Katharina Buczek
What Came Of Laura’s Case?
Even while working on TES, Tim never stopped thinking about his daughter’s case. Moreover, he believes he knows who was behind her murder: Clyde Hedrick, his next-door neighbor.
In the death of twenty-nine-year-old Ellen Rae Simpson Beason, Hedrick was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. However, he has vehemently denied having any involvement in Laura’s disappearance or subsequent death.
Yet, Beason’s body was discovered in July of 1984– just two months before Laura Miller disappeared. At that time, Hedrick was also convicted of abusing a corpse– earning him a one-year jail sentence.
In 2014, though, Beason’s death was finally ruled as a homicide. In turn, Hedrick was then convicted of involuntary manslaughter– serving out eight years of a twenty-year sentence. Then, he was released via good behavior.
Hedrick did have a long history of violent crimes and has allegedly admitted to killing four or five women in the past, per ABC13.
And Tim Miller believed that his daughter, Laura, had been one of those victims. In 2014, he filed a wrongful death lawsuit against next-door neighbor Hedrick. And this past July 2022, Tim won the suit and was awarded twenty-four million dollars in damages and liability.
Apparently, the motion was granted by default after Hedrick failed to appear in court despite receiving notice of the hearing.
Even after winning that civil suit, though, Hedrick has never been formally charged with Laura’s murder.
According to Tim, that lawsuit was also about way more than the money. It was about a father ensuring that his daughter and what happened to her were never forgotten.
“I filed the wrongful death suit to let Clyde Hedrick know that, ‘Clyde, I’m still here, I am still here, and I’m not going to quit until the day I die,” Tim said to the press following the hearing.
