OVERVIEW

There are many roadblocks to confront when attempting to link the I-45 cases to one another.

-Many of the victims have remained undiscovered long after their deaths, been dumped in water, or have never been found, making it especially difficult for investigators to find much in the way of useful evidence.

-A number of departments have been involved and cooperation and communication has been spotty until a few years ago when the Houston media first shed light on the string of murders and disappearances. A task force called Operation H.A.L.T. (Homicide Abduction-Liaison Team) has since been formed to solve the slayings but they are almost certainly still catching up.

-Authorities have been particlarly stingy with details in these crimes. If any of the slayings have been linked to one another forensically, investigators aren't saying so publicly.

-There seems to be little in the way of obvious patterns that are often apparent in many cases of serial murder.

THE KILLING FIELDS

Perhaps the best place to begin is the four victims found in a field next to Calder Road near League City, known as the 'Killing Fields'. They are the only cases publicly linked together by authorities. Heidi Villerial Fye was the first body discovered in April of 1984, followed by Laura Miller and a Jane Doe on February 3, 1986, then a second Jane Doe on September 8, 1991. All four women had been dumped within a couple of hundred yards of each other. All had been posed lying on their backs with their arms folded across their chests. But even these four cases do not link absolutely perfectly. While Fye and the second Jane Doe had been beaten to death, Miller and the first Doe, who were found on the same day, had been shot to death. Still, the identical signature posing of each body and the fact that Fye and Miller disappeared from the same League City convenience store are enough to definitely link these four homicides together.

EARLY 1970'S SERIES

Several of the 1970's killings seem likely to be related also, Colette Wilson was abducted on June 17, 1971, and found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in Addicks Resevoir in Houston. Two weeks after Wilson's abduction Brenda Jones was found dead from a head wound in another body of water, Galveston Bay. Then in November Addicks Resevoir was the scene of another body discovery when the corpse of Gloria Gonzales was found. She had died from blunt force trauma to the head.

Then a pair of double murders occurred. Maria Johnson and Debbie Ackerman disappeared from in Galveston in November of 1971 and were later found in Texas City's Turner's Bayou. Both had been shot in the head. Then Brooks Bracewell and Georgia Geer vanished in Dickinson on September 6, 1974. They were later found beaten to death in a swamp near Alvin.

These seven slayings share some obvious similarities. All the victims were under 19-years-old or younger, all dumped in or very near to bodies of water, and all had died from either a shotgun blast to the head or some sort of head trauma. If they are in fact linked this killer had a thing for pairs, with Jones being the only victim that was abducted alone and found alone.

Once could even tentatively link these seven cases to the Killing Fields cases. Bracewell and Geer were last seen at a convenience store pay phone, just like Fye and Miller. Both sets of victims also have the same cause of death mixture, with some being shot to death and some being beaten to death. On the other hand, the method of body disposal in the two groups is absolutely nothing alike, one set being dumped on land and posed with the other set dumped in water.

OTHER POSSIBILITIES

Aside from those two victim groups potential linkage gets much less obvious. Lynette Bibbs and Tamara Fisher were last seen in a Houston night club on February 1, 1996, and later found shot in the head. Just over a year later Erica Ann Garcia also disappeared from a club in Houston. She was later found strangled the next day. Another murder that could fit in is a teen Jane Doe found shot in the head in Houston in September 1989.

Or perhaps the Houston cases of Maria Isabel Solis and Trellis Sykes share a common perpetrator. Solis went missing near a bus stop on her way to school on March 3, 2003, and was never seen again. Sykes was found murdered in May of 1994 after she was abducted, also on her way to school.

SUMMARY

FBI profiler Mark Young at one time stated that there were at least four or five killers that are working or had worked the I-45 corridor. Certainly a case could be made that there are more than that, including killers that only claimed a single victim. Few cases can be definitively linked, and the method of abduction, cause of death, and type of dumping ground often varies wildly across the board. Conversely, it is possible that only a couple of serial slayers are responsible and are changing their M.O.'s to make the pieces of this puzzle as difficult as possilbe to put together. It has to be considered highly unusual for so many 'low-risk' victims to be murdered or missing over such a relatively small geographic area without at least a couple of serial murderers being responsible for the bulk of the slayings.