Thinking Sideways: Texas Killing Fields

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By Thinking Sideways, the ideas I don't know, stories of things sympt the answer too. Well, Hey there, and welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, of course, joined by and again this week we come to you with another mystery another Well this one's about the Texas Killing Fields some of my best work. Did I say that? Yeah, you gotta start saying these things out loud. Damnit. Um this story before we get into anything.

This story is a listener suggestion was suggested by Greg quite a while ago. Just a quick word of warning. This story does deal with the murder of quite a few young women. So if you've got little ears around, or if that is something that makes you uncomfortable, I'd recommend turning this one off or skipping it for a later time to the little ones aren't around. So let's get into things. First off, most of you are probably wondering what are the killing fields? And it can get

a bit confusing. And we're not the ones in Cambodia, by the way, the Texas Killing Fields, and it can get a little confusing when you're on the internet. So officially, the Texas Killing Fields are a twenty five acre piece of land that is on Calder Road, or just off of Calder Road, which is halfway between Houston and Galveston, Texas, on the I four forty five corridor. Like people who don't know as a freeway, it is the state that

runs north and south. Essentially between the coast where Galveston is to Houston, which is about fifty sixty miles away, But bodies are being found up and down that stretch of road and in that area, which is why I said it's a little confusing when you do the reading, because there's an official killing fields and then there's a larger term that's applied to this area, which is why

sometimes you'll see this called the Texas Killing Fields. Sometimes you'll see it called the I forty five killer Um. There was one other name that I saw it under the I can't suddenly think of. So there's a couple of different names, and really it all depends on who's making the list and the number of victims that they're going to include, because there's a whole lot of stuff going on in this area, and there has been since

the early seventies. Yeah, the killing fields, it's like this that's just like this little part of an oil field that's next to the highway and like a band in oil field in marshes, whereas there's miles of highway that are not part of the killing fields where people can still toss a body out here and there. So that's the difference. I guess Yeah, we're gonna go through quite a few people's stories. So we're just gonna jump right into this, which is with the very first one, and

we'll work our way forward from there. So the first victim story begins in June of nine. On the seventeenth of June, Collect Wilson, who was thirteen years old, was dropped off after band practice by her conductor at a bus stop your home. She didn't come home, and her body wasn't found until five months later, at which point they found her. She was about forty miles away and she had been shot in the head, and I believe

that she was partially, if not completely, undressed. Uh, And this is gonna be something that we're gonna see in a lot of a lot of these cases. Decomposition pretty extensive because it had been five months actually dumped five months ago. Now, yeah, she had been out in the open. So let's you know what. I was gonna talk about this later on, but let's do this now. All of these cases that we're gonna cover, there's a huge problem with the recovery of any kind of usable information. In

other words, the bodies are so decomposed. Because we're talking about South Texas. We're talking about humid, hot, it's marsh land. The conditions are not conducive to a body being preserved for any length of time. Nature begins to work right away. So like things like DNA, we all just take this for granted that should be just all kinds of stuff, but that's not going to be the case. So knowing that as we go in here, and that's also helpful

to know. You know, when we talk about sometimes we talk about stories where bodies were stored for five months and then dumped after the fact, and they you know, we're just but these these bodies were all dumped pretty after. Yeah, this this is not one of the guys that kept him around for an extended period. That's worth mentioning. No, these these were not that kind of trophy situation, I believe is what your is what you're referring to a

lot of times when they're stored like that. But but yeah, so that's that's kind of scenario here, right. So first victim is is Collette years old. So moving forward in time two weeks later, and that's from the time that Collette disappeared, Okay, not heard, not the discovery of her correct Brenda Jones left her house. She was going to go visit a family member who was in the hospital. Her plan was to walk up I forty five. This was the first of July, and she didn't come home,

and her body was found the very next day. It was in Galveston Bay and she had been shot once in the head and her a slip. It's always described as a slip. I don't know if it's hers or just a random slip had been stuffed in her mouth. We go forward in time another two weeks, so now we're in the middle of July and the killer. I'm sorry, at the beginning of August. These guys not wasting any time, not at all. We go to August four and fifteen year old round Rhonda Johnson and thirteen year old Sharon

Shaw disappeared at the same time. So these two girls, they had gone to the beach in Galveston to celebrate. I believe Rhonda's birthday was like the next week, She's gonna turn fourteen, and they were celebrating the big one. Um. But witnessssary that they saw them at the beach, and they saw them leaving the beach, but they never made it home. Part of Sharon's body was found in jail on j Anywary, third seventy one by two boys who were fishing in Clear Lake, where it's about twenty or

thirty miles away at the most. It's hard for me to answer this because there's so many different victims away from the Galvison Beach, correct, correct, Yeah, so, so it's not right next door to where they disappeared from. And what part of her body, her head, her decomposed skull, it was floating in the water when they found it, or just under the surface, just the kind of thing you want to really and when you're after a day of fishing exactly. Um. The boys reported that, and then

through searches, it took about it took several weeks. The rest of both Sharon and Rhonda's bodies were recovered in the marsh next to the lake, and it was several weeks or excuse me, it was several months after the recovery of the bodies that the police got a tip to look into a sexy fender who was in the area by the name of Michael Lloyd's self. And we're just gonna talk about self briefly because he's one of the few times that somebody gets charged with a case

and there's some serious issues in it. I'm gonna ask kind of a question. I'm sorry I from jumping ahead here. Was Sharon decapitated or was it decomposition and then like an animal carried her? She was in a marsh, you know, I mean there's stuff, there's critters, and decomposition happens, as far as I am aware, Yes, I mean, if you think about it, the vertebrae, they're not exactly locked together very well, especially when the flesh and tendons are gone. True,

So that's why it would have gone away. So self, Michael's Lloyd's self was picked up and eventually he would be charged with the murders of these girls. Uh. There's a lot of questions about that particular conviction because he said he was held and beaten by the local police and then he was threatened at gunpoint by the chief to confess to it, and he eventually gave in and he confessed. But then he continued to tell his story, but the details morphed and they didn't line up right

with the crime all the way. The description I heard of the interrogation was and they made him. They gave him some paper and pen and they told him, okay, you know, he confessed, and he writes it out and then and then the police said no, no, no, you got that detail wrong. Changed that, and they kept making him modify his confession. So it's not surprising his details kept changing. Yeah, I don't think he ever did it. No, no, And that's the thing is he he said that he

was innocent his entire time in jail. This was one He died in two thousand in jail, having fought this conviction the entire time. He died of cancer. There was a forensic files on this, well, not this specific, but it was a very similar case where this guy got convicted because he had quote unquote confessed and basically what they had found as the police had been sitting in the interrogation room and they'd said, you hit over you hit her over the head. Didn't you hit her over

the head? And he'd say yeah, you know, after like fifteen hours of interrogation he said yeah, and they say what what'd you hit her with? And he said, I'm a fist and they said nope. He said a brick and they said nope. It hadn't been something like a bat or something. He goes, oh, a bat, and they go that work, and I was just like, oh my god. And unfortunately, and this is this is not to say that law enforcement intentionally does that today, but back in

the day there there was a different rule book. And what really makes me question the conviction against Michael Lloyd's self is that two of the cops who pushed him into his confession were arrested three years later for bank robberies that they had been committing over the years. So like, these guys were crooked and dirty the whole way. So I really feel like self was probably never guilty of the crime. Yeah, it's a yeah, that's a great little

i'd line. If you're a cop robbing banks, Yeah, I mean what you do is, you know, you run around the corner and you rip off your your mask and your your coat, and you're coming back back around the corner wearing your uniform to make sure not to be carrying the bag with which why did they go? Which? Why did they go? Yeah? Yeah, that that would be Yeah, that is perfect cover. It is, but but we should probably get back to the girl. I kind of like

the robbery better. It's not questions. I know, I know, we've got we're gonna there's four more girls that would disappear that year. So they disappeared, and it was nineteen year old Gloria Gonzalez. She disappeared on the twenty eighth of October. She ended up being found thirty five yards from where Collette Wilson's body was found. The very first girl, twelve year old Alison Craven, disappeared on the ninth of November.

She was found four months later. Fifteen year old Debbie Ackerman and fifteen year old Maria Johnson went to the mall on the eleventh of November, and then they disappeared, and their bodies were found in a body of water with their hands and their feet bound. And they had also both been shot in the head. I think what had been shot in the front, and one had been shot in the back of the head twice and then shot in the thigh. I can't remember which of the

two girls. Um, So it's it's really strange that, you know, there's some of these bodies are shots, some are not. So it's it's a weird shifting pattern. Right at the very beginning, I was just gonna ask if Gloria Gonzalez looked younger. I believe she did, so that's that's okay. So that's that's a good question. And again I'm gonna say this later, but let's do it now. No, No, there's absolutely no reason that things that this bit of

information needed to come up anywhere. In particular, we're talking so far about girls. Ignoring Gloria for the moment, we've talked about girls who were twelve fifteen years of age, and most girls at that age are very shortened stature, and they tend to be because they're a little girls. They're rather petite. They're just just hitting pubert, they're just hitting puberty. So those gross spers haven't happened. I believe if I remember correct, that Gloria was a smaller girl.

There are several others as we come to them later on that I will point out who are older in terms of like Gloria, you know this nineteen twenty whatever it is, and they were rather small. So there does

seem to maybe be a pattern in that. But you know, again, if there's so many random things as far as like mode of death, it's not necessarily and also they he probably couldn't afford to be ultra ultra picky, because when you think about it, he's got to find himself at least one or two girls and no witnesses or police anywhere around. Which what do you think about it? You know, finding that your ideal target plus nobody else around, to

witnesses once or twice a month, Yeah that often. I mean he must have been like full time out there looking for victims, because yeah, yeah it is. It is amazing how rapid this is happening between girls. Um. And again, this is another thing that I was gonna talk about later,

but let's do it now. You would think in this day and age today, this would be all over the news and this would be all over the internet, and we all know, but this is one the police departments don't talk to each other because it's all little towns with their own police departments. They don't talk to one another. Yeah, but there was just this weird, complete and utter lack of communication between news and media outlets and people from

community community and the cops themselves. So I mean, they're they're disappearing from rather close but not towns, but they're not the same towns, but they're getting dumped kind of in the same area. Some of them they're getting dumped in that same corridor. Yes, so you would think people would notice, but people didn't notice this. For sadly, many many years, the links were not made between a lot

of these cases. That's intriguing that it could be an entirely random thing or somebody who's clever enough to know that, you know, I'll just hit a different municipality and let you know, bureaucratic and I fall through the cracks and all that stuff. Nail on the head, my friend, Yeah, somebody. I wonder if it was somebody like a policeman or something. Well, let's let's keep going. We'll get into that bit later, Okay.

So we're gonna we're gonna keep moving on. So the last victims that we talked about were Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson. They went to the mall, didn't come home. Just over a year after that, sixteen year old Kimberly Pitchford left school on January three, three and she was never seen again. Her body was found two days later in a ditch and her cause of death was strangulation.

So there was no gunshot in this particular one. And then, thankfully After that, things cooled off for a couple of years, at least according to what we know, we're or believe, because like I talked about, there's this lack of communication. And the other thing that was common practice at the time with the police department is if a young girl disappeared, the automatic conclusion by the police was that she ran away. She did a runaway. Sorry, mom and dad, your daughter

ran away, so no investigation would take place. So there's there's possibly more. Actually, I know there's lots more than just a particular list that I'm using. I know, Joe you had printed out. When the list it's like seventy people long. There's a lot of people disappeared, and some of them turned up, but of course not necessarily the same killer, right, and and some of them are on

these lists, some of their aren't. So it's it's hard to say that, oh yeah, a cool law for three years with any certainty, it could have continued and the links just weren't made. They may have been taken farther than the four corridor, or they could just their bodies could have just never been exactly I decomposed, not equal positioned, the accomposted. Yeah, decomposted, uh in you know, a bogger, an oil field or whatever. Yeah, it wasn't necessarily tossing

everybody in the oil fields. No, no, there, Okay, So here's folks who have heard these kind of stories when I'm I'm running the mic and probably used to the fact that I will say, and there's X number more and then I would just leave it at that with maybe a couple of highlights, but to kind of drive home the enormity of this whole thing, I have a list and I had to resort to a spreadsheet. Yeah, I did, And I'm going to grab the spreadsheet and we're going to go through because we have just talked

about eleven girls that have disappeared. I think eleven is what it is. The list that I have here has another eighteen on it. So my list is almost thirty girls long. And like I said, there's other lists that are bigger than that. But we're gonna go through this redsheet and I will keep this as brief as I can, with just what are kind of the big highlights where and when we need them. Suzanne Bowers disappeared on May one,

nineteen seventy seven. Uh and her body would be discovered in March of nineteen seventy nine in Alta Loma, Texas. Brooke brace Well, I don't know exactly when she disappeared, but her body would be found in April of nine one. She had been out with a friend that day, the day that she disappeared. Georgia Greer year. Yes, so Brooke was twelve, Georgia was fourteen. Both these girls bodies would be found in Alvin Swamp and then they had been

beaten to death. Heidi Faye, she was twenty three years old. She disappeared on the tenth of October three. Her body would be found on the Calder Road property in April of nineteen eighty four, and called. When I say they called the road property, that's the quote unquote official twenty five acre Texas killing field. So that's the the official sanctioned area. Sanctions the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Yeah, if you actually easily find it, it's

right behind that church. I can't remember the name of the church now, but it's on the highway there. Yeah, I mean if you type in called the road and Interstate forty five, you'll find it pretty quickly. Uh. Moving forward, there's Santa Ramber, she was fourteen, disappeared on October twenty six three and it's still missing to this day. There's a Jane Doe that was found in this time in February. It's Sandra. They are pretty sure it's not Sandra. We

don't know who she is or where she came from. Uh, she's what we've The term we used before was the missing missing. We don't nobody appears even though she's missing. Uh. Laura Miller, she was sixteen, disappeared on September tenth, nine four and was found on the same day as on the same Yeah. I was just suddenly that caught me off guard. It's on the same day. Um. So Laura Miller will talk about her briefly because she was last seen at a convenience store. There's two or three that

we're seen at a convenience store. But what I want to talk about is Laura Miller is so, she disappeared and her body was eventually found and it was found on the calder on the actual killing field. But her dad, Tim is an interesting figure in this entire case. Yeah, because Tim Miller, the man lost his daughter, and I get that, but he it's almost like he went on a crusade. He found a calling, he had to find the man who was responsible. And I'm not going to

say anything against him having done that. He's done some great things. He started a company called Equisearch. They've gone all over the country, actually all of the world, using horses and boats to look for lost girls. Like they do good work. But Tim has also done some very not good things in the search for his daughter's killer. And he has pointed the finger at some people and made some very i would say, some very bad moves. And we're gonna talk about those our theories when we

talked about ourselves that he has. It's not like the man just believes he's never done anything wrong. He's a human being and he gets it. But it's it's concerning to me some of his level involvement at times. Back to the list, we have Shelley Sikes. She was nineteen.

She disappeared on May six, and she's still missing. Her car was found abandon on I forty five, and she's one of the ones I'll point out because she was four ft eleven and ninety pounds, so it would kind of look like the profile of a eighteen early teenager Suzanne renee Richardson disappeared on October seven, and she was twenty two years old. She's also still missing. She was

five ft eight pounds. She's kind of an outlier here because I mean, yeah, I can't think of any like twelve year old girl that I've ever met that's also five eight. You know, I have a family member who at fifteen was about five eight or fight. I mean, yeah, so it just depends on the person, but yeah, she has a bit of an outlier in our general profile we're building here. We go to Lynnette Bibbs. She was fourteen, disappeared on February one of nineteen. She was found two

days later. She was out with her friend tomaraw Fisher and Tomorrow. Both of the girls disappeared at the same time, and both of their bodies were found on the same day, which is two days later. They were found on the side of the road in Cleveland, Texas. Uh, I had got this one, well, this is this is the one that I got mixed up with the girls in the beginning, because it was Tomorrow who was shot in the head and Lynnette who was shot twice in the head and

once in the leg. So I I incorrectly said that earlier. It's hard to keep. There's another Jane Doe and she was found in September of Crystal Baker. She was thirteen. She disappeared on March four, store from a convenience store and would be found the very next day. So the convenience store is just like Laura Miller and Heidi Faye. Um. Crystal was beaten, strangle, what's it? Also Brooks and Georgia Brooks brace well, Georgia Gear also disapparted. Yeah, you're right,

You're right. Crystal was found, like I said, she's found the very next day. She was underneath and under highway overpass and she had been beaten and strangled and sexually assaulted. So this is a case where we obvious sexual assault because the body was found so fast. We moved forward another year and there's Laura Smither. She was twelve. She was found went missing on April three and would be found seventeen days later. She left her house to go

jogging and just disappeared. I'm sorry, I'm just shaking my head because like, what twelve year old girl are we saying, like, yes, let's go out jogging by yourself. So she wanted she was she was a ballerina. She wanted to be a ballerina like for real life. And somebody said, you need to train, and one of the things you need to do to make your body stronger is to start running, right, That's why she started running. And this this unfortunately led

to her to mind. She was found in a retention pond in Pasadena and she's actually, go ahead, is that in that area? Sorry? I just think of Pasadena, California, Pasadena,

Texas again, it's within like a yeah. So Laura Smither is one of the first cases where there was enough media attention to the whole thing that the cops actually started talking to each other in all of those areas, and that's when they started putting this larger picture together and realizing there's a bigger problem than any one of us realized. Uh there, there's there's three more that I have here. One of them I was actually really hesitant to put on the list, and that is the next one,

which is Taught Harriman. She's completely an outlier because though she just she disappeared on I forty five, because she was last seen driving on it and it was the twelfth of July of two thousand one. But she's fifty seven, so she she does not seem to match what we've been talking about so far in the demographic of these girls. Do. There is Sarah Trusty. She was twenty three, disappeared on July twelfth of two thousand and two and would be

found just fourteen days later. She'd been less seeing riding her bike. She's another one five ft five pounds again, kind of kind of within the range more so than I would say with Tought. Yeah, more than taught, but still she's telling the outlier, and then the last one is going to be uh Teresa and Ajus. She was sixteen, disappeared on October thirty one of two thousand and six. So we've got what like twenty or thirties, almost almost

thirty years of almost four that's thirty five years. If he goes from seventy one to two thousand six, that could have been more than one. It's possible that somebody like took over the reins and there were some gaps

in there too. Yeah, there's totally gaps in there. And I think we're gonna have to talk about some of this stuff in terms of single versus multiple killers or a rapist or abductee abducteurs in the theory section, as I said, there's so little pattern between when they disappear, like it seems like the geography is one of the main things. Some are shots, some are not. Some have their hands bound and their feet bounds, some do not. Some are found fully clothed, some are found fully naked,

some are completely decomposed. Some are just dumped so that they're able to be found the very next day. I mean, even the ones who disappeared from their cars, there's really no crime scene because though their car is there, there was no sign of real struggle. So it's it's extremely hard to figure out what in the hell is going on in this area something bad? And that's the interesting thing is that, well, you know, how do you get somebody twelve or fifty seven whatever do you trust you

and get in your car? How do you do that? I don't always a total stranger, but I mean there's there's there's you know a couple of types of people who could get that, who could actually do that, like policemen. You know, there is that. Not that I want to anger any of our police listeners. I think what you're getting at, Joe is a figure of authority. There's a better way to say that. Could be a policeman, could be a fireman, could be a paramedic, could be any

road service worker. I mean, there's anybody who looks like they should be able to they're responsible to help you or you know, a cop has an interesting position in a Sorry, we're like talking a little bit about theories right now, but you know, in the instances where cars were found abandoned, you say, you know, cop could have pulled them over and said you're under arrest and put them in the back of their car. And you know, most people aren't gonna resist too terribly much. There's not

going to be much of which crime scheme. It's just going to look like there's a left behind car and then whoops. I mean, you know, there's a lot of different stories you can tell as a cop. You can say, you know, i'm here, your parents sent me to take you home. You know she's twelve, or if she's you know, and in the seventies that was not something that most

most kids knew was a bogus story. You know, there was a huge campaign in the seventies and eight e d s to not take candy from strangers and not let people tell you that your parents sent them to pick you up. Cop. Yes, I mean right, there's certain figures that have always been quote unquote trustworthy and that generally the population will do what they say. Yeah, yeah, usually. So Okay, now we've angered all our law enforcement Listen, No, no, I mean, I mean it's again, it's it's a figure

of authority or protection or help. That's I mean, that's really what that boils down to. Yeah, that's that would account for a lot, it would, but it still doesn't prove damn thing. It doesn't prove anything. So what we have here is we have a theory section. Well normally we would call this the theory section, but really today it's more of the suspects section. So let's talk about our suspects. And we have a huge laundry list of

scumbags that we're going to talk about here. Basically, we had a long list of bodies, and we have a long list of scumbags. Yes, not not every single one of them is necessarily scumbag. Okay, there's at least one guy on here. Okay, the very first guy is not a scumbag. The rest of them I consider scumbags. Thank you, Joe. That's a good clarification. So let's talk about the very first guy. That is Robert Abele and he was brought

to the attention of authorities. He lived in Texas. He lived in the in the area actually adjacent to the Calder Road killing Fields. And he was brought to him, Yeah, brought to authorities attention nine maybe, and that he was brought to them by his soon to be third ex wife. He owned a eleven acre property adjacent to the killing fields. Um, and that's where Laura Miller and three other bodies were found.

He initially participated in the searches, at least one search for bodies, and he had a horse, stay Able, and he loaned horses to the police to use to search for bodies. So from all from the outside, it looks like this guy is trying to do good. Uh. By the way, the stable he ran was called Startus Trails, So he seems like a good guy. Able was a smart guy. I mean, he had worked for NASA for quite a few years and he was part of the team that figured out how to get the Saturn rockets

into space, put rocket motors on him. That's what made the difference. Well, he was a literal rocket scientific he was, so that means he was actually very smart. I underlining the word very when I said it there so, but you know, I mean people are people. And he was fallible, and he was married several times, and each of his wives said that he had anger problems. So he wasn't a perfect human. So he did this thing, which is very bad, is he threatened to beat each of his wives.

He did the good thing of actually, yes, he never actually struck them. Instead, he would always storm off and sometimes he was gone for hours. I believe there's at least one instance where he was gone for a day. So he just he just left, he got away. But he never actually hit them. But he did hit his horses. He apparently would use poles and chains on horses when

they made him angry. Yeah, that's not standard operating procedure. No, absolutely not standard operating procedure with horses actually does not work. But generally standard operating procedure is never includes hitting things with chains or I would think, like I can't think of a thing. Well, I know a motor too that I've had, Like, you know, an actual combustion engine that I whacked it with a pole and it worked better.

But that's the rare exception, all right, Yeah, speaking, I would not I would not whack a horse with anything, because they're bigger than I am, a lot bigger. Yes they are, they really are. Okay, So so he's he lives next to the property. He's a very very smart guy. He's known to have this anger problem, and he's known to strike animals and disappears when he's angry, and he's he can disappear when he's angry. Made him perfectly fit and FBI profile of the person who they believed was

probably killing these young girls. I don't know it really would. And and this is where Tim Miller Um Laura's dad comes in because unfortunately Tim found out about this, this semi match of Able to the profile, and he latched on and he totally went off the rails, and he accused him to he made such a stink with the police. The police looked into Able. He made such a stink

in the community that Able was ostracized. He went so far as to to mount these illegal searches and digs of the property around and then Abel's property and then actually went on too Abel's property and had people digging looking for bodies like he did. He did this, and police actually searched this house at least one time, and they really turned it upside down and this property. And for their part, the police did their job. They went,

they investigated, and what did they find. Nothing squat So they stopped looking at him because there was nothing to support it. Tim Miller on the other end, he didn't. I mean this again. Tim Miller's has apologized. He said he apologized to Robert Abele for this behavior. But unfortunately, what it resulted in was able being isolated from the entire community. The man would walk down the street and people would yell killer and get their daughters out of

his way. That is how bad it was, and how afraid people were of him because of everything that had been said and all that happened. Really that he just happened to live next to where some bozo dumped some bodies, you know, and he happened to be good enough to try to help. Yeah. Yeah. Also he'd beat his horse and he did bad things, but he didn't do them

to these girls. I don't think so, Like I said, Tim Tim Miller, He says that he eventually apologized and that they talked and Able understood, but the damage had been done. In two thousand five, Robert Abel died. He was driving a golf cart and he drove his golf cart into the path of an oncoming train. That death was ruled an accident, though to me that smells quite a lot like suicide. But I don't know. But that's

that's where everything about Abel ends. And he's one of the big ones that you'll hear about because he was we're officially saying stop it. Yes, Abel Abel was an innocent man and everything that I can tell. But if you if you do do a search on this particular topic, his his name will come up and headline, Oh yeah, there's a there's a huge article. One of the first articles I read about him, I was like, Oh my god, why haven't they arrested this man? It was from like

nineties six. It was a giant Texas monthly article. I can't remember the author's name, and it was called is Robert Able getting Away with Murder? And it's the first one you find, And I was like, Oh my gosh, why aren't they And then I started reading everything after that. And realized, you know, that it was not what it appeared to be based on the information or the accusations that were made. So let's move away from Robert Abele. We're gonna very very very doubtful to me. We're gonna

say like one on a scale of correct. Next up, we have Kevin Edison Smith. He's got a middle name. He gets my vote. So everybody in this story after Robert Abele I used their middle name killers. Yes, well actually homelinded for me. You remember Crystal Baker. She was the girl who disappeared in March of ninety six and then was found in under the overpass UH forty miles away. She got into a argument with grandma and then ran away.

She was also she was seeing at the She's one of your ones, Joe, that was seen at the convenience store. She was using a pay phone to call her bomb. That's what she was doing. Well, because of what a screw up everything was between all of the local police departments, she was listed as missing for two weeks. Her family

didn't know where she was for two weeks. Even though they had found her body the very next day, there was nothing that the police could find at the crime scene to indicate who had killed her, and they had no leads, and so her case was cold for fourteen years.

Then fourteen years later, so that would be about two thousand and ten, there was an investigator somebody in the forensics office, and I cannot remember who this lady's and what this lady's name was, but for some reason she was looking at this case and she decided to send off the one I think was addressed that they had of crystals and send it to the lab to just screen it for d N A and lo and behold, they found actual usable DNA on it. And even better.

At the same time, Kevin Edison Smith in Louisiana had been booked on charges if Louisiana law said, if you get booked and you get thrown into jail, we're going to take your DNA and drop your your DNA into the system. And he was. He was a match to this case fourteen years later, which is amazing. This is good he didn't get arrested like a month later in a different state. If you've been arrested in a different state that didn't have this law, we may never know this.

So the Texas Police Department, they get involved in. They interrogate him about the case, and at first he he says that he doesn't have any knowledge of it, didn't know what they're talking about, but slowly, truly, and then eventually he admits to it. And he says he never sexually assaulted her, which we knows a lie because she was sexually assaulted. Well, I mean technically, technically, I guess she could have had sex prior to him killing her.

Is that she could have been sexually assaulted, either be by you know, I don't know, he could have not killed her, I guess technically or something some really horrible human could have come along and been like, oh, a dead body and done necrophilia. Yeah, or you know, she could have been assaulted before it could have been Yeah, you're right, that would be rather opportunistic. I'm going to

put my money on the fact that he's a liar. Okay, that's much if you're probably Okay, So I guess if you admit to murdering them, I don't know why you wouldn't also admit to sexually assaulting but whatever. Yeah, yeah, this is why I'm putting my money on it. Okay, So he said that, like I said, he he says he never assaulted her, but he said he did of

her a ride. And he admits that in that day and that not necessarily that day, but that time frame of his life, he was drinking a lot, he was doing a lot of drugs, and so he doesn't remember exactly what was going on, but he remembers that quote unquote, she started freaking out and hitting and punching him. Well, that's that's yeah, that's kind of what I would think

was going on. He probably wasn't driving when this was happening, and he said that his response was to strangle her, and then she was dead, and then he decided, I don't know what to do, so he dumped her body, and he drove her body many many miles away. So it almost makes you wonder like he had seen this spot before. It's a good place to dump body. It's

a little funny that he took that that corpse so far. Again, That's what I'm saying is like, I don't necessarily know why you wouldn't why you would say, yeah, I strangled her and then dumped her body, but but I didn't her Okay, Well, yeah, I mean the thing to do is there's DNA to say, yeah, I mean she was willing we had sex, you know, and then I dropped her off, and then now we had sex. Now we had sex, and then she freaked out and I had a strangler to death, and then I had to get

rid of the body. No, no, the Devin's right. The smart money would be to be like, well, yeah, you found d NA who I was with her? And then I dropped her off and she said that was her stop, so I let her out and I drove on my way. Yeah, that would be another way. Yeah. Now, this guy, how you managed to avoid the death penalty I will not know, but he did manage to do so. So he is currently serving forty years in prison. Yeah, not even life. Okay, now it's a forty year sentence. Yeah, that's how long

he's in there. But the thing that Joe has pointed out and we're gonna talk about now is the convenience story angle, because if you remember, Laura Miller back in also disappeared from the front of a convenience store, and there's a couple of other girls. Laura Miller actually disappeared from the front of the same convenience stores Crystal, but there's a couple others who disappeared from the fronts of

convenience stores. And this guy, you know, he was strangling women, and he strangled this girl at least, and we know that he was in the area. We also know that he was living. Oh god, I think it was over the course of twenty years, he lived in seventeen cities in four different states. So he was he was a rambling man, is what I was gonna say. But he was.

He was. He was roaming around doing work. So it's entirely possible that there are girls in this age bracket who were strangled in these cities where he lived, and he could be responsible. Unfortunately, to play the other side of the coin, there's girls in other cities where he did not live who were in this age bracket who were who died by strangulation. So just because that happens, we can't say it's him going on unfortunately, Yeah, but they are. They did run his DNA, and that's the

hard part. Like we talked about, so many these bodies, they're in a marsh or they're in a ditch for months, there's no good DNA left. It's hard as hell to get anything that's usable. Okay, let's keep going. We've talked about Kevin Edison Smith enough, so let's talk about Henry Lee Lucas. That guy. Yeah, so Henry Lee Lucas, he's a self confessed serial killer. Yeah, he's thought to have exaggerated some of his the number of his kills just a little bit. Yeah, I I would agree with that.

I believe we'll get through and we'll talk about here the number that he claims. But he was arrested in Texas in June of night three. That's when he really kind of came onto the radar in Texas for this kind of stuff. When he was fifteen, he ran away from home. I mean, get me wrong. His home life was horrible. Um, his family was terrible, and his mother was a prostitute and she made him watch her with clients like this is not the good upbringing that a

boy should have. Yeah, any child should have. So, I mean, I you can understand why the kid left. But he says that he killed for the first time in nineteen fifty one when a girl refused his sexual advances. He then would go on in nineteen sixty to kill his own mother with a knife. He said he didn't realize he had stabbed her. She said, I know, I heard the story is like he he was like, you know, I just hit her. It on. Then I looked down, I saw the knife in my hand, and I was like, whoopsie.

And that's essentially what that really was his story. He didn't say whopsie exactly. Yeah, I mean yeah, he uh. He did end up going to jail for that. In prison, he served ten years for that crime. Technically, he was supposed to serve one need to forty, but unfortunately the there was this push to early release because there's prison overcrowding, so he got out early. And the man who stabs

his mother to death is really the best candidate released programs. Yeah, they probably looked at it as an abusive situation, whereas he's not likely to go out randomly killing people left and right. Oh no. But the problem was his story didn't match up because he said, you know, like you said, he realized the knife was in his hand and he said, oh, look she's dead, and he ran away, except wasn't actually dead. His sister came and found their mother still alive, but

she did not. She didn't live live long enough to get to the hospital. Like the guy. Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's a really nice guy, a really nice guy. So he gets out, This would be nineteen sixty, in nineteen seventy, excuse me, nineteen seventy he went in and around nineteen sixty. He got out around nineteen seventy, and then in nineteen have any one, he was convicted of attempting to kidnap three girls. Uh, and after he gives and then after they let him out for a second time, thinking this

guy is gonna just be real, rehabilitated, no problems. Yeah, yeah. And after he after he got out from the conviction of of trying to kidnap those three girls, he continued to beat and kill. He was arrested in night. Yeah, not really. He was arrested on charges of unlawful possession of a firearm and that actually quickly grew into a larger charge for the murders of both Frieda Powell. And Frieda was a girl that he had met. I believe

he met her in Florida. She's described as having quote unquote intellectual impairments, So I don't know where she is on the range of impairments what that means. But he had convinced this girl to travel with him, and he treated her like a girlfriend until he grew tired of her. How old was he at this point? Oh he is, so he yeah, he's in his his early third Oh no, he's in his forties at this point. Old yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah absolutely so. So he's he's charged for killing free

to Powell. He's also charged at the same time with killing a pastor who had given him work and allowed him to stay in a building that his religious movement owned. So he's all around just not a nice guy people. And this is where what Joe was talking about when we first talked about Henry Lee Lucas comes in, is that once he got arrested, he's and he confessed to

the first ones. He started confessing to everything. His confessions initially at least seemed to be related to the crimes that he committed, but then he started and meeting involvement and guilt in crimes that were unsolved, and he seemed to be really good at filling in some details, so

people kind of thought that it was him. Eventually, it seems like he's probably been discredited almost everything that he's admitted to because he claimed credit for like three hundred murders somebod Yeah, somebody who did the math on a lot of these murders, And it would have required him to like drive for like a year, drive to three hundred seventy miles a day to get around all these places to commit these murders. And obviously I'm sure it killed lots of people. He you know, not as many

as he contested to. I hate to admit, you're right, he probably did kill a bunch of people. And he would have been traveling through the area between Houston and Galveston, So it's possible that he could be involved in one or two of the deaths. But it's really tough to say. And he's I mean, in a way, he's done a really great job of clouding himself in just disbelief. You know, nobody believes him. So when somebody suggests, oh, I wonder if he did it, everybody like, no, that guy admits

he did everything. There's no way we can trust him to be usable. Yeah, So, I mean, there's there is a little game theory in that if you start claiming responsibility for everything, eventually people will not believe you in the time that you are actually responsible nobody will believe it. What's he got to lose or gain? I don't know. But these guys, guys like this are so weird because they started meeting this stuff. Just so then get the

body count, the number to go down in history. Well, one thing I will just say is this is eight three right that he got arrested. That he starts admitting to a bunch of murders. Yeah, so like most of these women didn't really disappear. I mean, there's a slew of him in the seventies, there's But the thing is, remember he's but remember he's in jail. Yeah, so that's why I say he might be maybe culpable for one or two, but that's that's kind of stretching. Well, no,

he was, he was out. Oh I don't know how long he was in jail for the kidnap of the three girls. I guess, Yeah, I don't have that here. And yeah, I mean I don't think he's I don't think he did it. But you know, it's hard to say, hard to say, let's kick him to the curb. Okay, let's let's kick him all very hard. Let's let's move on. We're going to move on to the one here that

is titled Unnamed Man in one. Yeah. This okay, so I I again, this is one of the thoes I really hesitated to include, but dagnabbic we include them also, Okay. Ronna Johnson and Sharon Shaw, if you remember, those were the two girls who went to the beach in Galveston in seventy one and then never came home. And Michael self was the guy who was convicted of murdering these

two girls. Well, according to Unsolved Mysteries and it's all it's like listed in their WICKI some man came forward in nineteen eighty and went to the police and he admitted that he was the one that did it, and he gave details that weren't released, such as the fact that the girls were apparently bound with electrical cords. But according to this, they say, oh god, how do they

describe him? They say that he they make a statement about his mental mental health, and I cannot remember the verbiage that is used, basically saying that he was um not having visions, but he was delusional. Okay, But my problem with that his a It came for months of mystery. So I don't and I haven't seen anywhere else. So I have a hard time with it. I mean, they actually did do their own independent investigations. Often they did, although it would be sometimes it's nice to spice things

up a little bit not saying they did that. My my point is, if this guy had details like that, don't you think there would be record of it somewhere? If somebody like actually saying, oh, we're going to investigate this guy, Like, don't you think that uh self would have somehow heard of this and they would have tried to track down the records of this to exonerate that poor guy who still was sitting in jail at that

point almost ten years for friend we didn't commit. I feel like there may have been some sense of, I don't know, this guy seems like he might not be totally mentally there, so realistically he's gonna get sent he's going to get committed, not sent to prison, and well, we've already convicted this guy of it, and like, you know, he might be guilty, even if there's some questions about it.

And I there may just be a sense of like, well, we already got there's already somebody who's rotting for this case, so screw it. Yeah, I gotta tell you that as a taxpayer, if that's the opinion of the police force, with my tax dollars, is what we got somebody locked up, So screw it. We're not going to figure out if we did it right. That's not really a good attitude I would be. That makes me very upset. I agree. I'm just trying. Even if I weren't paying taxes, that

wouldn't be happy about that. Frankly, well, I know there was a year or two that you didn't but sorry, iron rest listeners, I forget you heard that. Uh yeah. And as far as the detail about tying up with electrical cord, I mean, that's not that bizarre. It could have just been a major you know, you could have been delusional, confessed to a crime he didn't commit. We're gonna move to our next suspect in our laundry list of suspects. This is number five and this giant list

that I created, Okay, we have William Lewis Reefs. William Lewis Reefs committed his first crime when he was caught and charged in night six h for picking up a nineteen year old girl in Oklahoma. He did that with pretense of giving her a ride. Instead, he abducted and raped her for several days in the sleeper cab of a semi Okay, first of all, let's just go ahead and say he probably didn't commit his first crime at

that time. His first crime forgetting that he was caught for is the way that I meant to phrase, that's a better way to look at Yes, he uh, well, this this girl, she she managed to escape under the pretense of using a bathroom or something, I can't remember what it was. And then while and then he got charged for doing this crime. And while he was awaiting trial out on bail. Yes, well, he's out on bail for this rape case. He raped another woman that he had met in a bar. But this guy seems to

have a compulsion. Maybe he was sentenced to twenty five years in prison for the first rape. I think that he was sentenced for. Maybe it was twenty five years total. I can't remember at the moment. Twenty five years done. Unless this guy should be locked up at kept away from the general populace, Yeah, not so much. He only served ten only served ten years of that sentence. He was then again put into jail in seven for kidnapping

a woman, just like Kevin Edison Smith. When he was put into jail in nine seven, his DNA was put into the system and checked against other cases. And after that he started getting linked to other unsolved crimes and cases. So this guy he went about this, he wanted to avoid the death penalty because he was in jail if I remember right in Oklahoma, maybe it's Louisiana. I can't remember which what it was, but it has the death penalty. And his deal was, you don't put me on death row,

you don't try me for murder. Uh and and I'll go ahead and I'll help you out. It's not well. And so he led investigators into the field and he took them to where the body of Jessica Caine was. She had disappeared in Yes, she was. She was one of the last ones we talked about in that that in that thirty person list. He also took them to where the body of a girl named Kelly Cox was. She had gone missing around the same time as Jessica,

though she wasn't actually on our list. Kelly wasn't Jessica was. Jessica was the seventeen Yeah, okay, he is also believed to be connected to the disappearance of twelve year old Laura Smither. Yeah, the one who went jogging. Why is that? Why is he suspected of that? There are links in his pattern and his travels that make people think that

he was in the area when it happened. But it's obviously it's nothing concrete because he has not been charged with her death, but they think that he might be involved in that. I mean, but I think about the guy. Was he was driving a truck. He was driving all over He was driving from Galveston all the way up into Oklahoma. What's the main city, Oklahoma City? Wow, Steve, good job. Yeah, he was driving all from north to

south along that route, driving a truck all the time. Well, Interstate forty five is part is the route between Houston to Galveston, So he's on that road. And if he's he's just out and about stealing girls and raping and killing them, then again, just like we said before, it's possible that he could be involved with at least one or two others that are on our list that just

didn't get any recomfortable d NA. Yeah, the ones that we're not out, we're outside the killing fields, but somewhere else along And we talked about this little bit before, and let's give a little more description of what's going on in terms of what it has to be like for these poor girls. Because you think, well, they're on the side of the road or there near the road, like they should be able to run and scream and get help there. Well, it's it's oil fields active and

abandon its giant expanses. Apparently it is amazingly windy. So you can yell at somebody fifty feet away, say, and they'd have no idea. Cars are whizzing by on the interstate a couple hundred yards away. They're not going to see what's happening. I mean, one of the cops in this, in the Smither case, was talking about the fact that you could literally get off the freeway, drive off the the off ramp, down a dirt road, drive for five minutes.

You are now in a complete and total seclusion, drop a body, drive back onto the freeway, and be on and no soul would be the wiser for months on end. And the only reason they would know is because they found the body you dumped. So this is this is the kind of situation. This is why. So I know some people are going, how is this possible? This doesn't make any sense. It is it's such a rural area. It's it's just a stretch of road that is a freeway with a couple of little towns dotting it, and

then it's marshes and dirt roads. It's all it is. So it's it's why these girls are so hard to find.

Um okay, So off of that soapbox or whatever it was that I was on there for the moment, I think, um, William Reese is a pretty good I think that this guy is probably responsible for a couple of the fact that he Okay, it didn't happen right away, but in watching what happened and it evolved, in his willingness to cooperate, I would call that a knee jerk reaction of Oh, hell, they're going to figure out all all the ones that

I did. I'm just gonna I'm gonna roll over. He folded like a cheap suit, and he went ahead and he told him what he needed to make sure that they didn't kill him. Every single body, just a couple of them, right, I mean, but his ability to lead them to certain bodies, it sounds like definitely, you know, I it's probably likely that he's responsible for the majority of the Strangolds bodies and maybe not the shot ones. So that's the weird thing, is the ones that were shot.

I've never I've never found anybody who followed that pattern of steal a girl and then once he has committed whatever whatever acts he was intending to commit with her, his method of getting to kill her was to shoot her in the head. Like, none of these guys that we're talking about match that. Yeah, but it's a it's a weird thing in the early pattern of of these deaths. Yeah. Man, By the way, the the shots to the head, what caliber of gun were they? They were smaller caliber if

I remember. I want to say that I read once and it was a twenty two that they were shot in the head. But I cannot be sure of that, Joe, because I've been reading about this obviously for a while. And then four or five days ago, I was like, crap, what caliber was it that they were killed with? And I started going back and of course you know how this is. Suddenly you can't find it anymore because the Internet has deleted that information from itself, so that I

cannot answer that question. I'll ask stupid Internet are Oh yeah, it's the kool aid man should break in right now and say that, Oh yeah, No, there were a ton of suspects in this thing. I mean I was. I was compiling a list of my own and it looks like you didn't miss anybody, but my list was getting pretty long. Was wow, I almost had to go to a spreadsheet of suspects. Yeah, and that just rubbed me wrong. I don't wanted to make a spreadsheet at These people

have hard enough time. I had him on my computer as it is. Okay, we're gonna go to the next guy, which is Edward Harold Bell got Bells a weirdo. Bell showed up in Pasadena, Texas on August. He was in a neighborhood. He got out of his truck in front of a bunch of children who are playing, and he didn't have any pants on. You thought it was a cartoon duck. Maybe no pants, No wonder where he he is.

Just there's a phrase for when you wear only a shirt, and I'm actually not going to say that that's what he was doing. There's a guy by the name of Larry Dickens Larry's mom yells to him and says, listen, slow that guy down, don't let him get near the kids, in delaying long enough for the cops to get here. So Larry Dickens does that. He's a stand up guy, and he gets in his way. He eventually takes Bell's keys out of Bell's truck, at which point Bell loses it.

He shoots Dickens a couple of times with a pistol. Larry Dickens runs away. He runs into the garage of his mom's house and he collapses. His mom is holding him. Bell comes up and demands the car keys or the truck keys back. Larry gives him the keys, at which point Bell shoots him point blank in the head while his mother is still holding him, and then walks back to the truck. And while this seems not normal, you would think at this point he would then get in

his truck and drive away. No, he grabs a rifle and he comes back and he continues to shoot Larry in the face. Yeah. He then at this point he tries to get away and it takes not come back with the rifle if he want, Yeah, if he was trying to Yeah, that was that was a bit excessive, a bit yes, understatement of the year on my part. So he tries to get away, the cops catching me like twenty minutes that he didn't do any very good job at all trying to escape. But this is a

part of the next part is what really puzzles me. Well, but the brutality of the case, because I mean, they bring him back and his sister, Larry's sister ideas him and you know, oh the release Okay, okay, yeah, they let this bozo go. They charge him and they release him on bail, and he's gone. What a surprise, shocking Yeah, yeah, no, no, I guano. He has gone, and he is at large for a total of fourteen years. Bell is eventually rest arrested in Panama. In there is a Panama Florida. Yea

Panama City. I think Florida. Yeah, I think that's I think it is. It's Panama City, Florida. I just realized, like, not Panama of the country, was Panama of the city. And I believe it was in Florida. In and at that point he was sentenced to seventy years in prison, just seventy but a and he begins they begin look at his history and his pattern, and they believe that he might actually be the one who was involved in the murders of Rhonda Johnson and Sharon Shaw again, the

girls who went to the beach. He's he's another one that this guy. He he fills in details and unsolved mystery or unsolved murders, and he starts confessing to things. And initially he claimed that he had killed seven girls. He then changed that number in two thousand eleven to eleven girls. And a guy like this who makes it makes his own catchphrase. I really god, I really worried that this guy is watching the Apprentice in prison to come up with a catchphrase like this, because his his

catchphrase is the eleven that went to Heaven. It's I mean, it's it's disturbing. But he also he makes again, this is one of those things, like these crazy lames. He begins, he's always actually said that it wasn't his fault. It was the government's fault. They brainwashed him, and they programmed him, and they forced him to be a flasher and to rape girls and to want to kill them. It seems like a good suspect for the girls that were shot. Yeah,

he did like to shoot people. Yeah, yeah, so, actually I guess I misspoke earlier. He is suddenly flailing firearms. You know who he actually makes me think of is reading his case. It made me think that maybe he was loosely the basis for the movie, Mr Wright, Either of you seen that it's a sam I have. It looks kind of intriguing. It's a Saram Rockwell movie and it is a lot of fun. I saw the description and I was really hesitant, and then my wife and

I sat down and watched it. And normally in my house, I'm known for picking really bad Netflix titols. Why did you pick that movie? That was a horrible movie? She actually laughed through to the point she's like, okay, and that one was good. Well, I mean, he can't go wrong with saying Rocket who is you know who he is?

Next up? Next up? Yeah, we have Clyde Edward Hendrick. Okay, so Hedrick, You're right, not hed So this one and the next one, I'm going to tell people, if you are in a position to do so, please pause and google this guy and look at his mug shot. He is a Texas resident and he looks like he has lived in the backwoods of Texas for many, many years. It's an amazing mug shot. But Clyde in five was questioned in the investigation of the death of a woman

by the name of Ellen Ray Beeson. And initially they didn't know that she was murdered. They just knew that she died and something didn't add up. Uh, And then twenty years later, so they charged him with tampering with a corpse. And then twenty years later they exhumed her body and they reinvestigated the case, and they figured out what was going on. And here's what was going on.

According to Hedrick, he and Beason had been out drinking and then they had gone to some place and she had gotten naked and went skinny dipping, and then she drowned and then a smile face killer thing could have been. When she drowned, he went in to help her, but when he got her body out, she realized she was dead. So he panicked and he threw her in the back of his truck and he looked for a place to dispose of her body and eventually dumped her body. Makes

sense when they exhumed the body. This The description of the case says that when it was in the initial autopsy and body review done, she was not cleaned enough. I believed that that means they did not get enough brain out of her skull to be able to tell

this stuff in the x rays. But when they exhumed her body, and they did a good job, they figured out that part of her skull was caved in because she'd been clubbed in the head with something, which means he had clubbed her in the head and killed her. And that's why he panicked and dumped her body. So why are we talking about this guy? Well, the problem the reason is is that what he did is where he dumped her body was near called her road, that

called the road property, that the killing field. He threw her body. It's reported under a couch, but it's also another reporting said that it was actually just a bench car seat. The back seat of car is also a dumping ground for stuff other than bodies apparently, So I mean it's an abandoned chunker crown, so not really suprising. Um. So that's why he's he's brought up in this. I gotta tell you that there's not a whole lot of linkage in terms of him to this place other than

that one thing. But he is one of the few people that I know of who got charged for the same crime twice and convicted in two different ways. So it goes down the books that way. But I don't think a guy that looked like him would have had an easy time. I've been trying to get girls to climb into his car. Not not in the later years of his life, not the twenty years later. But yeah, okay, well then let's go to one of our final ones here, Bobby Jack Fowler. Did you remember Bobby Jack. Yeah, we

heard about Bobby Jack from my favorite murder. Yeah here in Portland. So this guy, this guy, actually I consider him a contender for best mug shot ever. Again, this is another one. Please google this guy's mug shot. You will.

You will have a little fun at his expense. And that is perfectly okay given a kind of human Yes, but I don't know if he was a human, to be quite honest, I think he might have actually been a mole person or a retilion or whatever it is you want to call him, because he was another terrible human being. Oh yeah, he is a very prolific serial killer. He's one of the ones that's not so famous as like you know, we've all everybody's heard of Henry Lee,

Luca Sinted Bundy. But this guy is a little more obscure. But he killed a lot of people. He did. He did a lot of killing. So Bobby Jack Fowler was a construction worker and he traveled across the US he looked for work. He also, apparently at the same time, was looking for women to have unconsensual sex with and then possibly kill. The man was all over this country. He He's known to have been in British, Columbia, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Texas, Oregans,

South Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, and Washington State. Literally all over this continent, well the northern western part of it anyway, Well Louisiana is not and it's kind of easy, yeah, South Carolinas on the other coast. Okay, So, according to what I've read, he starts his criminal career in nineteen sixty nine with a murder charge in Texas that didn't stick.

And I don't I don't want to try and get into this guy's psyche, but it is said, and I'm going to emphasize the word said, because I don't know that he ever said this himself, but it is said that he believed that quote unquote women he came into contact with who were hitchy, hitch hiking and or hanging out in bars wanted to be sexually assaulted. That's some pretty ironclad reasoning. Yeah, so so this guy, I mean, obviously already you're it's pretty non Nobody likes this guy.

He was put into jail for the final time in based on what happened on June when he was with a woman in Newport, Oregon. He was in a hotel. She jumped out of the second story window of the hotel to escape him. She still had a rope tied around her ankle. She got to the police, she told the police what was going on. Obviously she was not there under by her own choice. She was there under dress. And then they arrested him and it took his DNA.

He thankfully died in two thousand six. He died in prison, but his DNA has linked him to several cases um all over the country. I know this one's on our list. But there is the high is it the Highway of tears? Yes, there's the Highway of Tears in Bridge? In Bridge, Columbia, and so he's linked to at least one case up there through d n A. He's also believed to be responsible for the death of four girls in a Newport, Oregon area back in I believe it's the mid eighties,

or maybe it's the early nineties. Again, there's so many of these guys, it's hard to keep all of their various crimes straight. He liked to travel. I think he called himself a rambling man. I think that's where I got that phrase early. He likes to say he was rambling about. But he liked to travel, he liked rape, he liked to kill, he liked to drink. He was all around just a terrible guy. But guy, Yeah, I

gotta hand it to him. Though he knew what he wanted, you know, and he just went out and got it. I wouldn't say I've got to hand it to him. I would say, we need to take it away from you. Should have been doing what he was doing, absolutely now. He should have been putting the cage a lot earlier than he was. He got away with murder for a

long time, no pun intended. Literally, yes, absolutely so. The fact he is he is a one that he's actually seems to be gaining some traction in terms of people knowing about him because of being linked to these things in various places. And I can't say that that he's not responsible for any of these things in Texas. Could very well be, but I can't see him really sticking around for years. You know, you might have been responsible for some of them, but that's why not the entire series,

I don't think. Well, but they have such large gaps in between them. He was doing what he was doing, he just wasn't doing it in the same city and state the whole time. So the path is not connected to connecting the dots. It just never happens. Yeah, it's hard to say. I'd really like to know how exactly

how many people Bobby Jack did kill. I think that was just say Bobby Jack's the only one who will know, and you and he obviously wasn't got to talk, but he was in jail for a good ten years before he died, and he never spilled the beans, so no tell him. Um. So our final one is actually it's actually a theory though it's a very simple one, which is that it was all of these guys or it was none of these guys, or it was a single guy like this is this is the general discussion area.

We don't normally do that, but I mean, yeah, if you think about it, it's entirely possible that each some of these girls were killed by the same person in the groups or clusters, and that accounts for all of them. It's possible that none of them were killed by these guys except for the ones who we know like Bobby Jack and um Ken whatever his name is. Yeah that yeah, that that we know by d n A. But I mean, maybe all the ones I've talked about so far, they're

not maybe all of the other ones. This is the scariest story. The part of the story is maybe they're all the same guy and he's just doing it different all the time, or yeah, or Joe said he's some kind of authority figure, you know what. To be honest with you, it's scarier to think that they're all done by different people. That's even scarier to me that there are that many people, men or women, who during this time period, for whatever reason, kill young women and then

just dump their bodies into swamps. Like That's the scariest theory to me is that there are thirty individual or what I guess twenty five if you did the couple that like, well, but but like Joe said earlier, you know, he looked at another list and I mean that list was fifty girls d something that none of them are really connected, and it probably is more than one person. I think some of the ms varied enough like that, you know, whoever did all the gunshots to the head

probably probably the same person. You know, the strangulation is probably maybe somebody else. I would say it's probably like two or three. I like the idea that if it was a cop, you know, he's just like, you know, well, I don't like it in the sense that I enjoy it. Don't you like it? As a google? If there? Well, yeah, so he's he's he's one wants to go do a

little killing. So he goes to the evidence room and just grabs a gun there that's been checked into evidence, goes out and murder somebody with it, and that just brings it back and puts it back into evidence. You know, I mean it could have done something. I doubt that he would do that. That's taken a big risk, that's a giant risk. Actually, yeah, it's already in evidence. Yeah, it kind of is. But still, you know, I mean, that's what a great way to get rid of your weapon.

Yeh know what you're what you're talking about is I believe it was training day Denzel Washington. They had a gun that was dirty that had been used in the crime, but the cops were hanging onto that would be the gun in your scenario that would get used. It's a gun you've taken off of somebody that you know was used a different crime. That is another way to do it. It's like, if you take it off a criminal, you have lots of opportunities to do that kind of stuff.

You know. What's really scary to me, And and there are places like this is that what is it that makes it such a magnet? Like what is it that raws people that are going to commit these acts in such a concentration, Like what is it that they are looking for they like so much? Well, they live in Texas, So I'm not just blaming it on Texas for once. I'm not actually blaming Texas. Houston actually is a very

very large city and it's very close to Houston. Yeah, away, I mean it's it is the feeder route from Galveston to Houston. But my point is like, Okay, if if it's just proximity to Houston, then why isn't the next fifty miles up the Inner State from Houston littered with bodies in the same way? Do you know what? You know what I'm saying that there are even distributed or even clustered a little bit closer to Houston. It's it's like there's the Highway of Tears and it's sing's like

it's it's scary. It's like, what what is it? Why? Well, I mean, it's hot, it's secluded, it's got bogs and body of water that you can a body will decompose quickly in. And I don't know, scary, I don't like it. Are you saying that it's kind of the perfect storm of the place to dispose of? That's what's drawing these guys is that they realized it's a good place. Yeah,

I guess, I don't know I would, but I would. Sorry, well, I was gonna say if I was gonna get scientific about it, um, I would look at it to go to Texas Department of Transportation, get the credit Okay, uh, get traffic counts and just see what traffic counts are like along our stretch. It may be that maybe the traffic just five ten miles further north, closer to Houston, is a lot heavier, and that's that in itself makes it a more attractive place. But these girls also disappeared

from places that were close to there. They didn't. They weren't disappearing from Houston. They weren't. You know, it's not as though it's a dumping ground for bodies from Houston. Could have been a local too. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's it's all scary. There's no no good answer. It's just here answers. I mean, we can, we can step around this for the next ten minutes, asking the same question in different ways and giving the same answer. The whole, in the long and the short of it

is it's disturbing. It feels like things have dropped off in the killing fields, in the Texas killing fields. And yet when I look at the list, I mean, like I said, I the list I used was curated by somebody else, and list that was curated by yet another individual has things that are in the twenty tens that are in that region. So I don't know that it's actually ended and I don't know. Well, story short, that area Yeah, yeah, if you live in the Galveston to

Houston area, please move. Apparently is not a good area. Well it's um it may be that somebody's still killing with dumping somewhere else, because that area is not as desolate as it used to be. If you look at the area, it's a lot it is subdivision, a lot of subdivision development in the area right near by. I very close, but that actually really confused me. At first. I was like, what, how is this? How is this a great place to dump bodies? And then I know

what we've talked about this before. I go on Google Earth and I go back to the satellite footage from ten twenty years ago, and suddenly you realize all the subdivisions just didn't exist, pretty recent stuff. Yeah, and so yeah, that might be one reason the bodies are going somewhere else nowadays. Yeah, okay, any last thoughts for either of you? And I know we've it occurs to me we haven't blamed Tuopy in a while. So you know, do you think it's the Chupacabra. Yeah, I think so, Okay, I

think so. All right, Well, I don't think that's it, but we'll let it stand. Okay, we never we never turned away a theory. Okay, okay, Well, I will have links to some of the research for today's show on our website. Website, of course, is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. On that website, you're gonna find a couple of things

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