Chapman was between the open door and the body of the truck and held onto the door as the truck drove away. He heard Tina screaming for Drew to stop. As the truck pulled out of the parking lot, the door slammed shut, knocking Chapman into a ditch. He picked himself up, ran to the bar and began beating on the front door.
At 2.52 a.m., Seabrook Police Officer Marc Hatton was on patrol when he saw Chapman beating on the bar’s door and stopped. Chapman’s trousers were covered in mud and he was hysterical. He told Hatton that his friend had just been kidnapped. He gave a full description of Drew’s maroon, full-sized, single-cab Chevrolet truck. The description of the appellant’s truck was broadcast to other officers in the area.
At 3.49 a.m., Harris County Deputy Constable Sean Kitchens spotted Drew’s truck and pulled him over for failing to maintain a single lane of traffic. Deputy Kitchens asked Drew for his licence. But when he leant over to retrieve his licence from the glove compartment, Kitchens noticed a bloody foot lying on the seat. When Kitchens asked who it belonged to, Drew said: “That’s my friend Tina. She’s knocked out over there.”
Investigating further, the deputy found Tina Flood lying unconscious in the foetal position against the passenger’s door. She was naked except for her skirt, which was bunched around her waist. Her panties and blouse were later found in Drew’s truck. She was bloody, bruised and scraped, and there were abrasions on her leg, buttocks and arms.
Kitchens called for back-up. When it arrived, Drew was asked to step out of the truck. Deputy Kitchens noticed a scratch on Drew’s right arm, three scratches on the back and side of his neck, and what looked like blood on his shirt collar.
Tina Flood was rushed to the Clear Lake Regional Medical Center. Emergency Room nurse Christine McFall conducted a sexual assault examination. According to McFall, Tina repeatedly cried out: “Please help me. Please help me. Don’t hurt me.” And Emergency Room nurse Mary Jane Heady heard Tina say: “Please don’t rape me.”
A CAT scan showed that Tina had sustained a skull fracture, which caused her brain to swell and haemorrhage. She was rushed into surgery. Tina died a day and a half later because of swelling in her brain.
The medical examiner found at least two distinct fractures to Tina’s skull, the result of one or possibly two separate acts of blunt trauma. A considerable amount of force was required to cause those fractures. There was an abrasion on the back of Tina’s head and a bruise on the back of her brain immediately below the point of impact. On the opposite side of her head, there was a massive amount of bleeding, but no external bruising on her skin. Such an injury is typically found where a moving head strikes a stationary object. Tina’s ear was swollen and there was a bruise behind the ear. This bruise could be related to the skull fracture, but the swelling of the ear indicated the injury was probably caused by a separate impact. The medical examiner said that the injury to Tina’s ear was more consistent with something striking her or her head striking something on that side.
The abrasions and contusions on Tina’s shoulder, shoulder blade, elbow, lower back and buttocks were consistent with being dragged on a rough surface, such as concrete. The wrinkling or crumpling of the skin on Tina’s back was consistent with the skin having been stepped on. The abrasions were not consistent with those that might result from jumping out of a moving vehicle. Further, there were small oval contusions on Tina’s lower legs, ankles, and upper right arm, consistent with finger impressions. There were also abrasions on Tina’s knuckles and the meaty part of the thumbs of both hands, suggesting defensive injuries. Drew had scratches on his right arm and neck.
The medical examiner also found bruising in the soft tissue of both sides of Tina’s neck. This, he said, was caused by direct external compression often seen in manual strangulations. The anal swabs taken during the sexual assault examination contained Drew’s DNA. While there were no obvious abrasions or tears in the vagina and anal area, the area was a little darker than normal, which suggested trauma.
The State tried Drew for capital murder, but the jury found him only guilty of felony murder and he was sentenced to life in prison. He appealed, but on 14 February 2002 both the conviction and the sentence were upheld.
Drew was also suspected of several sexual assaults and possibly the murder of Jessica Lee Cain. A search of his former home in League City, where his parents still lived, unearthed a vial containing several human teeth. League City was the home of the famous “killing fields” murders, but Drew would have been too young to have committed them, though it is thought that he did rape other women in the area.
Another case bore a similarity to Jessica Cain’s disappearance. It involved 17-year-old Michelle Doherty Thomas, who was last seen leaving her family’s home in Alta Loma, Texas, less that two miles from Santa Fe, on 5 October 1985. She was planning to meet friends at a nightclub on Galveston Island later in the evening, but she never arrived and has not been heard from again. Her family reported her missing on 7 October 1985, two days after her disappearance. She had served as an informant during a drug bust in 1985 and the police believe that she could have been abducted and murdered as a result.
Another young woman went missing from Galveston County in 1988. Twenty-two-year-old Suzanne Rene Richerson was a student at Texas A & M University in Galveston and was employed as a night clerk at Casa Del Mar Condominiums on Seawall Boulevard. She was last seen at work at around 6 a.m. on 7 October by the resort security guards. Another employee who was sleeping in the room above Richerson’s office woke up to hear a woman scream shortly after the guards left the vicinity. Then came the sound of a car door being slammed shut, accompanied by another scream, and the sound of a car racing from the parking lot shortly after. A guest arrived at Richerson’s office to check out at about 6.30 a.m. and discovered the desk unattended. There were no signs of a struggle and Suzanne’s purse, school books and car were left at the resort. One of her shoes was found in the parking lot later that morning, but Suzanne Richerson has never been seen again. There was a suspect in the Richerson case named Gabriel Soto. But he died on 31 July 2002, aged 39, from a drug overdose. Soto was charged with intimidating witnesses in the case, though never charged for the abduction. However investigators believe he played a role in Richerson’s disappearance.
The FBI set up Operation HALT—standing for Homicide-Abduction Liaison Team—to investigate the disappearances. At first, they thought they were looking for a single serial killer and were hopeful that they could put him behind bars. But they soon realized that they were looking for a number of killers whose crimes overlapped. Typically victims have disappeared while out alone, only to be found dead in a remote spot weeks or months later, leaving no hint as to their attacker’s identity or motive.
The small towns and country roads in that part of Texas have proved an easy place to hunt victims. The patchwork of jurisdictions makes it easy for killers to hide their activities. Over the past 40 years a huge influx of people have settled in this fast-growing corner of Texas. The refineries and ports draw transients. And the bayous shrouded with long-leafed pine, beech and oaks have served as a dumping ground for killers from Houston as well as local predators. In some cases the victim is unknown. In early 1999 a small boy went out for a walk with his dog in some marshy woods. The dog found a bone, and then the boy saw a skull. Nearby, the police would later find earrings, shreds of clothing and a belt tied around a tree. Investigators believe the killer used it to bind the young woman while she was sexually assaulted.
Evidence pointed to a serial killer long ago when two girls disappeared from the same convenience store in the 1970s. Then four bodies were found between 1984 and 1991 in a overgrown patch of land next to Calder Road near League City off I–45 dubbed the “killing fields”. In the 3000 block of Calder Drive was the abandoned League City Oil Field, tucked away between houses, strip joints, a few rundown businesses and Star Dust Trail Rides, run by retired NASA engineer Robert Able. All four victims were laying nude on the ground, face up and under trees with their arms crossed. They had been sexually assaulted and were placed within a hundred-yard radius of each other. One investigator who studied the scene thought the killer had used a footpath to view the bodies. The metal gates across one part of Calder Drive and adjacent Ervin Street are locked blocking access by automobile. Clearly the killer had had prior knowledge of this secluded area.
FBI profiler Mark Young said that there were at least four serial killers working the I–45 corridor. The picture was further confused by killers who only claimed a single victim. Few cases can be definitively linked as the method of abduction, cause of death and dumping ground often varies wildly. It is possible that a smaller number of killers is at work, who constantly change their modus operandi. However, it is very unusual for so many “low-risk” victims— that is, women not involved in drugs, prostitution or other illegal activity—to be murdered or go missing in such a relatively small geographic area without a number of serial killers being responsible for the majority of the crimes. Computer analysis of the evidence also indicates multiple murderers are at work. One killer has a preference for slim, short brown-haired women. Another killer has distinctive habits in the way he disposes of bodies.
Of particular interest were the “killing field” murders, which were the only cases publicly linked together by
