‘Killing Fields’ break
League City police to reveal names Monday; skeletal remains were found decades ago
Decades after two unidentified women were found dead in a swampy area off Interstate 45 dubbed the “Texas Killing Fields,” League City police announced Thursday that they have identified the women and are investigating the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
A breakthrough in forensic DNA analysis helped detectives identify the skeletal remains of the two victims, a “Jane Doe,” whose remains were found in 1986, and a “Janet Doe,” found in 1991. Both bodies were discovered in an area off Calder Road known as the Texas Killing Fields.
The League City Police Department will hold a news conference Monday to reveal the identities of Jane Doe and Janet Doe and to discuss the cases. The news about the identification was released in advance to allow national media outlets the opportunity to cover the news conference, a police department spokesman said.
Investigators announced in December that advances in DNA technology had provided the potential for unearthing new leads in the cold cases and identifying a suspect. Working with Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA technology company in Virginia, investigators have sought to piece together the appearance and ancestry of the two women using a new method of analysis called DNA “phenotyping.”
However, a spokesman for the League City Police Department said the DNA analysis was only one component of the breakthrough.
“It’s a multifaceted road,” said Kelly Williamson, public information officer. “There were a bunch of branches of the road that had to come together,and (the DNA phenotyping) was one part of showing us what they would look like.”
The Texas Killing Fields is a 25acre boggy stretch of land along I-45 where four women’s bodies were found between 1983 and 1991, including Jane Doe and Janet Doe. No one has been convicted in con
nection with the four deaths.
The first of the four victims investigators are focusing on — Heide Villareal Fye, a 25-year-old waitress and bartender — left her parents’ house in League City on Oct. 7, 1983, to hitch a ride to Houston to see her boyfriend. The next April, her remains were found in the clearing.
Another victim, 16-year-old Laura Lynn Miller, disappeared after using a pay phone at a nearby convenience store. Her body was found in the same clearing in February 1986.
Miller’s father, Tim, is the founder of Texas Equusearch, a search and rescue organization dedicated to searching for missing persons. Miller could not be reached for comment Thursday. The remains of Jane Doe were found next to Laura Miller’s body.
Five years later, in 1991, another female body was found in the field. The victim appeared to have been killed with a blunt instrument. The woman was never identified and was given the name Janet Doe.
League City investigators learned of Parabon phenotyping software two years ago, and they immediately worked with the company to analyze the unidentified women’s DNA and make “predictions” about the color of their eyes, hair and skin, as well as freckling and the shapes of their faces. These predictions were combined with forensic facial reconstruction to create the composite images of the victims.
Coroners estimated that Jane Doe was 22 to 30 years old and died six weeks to six months before she was found.
DNA analysis determined that she most likely had fair to very fair skin, blue or green eyes, blond/ brown hair, few or no freckles and a likely family origin of Tennessee.
Janet Doe was estimated to be 24 to 34 and died six weeks to several months before being found. She most likely had fair skin, hazel eyes, brown hair and few or no freckles, according to DNA analysis. It is believed her relatives were of Louisiana Acadian descent.
League City police have said there are “persons of interest” in the slayings whom investigators have not been able to eliminate. In the years since the first bodies turned up, police investigators and prosecutors have claimed that one or two serial killers are likely responsible for all four deaths and that additional murders may be tied to these suspects.
One suspect, Mark Roland Stallings, who is serving two life sentences for a series of unrelated crimes, told author Kathryn Casey that he killed Janet Doe in 1991. Stallings said the woman was a teenage prostitute he strangled and dumped in the clearing. Stallings remains a prime suspect in the 1991 murder and in two slayings in Fort Bend County.
Casey, who published the 2015 book “Deliver Us: Three Decades of Murder and Redemption in the Infamous I-45/Texas Killing Fields,” said she took Stallings’ admission to a forensic pathologist, who said it was “highly possible” that the 1991 victim died in the manner that Stallings described.
“Stallings told me that he murdered Janet Doe in graphic terms,” Casey said. “It will be interesting to see if that holds up or if Stallings was lying.”
Another man, Clyde Edwin Hedrick, who was sentenced in 2014 to 20 years in prison after he was convicted of manslaughter, was linked to the deaths of Heidi Fye and Laura Miller during his trial, but he was never charged. Tim Miller has previously told the Houston Chronicle that he believes that Hedrick, a former neighbor, murdered his daughter.
Miller filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Hedrick in 2014, and a jury trial for the lawsuit is scheduled for January 2020, according to Galveston County court records.