Along a Highway in Texas,Decades of Deadly Mystery
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The following appears courtesy of the 3/14/99 online edition of The
Washington Post newspaper:
Along a Highway in Texas,Decades of Deadly Mystery
FBI Joins Local Police in Tracking Series of Female Murders
By Roberto Suro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 1999
LA MARQUE, Tex.輸 little boy and his dog discovered victim No. 32 when
they
were out for a walk in some marshy woods several weeks ago. The dog came
up
with a bone, and then the boy saw a skull. Nearby, the police later
would find
earrings, shreds of clothing and a belt tied around a tree.
Investigators
believe the killer used it to bind the young woman while she was
sexually
assaulted.
Still unidentified, the 32nd victim was added to a grisly FBI database
that
chronicles nearly three decades of unsolved abductions, disappearances
and
murders. The crimes have two factors in common: gender and geography.
All the
victims were female, and almost all the crimes occurred a few miles on
either
side of Interstate 45 along the 50-mile stretch between Houston and
Galveston,
an area of refinery towns and suburban developments interspersed with
bayous,
forests and cattle ranches.
Nowhere else in the country are police so bedeviled by so many unusual
crimes
occurring within such a well-defined area. Now, for the first time since
the
first victim's corpse was discovered in 1971, investigators believe they
are
making progress both in breaking individual cases and devising a method
to
attack the overall problem. But early indications are not good for those
who
hoped it could be brought to an end by finding one serial killer who
could be
captured and put behind bars.
"It appears that there may be multiple serial killers," said Don K.
Clark,
special agent in charge of the FBI's Houston division.
If that suspicion proves true--and investigators caution that they
remain far
from bringing charges in these crimes--then the bizarre pattern of
killings
along I-45 would be the result of an equally bizarre occurrence. Police
now
worry that for nearly three decades this stretch of coastal plain has
served as
a hunting ground for any number of murderers who share a deadly
obsession. Over
time, it appears to police, the killers have come and gone but shared in
common
the site they selected to find their victims--or to dump the bodies of
people
killed elsewhere.
In fact, the bayous lined with longleaf pine, beech and live oaks appear
to
have served as a dumping ground not only for local killers but also for
Houston's predators. The refineries and ports draw transients. The small
towns
and country roads have proved easy places to hunt victims. The patchwork
of
jurisdictions makes it easy to cloak activities simply by crossing the
city
limits.
The victims in the I-45 cases typically disappeared while out alone,
only to be
found dead and abused in a remote spot weeks or months later, leaving no
hint
as to their attacker's identity or motive.
The investigation took an important turn after several particularly
horrific
and well-publicized crimes in 1997. First, Laura Smither, 12,
disappeared while
jogging near her home, and then Jessica Lee Cain, 17, vanished, leaving
behind
only her empty pickup truck parked on the shoulder of I-45. Smither's
decapitated body was found in a pond almost three weeks after her
disappearance. Cain is still missing.
The initial search for these two girls, when they were presumed alive,
brought
together more than a dozen local and state police agencies along with
the FBI.
These various law enforcement organizations have continued to pool their
resources under an FBI initiative.
"Before Laura Smither and Jessica Cain, each one of us was in his own
little
world, investigating our own individual cases, and we would have no way
of
knowing that some fellow we wanted to question in one murder, and had
been a
top suspect, had already been questioned in a very similar murder just a
few
miles down the highway," said Lt. Tommy Hansen of the Galveston County
Sheriff's Department.
Aside from lack of coordination, the investigations suffered from a lack
of
resources in the small-town police departments. "Until recently, we
didn't even
have a Polaroid for crime scene photographs," said Sgt. Brian T.
Goetschius of
the Texas City police. His department has only six detectives. The Cain
disappearance has produced 2,332 leads in two years.
Some evidence pointed to a serial killer long ago. Two girls disappeared
from
the same convenience store in the 1970s. Four bodies were found between
1984
and 1991 in a scrubby patch of pastures dubbed the "killing fields."
More
subtle patterns now are emerging from a computer analysis of the
evidence. The
victims seem to cluster according to physical type, such that it appears
one
killer has a preference for short, slim, brown-haired women. Another
killer
seems to have demonstrated distinctive habits in the way he disposes of
bodies,
investigators said.
Stark similarities in several early cases suggest that a serial killer
was
active in the area in the 1970s, but it is unlikely he will ever be
identified
because so much time has passed. Further complicating matters, one of
the most
infamous criminals in Texas, Henry Lee Lucas, who is in prison on
convictions
in nine killings, roamed the Gulf Coast when some of the early I-45
murders
took place, but he has not been linked definitively to any of the
unsolved
cases.
Investigators got lucky in the Smither case when they cross-referenced
the
names of known sex offenders living in the Houston area against the
names of
workers at a construction site near the Smithers' home who had been let
off
work close to the time of her abduction. The computer spit out the name
of
William Reece, then a 37-year-old bulldozer operator who had served time
in
Oklahoma on a rape conviction.
A search of his home and vehicles failed to produce conclusive evidence
against
him, and Smither's body was so badly decomposed that it did not yield
the kind
of DNA evidence often used to identify perpetrators in sexual assaults.
Then
even as the police were trying to build a case against him, Reece was
arrested
for a botched abduction in which his intended victim managed to escape
and
testify against him.
Reece faces a 60-year prison sentence for the crime and has been
publicly
identified as the prime suspect in the Smither murder. In scrutinizing
Reece's
recent life, investigators said they have developed leads potentially
linking
him to one and perhaps two other unsolved disappearances.
Police also are closely following another suspect who remains at large
on the
I-45 corridor, but who never has been publicly identified.
"We know a guy, we know him very well, a guy who has killed before and
who had
some kind of contact with five of the girls, but all the evidence is
circumstantial," said police Lt. Gary D. Ratliff of League City, a town
of
50,000 where the "killing fields" are located.
"What do you do when there are no witnesses and you recover a victim,
weeks or
months after the crime, and the physical evidence is all gone?" Ratliff
said.
"What do you say to the parents when all you have to go on are bones
that
critters have been at?"
The unnamed suspect suffered physical injuries in an automobile accident
a few
years ago and appears to have gone "dormant" since then, Ratliff said.
While
that is good news in one sense, his lack of activity makes it less
likely he
might commit a mistake that would allow him to be caught.
Investigators who have lived with the unsolved cases for years at a time
do not
bother to hide their frustration at not being able to solve the crimes
or their
feeling that they don't have enough resources to do the job. "There is
no more
than a handful of detectives in any of our departments and we have to
handle
everything else that comes in even while we are trying to work on these
cold
cases," Hansen said.
Although it cannot address the staffing limits on the small local police
departments most responsible for solving the murders, the FBI is
providing
technology, expertise and now a new tactic.
With an Internet posting and other efforts, the FBI this month is
attempting to
publicize six recent abductions, crimes that fall under the federal
kidnapping
statute. It is the same tactic successfully used in the Unabomber
investigation
when the publication of the "manifesto" prompted the family of Theodore
J.
Kaczynski to turn him in.
"We want to attract public attention to these crimes because we believe
there
is someone out there who knows something, someone who might have
overheard
something, who might have seen something, someone who might be close to
one of
the killers and might now be willing to come forward," Clark said.
Killing Corridor In East Texas
More than 30 unsolved disappearances and killings have occurred near a
stretch
of Texas highway over the past three decades. Several are being
investigated as
serial murders.
1. "Jane Doe":
The body of a short, small-framed white woman, with light brown hair,
likely
between 23 and 26 years old, was found on Feb. 2, 1986, in a field in
League
City, where the bodies of three other victims have been discovered.
2. "Janet Doe": The skeletal remains of the victim were found in a
League City
field on Sept. 8, 1991. She is believed to be similar in stature and age
to
"Jane."
3. Laura Smither: The 12-year-old's decapitated body was found on April
3,
1997, in a pond in Pasadena.
4. Jessica Lee Cain: The 17-year-old disappeared on Aug. 17, 1997. Her
pickup
truck was found on the shoulder of Interstate 45 in La Marque. Cain is
still
missing.
SOURCE: FBI
Quest
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