Texas Killing Fields Victims Part One: Victims 1-7

The Texas Killing Fields have been described as "a perfect place for killing somebody and getting away with it." A place where "if you yelled, no one would necessarily hear you. And if you ran, there wouldn't necessarily be anywhere to go."

It is an area bordering the Calder Oil Field, which is a 25-acre patch of land situated a mile from Interstate Highway 45. It is a place where, since the early 1970s, 30 bodies of murder victims have been found. Most of the victims were aged 12–25 years. Also, many young girls have disappeared from this area and their bodies are still missing.

It is believed that many of the murders are the work of multiple serial killers.  Some shared similar physical features. Despite efforts by the League City, Texas police, along with the assistance of the FBI, very few of these murders have been solved.

1

Collette Anise Wilson was born in Texas on November 4th, 1957 to Claire Wilson and dentist and Thomas Owen Wilson. Besides being a dentist, Thomas had been a Lieutenant (junior grade) in the Navy. Together, Claire and Thomas had 10 children.

On June 17th, 1971, Collette was a 13 year old, 5-foot-2, 100 pound girl with long black hair, blue eyes and 9 siblings. It was the summer following 7th grade and she had played the clarinet at a band camp at Dulles High School in Sugar Land. At 12:30 p.m. her band director, Charlie Mays, dropped her off at Highway 6 and County Road 99.  Her mother arrived at 12:36 p.m., with Collette's younger sister Alice in tow. She saw a car parked alongside the road with a man inside, but no sign of Collette.

Collette had learned to go to a friend’s house if she were concerned or impatient.  So, her mom drove down the road to the designated friend’s house, but they had not seen Colette. The mom was starting to get worried and drove back to the intersection where she was supposed to pick Colette up.

So they called all her friends that lived nearby, but no one had seen her. There was no sign of Collette and the family knew something  must be terribly wrong. However, the authorities initially labeled her a runaway. Collette's family decided to take matters into their own hands. They organized volunteers who searched the area for the next three weeks. The family also knelt around Colette's bed and prayed every day.

2

Brenda Kaye Jones was a student at Holy Rosary Catholic School. She was born on November 18th, 1956 in Galveston, Texas to Arthur Tyler Jones and Evelyn Regina Sanders Jones. Evelyn was employed as Custodian at Galveston Independent School District. The family was a loving and close-knit one that lived at 31-F Cedar Terrace.

On July 1st, 1971, Brenda was 14 years old when she disappeared while on her way to visit her sick aunt, Jennie Sealy, at Galveston General Hospital. Her family was poor and didn't have a car so she had to take the bus there and back home. Brenda made it to her destination and then was dropped off back at her usual spot, which was just a couple of blocks from her house. Several people on the bus, including the bus driver, attested to that fact. That was the last time Brenda would be seen alive.

The next day, a painting crew was working far above the Galveston Harbor. It was 10:30am when a few men noticed something was floating in the water just off the Pelican Island bridge.

Brenda's nude body was found floating in Galveston Bay, a slip crammed into her mouth. Her wrists and ankles were bound together with the laces from her sandals.

The coroner surmised that Brenda had been kept alive all night and then strangled by her own laces. (She could have been shot instead. I read a few places that claimed her cause of death was a head wound.) It was also theorized that she had been dumped from a pier or boat due to the lack of damage to her body.

Brenda was laid to rest at the Galveston Memorial Cemetery.

3

Rhonda Renee Johnson was born on December 16th, 1956
Houston, Harris County, Texas to Charles E. Johnson Sr and Betty Huey. Betty abandoned the family when Rhonda was only 11 years old. Rhonda became the glue that held the family together. Music and the ocean was her escape. She loved Janis Joplin. She also would hitchhike to Galveston to surf.

4

Sharon Lynn Shaw was born on Aug 11th, 1957 in Mobile, Alabama. She had street smarts and was a natural leader. She was crazy about surfing. Her aunt compared her to a fish and said that she could have been a professional surfer.

Both girls were described as tomboys and totally fearless. They also were close as sisters.

On Wednesday, August 4th, 1971, 13 year-old Sharon and 14 year-old Rhonda, were last seen, when they left Webster, Texas, to make a day-trip to Galveston Bay beach, about 25 miles away. They had went there with their friend, Glenda Willis, to go to the Wix water ski school, but the wind had made the bayou too rough for skiing. Glenda later saw the girls at the beach, but they weren't ready to go home. So while Glenda was packing up her car she watched as the other two girls headed back to Wix and the island party scene on the shores of Offatts Bayou. That was the last time she saw them.

Now the girls at first were considered runaways because they had talked before about wanting to hitch hike to California where the "good waves" were.

5

Gloria Ann Gonzales was born on October 2nd, 1952 in Houston, Harris County, Texas. She was a bookkeeper at the Houston Kroger grocery store.

October 28th, 1971 was the first day of her vacation. She was last seen walking near her apartment on Jacquelyn Street in Houston. Her roommate reported her missing when she failed to come home. 

6

Debbie Catherine Ackerman had one brown eye and one green eye. She was the type of person that was real bubbly, outgoing, laughed. She loved to surf and was a champion water skier and island native who trained at Wix Ski School on Offatts Bayou.

Debbie was born on June 23rd, 1956 in Galveston, Texas to Joseph Frank Ackerman and Deomeria Marqarete Guisti. Joseph worked as a semiskilled machine shop. He was also was enlisted in the United States Army during World War II.

7

Maria Johnson was born in 1956. She was really sweet and quiet. However, once you got her going she was hard to get quiet, too. She was a pretty teen who moved to Galveston after her parents divorced and quickly became Debbie’s best friend. Maria also had a boyfriend. His name was Bob Forester and he was two years her senior and a local ski jumper. Maria was an avid water skier herself.

On Monday, November 15th of 1971, Debbie and Maria were both 15 and students at Ball High School. Debbie's parents had agreed that she could stay at Maria's house for the three day weekend. The two girls hung out at the mall and then went to a Baskin-Robbins store and bought ice cream. Baskin- Robbins was a they frequented often, usually several times a day everyday. A classmate, who was also working at the Baskin-Robbins talked with Debbie and Maria. They stated that they were going to hitchhike to Huston. The classmate then watched as the two girls walked outside and attempted to hitch a ride from the vehicles that passed by. Soon a man in a white van with a peace sticker on the back window pulled up. It seemed to the classmate that the girls knew the man in the van. The classmate looked on as the van's back door opened and Debbie and Maria climbed in then drove away. That was the last time the pair would be seen alive.

On November 17th, 1971, Debbie and Maria's bodies were found nude from the waste down in Turner's Bayou. Both girl's hands had been bound with shoe laces and they both had been shot in the head with a .38-caliber pistol at close range.

"There is a mother who misses you
sadly,

And finds the time long since you went,

And I think of you daily and hourly,

But I try to be brave and content.

But the tears I shed in silence,

And I breathe a sigh of regret,

For you were mine, And I remember,

Though all the world forget.

Sadly Missed By: Mother, Father, Wayne and Glenn."

On November 23, 1971, a man looking for buried treasure stumbled upon Gloria Gonzales' severed remains near Addicks Reservoir. Investigators surmised that animals had detached her head from her body. One of the things they found weird was that her body still had some flesh on it and the head did not. There was a four inch piece of wood cinched around her neck with a two foot cotton cord. The cause of death was thought to be that of ligature strangulation. (However, i read a few different places that it was blunt force trauma to the head.)

There had also been a human molar found there that did not belong to Gloria. Investigators returned to the scene to search further and found Collette Wilson's nude body with a gunshot wound to the skull near the Addicks Reservoir. The body was only 35 yards from where they had found the tooth a few days earlier. Her dad identified the tooth as Collette's because he had performed her dental work himself. There was no sign of her clarinet.

Collette Wilson's  father, Thomas, lived only four years after her death. He had become obsessed with solving the case. He died of a heart attack at age 42. 

Collette's youngest brother also died 4 years after her death. He was accidentally run over and killed in their driveway by a friend who didn't know he was behind the car. When he tried to back out of the driveway, he crushed the child.

On January 3rd, 1972, two boys fishing in Clear Lake discovered what they thought was a sports ball floating in the water. On closer inspection it turned out to be a human skull with a crucifix wrapped around the jaw bone. Six weeks later, searchers discovered the rest of the body, along with that of another, in a marsh near the lake.  

On February 17th, 1972, dental records, along with Sharon Shaw's mother positively identifying the crucifix as her daughter's, confirmed that the skull and body belonged to Sharon. The other body found in the marsh was positively identified as Rhonda Johnson. There was no evidence of trauma found on either of the girl's bodies. The cause of death of both girl's were undetermined but they were classified as a homicide. (I also read where they had been bound at the feet and hands and shot in the back of the head.)