So, man, I was thinking about this and thought you might find this interesting.
Adults are actually way better fighters than infants.
It makes sense, right? Yeah. But more battles seem to be won by infantry than adultery.
That's just, that's very punny. Yeah, yeah, you're welcome.
Hahaha.
Are you crazy?
Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the graveyard. Thank you for joining us tonight.
My name is Adam and my name's Matt. Now, pull up a tombstone or settle into your casket and get comfortable.
Because this is graveyard tales.
Oh, right, everybody here, we are again, Matt. How you doing tonight, brother?
Hey, I'm dry, so that's always a good thing. That's good.
It's pouring up here storms. I'm liable to get struck by lightning sitting up here.
So, well, at least we'll get it on video. I get it on video, man.
That'll boost the views there. Yeah, y'all are getting the rain that we got at like 3am.
And I hate it when storms come through at night or when they're dark. You know, I don't want to be asleep and
then NATO is coming through. Which, that reminds me, I got to say this before we get into the episode.
I've told you, but I went up this past weekend to visit with grandma and mom and kind of help
them out a little bit and met up with Matt. Yep, help his kid with some guitar stuff.
And then we talk shop and all that. But I was driving through Little Rock, Arkansas.
And I'm driving through and I'm like, man, it looks nasty out here. It is like there was this
weird haze through the whole city. Never looked like that before. I get onto I-40
going east, heading to Nashville, and I'm maybe
five miles outside of Little Rock. And all of a sudden, I notice in front of me, it's like this
wall on the interstate. And what it is is the wind is so bad. I'm white knuckling to keep it in
the lanes, but the wind is so bad. It's blowing dust out of one of the freshly plowed fields
across the interstate. So it whided out the interstate for maybe 50, 60 feet. Geez.
When you got in the middle of it, you couldn't see anything but the lines of foot or two in front
of you and the tail lights. So it was kind of creepy. It was weird. I make it to my grandmother's
house and my mom's like, when did you go through Little Rock? And I told her and she goes,
look at the news and she's got it on literally like an hour or so after I had passed through Little
Rock is when the tornadoes hit. God. So yeah, he's talking about it. As soon as he gets into
Nashville, he's messaging me. Yeah. I'm like, can you believe it? I just barely missed a couple
of tornadoes. Yep. Man, I've said it before. I've got somebody looking out for me because that's not
the first time that I have looked behind me and seen destruction that I barely escaped.
So you just think you could have pulled over and eaten it at what a burger. And that would have
been the difference and you'd have been right in the middle of that. Exactly. Yeah. If I had taken
a break or started a little bit later in the morning or both, I could have been driving through
Little Rock trying to dodge all those tornadoes. That would have been horrible. So yeah, we're
thinking about the people in Little Rock and everywhere else that the tornadoes hit. But I just
thought I had to say that this will come out a couple of weeks after the tornadoes hit, but still,
I mean, sure. But so real quick, little housekeeping, we want to say go check out the Podbelly Network
at podbelly.com. You can find a list of shows that we're associated with in the Podbelly Network.
And it's probably some shows that you might not find any other way. And I promise you're going
to find something on there that you're going to like. We also want to thank tonight's sponsors,
Lomi. And we love Lomi. So we will definitely talk about them shortly coming up.
And while you're on the internet doing your internet stuff, whatever it is you cool people do on the
internet, go to patreon.com slash graveyard tells and you can sign up to become a patron.
We've got three different levels. Each one of them has their own little thing where you can get maybe
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And the $10 patron also gets an ad free version of the episode that we're putting out. So if you
don't want to deal with the ads, then sign up to become a $10 patron.
Yep. Yep.
All right. So let's take a second and talk about Lomi by Pila. Now, you heard us talk about it before
and you know that Matt and I love our Lomi's. But if you haven't heard it before, Matt and I both
had issues with composting for for many years because you've got a large container out back
that's full of nasty smelling, basically rotting food and it takes forever to
actually do the work and turn out the product that it's supposed to produce. Well, that was
until we found Lomi. Now, with this little toaster oven sized machine, we can put all of our food
scraps into it, hit a button and we've got dirt in a few hours. So Lomi allows you to turn these
food scraps and everything into a soil that you can throw into your garden or your potted plants in
the house in like under four hours for the most part. One of the cool things, Matt, there is no
smell when you run it. Oh, yeah. It doesn't smell. They have charcoal filters in it so that you can
leave stuff in there. You don't have to run it just as soon as you put stuff in there. You can put
some stuff in there, leave it till the next dinner and then when you fill it up, run it.
And the other cool thing is my garbage doesn't stink anymore because you throw these food scraps
into Lomi. They're not rotten away in your garbage can making a garbage can in your house stink.
Right. I mean, you know, I hate to go total fan boil. But this thing is so incredibly cool.
I mean, we keep, we have a spot for our Lomi container and when you're prepping dinner,
you cut your onion peels that go in there, not in the trash. You peel a banana, the peel goes in
there, not in the trash. Okay. So as you're prepping dinner, all that scraps that you would scoop
off and throw in your garbage, we put them in the Lomi because number one, you know, it's a better,
it's a better spot than in the trash. So it doesn't stink like atoms. And number two is we're
going to use this to make dirt that we can put in our garden. I use it in my house plants.
And and Adam's right. I stuck my face down there just trying. You cannot smell it. You cannot smell
it. It is, it is just incredible. And the amount of time that it takes to turn these food scraps
into dirt into usable dirt. I mean, you can get that in about four hours. Right. And you said scraps.
It's literally scraps. You can scrape your plates into Lomi. Most of the time with composting,
you can't put meat or dairy or bread in there. You can only do vegetable matter. But what's awesome
about Lomi, you can put, you can put meat, you can put cheese in there. I don't pour your milk in
there. Obviously you don't want to put liquids in there, but you can throw meat and dairy scraps
into the Lomi. And it will turn that into dirt. Yeah. It's absolutely incredible. You get,
you get less garbage. Okay. You're, you're doing something more productive with your garbage.
Which is reducing, you know, the amount of garbage that's going to landfills.
You're getting dirt that's like you said, you can use your garden and your house plants or just
spread it around in your yard. And you're doing something that's, that's helping the environment.
So, I mean, you're, you're producing less waste and the waste that you do have, you're doing
something great. So if you want to start making a positive environmental impact or you just want
to clean up after dinner and make it a lot easier, Lomi is perfect for you. Just go to lomi.com
slash grave. That's L-O-M-I dot com slash g-r-a-v-e and use our promo code grave to get $50 off
your Lomi. That's right. That's $50 off when you head to lomi.com L-O-M-I dot com slash g-r-a-v-e
and use our promo code grave at checkout. Food waste is gross. Let Lomi save you a trip out to
the garbage can. So Matt, that's all I've got for housekeeping and
my nearly, nearly getting dead story. So why don't you tell us what are we talking about tonight,
brother? Okay. So tonight, this is going to be a different graveyard tells episode than what
you're used to. We are, we are branching out a little bit to talk about something that we don't,
we may touch on them, but we're always got that paranormal slant to it. No paranormal slant
tonight. Not necessarily. I can probably figure one out. We could make one, but
because yeah, you walking through there at night, imagine.
But we're going to do a little true crime tonight.
And we're going to talk about this place in Texas. Calder Road Field, which is along I-45 in
League City, Texas. And that area became a site of just fascination when it was revealed to be
the site of tons of horrific murders. So over 30 years, these murders took place there.
So tonight, Adam and I, we're going to look at a little true crime and discuss the Texas killing
fields. Oh yeah. And they're infamous. So I'm pretty sure you heard tell of them before.
Yeah. And you know, if you haven't, if you haven't already, there's a documentary on Netflix that
is out about them. You know, it just, it's been out maybe a month. Adam and I both had the opportunity
to watch that. And very, very good. We're not going to go into that kind of in-depth.
But we are going to look at this with a little graveyard till spin on it.
All right. So as we always say, go check our sources down the bottom of the show notes.
You can find where we found this information. You can expand on it because like Matt said,
we're not going to go into quite as much depth or, or to that degree that the documentary went into
because, I mean, they had a multi-part documentary that we're just, we don't have the luxury of
that kind of time. So we're going to give you enough information where you know what happened
there. But then if it interests you, you can then follow up with watching the documentary or in our
sources, continue the research with one of our sources. So as Matt said, it's called the Texas
Killing Fields. And it is a 25-acre patch of land in League City, Texas, a long interstate highway 45,
like Matt was saying. And since the 1970s, 30 bodies have been found in and around the area,
leading to that haunting name of the Texas Killing Fields.
Yeah. And you know, the name comes from the the Killing Fields in Cambodia while they were
under the regime of the Khmer Rouge. And as this, as these cases became more and more known,
and the numbers kept going up, they just, they said, this is like the Texas Killing Field.
So that's where the name comes from. It actually is taken from that, from the Killing Fields in
Cambodia, which I didn't realize there was that connection, but that's where it is.
I didn't until like, either we talked about it or it just kind of came up yesterday. And I was
like, oh, well, that makes sense. Maybe it was something I was reading. I don't know.
Now, the majority of victims have been girls and young women between the ages of 12 and 25 years old.
But there are some outliers in there, which I'll discuss and touch on here in a minute,
and then we'll get a little more in depth. Now, let's look at league city Texas real quick.
It's got a population estimated as of July 2021 of 115,595. So the population per mile is only
2,231 per mile, which that's up quite a bit since the 1970s and 80s, and most of these murders were
taking place. Now, this next bit comes from the league city, league city Texas government site.
And it says it's in Galveston County and league city is a waterfront community nestled along
the shores of Clear Lake 30 miles south of downtown Houston, with proximity to Galveston Bay and the
Gulf of Mexico, the city regularly ranks among the safest, most affordable and best places to live
and raise a family in the state of Texas and in the US. And see, I noticed that in several places,
they even discussed this on the documentary where they said there is a town right outside of league
city called friend friendship or Friendsville, something like that, Texas. And they said it was
also designated one of the safest places. But if you're looking at what actually
friends would, that's it. Yeah. If you discount the Texas killing fields, yes, I agree with you.
But you kind of have to factor in these killing fields in that deal. But I mean,
you don't as a government want to turn people off to your city by going, Hey, we got a big body
dump site over here. But other than that, we're pretty good. And league city is kind of like a
beach town almost. Yeah, pretty close to it. It's right there on the coast,
which was interesting when we look at some of the cases, because some of them are,
you know, you hear them talking about like island girls and surfers and things like that. And I'm
in my head, I'm going talking about Texas. Yeah. Well, you know, Texas got a coast too, dummy.
We do know. And we talked about a haunted place down there in Porto, Ranzas. That's right.
Right. I mean, it's a lot like the keys. So yeah, Texas being as large as it is,
we've got a bunch of everything. If you need Texas probably has it.
Yeah. So let's look at some of the victims that are said to be related to the killing fields.
Now, not all of these get mentioned when people discuss the murders at the killing fields. So
I wanted to at least mention some of them and get them out there so that maybe if they're not
talked about on another, another podcast episode somewhere or the documentary, we at least give
them their due and mention them. And these are in no particular order. Collette Wilson,
age 13, was last seen June 17th, 1971. And her body was discovered November 26, 1971.
Brenda Jones, 14 last seen July 1st, 1971, discovered November 26, 1971. Rhonda Johnson,
14 was disappeared on August 4th of 71, found January 3rd of 72. Sharon Shaw, 13,
disappeared August 4th of 71, found January 3rd of 72. Gloria Gonzalez, 19,
missing October 28, 1971, found November 23rd, 1971.
But there's several of these names we're going to go into a little bit more specifics on their case.
Right. Right.
A little bit later in the show. But you're getting the idea. I mean, these are young,
early teen teenage women, young adults. And it's just,
I don't know. It was, I must admit, it was difficult reading a lot of this,
even more so than it was watching the documentary. It seems kind of strange, but there's something
about when you're reading the news articles, when you're reading the stuff, when it actually
happened, something that happened that long ago becomes so real. And you're just like,
my God. You know, what that community must have felt during this time.
Yeah, I can't imagine because I'm not going to, I'm going to hit a few more here, but I'm not
going to hit all 30. And you've got to think there were minimum of 30. There may have been more.
Yeah. Now, Kimberly Ray Pitchford was 16, disappeared January 3rd of 73, was found January 5th of
73 and Brooks Bracewell, 12 September 6th, 1974, and was found April 3rd of 1981.
And she disappeared with her friend, Georgia Greer, 14. She disappeared same day and was found
on the same day. And so that was a little outside of the norm when it came to what they expected from
this killer, because up to that point, he had just been picking out single young girls and women.
And this time he got two. Now, Heidi Villarreal Phi, which I have actually heard her,
I've heard it pronounced Heidi, but I also heard her cousin or something call her heed.
Yeah. So I'm not sure which if it's heed or Heidi, but I think it's heed since the family said that
she was 23, disappeared October 10th of 83. And they didn't find her until April 4th of 84.
Now jumping a little bit and age wise, you've got Audrey Cook. She was 30. She disappeared December
of 85. And they found her body February 2nd of 86. Now, Shelley Sykes was 19. She disappeared May
24th of 86. They have yet to find her remains. But she's associated with the Texas killing fields
because of proximity to where she disappeared. Right. The same goes with Suzanne Renee Richardson.
She was 22, disappeared October 7th, 1988, still hadn't found her remains as of today.
Now, one of the outliers is Tott Herriman. She was 57. She disappeared July 12th of 2001.
But no remains have been found, but because of proximity to the killing fields.
A couple, couple more recent ones were Sarah Trustee 23. She disappeared July 12th of 2002
and was found July 27th of 2002. And Teresa Vanagas was 16, disappeared October 31st of 2006 and was
found November 3rd of 2006. So a lot of the newer cases don't get publicized as much when you're
talking about the killing fields. Yeah. Because most of these are focused on the 70s and 80s.
Yeah. And you've got to understand this isn't like they're searching somebody's backyard when we
said they hadn't found her remains. But yet they they have pieced things together to believe that
their disappearance is connected with with the killing field. It's a huge piece of property.
Oh, yeah.
It's enormous. It's the kind of thing you're talking about a needle in a haystack.
That's what you're looking for. Because it wasn't like a bush hogged field.
It was overgrown and very few trails through there.
And that's important to remember because that plays into why
Calderfield would have been used by a murderer. It's swampy and wet terrain,
which makes it difficult to catch whoever is responsible. It also makes it difficult to find
remains or evidence. It doesn't take long for a piece of evidence to lay out there in that wet
overgrown where there's wildlife. You think if there's something out there that might have had
some DNA on it, that DNA is going to degrade so quickly. Oh, yeah.
Even if that thing doesn't just decompose while it's out there, whether it's a piece of clothing,
you know, a glove, maybe a rope, anything like that that would possibly carry some evidence that
would point a finger towards a suspect. It's not going to hold up to the elements if they don't
find it quickly. Water is one of the biggest killers of evidence like that.
Yeah. And when the bodies first started showing up out here,
you know, forensic science wasn't what it is today. Oh, yeah.
And a lot of the victims were considered to be potential runaways, or they had other,
you know, troubles at home or in school or things like that that a lot of teenagers have to go through.
And it was really difficult to get the police on board with a lot of these because they thought,
well, you know, it's a runaway. She'll be back. She'll be back. She's probably with her boyfriend.
She's that only. She got mad and left the house, whatever.
So the police were kind of hesitant to jump on it in that critical first,
you know, two to three days of an investigation. And something else to consider is the fact that
where it's located right off of Interstate 45, which, you know, that connects Houston and Galveston,
that highway being right there makes it extraordinarily easy for a killer to enter and exit without
being seen, you know, and especially in the 70s, where it was developed even less in that area.
It was a lot more likely that you could get in, do what you were doing and get out and nobody would
ever come by and see you there. Right. You know, wouldn't see a vehicle, you know, wouldn't call
in a suspicious, you know, van or truck or anything like that because they didn't see it.
Right. And like you said, during the 70s and 80s, the police response,
initially was, ah, they're a, they're a teen. They're, they're run, run away. And I'll talk more
about this toward the end, but I have to say now, since it's, it kind of pertains. I think a lot
of the officers doing this investigation were pretty inept. And because at the time,
it wasn't a common occurrence to have murders in League City. It was one of the safest places to
live. Right. A, they didn't have any clue of how to proceed and B, they didn't want to proceed
because they didn't want their city to be known as a murderous city. So you had them say, oh, well,
just wait, just wait, they'll come back and they did that for weeks to a couple of the families.
And then they decided to say, oh, well, you know, they were, they were kind of into drugs. So it's like,
okay, so they were into drugs. So they can be disappeared and murdered and you don't care.
Is that what you're saying? So I have kind of an issue with the police department and with their
reaction to these disappearances at the time, because it made them seem inept at their jobs.
And I don't think now we certainly have changed how we respond to a child disappearance,
or a teen disappearance. But back then, it was, it was this way for adults and children where now
it's like, well, adults, as an adult, you can disappear and you don't have to tell anybody.
So unless there's evidence of foul play, the cops are not going to initially investigate a
adult that went missing. But right now, if we call up and say, hey, my kid is missing,
they've been missing supposed to be here 10 minutes ago, you know, they'll jump on it if it
seems like they need to. Then, I don't know, it was a different time and the thinking was different.
They didn't assume that there would be a serial killer. But like Matt also alluded to their
forensics were not what they are now. And I don't think they handled it like they should,
even with their forensics, not being up to snuff. Right. Right. So one of the people associated
now with the Texas killing fields is a guy named Clyde Hedrick. And I want to look at him real
quick before Matt gets into some of the cases. So we kind of understand who they are
hitting this on. Now, Clyde Hedrick currently is a 68 year old guy who was
convicted criminal. Now, if you watch the documentary on the killing fields, you heard about Clyde,
but he had a pretty extensive rap sheet. Even before he got this pinned on him, he had a
extensive rap sheet. They included offenses against minors,
minors and strangers, former partners, and offenses against the state. Hedrick also had been charged
with enticing a child, aggravated kidnapping, sexual assault, criminal trespassing,
terroristic threat, attempted arson, theft, possession of marijuana, and driving while intoxicated.
So he sounds like a stand up gentleman, doesn't he? That's right. He is a productive member of
society. Absolutely. He's producing something. No chance. This guy is a piece.
Right. Let me tell you. One of the other things that Hedrick was convicted of is,
I don't remember how many years prior to these murders starting, but he went to jail for a year
because he was with a woman and they were, they got together at a bar and then went swimming
and she went missing. Well, they found her body later stuffed under a disposed couch
that was out there in a field. And when questioned because Clyde was the last person seen with her,
he said that she drowned in the lake and he was afraid that he was going to get in trouble
for murder even though he didn't do anything. So he hid her body to keep himself from getting in
trouble. Well, because of the lack of forensics and the lack of evidence that they could pin on him,
he got a year for tampering with a corpse. So he went to jail for a year for tampering with
a corpse and then got out prior to these murders starting in League City. So that kind of adds to why
people may think this guy probably had something to do with it. Yeah, I mean, you know, he's got,
he's definitely got the history. Yeah, yeah. Now, Hedrick was actually released from prison in 2021
after only serving eight years of a 20 year sentence for the death of Alan Beeson, which
I'm sure we'll get into. But he originally only served a year for the abuse of the corpse. Like I
said, until the FBI exhumed Beeson's body in 2012 and additional evidence led him to be charged and
found guilty of manslaughter in 2014. So that's the case I was mentioning earlier. So they actually
got him, but he only served eight years and it wasn't even in conjunction with any of
the Texas killing field murders, though they suspect him. So according to Texas
Equis search, this early release was because of the mandatory release law.
And according to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles website, quote mandatory supervision
is a legislatively mandated release of a prisoner to parole supervision when the combination of
actual calendar time and good conduct time, good conduct time, equal the sentence. Good conduct
time is credited to an offender for participating in work and self improvement programs. Now, upon
being released, Hedrick was given an ankle monitor for GPS tracking. So I keep track of him, but
let's briefly look at when he was younger. So around the time of the major activity at the Texas
killing fields, when he was younger, he actually relocated from Florida to Texas. So he's originally
a Florida native and he moved to Texas as a young man due to the rise of the fast paced cities like
Houston. So he moved there for work. He subsequently attained a stable job as a roofer in the construction
industry. He used to spend a lot of his leisure time hanging around local bars and nightclubs,
and he would enter the dancing competitions at these bars and win a lot of them.
So a lot of the conjecture and theory is that this is how he met the women that a lot of the women that
they say he murdered. Now he's not the only suspect which we'll get into, but as far as if it were him,
they're assuming this is how he would meet a lot of these women in their 20s.
Now the Netflix series on the killing fields mentions that Hedrick was quote,
a good looking man back in the day and quote, considered himself a ladies man.
So I mean, now granted, it hadn't been pinned on Hedrick, but Hedrick is who the documentary
kind of leans towards. Yeah. And who a lot of people associated with the women who were killed
lean toward. Yeah. And Adam and I were talking about this before we started recording
because of the timeframe, the 30 year span here, right?
And the number of victims, you know, this is not, doesn't look like the work of a single serial killer.
No, it does not. Not even like a pair of serial killers working together. This is different,
different people with different, I don't even know what you say, but not background,
no, just no, different issues that, you know, at different times where, you know,
this, whatever it was triggered them to do this. And so we're gonna, we're gonna look at another one
and look at some of these cases, but understand there are three distinct time periods when these
killings occurred. Between 1971 and 1977, there were 11 bodies found.
In the 80s, there were a new series of murders that happened along a different stretch of I-45
in the league city. And then in 1991, there was another woman's remains that were found
in the same area of the killing fields. Of course, when Adam was going through the list,
there's a victim from 2001. So theoretically, we could be looking at four different,
different eras of these murders. Yeah, which is crazy to think of first of all,
because you think of all the other places that there have been serial killers and you don't see
either overlapping or consecutive serial killers that get rid of bodies there.
And I told you this and I have to bring it up. I told you I was gonna try to find a way to bring
this up. We were watching the documentary and Michael came downstairs and he goes,
what are you watching? And so I told him and he goes, what are the killing fields? So I told him.
And I said, you know, to me and Matt as well, it seems like there's multiple serial killers,
not just one guy doing all this through the years. And he goes, now, would that be weird
if they met each other there? One was dumping a body and another one showed up to dump a body
and they're like, oh, hey, what are you doing? Well, what are you doing? And I started laughing.
I'm like, from the brain of my 11 year old, that's fantastic. I mean, it is. It's, it's, you know,
it's humorous to think about that situation when you're, you know, looking at something that's
this horrific. You got to have some find some humor in it. Right. I mean, you know, if you like
I said, reading this stuff was almost turn your stomach. But let's start with, with one of the
victims that Adam mentioned earlier. And that's 14 year old Brenda Jones, whose murder is,
is widely thought to be the one that kicked off this killing spree. Right.
Now, she disappeared while walking to visit her aunt in Galveston on July 1st, 1971.
And her body was recovered the next day on July 2nd. Four months later,
the bodies of 15 year olds, Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson were discovered in Turner's
Bayou on November 17th. Okay. So now we've got, we've got three murders three. See that three.
One is my hand is working anymore. One, two, three, three. I see it.
Three murders in a span of four months. Right. Okay, which that's a lot. Period. Okay. That's a
lot in a short amount of time. And, and Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson were the quote,
unquote surfer girls that I mentioned earlier. That was how they were described.
But both girls were last seen on November 15th, two days prior, accepting a ride from a man in a
white van near an ice cream shop. Now, the bodies of the girls were found together,
and they were bound and only partially clothed. Now, although their case was never solved,
investigators looked into one particular suspect years after the murders. So in, in 1993,
Edward Harold Bell was convicted of the 1978 killing of one Larry Dickens, who was an ex-marine
from Pasadena, California. Now, the story with this particular crime was that Dickens had
confronted Bell, who was a serial sex offender regarding Bell having exposed himself to a group
of neighborhood girls. Now, Dickens mother witnessed this happening from her garage, where Dickens had
fled to after being shot. So Dickens sees what's going on. He goes over to
her Edward Bell's truck, confronts him about this, and then Bell surprises him by pulling a gun and
shooting him. So Dickens runs, he's out on the road in front or near his home, and he runs
to the garage where his mother has just witnessed this entire scene, and he collapses in the garage.
Now, as his mother is trying to calm him down, Bell walks into the garage with a rifle that he had
brought from his truck and shot Larry in the forehead. So, you know, Bell, not only did he shoot
this guy after doing something as terrible as exposing himself to young girls,
he comes up and basically executes this guy in front of his mother.
Yeah, that's horrible. Now, Bell was arrested shortly after this, okay, but after being released
on bond, he ran and became a fugitive for the next 14 years. Wow.
So I'm like, how do you even release this guy on bond? You had somebody standing right there,
so I do it. No joke. That should be one of those cases where a bond is not even offered. This guy
is obviously a threat. He's obviously dangerous. And why you didn't think he was a flight risk?
And so you're like, oh, we'll release him on bond. He'll come back. No. The dude is,
he's dead to rights. No pun intended on what he did. And you think he's just going to show back up
for some court date? That's not how criminals work, man. Right. So for 14 years, Bell is a fugitive
from the law. Now, Bell was the subject of a segment on a 1992 episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
And after the episode aired, several people came forward with information that eventually
led to his arrest in Panama City, Panama. Oh, wow. And then he was subsequently extradited to the
US where he was tried and found guilty of the murder of Larry Dickens and sentenced to 70 years
in prison. Okay. I haven't haven't haven't really talked about the killing field yet,
but it's coming in 1998. Okay. So Bell's been in prison for about five years.
He wrote several letters to prosecutors in both Galveston and Harris counties,
claiming that he had killed 17 age girls in their jurisdictions between 1971 and 1977.
Now, despite these gruesome claims, the letters were actually kept secret until 2011.
When they were they were finally revealed by retired Galveston homicide detective Fred Page,
who revealed them to the public in an attempt to uncover any potential leads that could verify
Bell's accounts. So, so Edward Bell essentially confesses to seven murders of young women
in Galveston and Harris counties between the years of 71 and 77.
Why do you keep it secret though? Why do you keep the letter secret?
You know, they I don't know. I really I really don't know other than
they they wanted to prevent any kind of copycat or or any anybody from the public coming forward
with information that was not going to be helpful or they might leave them in another direction.
But I think maybe you do that for the first month. Yeah. Okay. And if in that first month,
you haven't produced any evidence that's going to tie him to these murders, then
you open it wide up. Hey, tell us we think we have a viable suspect for at least some of these
murders. If you know anything, yeah, come forward and tell us when you don't have to release all
the letters, release some of them, get the interest started. But that goes back to the ineptitude
that I was talking about. Right. The some of the decisions that this police force made
is just mind boggling. And I mean, in the in the documentary, one of the parents say, well,
if you want to commit a crime, come to League City because these cops here won't catch you.
Yeah. And I mean, I know he was mad, but it's kind of true and actually was saying the same thing.
She's like this, this police force is just it's crazy. I know. And I tried to wrap my head around
the keep in the thing. Okay. Even if you don't release the letters to the public,
at least tell the public that you have them. Yeah. Give them some information to go on. You
never know what you're going to come up with. And I would really, I would really hate to think
that there was any kind of influence to keep these letters back in order to preserve
the image of the town. Yeah. But and I guess that's a possibility. But I sure would hate that,
you know, if you've got multiple murders in this area, that you would be more concerned about
how the town looked now, understand, I'm just I'm just talking. I'm not saying that anybody
affiliated with League City or League City Police Department did this. And she's,
we already know that that was a that was on their mind. Right. So yeah, you don't want to believe
that something like that happened. But for whatever reason, they kept them private.
Well, I've got another you don't want to believe it happened. But I'll wait till we get closer to
the end. Just remind me because it's a theory that Ashley and I both spurred out at about the
same time. Oh gosh. Okay. Okay. So a Houston Chronicle reporter spoke with Bell in July
in September of that year. And he claimed to the reporter that he actually committed 11 murders.
And he referred to them as the quote 11 that went to heaven.
Oh, so Bell claimed that his victims were from Houston, Galveston, Webster and Dickinson.
Now five of the murders occurred in 1971. And six more occurred from 74 to 77. Six of them were
murdered in pairs. Now he names Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson, the two 15 year old Galveston
surfer girls who vanished after hitchhiking as two of the victims from 1971. Now,
he allegedly shot them and then dumped their remains close to a deserted bridge. His confession
matched details of the crime scene. Additionally, Bell had also owned a white van,
had made a purchase at the local surf shop where the girls frequented and had a trailer in the
bayou near where Ackerman and Johnson were found. So, I mean, you know, I think if he if he has
details about the crime scene that weren't released to the public, then there you go right there.
And when you add all this other stuff that I guess by itself could be viewed as circumstantial.
I mean, how many people had white vans? Yeah, probably a lot. There's certainly a lot of
circumstantial. But like you said, if he's got stuff that was not released to the public,
how else is he going to get that information? If he's not an officer that worked it, if he's not
wasn't there with the killer, he's got to be the killer.
And well, I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, but you said, okay, so he confesses, he could obviously
have gotten their names from the news would know probably roughly where they were, but he wouldn't
know any details necessarily. But then you add on top of that, oh, well, they were last seen
getting in a white van with a male. He had a white van. He made a purchase. They were able to
link a purchase at the surf shop that the girls went to often. So now you've got him in the area.
Okay. And he had a trailer near the area where the bodies were found. So now you've got a link to
the area where the girls were murdered. And you've got a link to the area where the girls were found.
So I mean, he looks good for these two. And plus he's saying, hey, I did it.
Right. Now another victim from 1971 was 13 year old Collette Wilson, who Adam mentioned earlier as
well. Now, Collette vanished after leaving a band camp. She disappeared on County Road 99 and
Highway 6 after she was dropped off by her band director. Her body was found five months later
near the Attics Reservoir. Now, Bell referred to another victim as Pitchford,
who was later revealed to be Kimberly Ray Pitchford age 16. And Adam mentioned her as well.
She was last seen at Adobe High School where she was there for a driving test.
Her body was found two days later in a ditch in Angleton, Texas. And she had died by strangulation.
So Bell claimed that he was unaware of the other victims names. However, two victims
are believed to be Rhonda Johnson and Sharon Shaw, who had vanished from Galveston on August 4th,
1971, just a few months before Debbie and Maria. And their bodies were found together just like Debbie
and Maria. But another man had been convicted for their murder, Michael Lloyd Self. But now,
many of the investigators believe that Self was innocent. That he was kind of low-hanging fruit.
And he looked good for this. Which we've seen that in other cases.
Obviously, not cases that we've covered because this is the first technical case. But
there's been a lot of low-hanging fruit that some of these small, small town police forces
snatch up because they want to quickly solve it. And they don't have the ability to do the
forensics or the legwork. And they're like, well, this guy looks good. Let's just go ahead and
pin it on him. Yeah. And I cannot believe that I didn't put this in the book. But I believe that
that Self died in prison. So anyway, I believe that's accurate.
If he was innocent and died in prison, that's just that's awful.
Yeah, you know, I yes, you're exactly right. But yeah, in 2000, Michael Lloyd Self died in prison
without ever receiving a new trial. He was age 52. But it says here that the investigators
involved in the case believe that his confession was coerced and that he was wrongly convicted.
Especially since Edward Bell had apparently confessed to Rhonda and Sharon's murders.
Now, when did Self get put in jail? Because what just hit me was if Bell wrote these confession
letters prior to self being put in jail, no, he didn't. Okay, good. He did not.
Because the letters didn't come out until 1988. Okay. So a self was convicted in 1973.
Okay. So yeah, that particular case that led to self's conviction didn't drag out. It wasn't a
really long period of time that had passed. But Rhonda and Sharon's murders occurred during that
timeframe. From 1971 to 77, which puts them right in the range for Bell to have been the actual killer.
Okay, so all four of these victims disappeared near Bell's apartment.
And then two more victims that Adam mentioned earlier, 12 year old Brooks Bracewell and 14 year
old Georgia Greer, who were last seen in 1974 and not discovered until 1976, are thought to be the
other two victims that he did not name. Right. Now, Bell also owned a meadow, not far from the shop,
where they had been last seen where Brooks and Georgia had been seen. So there's all this evidence
that beyond his confession, that keeps connecting Bell to the individuals, the victims, to the
areas where they were either murdered, abducted, or where the bodies were left. Right, right. I mean,
you know, it just it really looks like, you know, Bell's the guy. But the identity of the other
three victims are unknown. But one of those three is believed to have been Brenda Jones,
where we where we started. Okay. Now, Gloria Gonzalez, whose bones were discovered near
Collette Wilson's in October of 71, is thought to be what is thought to be another one. And Susie
Bowers, who disappeared from Galveston in 1977, is is also thought to be the third unnamed victim.
Now, Bell's reasoning, this is this is what's interesting. Bell asserted that a brain
washing program had pushed him to kill rape and expose himself to young girls.
He stated that it began with his father and spread to his three ex wives, scout masters,
and one of his cousins. After making his confession, he informed a reporter for the Houston Chronicle
that he would only offer evidence to support his accusations if he was granted immunity from
prosecution. What? So he's already in prison at this point, serving a 70 year sentence that,
you know, at his age was a life sentence. Yeah.
He doesn't want to be prosecuted for these 11 murders. And be put to death. And so he's he's offering
evidence to, you know, potentially give these families some closure as long as he won't be
prosecuted for their murders. Right. Okay. Remember that, because that's, that's going to come up
here in just a minute. Now, despite the fact that a lot of people thought he was just,
you know, a cooke, he was just seeking some publicity. Others were certain that Bell had,
he was the guy. He was the, you know, it's like we, we, we finally caught up to this guy. You know,
we got him convicted of a, of a different murder. And now that he realizes he's never going to see
the light of day again, he's going to confess to all these, all these other murders that we've been
trying to solve for all these years. Okay. After learning of his admissions,
some detectives actually went back and looked at their evidence in those cases.
And prosecutors in Galveston reopened Debbie and Maria's cases after learning new information
through their investigation. And Bell was identified as the quote unquote primary suspect in that.
However, in neither theirs nor any of the other cases were any charges ever brought against Edward
Bell. There was no tangible proof linking him to the other crimes. Bell later asserted that he had
made up these confessions in order to receive the death penalty when he was interviewed for the
documentary, the 11 in 2017. The, the thing that confuses me about that is he states that,
he says, well, I just made these up because I wanted the death penalty when he's,
you know, being interviewed, he thought that was it. But then we just heard him say, I don't want
to be prosecuted for these 11. Bingo. That makes zero sense to me. And that tells me right there,
that that's another feather in the cap of this dude did it.
Yeah. Why, why in the world? If that was really his motivation, you're right. Why ask for immunity?
Right. Right.
And if his, if his job was really, if what he was doing was really to, to be executed,
that's what he wanted. Why not just come forward with all of that information?
I mean, just lay it all out, give as much details as you can. Look, I confess you don't even have
to try me. Just I plead guilty, sin, it's me. Yeah. Okay. And they, they would have had no problem.
No, sentencing this guy to death and Texas would have put him down.
And they, they would have wiped the slate clean on these 11 people given the family closure.
That's right. Close the case, but it feels like maybe his conscience was getting to him.
So he wrote these letters, but then when it came down to it, he's like, crap, I know I'm in jail,
but they could put me to death for these. So he's like, I'll give you the rest of this if you
don't prosecute me for him. And then he doubles down on that a little bit later, because,
no, I just made it up. I was, I was trying to have him kill me. And you know, it sounds like lie
after lie to cover the fact that he actually did it. But again, this is just conjecture,
because we don't know for sure. We're not. Yeah. So the prosecutors are the, the,
evidence gatherers here. Yeah, I'm far from a prosecutor. I can say that, but
because I'm more or less the guy that goes, oh, you did it. You know, we got him. And, but I do
understand that these investigators had to try to find some evidence that would directly link him
that a lot of it was circumstantial outside of his confession. But, you know, my, my thought
process is is you put all that circumstantial evidence together. He's not just, he's not just
making this up. There's, there's already enough evidence that points you to bell. Okay. You,
you make him a primary suspect because man, it's, this dude just, there's too many connections
with all these murders. There's too many, too many, too many things like the van, the apartment,
you know, he owned the field and the trailer and the bayou and all that. There's, there's way too
much to go. What, you just decided you were going to make this up and then we found all this,
all this evidence that linked you to these areas. And if he made it up, how did he know
some of the stuff that wasn't released to the public? Exactly. Exactly. Most
police departments nowadays, they, they still do the thing of holding back some evidence so that
they can verify whether you're making crap up or you're telling the truth. Like, yeah, they may not
say what the murder weapon was or they may not say where they were found or certain things that
maybe they were tied up with. So if the somebody comes in to admit to it and they mention all these
things, they're like, oh, there's no way you could know this unless you did it and they'd
arrest them and prosecute them right there. But it sounds like this police force dropped the ball
a little bit on that. Yeah. Oh, he knows all this stuff that we didn't release, but I don't know.
Yeah. Yeah. But Bell died in prison in 2019 at the age of 79 from heart failure.
So he did he did spend the rest of his life in prison, even though it wasn't for the murder of
these 11 girls. So we can take a little bit of solace in that that, you know, he did, he did lose
his freedom and he died behind bars. But it still doesn't really give the families much closure
because there was they never actually said, yeah, he's guilty. You know, they never even charged
him with any of them. But, you know, based on what I've what I read, I think I go along with these
investigators that are now convinced that Bell was definitely the person responsible for the
murders between 1971 and 1977. But that still leaves quite a few. Yeah, it does.
19 other murders that are associated with the killing fields that they have yet to solve.
Right. And so that that brings me to a couple of questions that I'm going to see what your
thoughts are on it before we wrap this up. Now we've we've given you a brief synopsis of
the the victims, the area, and a couple suspects. But here here the main question, actually,
let me do my my small question before I do my main question. A small question is what do you think
about the possibility of an officer being involved? Because we were looking at it.
Ashley and I were looking at this and in the first set of killings and bodies found,
the police in what we found and what the documentary found didn't do a real good job of evidence
collection or looking into different aspects of it and also not even looking for the girls when
they were first reported missing. So there's been other cases where officers have been involved in
murder, a murder or multiple murders. And they finally got caught. But do you think it's a
possibility on some of those that there was an officer involved? And he was the one that was
steering the investigation away from certain things? Or do you think it just
they just didn't know what the heck they were doing? And it just kind of looks fishy.
Well, I think anything in that respect is possible.
Yeah, whether it was some whether it was an officer that was directly involved with the
killings or was just maybe a compatriot of bells who was helping him stay free,
interfering. But it could have been something as simple as, look, we're not really good at this
anyway. This is going to be easy. You lose a couple of evidence bags that probably aren't
all that beneficial anyway. We put out something, an anonymous tip that says,
hey, you need to search over here or take a look at this guy. And then all of a sudden you've got
the investigation going in a completely different direction. Because, as we said, this place was
a safe place to live. And these officers didn't have a whole lot of experience
in investigating murders, much less a potential serial killer.
So that, I think it's possible. I just don't know how probable that is.
Given that the police force had a lot working against them to begin with.
Right. Yeah. And I kind of agree with that. I just had to throw that out there because
I think it was just an experience. And because they were so inexperienced,
they didn't handle it right. And then B, they were trying to cover up for their inexperience,
which made it seem even more of an inept police force. Right. Made the people, the victims' families
a lot more upset. But my main thought here, and this is obviously putting a graveyard tail spin
on true crime. Do you think that there is something associated with this plot of land
with that field or with League City, Texas that would draw
killers to use it as a dump site outside of the fact that it's just a field that was overgrown
and easy to hide people in. But there was so many in such a small area over the years.
Do you think that there could be anything, hare normally related, drawing these people
to dump there or kidnap and murder in that area? Yeah. It's an interesting thought.
And I can't say that I didn't have that thought as well. What is the history of this
area? And I think we would have to go back further than we have. I tried, man.
Right. We would have to go back further than what we have documentation to support.
As far as looking at Native American tribes that may have been in that area.
Any kind of history from the back when Texas was a part of Mexico,
which also makes it difficult. Because you can't guarantee that there's any written history
about that area when it was a part of Mexico. I spent a whole day just on that slant.
If I'm being honest, trying to find that information. But it definitely could be. Especially when you
look at, this was just not, and I fully believe this, this was not the dump site for a single
killer, no matter who it was. No. The timeframe doesn't fit. And they found evidence that Bell,
when he was on the run, he was gone. He was gone. I mean,
hell, he left the country. So he made his way and they actually found where he had
worked in different places around the country and when he had moved to Panama.
He had met a lady. He wasn't that guy that was just going to like,
just do, do, do, do, do. No, I mean, he got away. He got away from this stuff. Just like he got away
from the Larry Dickens case. He put some distance between himself and what he had done.
So when you start looking at the murders that occurred in the 80s, you think, well, it's not him.
It's somebody else. Is it a copycat? Is it somebody that
invests is looking into these? Before the days of true crime podcasts and TV shows and documentaries,
did somebody go back and look at old newspaper articles and police reports about those murders
from 71 to 77 and something triggers them. And next thing you know, you're getting a whole new
wave of these crimes right around the killing fields. And that could very well be it because
they saw that's very possible. Yeah. They saw how easy it was in that area to get away with
dumping a body there. And so maybe these people were just spurred on as copycats or they had these
tendencies, but were worried about getting caught. And then when they realized that this area
doesn't do a good job of catching anybody for these crimes, this is where I'm going to go. So
it takes a long time sometimes to find these bodies. I mean, some of them were found two days later.
Then some a lot of them were months, even the years, before they found them. And
you know, it would just be, like you said, somebody's looking at that and going,
if I ever wanted to kill somebody, that's where I'm going to dump the body is out here. Because
you know, they may not ever find it. That's honestly where I where I land too. I toyed with the idea
of something paranormal drawing it there. But like I said, was unable to find enough historical
information about that land to tie anything to it. And I just ended up landing on this seems like
the place that you would just dump and commit these crimes because you thought you were going
to get away with it. And it kind of seems like everybody has to this day.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, even, even theoretically, Bell got away with it.
Exactly. Yep. Because he was never even charged with any of those murders.
But you know, if you like, if you like this, if you like Adam and I kind of stepping out every
once in a while and and doing some things on, you know, true crime or something else like that,
let us know, give us some feedback. And I want to let everybody know we touched on these murders
in the 80s. Adam and I are actually going to dig into these murders that occurred in the 80s
on a Patreon. So we are going to continue this. So if you're one of our patrons,
you have that to look forward to as well. If you enjoyed this, we're going to give you a little
bit more. If you're not, if you're not a patron of the show. Now, if you like this,
now might be a good time to jump in there and catch some of this because we're going to go on and
talk about the murders that occurred in the 80s as well. And if you do like this, like Matt said,
we can we can do some more because there are more than are in our hip pockets that are maybe more
paranormal slanted true crime that we can we can do as well. But considering we've done
mysteries before, and this is still pretty much a mystery, we think it fit in kind of well with our
MO here. Yeah, I do. And it was a it was a good change of pace. I tell you, you know,
there's a there's a ton of information out there. I mean, we we research places where you really got
a dig. So it was it was a different experience to to research something where all the information
is just like right there. It's like here, take it, take it. It did seem a little easier because we
weren't having to go into as many historical documents and and look around the corner with
a mirror to find the information where this was just like, oh, hey, there's books, there's
documentaries, there's websites, there's everything on it. Right, right. So if you liked it, if you
hated it, whatever, let us know. And the best place to do that is in our Facebook group. It is
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rate and review us on iTunes. It brings us up the charts and it just brings more people into the
graveyard. So Adam, this was, this was fun doing the research. And I know it's not a fun topic,
but, but I enjoyed doing this. So I hope you guys enjoyed it too. Until next time, we'll save you a
seat in the graveyard. See you soon.
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