There’s a stretch of land in southern Texas known as the Texas Killing Fields. The 25 acres of land, located near I-45 in League City, came by its name honestly. Dating back to the 1970s, dozens of corpses have been recovered from the area — almost all of them women between the ages of 12 and 25. No one knows if the murders are related because most of the murders have ever been solved. While it’s highly unlikely that all of the murders are related it is believed at least some of them are, which means this single wooded area somehow became the dumping ground for either multiple serial killers, or dozens of unrelated murderers. At least that’s how the legend goes.

Regardless, it’s a pretty creepy place — so, while driving to Galveston on our way to board our cruise, Susan and I decided to go there.

The internet’s a weird place, and with a couple of clicks you can find the GPS coordinates where some of the bodies were found. Some of the 25 acres appear to have been cleared and turned into a housing addition; if houses haven’t been built directly on top of some of the locations, they certainly overlook them. Just around the corner from the field is the Magnolia Creek Baptist Church. Behind the church is a memorial site for four of the victims. We parked in the church parking lot and walked into the field to see the memorials. I’m sure we were far from the first people to have done this.

After we left I did some digging into the facts surrounding the Texas Killing Fields and while the actual number of victims is a bit muddled, the memorials — and the people they honor — were very real.

The Texas Killing Fields are a bit like the Bermuda Triangle, as lots of unrelated incidents over a vast amount of time have been lumped together. According to the legend, the Killing Fields were a dumping ground for multiple serial killers. But once you start reading through the field’s Wikipedia entry, you’ll find multiple cases where women were abducted or simply disappeared and their bodies were never found. One of the victims listed on the Wikipedia page, Lynette Bibbs, was found more than 70 miles away. Of the four women memorialized behind the church, two were in their 30s (not “12-25”), and one was found six years after the other three. Look — I’m not saying the outskirts of Houston are the safest place on the planet for young women to be exploring on their own late at night, but it does seem like one has to cast a pretty wide net to link the majority of these murders, abductions, and disappearances. I haven’t done the math, but statistically speaking I’m guessing based on the crime rate in Houston it wouldn’t be that incredible if 50 women were the subject of violent crimes in a specific area over the past 50 years, especially when random disappearances that took place 50+ miles away are thrown into the equation.

If you want to learn more about the Texas Killing Fields, there’s a 2011 film based on the legend along with a 2022 Netflix docuseries called Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields that explores the events. There’s also the Wikipedia article and this helpful OddStops.com entry.