One week before Christmas in 1986, Tim Miller dug a hole in the League City oil field where his 16-year-old daughter's body was found 10 months prior.
He was there to put a cross in the ground to mark Laura Miller's memory, more than two years after she first disappeared.
While he was digging, he found one of her bones and asked his daughter for her forgiveness.
"That place made me crazy," Miller said. "I almost lived out there in that damned field."
Miller, 79, took the stand late Tuesday afternoon to testify in the first criminal trial over his daughter's death. James Dolphs Elmore, 61, was charged in March with manslaughter and accused of providing another man, Clyde Hedrick, a lethal dose of cocaine that was used to kill the teenager.
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Elmore and Hedrick were the Millers' neighbors in Dickinson in the 1980s, but Tim Miller said his life wouldn't become knowingly intertwined with Elmore's until 2022.
In the first part of his testimony - he's scheduled to return to the stand on Wednesday - Miller talked about how Laura's death led to his life's work and how that service in turn led to Elmore's arrest. Hedrick, whom Miller had long believed was responsible for killing Laura, died in March.
Miller founded Texas EquuSearch, a search and recovery operation dedicated to helping look for missing people, in 2000. Miller testified that his group has worked in 42 states and 11 countries and recovered the bodies of more than 400 missing people. Countless more have been found alive, he said.
"It is Laura's legacy," Miller said.
In April 2022, Miller said Elmore left a message saying that he wanted "to get some things off his chest." When Miller called back, Elmore said two things: that he wanted to talk about Laura and that his own daughter was missing. Miller said the issue with Elmore's daughter was settled quickly after the two men met. She was found safe.
Soon after, Elmore drove Miller to a field off Calder Road in League City, where crosses had been set up in memory of Laura and other girls found in the Texas Killing Fields.
Miller said he didn't initially believe that Elmore knew anything about the deaths. "Over the years, we got so many crazy leads and tips and psychics," he said.
But he was convinced when Elmore drove him directly to Clyde Hedrick's old home in Dickinson. Hedrick lived two houses down from the Millers when they lived on Nevada Street. The family moved from there to League City just days before Laura disappeared. Elmore drove to a nearby cemetery and told Miller he knew that's where Laura used to hang out and smoke cigarettes. That was a fact that nobody else knew, Miller said.
The spark started a relationship between the two men, Miller said. He said he brought Elmore to FBI Special Agent Richard Rennison, a longtime investigator in the Killing Fields cases. He also said that he continued to meet with Elmore personally, as many as 40 times, and that Elmore would occasionally offer new information but had difficulty remembering things. Miller chalked up the faults to Elmore's history of drug use.
Miller testified that Elmore had expressed interest in a reward that was advertised for information connected to Laura's death. He said he ultimately paid Elmore as much as $33,000 in the name of building a case against Hedrick.
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"We were finally going to get Clyde Hedrick indicted," Miller said. "The main person I wanted was Clyde."
Miller testified through sobs that Elmore claimed he watched Hedrick cover Laura with a blue checkered western shirt - another detail that hadn't been known to the public at the time.
He denied that he paid Elmore money to make false claims against Hedrick and said he wanted to keep up his relationship with Elmore because he might have information about more missing women. Miller said that he wanted to see both men charged with crimes related to Laura's death.
"I wanted James Elmore on manslaughter, for mixing up the dope and giving the needle to Clyde," Miller said. "He didn't say 'Clyde grabbed it and took it away.' He told me 'I handed it to Clyde.'"
Officials had said they planned for Elmore's trial to last a week. By the end of Tuesday, all six of the witnesses whom prosecutors said they planned to call had taken the stand. Miller's testimony on Tuesday ended with prosecutors alluding to a 90-minute videotape Miller created of Elmore's testimony. Prosecutors indicated they planned to show the video on Wednesday.
If convicted of manslaughter, Elmore could face up to 20 years in prison.
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This article originally published at Tim Miller, Laura Miller's father, testifies in first Texas Killing Fields trial over her death.