar
to the information given by Sandra.
That guy fits the description.
Number four,
step on the red circle.
They brought him in
for an in-person lineup.
Sandra's eyes locked on him
the minute that he walked in.
I want you to repeat after me
in a loud, clear voice.
"Do not scream."
Do not scream.
"Get in the truck."
Get in the truck.
"I'll kill you, bitch."
I'll kill you, bitch.
She said, "It's number four. That's him."
And it was Bill Reece.
They got a search warrant for his house.
And his truck.
And they found the black cowboy hat
that Sandra had talked about.
They were able to arrest Reece
for her abduction.
William Reece,
he was working in construction
during the period Laura Smither
and other young women disappeared.
He was a sex offender
out of Oklahoma
who had just gotten out of prison
after serving time
for two different sexual assaults.
William Reece
had come to Houston to work.
In 1997,
there was a new subdivision
going in very close
to where Laura Smither lived,
and William Reece was working
construction at that new subdivision.
And it turned out,
at nine o'clock,
when Laura started off on her jog,
Bill Reece was being released
by the foreman on the job that day
because it was gonna rain.
We don't know what he said
to get her in the truck.
We don't know if he used a weapon.
We don't know if he
tricked her.
But she was never seen after that.
When Laura was first missing,
William Lewis Reece was being interviewed
very early on and watched.
It was really when Sandra Sapaugh
was abducted.
And I wondered at that time.
When it was on the same stretch of road.
Was he involved?
While we were
investigating William Reece in 1997,
we had to consider he was potentially
a suspect for the Calder Road killings.
It's extremely rare
to have two serial killers
in the same close proximity,
separated by only a few years.
But at the time Heide Fye, Laura Miller,
and Jane Doe were discovered
William Reece was in prison in Oklahoma,
so he couldn't have been
responsible for those.
The man arrested
for a Webster kidnapping
and named as the prime suspect
in the killing of Friendswood's
Laura Smither.
Besides the Smither murder,
police are investigating
whether Reece could also be involved
with the disappearance
of another local teenager,
Jessica Cain of Tiki Island.
At the beginning,
Reece had a very convincing
good-old-boy country act.
And I've watched the tape.
He was very convincing.
It sounds bad because they got me set up
like I'm a serial killer.
I didn't kill her.
Never seen the girl, never met the girl.
I've never been with the girl.
With Laura Smither,
she was found deceased.
There was very little evidence, and
then Jessica Cain, she wasn't even found.
The district attorney chose
to prosecute for Sandra, not for Laura,
because he felt that we didn't have
enough evidence for a capital murder case,
which was very frustrating
to me at the time
because I thought
we had plenty to prosecute.
William Reece
has not been charged
in the unsolved Laura Smither case,
although her parents
are a constant presence
here at the kidnapping trial.
Reece was convicted
for the kidnapping of Sandra Sapaugh
and sentenced to 60 years.
I interviewed Reece when I was
just starting to work on the book.
- Did you kill Laura Smither?
- Nope.
Huh. So you never
saw Laura that day?
Like, even just jogging down the street
when you were driving by in your truck?
No.
What about Jessica Cain?
Who's that?
The girl
who disappeared on I-45?
- Why do you think people look at you?
- I don't give a damn.
I mean, I got everything I need
to prove that I'm innocent.
Nothing links me to anything.
He just denied and denied.
So what do you think
happened here?
I really don't care.
I walked out of there
believing he had killed both of them.
But I didn't have anything
on my tape recorder that proved it.
Since 1983, Galveston County
has an unusually large number
of mysterious disappearances.
All involve young women,
many only teenagers.
All have either disappeared
or turned up dead.
Police are afraid
those responsible may still be out there.
How did we get all these
sick bastards in one spot?
I don't know. I don't get it.
I don't get it.
As time passed
and no evidence materialized,
the Calder Road killings,
they were frozen cold.
In the '90s, the detectives
never gave up on Abel.
But there was no evidence
that Abel had done anything.
At one point, Tim decided
that Robert wasn't guilty.
Tim Miller,
the most adamant Abel-hater
in all of that part of Texas,
a man who wanted to kill Abel,
realized that he had gone way too far.
And at some point, he called Abel
and said, "I'm sorry."
I just had the opportunity
to hug his neck and say,
"Robert, please forgive me."
And we cried together and stuff.
But it wasn't enough.
It was too late.
Abel knew that he'd never be thought of
as anything but a serial killer
for the rest of his life.
In League City, he continued
to be a suspect until he died.
He drove his golf cart
right up on the tracks,
just as a train was getting there.
We'll probably never know
if it was suicide or an accident.
Totally destroyed his life until
he couldn't stand what they did anymore.
Couldn't deal with it.
Waste of time and another wasted life.
There are a lot of victims here.
- What's your name?
- Clyde Hedrick.
Clyde, tell me
about your decorations.
We just do it for the kids.
Put the little tombstone things out here.
You know, give them an idea of a grave.
Clyde Hedrick.
He was on my radar the minute
they told me early on about Ellen Beason.
But then this Robert Abel
is a person of interest and everything.
Waste of time.
And then it went back to the same person
I was looking at in the very beginning.
After the trial for tampering
with the body of Ellen Beason,
he got into trouble
with the law time and again.
Clyde Hedrick, he had already
done time in prison in Florida.
The file that the Galveston County
DA's office has on Clyde Hedrick
is pretty thick.
He was accused by various
ex-wives and ex-girlfriends
of beating them, cocaine, arson.
Clyde Hedrick
knew everything about this area.
Clyde worked for a contractor
that was right here on Calder.
We did get information.
This is one of the spots Clyde would dump
some of his building materials.
Right beside Laura's body,
there was some old shingles
and some old rotten wood
that was apparently
taken off somebody's house.
That's the business he was in.
Tim Miller contacted myself
and a sheriff's department detective
and asked to meet with us.
He and I went to Tim's office
and sat down with him,
and Tim asked for help.
Tim Miller was suspicious
of Clyde Hedrick's involvement
in his daughter's murder.
For years, I think police who knew
about the Ellen Beason case
were very skeptical of the statements
that were given by Clyde Hedrick.
He was always the focus,
and it was always thought
that he was far more involved in that
than we were able to convict him for.
Myself
and several other investigators
formed an ad hoc task force.
We had the idea if we reopen
the Ellen Beason case,
maybe that would bring in some more
information and possible tips
to the other unsolved cases.
If we were gonna hold somebody
accountable for her murder,
it is evidence that we had to have.
In March of 2012,
we exhumed Ellen Beason's body,
and it was a very difficult decision.
I can't imagine having that
be my loved one.
Clyde, why don't you
have a seat right here.
I've never seen a Dr Pepper can like that.
Yeah, it just pops on.
I only got half a jaw from the cancer.
I'm Ted Tommy Hanson
with Galveston Sheriff's Office,
Agent Rennison with the FBI,
and you're Clyde Edwin Hedrick, right?
- Yes.
- Okay.
Let's start with Ellen Beason.
Who's that?
When we were driving over,
I said, "When's the last time
you carried a body around?"
And you said: "I never did that."
- Oh, and that's her?
- That's her.
Back in 1985 when this happened,
the medical examiner's office didn't have
certain equipment they have today.
Right.
We exhumed her body.
That means we dug it up.
And she has a massive skull fracture.
And I don't mean a little hairline crack.
We're talking a massive skull fracture
that would absolutely cause death.
I don't see how that's possible.
Well, it's possible.
We had forensic anthropologist
take a look at the remains.
And according to
the medical professionals,
that could only have been done
through homicide.
I'm not trying to see
if she got a skull fracture.
I'm trying to see how
she got the skull fracture.
The only way I could possibly think of
is that maybe that's what
When she went swimming
and then she was not swimming,
but there's nothing in there that
You know, I was in that water,
you know, years.
There's no way she dove in
and hit her head.
There's no way in hell
that she had skull fractures.
I don't like seeing someone
get away with murder.
That's just not right.
A judge of your character
is how you own up to your responsibilities
when you make mistakes,
and you're failing miserably, Clyde.
I can put my hand on a stack of bibles,
and I know I've never, ever hurt
anybody as far as death-wise.
Definitive. That happened.
Complete puzzle to me.
I think he felt this was behind him,
and perhaps he'd gotten away with it.
The force needed to cause
that fracture was a great powerful force,
a force that wasn't an accident,
but that was intended to take a life.
That, along with other things,
gave us enough evidence
to charge Clyde
for the murder of Ellen Beason.
Is that him?
Oh, yeah. That's him.
Yeah, that's him. That's him.
I mean, the list goes on and on.
It's sickening looking through shit.
I mean, it truly is.
An additional piece
of evidence we had
was some statements that Hedrick had made
to other inmates in the county jail
while he was awaiting trial.
We typically call them jailhouse snitches,
jailhouse informants.
Hedrick spoke about the Ellen Beason case
and made admissions to other murders.
One of those, he included
the name of Laura Miller.
Tucked away
in the prosecution's case
involving Beason is a document titled,
"Notice of Intent to Use Evidence
of Other Crimes, Wrongs, or Acts."
In this document, prosecutors write,
"Defendant had sex with Laura Miller
and then intentionally
and knowingly killed her."
Prosecutors have indicated
Clyde Hedrick was also involved
in the Killing Fields murders
in the mid '80s,
and have never been solved.
Without ever reaching out
to Tim Miller, her father,
I had now filed a document
that said I knew a man had murdered
and potentially raped his daughter.
I regret that.
It was the way that I met Tim Miller,
which is not a great way to meet someone.
How did you
find out about that?
Well, I read it in court reports.
Taunting and bragging.
His own admission when he was in jail.
How he had sex with Laura
before he killed her.
How he killed Heide.
I received
a phone call from Tim Miller,
and I went further and explained to him
the source of that information,
and why it wasn't necessarily
a break in the case.
Texas law states
that a person cannot be convicted
on the basis of jailhouse informants,
but the defendant's involvement
has to be corroborated.
I talked to one of the guys
that was in jail with Clyde
when Clyde actually told them
that he had sex with Laura
before he murdered her.
Pretty painful conversation.
You know, I was just hoping to get that
one little piece of evidence,
but I think anything I would've found
and turned over to the police,
it would just be probably lost.
I know that Tim wants the killer
of his daughter brought to justice.
I want that. I think everybody wants that.
We asked Hedrick
if he had anything to say about Laura.
"They're trying to pin me
for the Killing Fields murders."
"I didn't kill her.
I didn't even know her."
The criminal justice system
is just a long,
brutal system for victims
and for families of victims.
But he fights every single day.
I filed a wrongful death suit
against him.
And I'll fight till my dying breath.
Clyde Hedrick sat quietly
as prosecutors told the jury
he is the man who killed and then tried
to hide the body of Ellen Rae Beason.
The 29-year-old woman,
left discarded under a couch
and forgotten about.
Some of Heide's family
was at the trial.
Tim Miller was there.
I had heart palpitations,
a lot of anxieties.
Difficult being there,
but it'd be harder not to be there.
I ended up cross-examining
the medical examiner.
From all of the photographs that we had
of his very initial examination
of Ellen Beason,
there were only two of the skull,
neither showing the area
where the fracture was.
I argued to the jury,
the medical examiner,
in an attempt to protect his reputation,
hid or destroyed evidence from the state.
We tried Clyde Hedrick for murder.
The jury found him guilty of manslaughter.
So after Clyde was convicted,
there was sentencing portion of the trial.
A former family member testified.
I was called in
as a witness for the sentencing phase.
The district attorney,
Kevin Petroff, wanted the jury
to hear what I had to say.
To really show
what kind of person Clyde Hedrick is.
I told them what had happened,
and that things progressively got worse.
There were times that I would fall asleep
watching TV in the living room.
And I could feel somebody
touching me.
It was just It was so hard to wake up.
And I was just so tired.
He would make me, like,
a glass of Kool-Aid or something.
I don't like Kool-Aid.
But if he made you something,
you take it.
One morning, I woke up
and I had to go straight to the bathroom.
I would be sore in places
that I shouldn't be.
You could tell on some level
that she was reliving it
as she was describing it to the jury.
It was very strong.
It was difficult to listen to.
For the Ellen Beason case,
the jury deliberated
fairly quickly and came back
with the maximum sentence
of 20 years in prison.
Somebody finally listened.
The Ellen Beason trial,
that was very eye-opening to me.
The autopsy decision
being grossly incorrect
just brought to light
some of the same frustrations we've had
in our case with my aunt Heide.
The medical examiner,
he did not preserve her clothing.
He did not preserve fingernails.
He did not preserve items
that could potentially contain
physical forensic evidence
that a lot of juries want
in a case to get convictions.
In most of these cases,
they've lost a lot of the evidence.
The shirt that was found
near Laura's body was gone.
There could be DNA.
But if they never find the shirt,
we'll never know.
There's just not enough resources
for cold cases in America in general.
There's still a lot of cases
that get forgotten,
and that don't get solved.
And that is allowing
serial killers to go free.
These cases were old.
The world might have forgotten about it,
but those families didn't.
It just brought to light
the fact that
we're gonna have to dive into this deeper.
It would really, really be nice
to get some closure for these families.
Anything I can do to help
these people, I'm gonna try my hardest.
When I first started working
the Calder Road case,
it was somewhat difficult because
I didn't have access to all of the files
at League City Police Department.
I just wanted to read as much as I could
and see if a new set of fresh eyes could
maybe find something others didn't see.
The benefit of working cold cases is
technology improves over time.
The end of 2017, we decided
to try to use forensic genealogy
to identify the two women,
and had a hard time convincing
League City that it was a good technique.
It could answer the question
that has been
hanging around since the 1980s.
Who were these women?
Jane and Janet Doe
were unidentified
throughout the course
of the investigation.
League City,
they were a little resistant at first.
But in January of 2019,
on my birthday,
we were able to extract a DNA profile
and put it into those databases.
We were able to identify these two women.
First was Janet Doe.
Donna Gonsulin Prudhomme.
We were able to identify her
after 30-plus years.
And then the next day,
we were able to identify
Jane Doe as Audrey Lee Cook.
We sort of had assumed
maybe these women were transient people,
and the opposite was true.
Donna Gonsulin Prudhomme
had come here like a lot of other people
we've been talking about
because Houston was a boomtown,
there was work.
Audrey Lee Cook,
she was a mechanic,
and her family had been looking
for her for a long time.
After Donna Prudhomme
was positively ID'd, and Audrey,
I said, "We can get somebody indicted
and convicted on these girls."
What we're hoping for is somebody
who knew either one of these girls
to provide some information, anything,
even if you don't think it's a big deal.
We wanna know everything about them.
Families that go through this
When do we give up? We never give up.
Hey, Lee. Tim.
Tim, how's it going, man?
Well, I'm all right, you know.
We're gonna get four girls up
on these digital billboards.
Hopefully we'll get more information,
some calls coming in,
some possible leads and stuff.
You need to send me
exactly what you want to say on it,
and then we rotate them on the digital.
Okay.
Yes, sir.
Hey, I'm gonna text you
this license plate number.
Thanks.
I had a lot of plans,
and I had a lot of goals in my life.
I know God
had different plans for Tim Miller.
And I'm not gonna say I like them.
I'm not gonna say I still like them today.
I mean,
he's getting up there in years.
We both are.
And I've seen him out on searches.
And I know he's in a lot of pain.
And he gets right down in that hole
and starts digging with everybody else.
Tim is very tenacious.
He won't give up,
and he doesn't like to lose.
He's good.
Tim Miller is one of the loudest voices
for these victims.
He keeps asking for someone
to be held accountable.
Are we gonna use ATVs out there?
It's a big-ass area.
What's your schedule?
He keeps insisting
that they should find out who did this.
Clyde, he would talk
about past women
and what they used to do together.
And then that's when
Mother would get upset,
and they would get into arguments.
The first time that I met Tim,
it was at the trial.
It was right after I testified,
and he wanted to talk to me
about his daughter,
Laura Miller,
who Clyde knew.
Just lived on the same street as them.
This is Abel's stuff.
That was that fence line.
But after he told me
about his daughter
the age,
just all the connections,
all the similarities,
it just made sense.
It made sense.
Can you print that out and mark the fence?
Yeah.
Let's go to the Killing Fields.
Tim had asked me
if I would go out to Calder Road.
See if I had been out there before.
You know, maybe, maybe not.
Right around here,
they had that gate.
I need to remember
if this was the same place Clyde took me.
How old were you then?
- Teenager.
- Twelve, thirteen?
And so
when we entered this property
none of it looked familiar
until I hit the tree line,
and there was this big metal pipe thing
coming out of the ground.
It was a trail,
and then there was a little pond.
Something about that metal pipe.
It was like a rush.
It just all came back.
I didn't know
it was Calder Road at the time,
but I was there.
Clyde had to do a mowing job
on his buddy's property.
It was the same place.
It was Calder Road.
I could see him.
He was doing something with the ground.
He was digging.
I don't know
what Clyde was doing out there,
but I can't believe that's where I was.
It makes sense now.
After the things that I've seen
and heard and have been through,
I was relieved
that he was finally behind bars.
You know, I was really hoping
that he would end up dying behind bars.
Tonight, 67-year-old
Clyde Hedrick is out of prison.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice
says he was released yesterday
on mandatory supervision.
I could not believe it.
It was like a punch in the stomach.
He was released on parole.
So, he's out today on parole.
How much time did he serve?
Eight years.
Clyde got early release
due to a technicality, a Texas law.
I don't know.
There was at least one instance
in which Clyde Hedrick was in prison
that came up
for the possibility of parole,
and we fought that successfully.
But this time was different.
The laws that are in effect
are those that were in effect
at the time of the crime.
This was a mandatory release.
This is not something that
there was a hearing or could be fought.
The way the laws were set up
is he was to be released at that time.
So, there wasn't much to be done about it.
If they would've listened to me
in the beginning,
they would've found Laura.
There would've been probably evidence.
At least they would've been able
to determine a cause of death.
Hmm.
I hate going through this shit.
I'm telling you, I fucking hate it.
There's no reason 30-some years later
I need to even be doing this shit.
Where do you stop?
I know that throughout
the course of a criminal justice case,
that victims feel
there's a lot of injustices,
and that's certainly one of them.
It's disheartening for me.
I can't imagine the pain
and frustration that Tim Miller feels.
That Marla feels.
But it is the law.
And so, I understand it.
We have to accept that.
Vulnerable women.
The most vulnerable.
That's who he seeks out.
That's the kind of man that they released.
This transitional center
is Hedrick's new address.
He's not in prison right now,
and he's free to go.
He's free to go.
Miller plans to be
across the street tomorrow morning
to discuss his concerns
with these latest developments.
Clyde Hedrick, right now,
is somewhere in here,
in a halfway house.
I'm gonna introduce several people
who are directly affected by Clyde.
I'm gonna ask Nina Edwards
to come up here and share a few words.
Hi, I'm Nina Edwards.
I'm Heide Fye's niece.
My grandfather spent
endless hours searching for her
and recording notes.
And my grandmother went to her grave
not knowing what happened
to her baby girl.
On behalf of my family,
I thank you for letting me
speak today on behalf of Heide,
who's not able to be with us today.
Put this mic right here.
I'm here to speak on behalf of myself
and the victims
who no longer have a voice,
and the victims out there
who haven't found their voice yet.
We had a press conference.
I was talking to the public,
and I was talking to Clyde.
Just because you were not convicted
of other crimes does not mean
you did not commit them.
Thank you, everyone, for your support.
I need as many people to know as possible
what kind of person
our law has put back out on the streets.
I think, as all of us feel here,
in the very beginning
when we begged and asked for help,
we were denied.
None of us are quitting.
In fact, I believe
we're just getting started.
I'll never, ever forget this day.
I said, "William, what's going
through your mind?"
"You have any remorse over this?"
Incredibly, he looked right at my eyes.
He said, "Mr. Miller,
you'll never understand this,
but people like me,
we don't have remorse."
There were a number of years in there
where we truly didn't think
we'd ever see this day.
I am just relieved
that now the official records
will show he was found guilty
and convicted of taking
my daughter away from us.
We just have to wait
for the wheels of justice to turn.
And hopefully, I'm gonna start pedaling
a lot faster than before.
We're never gonna give up.
We're going to pursue this
until my dying day, anyway.
We're still getting information
on the Calder Road killings.
If you have information
about any of these four victims,
please reach out to the FBI.
You can remain anonymous.
I retire in about
a year and a half from now.
So I've got some work to do.
I filed a wrongful death suit
to let Clyde Hedrick know that,
"Clyde, I'm still here. I am still here."