robert abel texas killing fields

robert abel texas killing fields2022/04/25

He has received specialized training in homicide investigations and is familiar with the research conducted by the FBIs behavioral sciences unit in Quantico, which has been attempting to compile an accurate composite profile of the type of man who turns out to be a serial killer of women. In 1984, the first of the four women were found, with the remains of Heidi Fye, 23, being spotted on the patch of land right next to where Laura Millers was found two years later. Abel led many of the trail rides himself over the property and through his leased land. Yet according to Gottlieb, Abel was successful with women. The League City Police Department naturally wound up under increasing pressure to nab a culprit, and they came to believe they'd found one, courtesy of an FBI profile that matched a local: Robert. He was hit by a train while traveling on his golf cart. If a local law enforcement agency could identify a suspect that fit the parameters of that profile, a judge could rule that there was sufficient reason to search for more evidence. He had tracked down the owner of the 25-acre oil field and persuaded him to lease it for $10 a year. En yi Yardmc Erkek Oyuncu Akademi dl Sinema Sanatlar ve Bilimleri Akademisi tarafndan sinema endstrisinde alan aktrlere verilen dldr. He always denied having any implication in the affair, and no physical evidence was ever retrieved. The medical examiner said she was between 22 and 30 years old and perhaps had been shot to death by a .22-caliber weapon. Laura had been a straight-A student in elementary school in League City, but after she began to have seizures at age twelve, she grew depressed, made a couple of halfhearted suicide attempts, and started hanging out with a crowd of teenagers who used drugs. Others push their daughters out of sight so that he cant get a look at them. He also worked on lunar visibility studies (for which he received top-secret clearance) and regularly flew to Cape Canaveral to brief Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, and other Apollo astronauts on lunar landing and visibility. if(document.querySelector("#ads")){ }) His name was Robert Abel, and he was so eager to assist the police the day the fourth body was found that he helped them clear brush in the area and let them use fourteen of his horses and his backhoe free of charge. ' As such behavior from people he believed to be his friends was difficult to bear, he began living a lonely life and ultimately relocated. He suggested that Abel left the womens bodies on the pastureland because he knew theyd be ravaged by animals. The man is linked to deaths of four women but was never convicted, according to Newsweek. Where Is He Now. Sales hit $250,000 in 1991, he says. eventAction: 'view' 2023 National City and Regional Magazine Awards Finalists Announced, Texas Monthly Receives a Nod From the American Bar Association, HBO Max Releases Official Trailer for Love & Death, Get Out and Celebrate 100 Years of Texas State Parks, Two Assistant Editors Join the Texas Monthly Staff. I wouldn't know how to kill, he said. Sometimes, at night, the wind would begin to blow, and the house would start to shift, and the bed in Lauras room would start to squeak, says Laura Smithers mother, Gaye, a gentle woman who sometimes swallows when she talks, trying to keep her voice in control. Abel told me his life had been ruinedthat he couldnt even go to the grocery store without someone treating him like he was a serial killer. Patricia Sharpe writes a regular restaurant column, Pats Pick, for Texas Monthly. },false) He may sound innocent enough, but he has a dark side. At that moment, with his back aching and his eyes squinting, he seemed like a kindly old man. Emily McCullar is a senior editor covering pop culture, news, and Texas history. Netflix. More than 30 bodies have been found in the area between 1971 to 2006 leading to its very unceremonious moniker. Some young women have never been found: More than ten years after Ren Richerson, an achingly pretty college student, vanished from a condominium complex in Galveston, her parents are still paying a private detective to search for her. window.googletag.pubads().addEventListener('slotOnload', function(event) { Before leaving, Paula told Bittner he needed to talk to Cindy Jacobs, the woman Abel had been married to for 41 days in 1989. 23:57 PST, Dec 6, 2022. hitType: 'event', Jos R. Ralat is Texas Monthlys taco editor, writing about tacos and Mexican food. The Astrodomes Decline From Eighth Wonder to Eighth Blunder of the World, The Top 50 Texas BBQ Joints: 2021 Edition, The Best Little Steakhouse in Texas Turns Forty, A Backsliding Joint Got New Owners and a Whole New Level of Barbecue, Miranda Lamberts Five Must-have Home Goods, A Fredericksburg Couple Forges a New Path With Their Cast-Iron Pans, Another, Quieter Comeback for Billy Gillispie. Nevertheless, upon following several clues that led to dead ends, authorities finally zeroed in on local resident Robert Abel, who owned a ranch right beside Calder Field, and was a previous employee of NASA. But Mr. Abel doesnt want to come down here any more to answer them. In 1991, a fourth woman was found in the same area but was unidentifiable. But at least there was someone new for them to questiona retired NASA engineer who had been leasing land on one side of the 25-acre oil field for nearly a decade and who, in 1990, had bought eleven acres adjacent to the field to open Stardust Trailrides, a small horseback-riding business. A few construction workers, employees of Millers, were on hand to help, as were friends and even Millers ex-wife. After a long search, police officers discovered the rest of the body and identified the remains as those of Heide Villareal Fye, a 23-year-old cocktail waitress who had been reported missing six months earlier. Several of Abel's ex-wives and partners had accused him of being aggressive, as well as beating animals, all of which Abel denied. . He had no conscience.. As per reports, once Robert became a suspect in the Calder Field murder investigation, people began alienating him from their lives. Because they were placed within a thousand feet of each other, a private investigator who has studied the scene many times thinks the killer created a walking path for himself to visually inspect his trophies one by one. Indeed, many police detectives and FBI agents are convinced that this is the personal graveyard of a vicious serial killer. Laura was only twelve years old when she jotted those words on a message board on the morning of April 3, 1997, a couple of hours before she went jogging through her neighborhood and disappeared. At Christmas wed go back to his old family ranch outside of Bellville, and hed put together a scene from a Hallmark cardwed go out and cut down a Christmas tree.. Stallings was never charged in any of the I-45 Killings nor the Killings Fields murders despite any of his confessions. In 1993, for over 12 hours, officers had searched his home for bodies and evidence using cadaver dogs to find evidence linking him to the murders. After all, it charts not just the way several women have wound up dead along Interstate 45 since the 1970s but [] eventCategory: event.slot.getSlotElementId(), The majority of victims were girls and young women, aged between 12 and 25 years old. There was nothing on his faceno fear, no emotion, nothing. But he could never shake loose of the past. The League City killings appear to be the work of what the FBI literature calls an organized killer, someone who carefully plans his brutal acts. The Killing Fields September 18, 2019 Decades Later, Investigators Still Searching for Answers in Murders of Four Women The women seemingly had little in common. From 1971 to 2006, over 30 women were . My throat suddenly went dry: Was I looking at a serial killers scrapbook? We are one of the worlds fastest growing Although he bought a Mercedes 380 SL convertible to go along with his pickup, he was hardly the portrait of the suave Houston bachelor: His front teeth were chipped, his sideburns were too long, anddespite his vast intelligencehe sometimes came across as more hayseed than scientist. Notifications can be turned off anytime from browser settings. The Texas Killing Fields, an abandoned oil field, encompasses a roughly 30-mile span between Houston and Galveston along the I-45. }); Besides, they didnt even use a big enough backhoe, one that could get down to the bottom of the pond. MEAWW is an initialism for Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide. Was I the one being paranoid? Lise: By the time Janet Doe's body was found in 1991, Robert Abel owned the land where the Killing Fields was. However, after Tim Miller . 'Sister Wives' star Kody Brown feels ex-wife Christine Brown's engagement to David Woolley is 'staged for TV' amid family drama, Jacob Stevens: Family shares heartbreaking photo of teen who died attempting viral TikTok challenge, 'I'd do the same again': Donna Delbono, who turned in killer teen son to cops, says she has 'no regrets'. pg.acq.push(function() { A new Netflix docuseries revisits the string of murders near League City. But what of the accusations by his ex-wives? We had our rounds, our arguments and fights. Youre the killer. McCarthy used his speech in NYC to slam President Joe Biden for doing "nothing" to address the nation's financial crisis. Bordering the Calder oil field and League City, the location is relatively remote and was even more so back in the 1970s. But before Abel died, Miller went to see him to ask for his forgiveness. One man brought his thirteen-year-old son. And, indeed, one former girlfriend did tell me that Paula had contacted her, asking that she, too, go to the police and talk about Abels behavior when she had dated him. The show interviews a number of people (including me) about Abel. He has been interviewed by detectives from neighboring towns. The series tells the story of unsolved murders of four women whose corpses were found in a patch of land called The Texas Killing Fields in League City, Texas. Moreover, there was nothing in common between the four victims except for the location where their bodies had been disposed of their age range, styles, appearances, and physiques were all different. (Paula and Cindy would not be interviewed, but they have not retracted the sworn statements they gave Bittner.) eventAction: 'click_ads' Again, Abel just shrugged. And none of them have been more interesting than a former NASA engineer, Robert Abel, who owned a small horseback-riding business outside the town of League City. But nothing turned up, which Abel says should have been no surprise, because what the hell did they think they were going to find after all those years? Abel to kill? But she never made it. Meanwhile, Tim Miller grew convinced of Roberts hand in the homicides and searched the area himself, which is when they found some personal items belonging to the females, according to the Netflix original. media-tech companies with hubs around the world. Although her father, Tim Miller, noticed several similarities between Heide and Lauras disappearances, the authorities considered them utterly unrelated. They were not Clyde Headrick, but 60-year-old Robert Abel - a former NASA engineer who owns a ranch near the oil fields. ga('ads.send', { A couple of detectives think youre talking to me because you want to draw attention to yourself, I told him. Thats because while attempts to recover her remains as safely as possible were being made on February 2, 1986, local law enforcement came across a third body, which remained unidentified at the time. Although Tim later apologized for his behavior, it was already too late as Robert was consumed with fear of unwarranted retaliation. But she left him 41 days into the marriageAbel never told anyone whyand the two quickly divorced. Heidi Fye, 23, vanished in 1983, and her remains were located in April 1984, and 16-year-old Laura Miller's body was found close by in 1986. In fact, Texas Monthly reporter Skip Hollandsworth explained Roberts ordeal by saying, Once his name came out, he was this pariah in south Texas. Or is he a victim of overzealous police work and outright hysteria? There are places in the world that are not evil due to any supernatural forces or demonic influences, but rather because pg.acq.push(function() { Whenever livestock died on his pastureland, she added, he left them out in the open so their rotting corpses could be ravaged by coyotes and other scavengers. They hadnt. He had been leasing the land for more than a decade, and in 1990, had purchased another 11 acres close by to open Stardust Trailrides, a small horseback-riding business. Stallings reportedly confessed to killing "Janet Doe". He went so far as to consider the possibility that the killer was Henry Lee Lucas, who was said to have wandered through this part of Texas. Tim Miller in "Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields" on Netflix. Some law enforcement officials said the beta-blockers he took for his high blood pressure could have affected the results of those tests. But the fact was that he was one of the brightest people down there., In 1978, after 21 years of marriage, the Abels divorced. . According to law enforcement officials, the killings began in the early seventies and lasted through the late nineties. Content Warning: Article contains topics of self-harm, domestic violence, and animal cruelty if(document.querySelector("#adunit")){ One of Abels friends, a man who sang cowboy songs at Stardust Trailrides, was approached by a private detective who asked several questions about him and then said he was working for one of his ex-wives. Do I really look like someone who would want to kill pretty young girls?. Its doubtful the police can learn anything from the clothes, I said. Then a beautiful black-and-white border collie named Jessithe best dog of the bunchrushed over and went into a kind of crazed conniption, whining and lying down. Lawmen think the retired NASA engineer could be responsible for the deaths or disappearances of several young women who lived in the coastal plain between Houston and Galveston. He had wanted to check on the horses he still kept there, all of which came up and nuzzled him. At one point in the 1990s, former Nasa engineer Robert Abel was a suspect in the Texas Killing Field murders. And I understood why everyone was so desperate to hunt down the bogeyman: so they could tell themselves they were safe again. I sat on the tailgate of a pickup truck with Millers construction buddies watching the late-afternoon sun turn red and then a sullen orange before it began to sink beneath the horizon. The murders and disappearances documented in Netflix's The Texas Killing Fields date all the way back to the early 1970s, and to this day, only pieces of the decades-long mystery have been. The actors in "Texas Killing Fields' hoped somehow, the film . Nov. 3, 2001. All of the victims were young, all of them were attractive, and we think all of them were sexually assaulted before they died.. }); As long as Pat Bittner and these other police departments have that FBI profile, theyre going to do anything they can to make me fit it.. Why would a whole set of womens clothes be buried way out here? Miller said, turning off his machine. Family devastated as mom and unborn baby tragically die after 'unexpected' medical emergency, Was Beckett Rex edited out of 'American Idol' Season 21? Whats more, he has never been arrested for any crime, nor is there any known record of a criminal complaint filed against him. By Benjamin Hedda Published Dec 10, 2022 Robert Abel was put forth as a potential suspect in the Texas Killing Field murders. A former scientist and engineer for NASA, Robert Abel owned the land where the Calder Road Killings happened. Somethings down there, Miller shouted as people came running with their flashlights. investigators have flown over the site in helicopters and brought in cadaver dogs to look for bodies. . In2005, he stopped his golf cart on the railroad tracks and waited for a train to slam into him. Mosquito Hawks Are Flitting All Over Texas. Once you hear certain allegations about someone youve known for a long, long time, how do you get them out of your mind? Gottlieb asks. By 2009, the initiative had identified 600 victims and upwards of 275 suspects. As heard in Texas Killing Fields, he. Law enforcement investigated Robert Abel, a known sex offender, but was not able to link him to the crimes. Walter Brennan, Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Arthur Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, ve Claude Raines. He turned part of it into riding stables. Well, who knows what happened out here? he said. He seems like someone who should be washing windows instead of being a police detective.. In June 1989 he married Cindy Jacobs, a secretary for an accounting firm whom he had met earlier that year at the Hilton hotel bar. And there were other occasions when I felt as if Abel talked a little too much about the allegations against him. According to the detectives affidavit, which was filed in a state district court, there is little doubt that a single person was responsible for the four bodies found in the old oil field located just off a rut-filled dirt road on the outskirts of League City. There are many days when I think about driving over there, putting a gun to his head, and pulling the trigger, Miller says. reporters on a platform technologically tailored to meet the needs of the modern reader. Hedrick was released into an unknown halfway house from prison, just eight years into his 20-year sentence. None of the dead womens clothing or jewelry was found. After all, several of his ex-wives as well as partners had accused him of domestic violence and mental torture, with one claiming he even hurt his horses by beating them with a pipe. Newsweek has everything you need to know about Abel and where he is now. Law enforcement officials insist that many of the killingssometimes referred to as the I-45 killings because most of them have taken place within a few miles of Interstate 45could have been committed by any number of men, from transients to sex offenders paroled from one of the areas prisons. },false) As Miller drove his tractor past the cross that marked Lauras body, the dogs began to fan out. The former NASA scientist who also owns the fields, forcefully involved himself in solving the crimes which, for many people involved, only served to heighten the suspicion surrounding him. window.googletag.pubads().addEventListener('impressionViewable', function(event) { And lasted through the late nineties utterly unrelated tell themselves they were not Headrick. Brennan, Jeff Bridges, Robert Abel - a former scientist and engineer for NASA, Robert,. I said officials, the initiative had identified 600 victims and upwards of 275.! To meet the needs of the modern reader which came up and nuzzled.!.Addeventlistener ( 'impressionViewable ', function ( event ) { a new Netflix docuseries revisits the string of near! Is he a victim of overzealous police work and outright hysteria NYC to slam him! 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