third serial killer, who went on to kill again in the 1980s.
The OVRCRC link the first killer to another unidentified woman, whose body was found in a wooded area on the east side of Houston on 19 September 1989. She had been dead for between one and three months. She was a brunette aged between 14 and 19, weighed between 110 and 130 pounds and between 5 foot 2 inches and 5 foot 5 inches tall. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head.
The same killer was thought to be responsible for the abduction and murder of 14-year-old Lynette Bibbs and 15-year-old Tamara Fisher. The two friends disappeared from a teen club in Houston on 1 February 1996. Two days later their bodies were found on the side of a rural road near Cleveland, Texas, some 40 miles to the north. Lynette was partially clothed and shot twice in the back of the head and once in the thigh. Tamara was fully clothed and died from a gunshot wound to the head.
None of these victims seems to have been sexually assaulted and the use of a gun by a serial killer is unusual. They usually prefer to strangle, bludgeon or stab so that they can savour their victim’s pain, panic and death throes close up. Guns kill from a distance. They can kill quickly. They make a lot of noise and can be traced easily. In this case, the killer clearly had somewhere private where he could take his victims to kill them.
It is thought that the killer got his pleasure from hunting his victims. There is even a theory that he is some type of law enforcement officer, some other authority figure, or someone posing as one. The OVRCRC believe that he may have stopped killing because he no longer found hunting his victims fun.
On 6 September 1974, 12-year-old Brooks Bracewell and 14-year-old Georgia Geer skipped school. They were last seen in a convenience store in Dickinson, just four miles down the I–45 from League City. Both had been beaten to death and their bodies were found in a swamp near Alvin.
Other profilers connect these two killings to those above. All the victims were 19 years old or younger. They were all dumped in or near bodies of water, and all had died from either a gunshot to the head or some sort of head trauma. And the killer showed a distinct preference for pairs. Only Brenda Jones was abducted alone and found alone.
There was even a link between these cases and those found in the “killing fields”. Brooks Bracewell and Georgia Geer were last seen at a convenience store pay phone, just like Heidi Fye and Laura Miller. Both sets of victims show the same mixture of murder methods—some being beaten to death or shot. However, the method of body disposal is quite different. In the “killing field” they were laid out on land. The others were dumped in or near water. The “killing field” victims were naked and had been sexually assaulted. The others were fully or partially clothed and showing no signs of rape.
The OVRCRC tie three other murders to the killer of Kimberly Pitchford, as strangulation was the method of murder. On 1 November 1980, a truck driver found the naked body of an unidentified brunette aged between 14 and 17 dumped on I–45, about five miles north of Huntsville. She had been strangled with pantyhose and there were human bite marks on her body. She was 5 foot 4 inches tall and weighed 110 pounds. On 7 June 1987, 14-year-old Erica Ann Garcia went missing from a teen club. This showed a similarity with the abduction of Lynette Bibbs and Tamara Fisher. However, they had been shot. When Erica Garcia’s body was found, she had been strangled.
Another victim of strangulation was 13-year-old Krystal Jean Baker, the great niece of Marilyn Monroe, aka Norma Jean Baker. On 5 March 1996, the dark-eyed blonde disappeared after making a call from a payphone in a convenience store in Texas City, ten miles from Dickinson and 14 miles from League City. She had phoned to get a lift to a friend’s house in Bayou Vista, four miles away on the I–45. Her body was found a few hours later under the I–10 Bridge over the Trinity River near Galveston Bay in Chambers County. Her face was pulverized. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted and despatched with a ligature. The OVRCRC believed that the killer had been building up to the sexual assault of Krystal Baker as the Huntsville victim had been found nude. On earlier occasions he may not have managed to become sexually aroused, finding himself impotent or disturbed before he could attempt the act.
It is thought that Trellis Sykes and Maria Isabel Solis might share a common killer. Sixteen-year-old Trellis Sykes did not show up at Worthing High School in Houston on 13 May 1994. Her loved ones went out to search for her and found her dead body in the undergrowth on a vacant lot on Redbud Street. Maria Isabel Solis was also 16 when she went missing on her way to school in Houston. She lived with her father and grandmother on the south side of the city. Her mother, Blanca Ortiz, still lived in Mexico City. At 8.40 on the morning of 3 March 2003, she left home to go to the George I. Sanchez High School where she was an honours student. She was last seen getting off the city bus near her school. Students and the manager of a nearby motel heard screams. On 13 August 2003, a body was discovered in a wooded area near a closed US 59 turnaround at the Brazos River not far from Sugar Land, Texas, some 20 miles southwest of Houston. However, the remains were only identified as those of Maria by the forensic laboratory on 9 February 2005.
Other murders in the area might be linked. On 10 May 1978, when Robert Pretty arrived home from work at his house in north Houston, he found cold toast and a half-empty glass of milk on the breakfast table. He heard water dripping in the front bathroom and, when he went to investigate, he found his sons, five-year-old Mark and seven-year-old Scott, face down in the bathtub. In the master bathroom he found his 28-year-old wife, Karen, bound hand and foot, underwater in the bath. The medical examiner said that they had died from a combination of strangulation and drowning. Karen had a telephone cord around her neck. The two boys had been strangled manually. Mark had fought back and been beaten by his assailant. The murders seemed motiveless. Nothing had been taken from the house and only one drawer was opened. Nor had the victims been sexually molested. Karen was still wearing her flowery bathrobe and the boys still had their pyjamas on. The only clue was that the family car, a 1978 Mercury Marquis, was found in an unassigned parking spot at an apartment at 198 Goodson Drive. There is a theory was that the murder of Karen and the two children was a case of mistaken identity. A local drug dealer had been arrested on evidence provided by an informant who lived in the neighbourhood.
And so the I–45 murders continue. Twenty-two-year-old Tamara Ellen McCurry disappeared in Galveston on 1 July 1982 after being seen getting into an orange or yellow van. The headless body of a woman was found in a garbage bag in a state park in Galveston in April 1986. The victim remains unidentified.
Shelley Kathleen Sikes, a 19-year-old University of Texas student, was last seen just before midnight 24 May 1986, when she left work at Gaido’s beach-front restaurant in Galveston where she was a waitress. She was heading for her home in Texas City, but never made it. Her car was found at around two the next morning, stuck in the mud alongside the I–45 northbound feeder road just south of the Galveston causeway. The driver’s window was broken, and blood was spattered on the door and driver’s seat. Despite an intensive search, Sikes was never found. She was thought to be another victim of one of the I–45 serial killers. But then in June 1987 the police got a phone call from a local motel. Resident John Robert King was trying to kill himself and confessed to abducting Sikes and burying her body. He said he and a friend, Gerald Peter Zwarst, high on drugs, had run Shelley Sikes’ car off the road and abducted her. Safely in custody, both men blamed each other for Sikes’ death and admitted burying the body near King’s home. However, King reneged on his promise to tell police exactly where the body was buried. Zwarst was offered immunity from a murder charge in 1990 if he would help find Shelley Sikes’ body. Under hypnosis he drew a map of a field in San Leon near Galveston Bay, where he said he last saw Shelley Sikes, but her body was not found. Authorities uncovered a white blouse during the search, but lab tests could not prove it belonged to Sikes. However, her family remain convinced the petite, handmade blouse was hers. King and Zwarst were convicted of aggravated kidnapping in 1988—the most severe charge prosecutors could pursue without a body—and they were sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the case remains open.
The murder of 15-year-old Laurie Lee Tremblay is another I–45 case that has been resolved recently. She was last seen alive walking from her family’s apartment to the bus stop, on 26 September 1986. Her body was later found behind a restaurant in the 10600 block of Westheimer Road, Houston. None of her jewellery or possessions were taken. So the motive was not robbery.
“We knew we had a serial killer working,” said Houston police detective Sergeant John Swain said. “I think that the Police Department danced around that. The powers that be didn’t want to admit that, didn’t want the public to panic.”
The case remained unsolved until 2003 when 41-year-old Anthony Allen Shore was arrested for the murder of Maria Del Carmen Estrada, 11 years before. The 21-year-old Hispanic brunette was last seen on 16 April 1992 when she left her apartment at 7200 Shadyvilla to walk to work. Her body was found hours later face down in the drive-through lane of a Dairy Queen restaurant at 6707 Westview, Houston. She was partially nude and had been sexually assaulted and strangled. “When he had finished having his way with her, he left her… like a piece of garbage,” said Kelly Siegler, the prosecutor at his trial. The police testified that the nylon cord around Maria
