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Dean Corll

Dean Corll (December 24, 1939 – August 8 1973) was an American serial killer who, together with two younger accomplices named David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, committed the Houston Mass Murders in Houston, Texas. The trio is believed to be responsible for the murders of at least 27 boys, the crimes only coming to light when Corll was shot and killed by his accomplice Henley.

Early life

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana to Mary Robinson and Arnold Edwin Corll, Corll was moved to Pasadena, Texas when he was 11 following the breakdown of his parents' marriage. He was regarded as a good student at school and well behaved, although a heart condition kept him out of physical education. Corll was drafted into the military in 1964, where it is thought he first realized he was homosexual, but he was given a military discharge the following year so that he could help his mother run her candy business. For this reason, he was given the nickname "the Candy Man" by the media when his crimes were eventually uncovered. He eventually took over the business and invited local children round to the store for free candy. A number of local people commented that it was not normal that Corll always seemed to hang around with youngsters, in particular teenaged boys. However, no one made the connection with the rash of missing youths that indicated Corll's more deadly activities in the coming years.

Victims

All of the victims were young males, the youngest aged 13. The eldest was 21-year-old Jeffrey Konen, Corll's first known victim, who vanished on September 25, 1970, while hitchiking from the University of Texas to his parents' home in Houston. The majority of victims were in their mid-teens. Most had been abducted from a low-income neighborhood in Houston: one, 15-year-old Homer Garcia, met Henley at his driving school education class and was invited to Corll's for "a party". Many were listed by police as runaways despite the anxious protests of parents who insisted that their boys would not run away from home. Quite often the victims, alone or in pairs, were invited to Corll's parties. Several were friends of either Henley or Brooks and two, Malley Winkle and Billy Baulch, had actually worked for Corlls candy business in the late 1960's. Listed below are the victims the police were able to identify: all had either been shot or strangled or a combination of both

September 25th, 1970 :Jeffrey Konen, 21

December 15th, 1970: Danny Yates, 15

December 15th, 1970: James Glass, 15

January 30th, 1971: Donald Waldrop, 17

January 30th, 1971: Jerry Waldrop, 13

May 29th, 1971: David Hilligeist, 13

May 29th, 1971: Malley Winkle, 16

August 17th, 1971: Ruben Watson, 17

March 24th, 1972: Frank Aguirre, 18

May 21st, 1972: Johnny DeLome, 16

May 21st, 1972: Billy Baulch, 17

October 2nd, 1972: Wally Simoneaux, 14

October 2nd, 1972: Richard Hembree, 13

December 22nd, 1972: Mark Scott, 18

June 4th, 1973: Billy Ray Lawrence, 15

June 15th, 1973: Ray Blackburn, 20

July 7th, 1973: Homer Garcia, 15

July 19th, 1973: Tony Baulch, 15

July 25th, 1973: Marty Jones, 18

July 25th, 1973: Charles Cary Cobble, 17

August 3rd, 1973: James Dreymala, 13

Discovery

At approximately 3 a.m. on August 8, 1973, Henley, then aged 17, went to Corll's house accompanied by a boy named Tim Kerley, who was supposed to be the next victim. Also with them was Rhonda Williams, 15, who was Henley's girlfriend. Brooks was not present at the time. Corll was furious that Henley had brought a girl along, but eventually he calmed down and the four of them settled down with a little drinking. Soon Henley, Kerley and Williams all passed out and awoke to find themselves tied up and Corll waving a .22-caliber pistol around, angrily threatening to kill them all. Henley calmed Corll, and the older man eventually put down the gun and released Henley. Corll then insisted that, while he would rape and kill Kerley, Henley would do likewise to Rhonda Williams.

Henley refused and soon a fight broke out between him and Corll. It ended when Henley grabbed the pistol and shot Corll six times, killing him instantly. After releasing the other two youngsters, Henley called the police. While they all waited outside the house, Henley told Kerley that "I could have gotten $200 for you", this apparently being the fee he was paid by Corll to recruit victims. In custody, Henley explained that he and Brooks had helped procure boys for Corll, who had raped and murdered them. Police were a little skeptical at first, as they assumed they were just dealing with the one homicide — of Corll — as a result of drug-fuelled fisticuffs that had turned deadly. Henley was quite insistent, however, and police soon accepted that there was something to his claims, especially when they found a torture board at Corll's house, consisting of a large wooden board with handcuffs in each corner. There were also a number of dildos and lengths of rope, as well as a wooden crate with what appeared to be airholes. (Human hair was found inside it.)

Later that day, accompanied by his father, Brooks presented himself at the police station, and he was promptly questioned concerning the allegations made by Henley. The police went to the boatshed in Southwest Houston, which Corll had rented since November 17, 1970, where Henley said that bodies of most of the victims could be found. They began digging through the soft earth and soon uncovered the body of a teenaged boy. They continued excavating, and the remains of more dead boys were uncovered, several wrapped in plastic. Some had been shot, others strangled, the ligature still wrapped tightly around their necks. Some had been castrated. Their pubic hairs were plucked out one at a time. Objects were inserted into their rectums, and glass rods were shoved into their urethrae and smashed. Genitals were removed, and all had been sodomized. Eventually, 17 corpses were uncovered at the shed. Following Henley's directions, police excavated a number of other locations, including Crystal Beach, located along the Bolivar Peninsula, in nearby eastern Galveston County. The remains of 10 more bodies were uncovered, making a total of 27 victims. It is interesting to note that Henley initially insisted that there were two more bodies to be found inside the boatshed, and he also insisted that the bodies of a further two boys were buried at High Island beach in 1972. At the time, however, it was the worst case of serial murder (in terms of number of victims) in the United States, exceeding the 25 murders attributed to Juan Corona from California. The Houston Mass Murders, as they became known, hit the headlines all over the world, and even the Pope commented on the atrocious nature of the crimes and offered sympathy to relatives of those who had died. Families of the victims — including two who had lost two sons each to Corll — were highly critical of the Houston Police Department, which had been so quick to list the missing boys as runaways and not worthy of investigation.

In 2008, Sharon Derrick, a forensic anthropologist with the medical examiner's office in Houston, released digital images of three victims that had still not been identified thirty-five years later. They were listed as ML73-3349, ML73-3356 and ML73-3378.

References and further reading

John K. Gurwell. Mass Murder in Houston. Cordovan Press, 1974.
David Hanna. Harvest of Horror: Mass Murder in Houston. Belmont Tower, 1975.
Brian Lane and Wilfred Gregg. The New Encyclopedia Of Serial Killers. Headline Book Publishing, (Revised Edition 1996). ISBN 0-7472-5361-7
Jack Olsen. The Man With The Candy: The Story of the Houston Mass Murders. Simon & Schuster, 1974. ISBN 0-7432-1283-5