Galveston Jury Indicts Man in Two Killing Fields Deaths

A Galveston County grand jury has indicted a 61-year-old man from Bacliff, Texas, on charges connected to two unsolved murders in the notorious Texas Killing Fields, marking a significant development in a decades-old investigation into the deaths of more than 30 women in the area southeast of Houston.

James Dolphs Elmore Jr. faces charges of manslaughter and felony tampering with evidence in the 1984 death of 16-year-old Laura Miller, as well as an additional count of tampering with evidence in the 1985 killing of 30-year-old Audrey Cook. Authorities arrested Elmore on Tuesday and are holding him without bond in the Galveston County Jail. Prosecutors allege that Elmore assisted his longtime friend, Clyde Edwin Hedrick, in concealing the women's remains after their deaths. Miller disappeared on September 10, 1984, after her mother dropped her off at a pay phone in League City to call her boyfriend; her body was discovered 17 months later in a rural field off Calder Road. Cook vanished in December 1985 while living in the Houston area, where she worked as a mechanic; her remains were found the following year but not identified until 2019 through forensic genealogy.