HOUSTON – In 1985, 29-year-old Ellen Rae Beason’s body was found near the Galveston causeway.
But it wasn’t until 2014 that someone was finally convicted for her death. Even though her body was found in Galveston County, Benson’s case is connected to the ‘Killing Fields’ murders in League City because of the prime suspect.
Beason was last seen with Clyde Edwin Hedrick at the Texas Moon bar in July 1984. She went to the bar with her friend, Candy Giffords. Even though she was married, Giffords was having an affair with Hedrick. When Gifford’s husband showed up at the bar and asked about Hedrick, Candy said he was there with her friend, Ellen.
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Gifford and her husband left the bar, and the next day, her friend’s car was found in the parking lot. According to police and prosecutors, Gifford kept asking Hedrick what happened to Beason, but his stories kept changing. At one point, he said he saw Ellen get into a car with someone he didn’t know.
After constantly pressuring Hedrick for answers, he took Gifford to the place where he discarded Beason’s body under an old car seat in November 1984. Prosecutors said Hedrick threatened to hurt Gifford and her family if she went to police.
Fearful of Hedrick, Gifford finally told police where to find Beason’s body in July 1985. The original autopsy at the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the cause of death undetermined.
Hedrick denied hurting Beason and claimed she drowned while ‘skinny-dipping’ at the Dickinson sandpit. He said he panicked because he had been drinking, smoking marijuana, and had a criminal past. So, thinking no one would believe her death wasn’t his fault, he left her body on the side.
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Hedrick was originally convicted of abuse of a corpse in 1986, and sentenced to a year in jail. Beason’s body was then exhumed twice. Once in 1993, and again in 2012. New autopsies determined that she had died from a skull fracture. In 2013, Hedrick was charged with her murder, and the case went to trial in 2014.
“We’re dealing with a possible serial killer, he’s not going to have warm blood in his system,” Hansen said of Hedrick.
Don’t miss Part 4 of KPRC 2′s Investigation into the Texas Killing Fields, airing Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. on KPRC 2+.