HOUSTON – A man who long remained a prime suspect in the so-called “Texas Killing Fields” murders has died.
Clyde Edwin Hedrick, 72, was taken to a Houston hospital last week and died on March 21 at 2 p.m.
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For more than four decades, Hedrick had been considered a prime suspect in the murders of Laura Miller, Heide Villareal Fye, Audrey Cook and Donna Prudhomme.
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He was never charged in any of the cases and maintained his innocence during an interview with 2 Investigates in August 2024.
Hitchcock Police Detective Corey Williams said he met with Hedrick at the hospital the day before he died. While Hedrick could not speak, Williams said he indicated he was not involved in the murders. However, Williams added that Hedrick’s death does not mark the end of the investigation, though he declined to elaborate further.
“If I live till December, I’ll be 80 years old,” said Laura’s father, Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch. “I’m going to fight this till my dying breath.”
Miller has spent more than four decades pushing for progress in the investigation. He maintains a memorial for the victims at the field where their bodies were discovered off Calder Road in League City between 1984 and 1991.
Hedrick was identified early on as a suspect in the murders of Miller and Fye.
2 Investigates has covered the cases extensively over the years, most recently in “The Evidence Room,” a four-part documentary that aired in 2024.
- WATCH HERE: The Evidence Room
“Very early on, right after Laura’s body was found, Clyde’s name was brought up,” Miller said in August 2024.
Miller said Hedrick lived just a few doors down from his family when they resided in Dickinson. He also said his daughter’s boyfriend recalled Hedrick speaking with Laura and described his demeanor as unsettling. Hedrick, however, claimed he did not know he lived near the Millers.
Retired FBI agent Richard Rennison said witness accounts contradict Hedrick’s claims.
“We had witnesses who said he knew her and would talk to her, and one person said she saw Laura on the back of his motorcycle at one point,” said Rennison, who served on a task force investigating several unsolved murders in the area.
Fye’s niece, Nina Jager, also said she remembered seeing Hedrick at her aunt’s apartment. Fye worked as a bartender and waitress at the Texas Moon, a popular League City bar frequented by Hedrick in the 1980s.
“I told the police that. I actually picked out his photo,” Jager said. “I picked his photo out of a binder of people and said, ‘That guy came to her house.’ I didn’t even know who he was at the time, but I knew I recognized him.”
Hedrick initially denied knowing Fye or visiting her apartment but later acknowledged he may have known her from the Texas Moon.
“There was one witness who said they saw Heide in a car with Clyde at one point,” Rennison said. “We had a whiteboard with all these names on it. Slowly they were crossed off, ruled out one way or another, but we could never rule out Clyde.”
SEE ALSO: From their headquarters in Dickinson, Texas EquuSearch brings closure for grieving families
Fye’s father documented his own investigation into his daughter’s disappearance and murder through journals and cassette recordings. A friend of Fye’s also said Hedrick knew her, and Joseph Villareal recalled a League City detective expressing doubts about Hedrick’s truthfulness.
“He told us his opinion of this guy Clyde and how he knows the guy’s lying when he talks to him,” Villareal said in one of several recorded tapes. “He showed us photos of Clyde from when he was in prison and more recent ones. He believed there was a connection and was trying to find it.”
The sister of Donna Prudhomme, Dianne Gonsoulin, said one of her nephews remembered seeing Hedrick during one of his mother’s last trips home. Prudhomme’s sons were living with their grandparents in Ville Platte, Louisiana, while she was living in the Nassau Bay area.
Gonsoulin said she last saw the boys during a trip in 1989. Prudhomme’s body was discovered in 1991 but was not identified until 2019.
After her sister was identified, Gonsoulin said she showed a photo of Hedrick to one of Prudhomme’s surviving sons.
“Within seconds he called me saying, ‘That’s him, Aunt Diane, that’s him,’” Gonsoulin said. “He said he remembered what he looked like—his clothes, his eyes, everything.”
Hedrick denied knowing Prudhomme or traveling to Louisiana during that time.
Hedrick was previously sentenced to 20 years in prison in connection with the 1984 death of Ellen Rae Beason. Most recently, he had been living at a parole halfway house in southwest Houston and remained under the state’s highest level of supervision.
“Do I have any doubt in my mind that he’s potentially suitable for several of those girls? Absolutely,” said Lt. Tommy Hansen, who retired from the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office. “All of them—I’m not going to go there.”