Texas man sentenced to 20 years in prison over death of teen in 1980s

James Elmore Jr sentenced in death of Laura Miller, whose body was found in 1986 in notorious ‘Texas Killing Fields’

A man found guilty in the death of teenager Laura Miller, whose body was recovered in 1986 in the notorious so-called “Texas Killing Fields”, was given a 20-year prison sentence on Thursday.

James Elmore Jr received that punishment from a Galveston county jury that a day earlier had convicted him of manslaughter in connection with Laura Miller’s death, which inspired her father, Tim Miller , to launch Texas EquuSearch, a non-profit organization specializing in searching for missing people.

Elmore, 61, was determined to have helped administer a cocaine dose that killed Laura, who went missing in 1984 – and whose corpse was located two years later in League City, Texas, on land along Interstate 45 south-east of Houston.

That stretch constitutes the infamous Texas Killing Fields, where the bodies of more than 30 girls and young women have been discovered, as chronicled in a Netflix documentary along with various books and movies.

Investigators suspect multiple people are responsible for those deaths, most of which are unsolved.

But Laura’s death proved to be an exception after Elmore called Tim Miller in 2022. Elmore told him that he was there when Laura died, prompting both men to meet repeatedly afterward.

Tim Miller, 79, even produced a video showing him and Elmore visiting locales involved in Laura’s death. And jurors saw that video after authorities charged Elmore in Laura’s case with manslaughter in late March, setting the stage for a trial leading to his conviction on Wednesday and sentencing on Thursday.

Jurors concluded that Elmore prepared a vial of cocaine that his longtime friend, Clyde Hedrick, gave to Laura.

Investigators surmised that Hedrick was responsible for the deaths of Laura and three other women left in the Texas Killing Fields between 1984 and 1991: Audrey Cook, Heidi Fye-Villareal and Donna Prudhomme. But Hedrick died by suicide in March at age 72 shortly before Texas prosecutors sought to obtain an indictment charging him and Elmore.

Furthermore, Hedrick had been convicted of manslaughter in 2014 in the death of Ellen Beason, who went missing in 1984 and whose body was found a year later. He had been released on parole in 2022.

At Elmore’s trial, his attorney, Bill Agnew, maintained that his client “didn’t have anything to do with this”. But Elmore was “the one guy standing” after Hedrick’s suicide, Agnew contended.

The jury, meanwhile, heard from Tim Miller as he addressed Elmore while testifying the trial.

“You handed [the cocaine vial] to Clyde Hedrick,” Tim remarked, pointing at Elmore and crying. “You handed it.”

Charges of evidence tampering and possession of child abuse imagery remained pending against Elmore as of Thursday. He was tentatively scheduled to be tried on those counts in October.

Elmore’s sentence in Laura’s death came about four years after an Oklahoma death row inmate, William Reece, pleaded guilty to the murders of two girls and one woman whose bodies were in the Texas Killing Fields: Laura Smither, 12; Jessica Cain, 17; and Kelli Cox, 20.

Reece received sentences of life imprisonment for each of those murders.

During Elmore’s court proceedings, Tim Miller alluded to his tireless efforts to learn precisely what had happened to Laura – and his dissatisfaction with what he considered to be an inadequate law enforcement investigation into her disappearance. He dedicated himself to becoming an expert in finding missing people or their remains – and he started Texas EquuSearch in 2000.

The group’s name nods to the fact that its volunteers occasionally conduct searches on horseback, though they also mount all-terrain vehicles, boats or backhoes.

A 2022 Houston Chronicle article reported that the organization worked on about 100 new missing persons cases annually. According to its website , Texas EquuSearch had found about 580 people alive and another 560 or so deceased.

“I begged – I pleaded – for somebody to do something,” Miller said to the jury at Elmore’s trial about the years-long uncertainty surrounding Laura’s whereabouts and the exact circumstances of her death. “I knew something happened to Laura – I just knew it. I just didn’t know what it was.”

He had previously told the Guardian that his mission to find missing people would not end with the conclusion of Laura’s case.

“We got a lot more girls to find,” Miller said, “and a lot more families to help.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting