James Elmore Jr. will spend the next 20 years in state prison for his role in the 1984 death of League City teenager Laura Miller.

A Galveston County jury handed down the maximum sentence Thursday, Sept. 3, after deliberating roughly 30 minutes during the punishment phase of Elmore's manslaughter trial, Houston Public Media reported. The sentence caps the first criminal conviction tied to the Texas Killing Fields, the stretch of land near Calder Road and Ervin Street where the bodies of four women were found between 1984 and 1991.

Elmore, 61, was convicted Wednesday, Sept. 2, of felony manslaughter and using a deadly weapon in the death of Miller, who was 16 when she disappeared Sept. 10, 1984. Her remains were recovered 17 months later in a field off Calder Road.

Prosecutors argued Elmore prepared a vial of cocaine for his longtime associate Clyde Hedrick to give to Miller, causing her fatal overdose, and later helped move her body.

The sentencing range was two to 20 years. Jurors chose the maximum.

Before deliberating Thursday, jurors heard from two women who described encounters in which Elmore and Hedrick followed and attempted to grab them when they were young girls, according to Houston Public Media. Detective Larry Williamson of the Texas City Police Department also testified about images of child sex abuse material found on Elmore's phone after a search warrant was served at his residence in April. The Houston Chronicle reported prosecutors presented evidence of more than a dozen such images.

During closing arguments, Galveston County Assistant District Attorney Katelyn Willis asked the jury: "What number do you put on the exploitation in the stealing of children's innocence? … No number brings back Laura Miller."

Defense attorney Bill Agnew urged leniency, telling jurors Elmore had helped solve one of the county's oldest cold cases.

Tim Miller, Laura's father and founder of the search-and-rescue organization Texas EquuSearch, was visibly emotional after the guilty verdict Wednesday. Speaking to KPRC 2 that day, he said the 42-year wait for accountability had been "difficult at best."

As we reported Wednesday, the two-day trial ended with the jury returning a guilty verdict after about an hour of deliberation.

Elmore first contacted Tim Miller in 2022 when his own daughter was missing. He reached out to Texas EquuSearch and said he wanted to "get something off his chest," according to ABC13. Tim Miller testified he paid Elmore approximately $33,000 over four years for information about his daughter's death.

Hedrick, the prime suspect in the four Calder Road deaths, died by suicide in March 2026 before he was scheduled to face a grand jury. He had been convicted of manslaughter in 2014 in the death of Ellen Beason, whose body was found in 1985, and was released in 2022, according to the Associated Press.

The Calder Road field is part of a larger area along the I-45 corridor between southeast Houston and Galveston where the bodies of at least 30 women have been recovered over the decades. Most of those deaths remain unsolved.

Under Texas law, Elmore will be eligible for parole after serving half his sentence.

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