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

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. He was tentatively scheduled to be tried on those counts in October.