ingly secret information Elmore knew about Laura came from other men, now dead, who committed the crime, including Hedrick.

The jury began deliberating at about 3:30 p.m.

Wednesday testimony from Tim Miller and Elmore's sisters

Prosecutors began the day by continuing their questioning of Tim Miller, Laura's father and the founder of Texas EquuSearch, the renowned search and recovery group. They showed the jury a 90-minute video, commissioned by Miller, of an interview he did with Elmore.

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In the video, Elmore discussed the night of Laura's death in September 1984 and said he handed Hedrick a  rig  filled with cocaine. In Elmore's telling, Hedrick gave the cocaine to Laura, causing her to overdose - though Elmore denied seeing Hedrick inject Laura with the drugs.

On the day of the interview, Elmore told Miller that Laura died inside Hedrick's former home on Nevada Street in Dickinson. The blue house was just two blocks from Miller's former home on the same street.

Elmore said he also helped move Laura's body sometime within the week of her death.

After prosecutors rested, Elmore's defense attorney called Elmore's two sisters to the stand. Both sisters testified that Elmore didn't know Hedrick in 1984 and wasn't living in Galveston County at the time. The sisters said they didn't meet Hedrick until the 1990s, and said their brother would have met him around the same time.

Both sisters said they believed Elmore had made up the story he told Miller in order to scam money from Miller.

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 He's ruthless when it comes to money,  said his younger sister, Pamela Croft.  He's done some pretty shrewd stuff. What he's done here is the lowest of the low. He concocted that story. 

During his testimony, Miller said he paid Elmore up to $33,000 over the course of four years. Miller said he hoped to keep Elmore close as he built a case against Hedrick and that he was frustrated that police didn't act on Elmore's story in 2022. Miller also said he came to consider Elmore a friend.

Prosecutors questioned the sisters' timelines and revealed that one of them had lied on the stand when she denied having any criminal convictions in her history.

Assistant District Attorney Kate Willis also pointed out that Elmore began making his confessions before he received any money from Miller.

Question of whether Elmore had a plea deal

In a separate matter, taken up outside the view of the jury, lawyers discussed whether Elmore had at one time reached a plea agreement with the district attorney's office.

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Jessica Ebbs, a Galveston County defense attorney who at one point represented Elmore, showed the court an email exchange that she had with a former prosecutor, with a copy of an immunity offer attached to it.

Ebbs said she believed that the DA's office had a copy of the agreement, but reached out to Agnew on Tuesday while she was listening to court proceedings through a live stream. During Tuesday's testimony, a Hitchcock police detective said that Elmore had never signed a plea agreement.

Ebbs said that document didn't have explicit terms, but that she reached a verbal agreement with investigators and the DA's office during an interview he gave police in 2022.

 I was assured that as long as he did not put the needle in Laura Miller's arm, he was safe from prosecution,  Ebbs said.

Ebbs was never questioned in front of the jury. District Judge Jeth Jones didn't make any ruling regarding Ebbs' claims and Agnew didn't bring it up during his closing arguments.