Texas
Man charged in connection with some of ‘Texas Killing Fields’ deaths of dozens of women
HOUSTON (AP) — Prosecutors have charged a man allegedly connected to some of the deaths linked to the “Texas Killing Fields,” an area near Houston where the bodies of dozens of women were found beginning in the 1970s, saying they have solved a piece of a tragic mystery that has inspired books, movies and a Netflix documentary.
A stretch of land along Interstate 45 southeast of Houston was dubbed the “Texas Killing Fields” after the bodies of more than 30 women were found there. Investigators believe multiple perpetrators may be responsible for the deaths of mainly girls and young women.
A Galveston grand jury has indicted 61-year-old James Dolphs Elmore Jr. for his alleged role in the deaths of 16-year-old Laura Miller and 30-year-old Audrey Cook, whose bodies were found in the infamous area in 1986, Galveston County District Attorney Kenneth Cusick said Wednesday.
Court and jail records did not list an attorney who could speak on behalf of Elmore, who was arrested Tuesday and is being held without bond in the Galveston County Jail.
Miller and Cook were two of four young women whose bodies were found between 1984 and 1991 in a rural field off a desolate dirt road in League City, located about 28 miles (45 kilometers) southeast of Houston. The other two women were 25-year-old Heidi Fye-Villareal and 34-year-old Donna Prudhomme.
Cusick said after being appointed as district attorney in October that he would to take a harder look at these cases.
“Due to the concerted efforts of the law enforcement agencies in this county, this 40-year cycle of violence by these defendants against women, we’re trying to make headway on it, and I think we made significant headway yesterday in getting a charge against Mr. Elmore and having him arrested,” he said.
Elmore has been charged with manslaughter and felony tampering with evidence in the death of Miller and with tampering with evidence in Cook’s killing.
Cusick said prosecutors had also presented evidence to a grand jury seeking indictments against Clyde Hedrick, who authorities allege was the person responsible for the deaths of the four women and had been Elmore’s longtime friend.
But the 72-year-old Hedrick died by suicide last month before the grand jury came back with a decision in his case, Cusick said.
Hedrick was convicted of manslaughter in 2014 in the death of Ellen Beason, a young woman whose body was found in 1985 after going missing the previous years. He was released in 2022 and was still on parole at the time of his death, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Relatives of the victims on Wednesday said they were relieved an arrest had been made but expressed frustration it had taken so long.
“I think with everything that they had in the past, it’s inexcusable that Clyde Hedrick had the opportunity to die without never been indicted, convicted,” said Tim Miller, the father of Laura Miller. After his daughter’s death, Miller founded Texas EquuSearch, a nonprofit that helps look for missing people.
Miller said that in the last four years, he had met 30 times with Elmore who had shared information but he declined to elaborate on what Elmore told him because he didn’t want to jeopardize the case against him.
Nina Jager, Fye-Villareal’s niece, celebrated Elmore’s indictment but said it was also “bittersweet” because her grandfather had investigated the case and long believed Hedrick was responsible but his efforts were ignored by authorities.
“Maybe today is a result of all the work that he put in, all the searching the fields, going and talking to people and doing his own investigation because he just didn’t feel supported,” she said.
Cusick said he’s committed to continue working on these cases and that there are active leads that can be pursued “to bring to justice some people who may have escaped justice thus far,” he said.
Most of the deaths associated with the “Texas Killing Fields” remain unsolved.
In 2022, William Reece, an Oklahoma death row inmate, pleaded guilty to three murders in Texas, including those of 12-year-old Laura Smither and 17-year-old Jessica Cain in Galveston County, and 20-year-old Kelli Cox, who was from Denton in North Texas but whose body was found hundreds of miles away in Brazoria County, located next to Galveston County. He received life sentences for all three murders.
Texas
Judge rejects push to let churches make political endorsements
A federal judge in Tyler dismissed a lawsuit on Tuesday that sought to allow churches to endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status, dealing a blow to the Trump administration and other conservatives who have worked to eliminate the decades-old law barring nonprofits from supporting political office seekers.
Several Texas churches and national Christian groups brought the lawsuit challenging the Johnson Amendment, as it’s commonly known, arguing that their religious beliefs compelled them to speak to their congregations about all aspects of life, including electoral politics. Prohibiting electioneering from the pulpit in order to maintain their tax exemption was a violation of their First Amendment rights, the plaintiffs argued in their lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.
In the final days of the Biden administration, the Department of Justice sought to dismiss the case. The Trump administration not only revived it, but sided with the plaintiffs. The two sides asked the judge to approve a deal in which the IRS agreed to not enforce the Johnson Amendment against these churches.
This would have been a landmark ruling, empowering pastors to more aggressively push politics through the church and undercutting the requirement that has been a mainstay of the U.S. tax code since 1954. It is named after then-Texas Sen. Lyndon Johnson, who first proposed the law.
But District Judge Cam Barker ruled that he did not have the authority to approve the proposed consent judgement. He cited federal laws that prevent judges from blocking taxation that hasn’t yet occurred; plaintiffs typically must pay the taxes they want to challenge, and then sue for a refund.
Barker, a Trump appointee who previously served as Texas’ deputy solicitor general, rejected the argument that these restrictions did not apply because both sides had agreed to the judgement.
“Relief enjoining the Johnson Amendment’s enforcement or declaring that it does not apply to specific conduct would thus directly bear on the amount of tax that could be collected,” Barker wrote. “Put differently, if the plaintiffs here gave up their § 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, none of the harms they allege could occur.”
Barker noted that there are other avenues to challenge this issue, like by suing after the taxes are collected or disputing the loss of a tax-exempt status caused by a violation of the Johnson Amendment. But this was not the proper venue, no matter how much both sides wanted it to be, he wrote.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group that attempted to intervene in the case, lauded Tuesday’s ruling.
“We’re glad that the Johnson Amendment will remain a strong bulwark to stop religious extremists from exploiting houses of worship,” said Rachel Laser, the group’s president. “The proposed settlement agreement to exempt only houses of worship and not secular nonprofits would have been unfair and a violation of church-state separation.”
Even before the court could approve the judgment, some conservative Christian pastors began touting the victory and preparing to amp up their political rhetoric. Others, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said they would continue steering clear of candidate endorsements from the pulpit, no matter the outcome.
Enforcement of the Johnson Amendment has long been lax, in Democratic and Republican administrations alike. The Texas Tribune and ProPublica identified at least 20 examples over a two-year period of churches violating the statute, more than the IRS had investigated in the past decade.
New York
Former prison guard found guilty of manslaughter in an inmate’s fatal beating
UTICA, N.Y. (AP) — A former corrections officer was found guilty of manslaughter Wednesday in the fatal beating of an inmate at Mid-State Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
The jury in Utica, New York, also found Jonah Levi guilty of gang assault and conspiracy in the death Messiah Nantwi on March 1, 2025, and the subsequent coverup. The jurors acquitted him of second-degree murder.
“This verdict sets an important precedent — not just for Messiah, but for everyone who is incarcerated,” Patterson Nantwi, Messiah Nantwi’s father, said in a written statement. “No one should have to fear losing their life at the hands of those who are supposed to care for them.”
Levi was the first guard to go on trial in Nantwi’s death.
“The first step in justice for Messiah is complete with some work to go,” Onondaga County District Attorney William J. Fitzpatrick said in an email. “I thank the hard working jurors for their diligence and am very pleased with the verdict.”
A message was left seeking comment from Levi’s attorney.
Nantwi, 22, was struck dozens of times by guards who used their fists, boots and batons. He died due to massive head trauma and other injuries to his body from the beatings, according to prosecutors.
The beating occurred during a wildcat strike by many officers that forced the governor to send in National Guard members to help keep order. Nantwi’s death also came several months after Robert Brooks was fatally beaten at a separate prison just across the road from Mid-State.
Levi was part of an emergency response team called to Nantwi’s housing unit to help National Guard members who sought backup after Nantwi was uncooperative during a prisoner headcount. A witness testified that Nantwi calmed down once backup was called.
Corrections officers who responded to the call began beating Nantwi in his room after he refused to be handcuffed and grabbed a guard’s vest. Prosecutors said the beatings intensified after Nantwi bit a guard’s hand.
Fitzpatrick told jurors that Levi stomped on Nantwi’s head multiple times and participated in a cover-up by guards.
“The evidence of guilt here, ladies and gentlemen, is simple and it’s overwhelming. Stomp on someone’s head, you’re not trying to get their attention,” Fitzpatrick told jurors during closing arguments Monday. “You’ve divorced yourself from the human race.”
Levi’s attorney, Lewis G. Spicer, told jurors that his client did not use any force that resulted in Nantwi’s death.
“Jonah Levi did not kick Messiah Nantwi in the head,” Spicer said in his closing statement.
More than half a dozen others have pleaded guilty to lesser charges related to the beating and alleged cover-up.
Another former guard charged with murder, Caleb Blair, is scheduled to go on trial May 4, along with a fellow defendant will stand trial for first-degree manslaughter. Another guard charged with manslaughter is scheduled for trial June 1.
Nantwi entered the state prison system in May 2024 and had been serving a five-year sentence for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon related to an exchange of gunfire with police officers in 2021. He was shot multiple times, while the officers were uninjured.
Man charged in connection with some of ‘Texas Killing Fields’ deaths of dozens of women
HOUSTON (AP) — Prosecutors have charged a man allegedly connected to some of the deaths linked to the “Texas Killing Fields,” an area near Houston where the bodies of dozens of women were found beginning in the 1970s, saying they have solved a piece of a tragic mystery that has inspired books, movies and a Netflix documentary.
A stretch of land along Interstate 45 southeast of Houston was dubbed the “Texas Killing Fields” after the bodies of more than 30 women were found there. Investigators believe multiple perpetrators may be responsible for the deaths of mainly girls and young women.
A Galveston grand jury has indicted 61-year-old James Dolphs Elmore Jr. for his alleged role in the deaths of 16-year-old Laura Miller and 30-year-old Audrey Cook, whose bodies were found in the infamous area in 1986, Galveston County District Attorney Kenneth Cusick said Wednesday.
Court and jail records did not list an attorney who could speak on behalf of Elmore, who was arrested Tuesday and is being held without bond in the Galveston County Jail.
Miller and Cook were two of four young women whose bodies were found between 1984 and 1991 in a rural field off a desolate dirt road in League City, located about 28 miles (45 kilometers) southeast of Houston. The other two women were 25-year-old Heidi Fye-Villareal and 34-year-old Donna Prudhomme.
Cusick said after being appointed as district attorney in October that he would to take a harder look at these cases.
“Due to the concerted efforts of the law enforcement agencies in this county, this 40-year cycle of violence by these defendants against women, we’re trying to make headway on it, and I think we made significant headway yesterday in getting a charge against Mr. Elmore and having him arrested,” he said.
Elmore has been charged with manslaughter and felony tampering with evidence in the death of Miller and with tampering with evidence in Cook’s killing.
Cusick said prosecutors had also presented evidence to a grand jury seeking indictments against Clyde Hedrick, who authorities allege was the person responsible for the deaths of the four women and had been Elmore’s longtime friend.
But the 72-year-old Hedrick died by suicide last month before the grand jury came back with a decision in his case, Cusick said.
Hedrick was convicted of manslaughter in 2014 in the death of Ellen Beason, a young woman whose body was found in 1985 after going missing the previous years. He was released in 2022 and was still on parole at the time of his death, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Relatives of the victims on Wednesday said they were relieved an arrest had been made but expressed frustration it had taken so long.
“I think with everything that they had in the past, it’s inexcusable that Clyde Hedrick had the opportunity to die without never been indicted, convicted,” said Tim Miller, the father of Laura Miller. After his daughter’s death, Miller founded Texas EquuSearch, a nonprofit that helps look for missing people.
Miller said that in the last four years, he had met 30 times with Elmore who had shared information but he declined to elaborate on what Elmore told him because he didn’t want to jeopardize the case against him.
Nina Jager, Fye-Villareal’s niece, celebrated Elmore’s indictment but said it was also “bittersweet” because her grandfather had investigated the case and long believed Hedrick was responsible but his efforts were ignored by authorities.
“Maybe today is a result of all the work that he put in, all the searching the fields, going and talking to people and doing his own investigation because he just didn’t feel supported,” she said.
Cusick said he’s committed to continue working on these cases and that there are active leads that can be pursued “to bring to justice some people who may have escaped justice thus far,” he said.
Most of the deaths associated with the “Texas Killing Fields” remain unsolved.
In 2022, William Reece, an Oklahoma death row inmate, pleaded guilty to three murders in Texas, including those of 12-year-old Laura Smither and 17-year-old Jessica Cain in Galveston County, and 20-year-old Kelli Cox, who was from Denton in North Texas but whose body was found hundreds of miles away in Brazoria County, located next to Galveston County. He received life sentences for all three murders.
Texas
Judge rejects push to let churches make political endorsements
A federal judge in Tyler dismissed a lawsuit on Tuesday that sought to allow churches to endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status, dealing a blow to the Trump administration and other conservatives who have worked to eliminate the decades-old law barring nonprofits from supporting political office seekers.
Several Texas churches and national Christian groups brought the lawsuit challenging the Johnson Amendment, as it’s commonly known, arguing that their religious beliefs compelled them to speak to their congregations about all aspects of life, including electoral politics. Prohibiting electioneering from the pulpit in order to maintain their tax exemption was a violation of their First Amendment rights, the plaintiffs argued in their lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.
In the final days of the Biden administration, the Department of Justice sought to dismiss the case. The Trump administration not only revived it, but sided with the plaintiffs. The two sides asked the judge to approve a deal in which the IRS agreed to not enforce the Johnson Amendment against these churches.
This would have been a landmark ruling, empowering pastors to more aggressively push politics through the church and undercutting the requirement that has been a mainstay of the U.S. tax code since 1954. It is named after then-Texas Sen. Lyndon Johnson, who first proposed the law.
But District Judge Cam Barker ruled that he did not have the authority to approve the proposed consent judgement. He cited federal laws that prevent judges from blocking taxation that hasn’t yet occurred; plaintiffs typically must pay the taxes they want to challenge, and then sue for a refund.
Barker, a Trump appointee who previously served as Texas’ deputy solicitor general, rejected the argument that these restrictions did not apply because both sides had agreed to the judgement.
“Relief enjoining the Johnson Amendment’s enforcement or declaring that it does not apply to specific conduct would thus directly bear on the amount of tax that could be collected,” Barker wrote. “Put differently, if the plaintiffs here gave up their § 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, none of the harms they allege could occur.”
Barker noted that there are other avenues to challenge this issue, like by suing after the taxes are collected or disputing the loss of a tax-exempt status caused by a violation of the Johnson Amendment. But this was not the proper venue, no matter how much both sides wanted it to be, he wrote.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group that attempted to intervene in the case, lauded Tuesday’s ruling.
“We’re glad that the Johnson Amendment will remain a strong bulwark to stop religious extremists from exploiting houses of worship,” said Rachel Laser, the group’s president. “The proposed settlement agreement to exempt only houses of worship and not secular nonprofits would have been unfair and a violation of church-state separation.”
Even before the court could approve the judgment, some conservative Christian pastors began touting the victory and preparing to amp up their political rhetoric. Others, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said they would continue steering clear of candidate endorsements from the pulpit, no matter the outcome.
Enforcement of the Johnson Amendment has long been lax, in Democratic and Republican administrations alike. The Texas Tribune and ProPublica identified at least 20 examples over a two-year period of churches violating the statute, more than the IRS had investigated in the past decade.
New York
Former prison guard found guilty of manslaughter in an inmate’s fatal beating
UTICA, N.Y. (AP) — A former corrections officer was found guilty of manslaughter Wednesday in the fatal beating of an inmate at Mid-State Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
The jury in Utica, New York, also found Jonah Levi guilty of gang assault and conspiracy in the death Messiah Nantwi on March 1, 2025, and the subsequent coverup. The jurors acquitted him of second-degree murder.
“This verdict sets an important precedent — not just for Messiah, but for everyone who is incarcerated,” Patterson Nantwi, Messiah Nantwi’s father, said in a written statement. “No one should have to fear losing their life at the hands of those who are supposed to care for them.”
Levi was the first guard to go on trial in Nantwi’s death.
“The first step in justice for Messiah is complete with some work to go,” Onondaga County District Attorney William J. Fitzpatrick said in an email. “I thank the hard working jurors for their diligence and am very pleased with the verdict.”
A message was left seeking comment from Levi’s attorney.
Nantwi, 22, was struck dozens of times by guards who used their fists, boots and batons. He died due to massive head trauma and other injuries to his body from the beatings, according to prosecutors.
The beating occurred during a wildcat strike by many officers that forced the governor to send in National Guard members to help keep order. Nantwi’s death also came several months after Robert Brooks was fatally beaten at a separate prison just across the road from Mid-State.
Levi was part of an emergency response team called to Nantwi’s housing unit to help National Guard members who sought backup after Nantwi was uncooperative during a prisoner headcount. A witness testified that Nantwi calmed down once backup was called.
Corrections officers who responded to the call began beating Nantwi in his room after he refused to be handcuffed and grabbed a guard’s vest. Prosecutors said the beatings intensified after Nantwi bit a guard’s hand.
Fitzpatrick told jurors that Levi stomped on Nantwi’s head multiple times and participated in a cover-up by guards.
“The evidence of guilt here, ladies and gentlemen, is simple and it’s overwhelming. Stomp on someone’s head, you’re not trying to get their attention,” Fitzpatrick told jurors during closing arguments Monday. “You’ve divorced yourself from the human race.”
Levi’s attorney, Lewis G. Spicer, told jurors that his client did not use any force that resulted in Nantwi’s death.
“Jonah Levi did not kick Messiah Nantwi in the head,” Spicer said in his closing statement.
More than half a dozen others have pleaded guilty to lesser charges related to the beating and alleged cover-up.
Another former guard charged with murder, Caleb Blair, is scheduled to go on trial May 4, along with a fellow defendant will stand trial for first-degree manslaughter. Another guard charged with manslaughter is scheduled for trial June 1.
Nantwi entered the state prison system in May 2024 and had been serving a five-year sentence for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon related to an exchange of gunfire with police officers in 2021. He was shot multiple times, while the officers were uninjured.
