GALVESTON COUNTY, Texas – Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch, won a default judgment in his 2014 wrongful death lawsuit filed against Clyde Edwin Hedrick. Galveston County judge Lonnie Cox granted Miller’s motion for default judgment on Monday and awarded him $24,365,471.23 in damages.
“I filed the wrongful death suit to let Clyde Hedrick know that, ‘Clyde, I’m still here, I am still here and I’m not going to quit until the day I die,’” Miller said after the hearing. “I want to let Clyde know that I know what you did to my daughter and I’m not going to let you rest until we have you where you need to be for the rest of your life.”
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Miller said he has evidence that Hedrick is responsible for the murder of his daughter Laura, who disappeared in 1984 and was found in 1986, in what has become known as the ‘Killing Fields.’
“As time goes by and the more information I get and, the more information I am continuing to get, I have no doubt in my mind Clyde Hedrick is responsible for Laura’s murder,” said Miller. “A lot of the evidence we brought forward we don’t want to talk about now because we don’t want to interfere in the (criminal) investigation.”
Hedrick has never been criminally charged with Laura Miller’s murder.
“We did reach out to Clyde on several occasions and invite him to tell his side of the story and tell him there was an opportunity to do that and he wasn’t interested,” said Miller’s attorney, Curt Hesse.
“Did he not respond or did he just say, ‘no?’” asked KPRC 2 Investigator Robert Arnold.
“No, he responded and he said, ‘no,’ unequivocally,” said Hesse.
Miller did tell us when Hedrick’s San Leon home was foreclosed and the owners allowed him access to the house, he said he spent $6,000 cleaning up the property and boxing up Hedrick’s personal items, of which he still maintains possession.
Miller founded Texas EquuSearch after his daughter’s murder and he’s never stopped searching for her killer. Laura’s body was found off Calder Rd in League City with the bodies of three other women; Heidi Fye, Donna Prudhomme and Audrey Lee Cook.
When we contacted Galveston County District Attorney Jack Roady, he sent KPRC 2 the following statement, “We continue to work with multiple law enforcement agencies to identify and charge the person responsible for murdering Laura Miller in 1984. Clyde Hedrick has not been ruled out as a suspect in these investigations.”
Hedrick was sued by Miller the same year he was convicted for the 1984 death of Ellen Rae Beason. Her cause of death was initially ruled as “undetermined,” and in 1986, Hedrick was charged with abuse of corpse for trying to hide her body.
Several years later, Beason’s body was exhumed and a new forensic examination determined she died from a blow to the back of head. Hedrick pleaded not guilty but was convicted in 2014 of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Hedrick was paroled from prison in Oct. 2021 and is currently living in transitional housing. Due to privacy laws, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will not disclose Hedrick’s location. During a 2014 jailhouse interview with KPRC, Hedrick denied any involvement in Laura or the other women’s murders.
COMPLETE COVERAGE:
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