The Texas Killing Fields: League City Jane Doe & Janet Doe Identified
Tags: Jane Doe, True Crime, Missing Persons, Crime

Photo by: Shopify Partners

League City, Texas, is an unassuming town with 83,000 residents nestled between Houston and Galveston. But it is also part of the site many call the Texas Killing Fields.

For several decades, League City Jane Doe and League City Janet Doe remained identified, their remains having been found on Calder Road in League City, Texas.

League City Jane Doe

Jane Doe was the first of the two to be found on February 2, 1986. She’d been in the field for at least six weeks before she was discovered. Today, we can call her Audrey Lee Cook.

Cook was originally found just off Calder Road in a field by some boys riding their bikes. She was in close proximity to the body of another woman.

Cook was born on November 25, 1955, and was from Memphis. She’d lived in other Texas cities, including Houston, and she worked at a golf cart company for a period of time. She apparently had strong mechanical skills, as she also worked as a mechanic for National Rent-A-Car before her death.

Cook’s family apparently last heard from her in December of 1985, and an investigator had come to Houston on behalf of the family to look for her. Unfortunately, the investigator was not able to present any significant finding. According to news sources, Cook was never formally reported missing.

League City Janet Doe

On September 8, 1991, the skeletal remains of League City Janet Doe were also discovered along Calder Road by people riding horses. Her cause of death seemingly involved a blunt instrument.

League City Janet Doe has been identified as Donna Prudhomme. Prudhomme was born on April 23, 1957, and was from Port Arthur, Texas. She had also lived in Beaumont, Austin, Seabrook, and Nassau Bay. She’d last been seen in July of 1991.

Like League City Jane Doe, Janet Doe had apparently not been officially reported missing.

How Jane and Janet Doe Were Identified

Forensic DNA analysis allowed Jane and Janet Doe to be identified. Investigators performed thorough searches of both women’s ancestry with an online database to build a family tree based on DNA.

Of course, there is still a lot we do not know about the newly identified women. Who killed them, and how are their deaths connected to other deaths in the immediate area?

The Other League City Victims

Cook and Prudhomme are not the only women to have been found along that Calder Road field.

In fact, a woman named Laura was found in the same field at the same time as Cook, on a piece of earth on which her dad claims grass never grows anymore. She was 16 years old and had been missing from a corner store for over a year.

In the same field, Heidi Fye was discovered two years earlier after a dog brought skeletal remains to his home. Like the other women found in the field, Fye had seemingly been killed elsewhere and dumped at the site of Calder Road and Ervin Street.

In total, about 30 women have been killed in the region known as the “Texas Killing Fields.” The remains of several women have been found in fields along Calder Road. Also noticeable is that many of the girls and women killed in the area were seemingly dumped or abducted in pairs.

If you believe you know anything about the deaths of Audrey Cook, Donna Prudhomme, or any other victim associated with this story, contact the League City Police Department Cold Case tip line at (281) 338–8220.