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Dark OutdoorsAuthor: darkoutdoors Language: en Genres: Nature, Science, True Crime Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Texas Killing Fields: Justice After 42 Years
Episode 93
Thursday, 3 September, 2026
In 1997, Chester Moore and his wife Lisa were driving to Pasadena, Texas, to visit a friend when they came upon a scene they would never forget. Police and investigators had converged on an area near a retention pond. Chester and Lisa didn't know exactly what had happened, but they would soon learn they had driven upon the scene where, that very day, the body of 12-year-old Laura Smither had been discovered following a massive search. Nearly three decades later, Chester returns to that moment in this deeply personal episode of Dark Outdoors®, exploring Laura's murder, serial killer William Reece and the larger, haunting history of the Texas Killing Fields. And remarkably, this isn't just history. As this episode drops, the Texas Killing Fields are back in the news. More than four decades after 16-year-old Laura Miller disappeared, James Dolphs Elmore Jr. has become the first person convicted in connection with the deaths of the four women whose bodies were found in the infamous Calder Road field. The guilty verdict came just one day before this episode's release, and Elmore has now been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Chester examines those stunning new developments before turning to another question at the heart of Dark Outdoors: Why can places like this become hunting grounds for human predators? From isolated roads and abandoned fields to marshes, woods and the forgotten edges of growing communities, this is a story about what can happen where civilization meets the darkness. Because sometimes the most dangerous predator in the outdoors is human.
