Katharina Buczek
The Millers did contact the police, but law enforcement considered Laura a runaway and reassured them that she would phone home.
As months passed by, though, it became clear that Laura was not returning home on her own. So, Tim began reading up on similar murders in the region and even started to conduct his own searches.
“I knew in my heart that Laura wasn’t coming home alive. I was afraid she was never going to be located,” he said to the FBI.
Laura’s Body Was Discovered
Then, over a year later, Laura’s body was discovered in a patch of land close to Calder Road– the same region where the remains of another young woman, Heidi Fye, were found in April of 1984.
This obviously devastated Tim and the rest of Laura’s family. But as time continued to pass, he only became more frustrated– because Laura’s killer was never found or brought to justice.
He had also voiced his upset with law enforcement and believed investigators were not doing enough to track down his daughter’s killer. So, in 2000, Tim decided to take the case into his own hands.
Texas EquuSearch (TES) Is Born
That year, he established a volunteer organization known as Texas EquuSearch (TES) with the sole mission of helping families locate missing loved ones. He could not bear to imagine another family going through the same turmoil he had after Laura’s disappearance and murder.
“At that moment, I made a promise to God that I would never leave a family alone,” Tim told the FBI.
Since its inception, TES has helped work on over two thousand cases. The organization has also discovered over four hundred living people and over three hundred bodies.
