First Place Division 9 News Writing

The (Clear Lake Citizen)

New face sheds light on murder victim

Police hope to ID ‘killing fields’ body

By PATRICK REYNOLDS

Citizen Staff

A composite drawing of a young woman found in the “Calder Road Killing Fields” in the mid-1980s has been released by the League City Police Department.

Her nude body was found in a field in the 3000 block of Calder on Feb. 2, 1986, but has never been identified. Police named her Jane Doe after the discovery, and are still looking for clues in her death.

Jane Doe was one of at least four bodies found in the field from 1983 to 1991. Her death is part of a gruesome puzzle that homicide detectives in Galveston County have been trying to piece together for three decades.

In the mid-1980s, the bodies of Heidi Villareal Fye, 23, and Laura Miller, 16, were found in the lame Calder Road field where Jane Doe was found.

Both Miller and Villareal Fye were last seen at the same convenience store in League City.

Then, in 1991, another body was found in the Calder field. She was dubbed “Janet Doe,” and has yet to be identified.

Since 1971, at least 18 women have been abducted or murdered along the 50—mile stretch of Interstate 45 from Houston to Galveston, prompting many residents and a tabloid to nickname the stretch of roadway “America’s Highway to Hell.”

Since 1997, the killings seem to have subsided, but rumors still abound about the “I-45 Killer.”

Although police have questioned numerous people in the killings, they are uncertain if the crimes were perpetrated by several people or the work of a serial killer.

One suspect surfaced late last year, and is still under investigation.

Mark Roland Stallings, 34, worked on the Calder Road property that came to be known as the “killing fields.”

Stallings, who is currently serving a 489-year sentence in the Texas Department of Corrections for aggravated assault and escape, became implicated in the murders after he wrote a letter to the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Department last year.

In the letter, Stallings allegedly confessed to murdering two Houston-area women a decade earlier.

Police and FBI

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