Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields true story explained

Netflix's latest offering looks into the murders of four women, who were found in the same small area around the Calder Road between 1984 and 1991 – but what happened in the area? And who are the suspects?

Here's everything you need to know about the true story behind Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields.

What happened at the Texas Killing Fields?

The Texas Killing Fields are an area of land in League City where more than 30 girls and women have disappeared or been found dead since the 1970s.

Most of the murder victims have been women between the ages of 12 and 57, however there have only been three convictions in relation to the cases.

The 25-acre patch is located a mile from the the Interstate Highway 45, while four of the victims were located in the same area on the Calder Road.

"There are a lot of old oil fields and marshes between Houston and Galveston," investigative journalist Lise Olsen says in the documentary. "A lot of those places are still very remote. It was a place where killers could hide bodies pretty easily."

Brenda Jones, a 14-year-old from Galveston in Texas, was the first body to be discovered in Galveston Bay on 2nd July 1971, while four months later, the bodies of 15-year-olds Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson were discovered in Turner's Bayou on 17th November.

Another six bodies were found in the Texas Killing Fields between 1971 and 1973 before the remains of 12-year-old Brooks Bracewell and 14-year-old Georgia Greer – who went missing in 1974 – were discovered in Alvin.

As explored in Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields, four bodies were found on the same stretch of the Calder Road between 1984 and 1991, beginning with 23-year-old Heide Villarreal-Fye in 1984, 30-year-old Audrey Cook in 1986, 16-year-old Laura Miller a day later and 34-year-old Donna Prudhomme in 1991.

The four murders were never solved, while it took law enforcement over 30 years to identify the remains of Audrey Cook and Donna Prudhomme, whose identities were confirmed in 2019, reports MailOnline.

Villarreal-Fye was last seen at a convenience store in League City in October 1983 but wasn't found until six months later, when a dog discovered her remains. Meanwhile, Miller went missing after visiting the same shop in September 1984 and was found in February 1986, just 60 feet away from Villarreal-Fye's remains.

Police discovered the body of Audrey Cook, who was not identified at the time, whilst digging up Miller's body.

While it's been decades since the bodies were found, police are yet to convict anybody for the murders of Villarreal-Fye, Cook, Miller and Prudhomme, with Special Agent Richard Rennison saying in 2019: "It’s important for the public to know that we have not given up. It may be labelled a cold case, but that doesn’t mean it’s sitting on a shelf and isn’t being worked."

The FBI has since said that the agency's behavioural experts have "created a profile of a possible killer", but "there are no known witnesses to any of the killings, and no common person connects all four".

"To date, the signs point to one killer, although multiple killers can’t be ruled out," the FBI continued. "Given the nature of the area where the bodies were found, it was likely someone with roots in the area. Someone would have known those fields were a good place to leave a body, Rennison explained."

Since 1991, seven bodies have been found around the area of the Texas Killing Fields, with the latest being that of 16-year-old Teressa Vanegas, who disappeared on 31st October in 2006 and was found dead on 3rd November at the edge of a high school practice field.

Who are the suspects in the Texas Killing Fields murders?

Three people have been convicted in relation to murdered women found around the Texas Killing Fields.

Gerald Zwarst and John Robert King were convicted of aggravated kidnapping in relation to the 1986 disappearance of 19-year-old Shelley Sikes, whose car was discovered blood-stained and abandoned on the side of an I-45 access road, although her body was never found.

They were both sentenced to life in prison and while they were offered deals in exchange for the location of Sikes's body, they did not provide accurate information. King died in prison in 2015, and Zwarst also passed away behind bars in 2020.

In April 2012, Kevin Edison Smith was convicted of killing 13-year-old Krystal Baker, whose body was found over the I-10 Trinity River bridge in March 1996. According to CHRon.com, Smith was identified as the killer after his DNA, obtained after a minor drug arrest in 2010, matched a semen stain from Baker's dress.

Meanwhile, convicted murderer Edward Harold Bell, who was sentenced to 70 years imprisonment for killing a Marine in 1978, confessed to murdering 11 teenage girls between 1971 and 1977, including Collette Wilson, Brenda Jones, Debbie Ackerman, Maria Johnson, Georgia Greer, Brooks Bracewell and Suzanne Bowers, according to the Houston Public Media. However, Bell was never charged with the murders and died in April 2019.

Meanwhile, although Mark Roland Stallings – who was serving two life sentences for unrelated crimes – confessed to killing Donna Prudhomme in 2013, he was not charged with murder.

In July 2022, Tim Miller won $24 million in liability and damages after filing a 2014 wrongful death lawsuit against Clyde Edwin Hedrick – his neighbour who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the involuntary manslaughter of Ellen Rae Beason in 1984.

Hedrick was found civilly liable for Laura Miller's death but never criminally charged, according to click2houston.

"I filed the wrongful death suit to let Clyde Hedrick know that, ‘Clyde, I’m still here, I am still here and I’m not going to quit until the day I die'," he said. "I want to let Clyde know that I know what you did to my daughter and I’m not going to let you rest until we have you where you need to be for the rest of your life."

"As time goes by and the more information I get and, the more information I am continuing to get, I have no doubt in my mind Clyde Hedrick is responsible for Laura’s murder."

Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields is available to stream on Netflix.

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