By Chris Bartholomew
Since 1971 at least thirty two young women and girls have been abducted and slain along Interstate 45 from Houston, Texas, to Galveston. There is more than one serial killer roaming the highway.
A few of the I-45 killers have been caught. There have been a lot of suspects.
Henry Lee Lucas might have been the original I-45 serial killer in the 1970's. He admitted to over 1000 murders, it is unknown how many of these are true and how many are only his imagination. It is a fact that Lucas roamed the Gulf Coast when some of the early I-45 murders took place.
Gabriel Soto is the main suspect in the disappearance and most likely the killer of Rene Richerson in 1988. He died in 2002 without being charged, yet was at one time charged with retaliation against a potential witness in her murder case.
Mark Stallings confessed in 2001 to the Killing Fields murders outside of League City but he would have been only 15 or 16 years old when the first Killing Fields victims came up missing. Since all of the Killing Fields victims were killed by the same unknown killer, his confession may have only been a way to improve his prison reputation with other inmates. Stallings was never charged in any of the I-45 killings nor the Killing Fields murders despite any of his confessions.
Robert Abel was a retired NASA engineer who died in early 2005. He operated the Star Dust Trail Rides, the address of which was 3001 Calder in League City, right where the notorious Killing Fields victims were discovered. He is still considered a prime suspect. Mark Stallings was his employee.
Anthony Shore was convicted in October of 2004 in the murders of four young women and girls in Houston, three of which had been previously considered I-45 victims. Shore was sentenced to die for killing Laurie Tremblay, 16, Maria Del Carmen Estrada, 21, Diane Rebollar, 9, and Dana Sanchez, 16. The four killings spanned from 1986 through 1995. Shore is reportedly a suspect in other I-45 slayings but apparently has not been linked.
Jonathan David Drew was convicted of killing Houston waitress Tina Flood, 23, in December of 1988. Drew was pulled over by a police officer who found Flood beaten and barely alive in Drew's front passenger seat. She died soon afterwards. Drew is suspected of several sexual assaults and Drew could be responsible for the slaying of Jessica Lee Cain. A search of Drew's former home in League City, where his parents lived, produced a vial containing several human teeth.
William Ray Mathews led investigators to the body of Wanda May Pitts, an 18-year-old girl who was abducted from the lobby of a motel. A plea bargain prevents authorities from charging him in Pitts' murder but has him serving time for a similar crime, the attempted abduction of a Willis office clerk who was forced to leap from Mathews' moving truck to save herself.
William Reece was arrested after a botched abduction in 1997 and is a suspect in the murder of Laura Smither. He was previously convicted of rape in Oklahoma. Reece worked at a construction site near the Smither home and was reportedly getting off work about the same time Laura Smither disappeared while jogging.
Walter Alexander Sorto, Edgardo Rafael Cubas, and Eduardo Navarro were all arrested in February of 2003 for the rapes and shooting deaths of Roxana Capulin, 24, Teresa Rangel, 38, and 15-year-old Esmerelda Alvarado on the east side of Houston. Sorto has since been convicted in the slayings of Capulin and Rangel, who were abducted from the restaurant where they worked on June 1, 2002. Thirteen-year-old Laura Ayala, missing since March 10, 2002, and previously listed as an I-45 victim, has been linked to Sorto, Cubas, and Navarro after a drop of blood found in Cubas' father's SUV was linked to Ayala by DNA testing. They have not been charged in the case.
In 1971, twenty miles south of Houston in Galveston County off of I-45, there is a dumping ground known as the Killing Field. It is where the bodies of four sexually assaulted females were discovered and all four cases remain unsolved. The modus operandi of these four particular slayings is the work of one man.
All four victims were laying nude on the ground, face up and under trees with their arms crossed. They were placed within a hundred yard radius of each other. The killer made a footpath to view his trophies. This is the personal graveyard of a nefarious serial killer. Clearly this man had to have had prior knowledge of this secluded area to plan out his carnage and elude the authorities. There are locked metal ranch gates across one part of Calder Drive and adjacent Ervin Street blocking automobile access.
There were four victims, two unknown, between 1983 and 1991.
Twenty-three year old Heidi Villarreal Fye was a cocktail waitress, last seen on October 10th 1983. Her remains were found after a dog carried her skull to a nearby house on April 4th 1984. She had vanished six months earlier after walking from the home of her parents to use the phone at a nearby convenience store. The medical examiner noted Fye had broken ribs and had been beaten with a club. She may have died from blunt force trauma to her head.
Sixteen year old Laura Lynn Miller went missing on September 1st, 1984. The home phone wasn't working, so she had been talking to her boyfriend on a payphone, at the same convenience store where Fye was last seen. The day Jane Doe's body was found the police stumbled upon Miller's remains. She was shot in the head. She was twenty yards from Jane Doe.
February 2nd 1986 four boys riding dirt bikes smelled a foul odor. They located the skeletal remains of a still unidentified female and called the police. Dubbed Jane Doe, she had died six weeks to six months before being found, she had been shot in the back. She had been shot to death by a 22 caliber weapon. Part of a bullet was found with the cadaver at the medical examiner's office. The autopsy revealed healed fractures of the ribs. She is about 25 years old, between 5 feet 5 inches to 5 feet 8 inches tall. Weighing about 140 to 160 pounds, with light reddish brown shoulder length hair and had a distinct gap between her upper front teeth. She was about fifty yards from where Fye had been found. While investigating the scene the police found another body the same day.
For five years no bodies were found until September 8th 1991. Dubbed Janet Doe, this victim still has not been identified. She died a month to four months before her decomposing remains were found. She was about 31 years old, had a small frame and stood between 5 feet to 5 feet 3 inches tall. Weighed about 100 to 130 pounds, had long, fine, light brown hair. She had low quality upper dentures and poorly healed fractures in two ribs. She appeared to have been beaten with a club and possibly strangled by a drapery cord found close by. Her cause of death was most likely the beating. She was a hundred yards from where the other victims were located.
The Killing Field cases differ somewhat being that both Fye and Janet Doe had been beaten to death, while Miller and Jane Doe, who were found the same day, were shot to death. Both Fye and Miller disappeared from the same convenience store at Hobbs and W Main in League City, Texas. The same duplication of arrangement of the cadavers, lying on their backs nude with their arms crossed over their chest. They had been dumped within a few hundred yards of each other in the abandoned oil field in the 3000 block of Calder Drive, League City, Texas, 20 miles south of Houston in Galveston County off of I-45.
On December 22, 2005 Houston's local news reported that a letter had been mailed to Laura Lynn Miller's father Tim by someone claiming to be the man who killed his daughter and others. It also boasted about the I-45 deaths. The letter was made by cutting letters out of a newspaper. Miller was upset about the letter so he went out to the place where his daughter was found and saw that a cross that he had made and left there was torn apart, and some pornographic CDs had been left there.
The writer of the letter was never found.
It might be helpful to look at where the victims were abducted.
Victims abducted at or near home: Gloria Gonzales 1971, Alison Craven 1971, Sandra Ramber 1983, Laurie Lee Tremblay 1986, Michelle Doherty Thomas 1985, Maria Del Carmen Estrada 1992, Laura Kate Smither 1997.
Victims abducted at bus stops or schools: Colette Willson 1971, Kimberly Pitchford 1973, Trellis Sykes 1994, Maria Isabel Solis 2003.
Victims abducted at or near night or teen clubs: Erica Ann Garcia 1987, Lynette Bibbs 1996, Tamara Fisher 1996.
Victims abducted at or by shopping center or mall: Debbie Ackerman 1971, Maria Johnson 1971, teen girl who survived 1996, Amber Hagerman 1996.
Victims abducted while biking or walking or driving along or near I-45: Brenda Jones 1971, Shelley Kathleen Sikes 1986, Sandra Sapaugh who survived 1997, Jessica Lee Cain 1997, Tot Tran Harriman 2001, Sara Trusty 2002, teen girl who survived 2004, Natasha Nicole Solidum 2006.
Victims abducted at convenience stores or using pay phones: Brooks Bracewell 1974, Georgia Geer 1974, Heidi Villarreal Fye 1984, Laura Lynn Miller 1986, Diana Rebollar 1994, Dana Sanchez 1995, Krystal Jean Baker 1996, Laura Ayala 2002.
Victims abducted by automobile, dead or alive, from the location last seen: Tamara Ellen McCurry 1982, Suzanne Rene Richerson 1988, Tina Flood 1998, Wanda May Pitts 1999, Tracy Vickery who survived 1999.
Victims dumped in fields or parks: Alison Craven 1971, Heidi Villarreal Fye 1984, headless woman 1986, Dana Sanchez 1995, Jane Doe 1986, Laura Lynn Miller 1986, Janet Doe 1991, Trellis Sykes 1994.
Victims dumped along I-45 or on another road or highway near I-45: Unknown Doe 1980, Lynette Bibbs 1996, Tamara Fisher 1996, Krystal Jean Baker 1996.
Victims dumped in or by bodies of water: Colette Wilson 1971, Gloria Gonzales 1971, Brenda Jones 1971, Debbie Ackerman 1971, Maria Johnson 1971, Kimberly Pitchford 1973, Brooks Bracewell 1974, Georgia Geer 1974, Amber Hagerman 1996, Laura Kate Smither 1997, Sara Trusty 2002, Natasha Nicole Solidum 2006.
Victims dumped by or in buildings: Laurie Lee Tremblay 1986, Erica Ann Garcia 1987, Maria Del Carmen Estrada 1992, Diana Rebollar 1994.
Victims dumped by undisclosed or other methods: another Jane Doe 1989, Wanda May Pitts 1999, Maria Isabel Solis 2003.
Victims who disappeared: Tamara Ellen McCurry 1982, Sandra Ramber 1983, Michelle Doherty Thomas 1985, Suzanne Rene Richerson 1988, Jessica Lee Cain 1997, Tot Tran Harriman 2001, Laura Ayala 2002.
Victims shot to death: Colette Wilson 1971, Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson 1971, Jane Doe and Laura Miller of the Killing Fields 1984, another Jane Doe in East Houston 1989, Lynette Bibbs and Tamara Fisher 1996, Natasha Nicole Solidum 2006.
Victims strangled to death: Kimberly Pitchford 1973, Unknown Doe 1980, Laurie Lee Tremblay 1986, Erica Ann Garcia 1987, Maria Del Carmen Estrada 1992, Diana Rebollar 1994, Dana Sanchez 1995, Krystal Jean Baker 1996, Wanda May Pitts 1999.
Victims dismembered: Alison Craven 1971, unknown headless woman 1986, Shelley Kathleen Sikes 1986, Laura Kate Smither 1997.
Victims beaten to death or by blunt force trauma to the head: Brenda Jones 1971, Gloria Gonzales 1971, Brooks Bracewell and Georgia Geer 1974, Heidi Villarreal Fye 1984, Janet Doe 1991, Tina Flood 1998.
Victims killed by undisclosed or other methods: Trellis Sykes 1994, Amber Hagerman 1996, Sara Trusty 2002, Maria Isabel Solis 2003.
April 26, 2006 in Santa Fe, Texas, the partial skull of an adolescent was found in a Galveston County field. The medical examiner confirmed the skull belonged to an adolescent and it had probably been in the field for five to 10 years. It could belong to one of the missing I-45 victims.
This is an interesting case. Think about it. Have you stopped at a convenience store to ask for directions, get gas, and perhaps even use the phone? Have you visited out of state parks and attractions? Gone for a bike ride, or a long walk near home? There is a lot of talk around the internet that these killings are being investigated by the FBI, but there is one person who wrote to the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act wanting information on the investigation. They were told that there are no records in the computers, and in fact no records responsive to his request were located by a search of the automated indices. Everyone should be careful out there, no one is looking for these serial murderers, they are still out there.
Editor's note: this article was written in 2008. Two of the four Killing Fields cases have since been resolved. In 2019 the woman known here as Jane Doe was identified through genetic genealogy as Audrey Lee Cook, a mechanic who disappeared in 1985, and Janet Doe as Donna Prudhomme, who had moved to the area in the early 1980s. William Reece, named above as a suspect, confessed in 2016 and led investigators to remains; he was convicted of the murder of Laura Smither in 2021 and sentenced to life, and has been charged over Killing Fields deaths including that of Laura Lynn Miller. Anthony Shore was executed in Texas on January 18, 2018. Heidi Villarreal Fye's killing remains unsolved.