A Texas father who has spent the last three decades working on his own daughter’s murder case believes he has solved it, and told CrimeOnline that he thinks the man responsible is also guilty in the deaths of several other women.
Tim Miller has not only dedicated his life to solving his daughter’s murder, but he is also the founder of Equusearch, whose mission is “to provide Volunteer Horse Mounted Search and Recovery for Lost and Missing persons,” according to the non-profit recovery team’s website. The organization has been connected to the recovery of 238 bodies and has assisted in finding more than 400 missing people across the globe using such tools as drones and airplanes to search, the website states.
Miller’s daughter, Laura Miller, was last seen alive on September 10, 1984, when she left her home in League City, Texas, to use a payphone to call her boyfriend along Interstate 45 between Houston and Galveston. Because the Millers had only recently moved into the neighborhood, they did not yet have a regular landline phone set up. Laura never returned home, and to this day nobody has been charged in her abduction and subsequent murder.
And Miller wants justice for his daughter, he told CrimeOnline. Not only that, but he wholeheartedly believes that Clyde Hedrick is responsible. Hedrick lived just two doors down from the Millers’ home at the time of Laura’s murder.
Only six months after Laura disappeared, a human skull belonging to Heidi Fye was found on Calder Road along I-45 in League City, by a dog digging in an oil field, as CrimeOnline previously reported. Fye was last seen in 1983 using the same payphone Laura had used.
Although Miller adamantly urged authorities to “connect the dots” between Fye’s and his daughter’s cases, he said that he was never taken seriously.
Fast forward to 1986, and yet another woman’s body was found in the area that is now dubbed the “Highway of Hell.” Her remains have yet to be identified, and were discovered just a few hundred feet from Fye’s remains. While further searching the field, authorities finally found Laura’s remains, which were just 60 feet from Jane Doe’s.
At about the same time Miller became convinced that there was a connection between the three victims, Hedrick found himself in legal trouble after being convicted of abusing a corpse. Just a year after Laura’s murder, Hedrick reportedly claimed to police that after swimming with a woman named Ellen Beason, the woman suddenly drowned and he panicked after realizing she was dead — and subsequently hid her body. However, the woman’s body was later exhumed and it was discovered that her cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Hedrick was arrested in April 2013 for Beason’s murder. After pleading not guilty, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Over 30 women have been murdered or disappeared under mysterious circumstances along the “Highway of Hell.” The crimes became so notorious that true crime writer, Kathryn Casey, wrote a book about the murders, “Deliver Us.”
Jury views video of the skull of murder victim Ellie Beason as accused killer, Clyde Hedrick's looks on #justice pic.twitter.com/Epnz2ehJWy
— steph watts (@stephwatts) March 26, 2014
Six years ago Miller said he sat down with investigators, including an FBI agent, and said, “Guys we can solve the Calder Road murders.”
“Clyde was our guy in the very, very beginning,” Miller told CrimeOnline. “When Laura’s body was found, that’s about the same time they arrested Clyde on the abuse of a corpse [of Ellen Beeson]. And I told the League City Police then, ‘all you have to do is connect the dots, and there’s not many.’ Clyde knew Heidi Fye. There were only two houses between my house and Clyde’s house. Clyde knew Laura. This was no coincidence.”
Miller then urged authorities to conduct a lie detector test on Clyde regarding Laura, Fye and Jane Doe. “I told investigators that they need to go talk to Clyde and ask him if he would take a polygraph, which I knew he would because he thinks he’s smarter than anyone,” Miller said. “So time goes by and he takes a polygraph and of course he failed it.”
In yet another eerie twist, Miller said Hedrick “shot himself in the foot” after reading an article regarding a theft at Miller’s organization, Equusearch. Hedrick allegedly spoke out to three cellmates, who later testified against him in the murder trial of Beeson. Miller said Clyde blamed him and Equusearch for being in prison.
According to Miller, Clyde confided information regarding the deaths of Laura, Fye and Jane Doe to the cellmates.
“He said, ‘Yes, I f***ed his [Miller’s] daughter before I killed her.’ And then he said, ‘and Heidi Fye was just a little drug addict.’ And about Ellen Beeson, he said, ‘Yeah when I went out there I found this old table and busted the leg off of that table, and I beat that b****’s head in.’”
And the uncanny coincidences do not stop with the three women, according to Miller, who said he believes Hedrick is responsible for the deaths of multiple other women, including Angela Ramsey, who disappeared after hitchhiking from North Carolina to Florida in 1977.
“Back in June of 1977 Clyde was divorced from his wife, and he broke into her house, raped her at knifepoint, and stole her car,” Miller told CrimeOnline, adding that Hedrick was not convicted of the crimes because his ex-wife “knew Hedrick was headed back to prison on arson and other charges anyway.” From there, Miller said Hedrick headed to Florida.
“He was staying at the Boulevard Hotel in Deland, Florida,” he said. “Angela Ramsey hitchhiked from North Carolina to Deland, and stayed at the same hotel. And it just so happens that Angela Ramsey disappears, which was the same year in 1977. Her body has never been found. Clyde is 100 percent responsible for Angela.”
In addition, Miller said he knows of “three other girls who were in Clyde’s possession and ended up dead, but the medical examiner ruled the deaths as accidental overdoses.”
That same medical examiner was responsible for his daughter’s case, Miller said, adding that the professional had made critical mistakes.
“The medical examiner was so incompetent, they made so many mistakes. It was just unbelievable … there was a shirt that was found beside Laura’s body when she was found but they have lost the shirt.”
Miller said in addition to the lost shirt, the medical examiner and state had lost track of several of Laura’s bones after the process of exhuming her body and sending it for testing.
“I’ve talked to enough people over the years and I know that Clyde Hedrick murdered these girls,” Miller stated.
Miller said he will never give up on his journey of finding justice for all of the women, including his own daughter. “I do everything I do in Laura’s name,” Miller said.
Hedrick continues to deny any involvement in the tragic deaths.
CrimeOnline reached out to League City Police Department detectives for comment, but did not receive an immediate reply.
[Featured image: Laura Miller/Handout]
