Houston – It is the afternoon at Texas Equusearch headquarters in Dickinson, Texas. Volunteers gather after a morning doing what they do best.
“Today, we literally just got off of a search with Galveston County Sheriff’s Department in an apparent homicide case…so all our volunteers are here kind of debriefing from what we’ve done today to go ahead and put the next search effort together,” Texas EquuSearch Founder & CEO, Tim Miller, told Houston Life.
While it can take as little as an hour to find someone once all the correct information is gathered, some searches take longer.
One example Miller shared was a search where “we went back probably literally more than 20 times over a year. And then finally three weeks ago we found a body. So, you know, it all depends on new information that comes in. We’ll go back. I mean, I actually dug a girl’s body up, a 15-year-old girl that was missing 25 years.” he said.
25 years.
Founded in August 2000, for almost as long, Texas EquuSearch has been helping reunite families with missing loved ones. Sometimes a team of volunteers will bring people home alive. Many times, it is about finding remains and bringing some form of closure to grieving families. The pain that comes with the kind of grief from not knowing where a murdered loved one has ended up is something Tim Miller knows all too well.
“I’ve been there, my own self when my own daughter disappeared,” Miller’s daughter Laura went missing in 1984. She was 16 years old. Police discovered her body by chance while investigating another crime that led them to an area along Interstate 45 between Houston and Galveston near League City. The 25-acre swath of land is known as, The Texas Killing Fields. The bodies of four young women were found her, including Laura’s.
When Laura went missing, Miller said, “There wasn’t any searches. There was never one article in a newspaper. Never one story on a TV,” said Miller. Laura was missing for 17 months before her body was found. “I remember every minute of that 17 months,” said Miller.
Over the years, Miller has worked alongside law enforcement and government departments to help find those missing and as a result, bring justice and closure to many criminal cases.
For all of it, Texas EquuSearch relies on volunteers and donations from the community to keep the searches going. They never ask for any money from families whose loved ones are missing. “We let them know, no listen, you’ve paid the ultimate cost. You’ve got a missing loved one,” said Miller.
You can support Texas EquuSearch and help them continue to do the work HERE.
Houston Life’s Melanie Camp visited Texas EquuSearch headquarters in Dickinson, Texas to meet with volunteers and talk to Miller after a morning of searching for a murdered man. Watch more in the video above.