Dean Corll
Elmer Wayne Henley
David Owen Brooks
"The Candy Man"
Dean Corll
Indiana born, on Christmas Eve of 1939, Dean Corll grew up in a
combative home, his parents quarreling constantly. They were divorced while
Corll was still an infant, then remarried after World War II, but Dean's father
provided no stabilizing influence, regarding his children with thinly-veiled
distaste, resorting to harsh punishment for the smallest infractions. When the
couple separated a second time, Corll and his younger brother were left with a
series of sitters, their mother working to support the family on her own.
Rheumatic fever left Dean with a heart condition, resulting in frequent absence
from school, and he seemed to welcome the change when his mother remarried,
moving the family to Texas. A part-time business making candy soon expanded to
become their livelihood, and Corll was generous with samples as he sought to win
new friends. In 1964, despite his heart condition, Corll was drafted into
military service, where he displayed the first signs of flagrant homosexuality.
On turning thirty, in December 1969, he seemed to undergo a sudden shift in
personality, becoming hypersensitive and glum. He had begun to spend his time
with teenage boys, like David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, passing out
free candy all around, hosting glue and paint sniffing parties at his apartment
in Pasadena, a suburb of Houston. At the same time, he displayed a sadistic
streak, leaning toward bondage in his sexual relationships with young men and
boys. On one occasion, during 1970, Brooks entered the apartment to find Corll
nude, with two naked boys strapped to a homemade torture rack. Embarrassed,
Corll released his playmates and offered Brooks a car in return for his promise
of silence. Later, as his passion turned to bloodlust, Corll would use Brooks
and Henley as procurers, offering $200 per head for fresh victims.
The date of Corll's first murder is uncertain. Brooks would place it sometime in
mid-1970, the victim identified as college student Jeffrey Konen, picked up
while hitchhiking. Most of Corll's victims were drawn from a seedy Houston
neighborhood known as the Heights, their disappearances blithely ignored by
police accustomed to dealing with runaways. Two were friends and neighbors of
Henley, delivered on order to Corll, and sometimes the candy man killed two
victims at once. In December 1970, he murdered 14-year-old James Glass and
15-year-old David Yates in one sitting. The following month, brothers Donald and
Jerry Waldrop joined the missing list, with Wally Simineaux and Richard Embry
slaughtered in October 1972. Another pair of brothers -- Billy and Mike Baulch
-- were killed at separate times, in May 1972 and July 1973, respectively.
Corll's youngest known victim was a nine-year-old neighbor, residing across the
street from Dean's apartment.
On August 8, 1973, a tearful phone call from Elmer Henley summoned Pasadena
police officers to Corll's apartment. They found the candy man dead, six bullet
holes in his shoulder and back, with Henley claiming he had killed his "friend"
in self-defense. The violence had erupted after Henley brought a girl to one of
Corll's paint-sniffing orgies, driving the homosexual killer into a rage. Corll
had threatened Elmer with a gun, then taunted his young friend when Henley
managed to disarm him. Frightened for his life, Henley insisted that he shot
Corll only to save himself. But, there was more.... That afternoon, he led
detectives to a rented boat shed in southwest Houston, leaving authorities to
unearth seventeen victims from the earthen floor. A drive to Lake Sam Rayburn
turned up four more graves, while six others were found on the beach at High
Island, for a total of 27 dead. Henley insisted there were at least two more
corpses in the boat shed, plus two more at High Island, but police called off
the search, content to know that they had broken California's record in the Juan
Corona case. (In The Man with the Candy, author Jack Olsen suggests that other
victims might be buried around Corll's candy shop, but authorities show no
interest in pursuing the case further.) In custody, Brooks and Henley confessed
their role in procuring victims for Corll through the years, with Brooks
fingering Henley as the trigger man in at least one slaying. "Most of the
killings that occurred after Wayne came into the picture involved all three of
us," he told police. "Wayne seemed to enjoy causing pain."
Convicted of multiple murder in August 1974, Henley was sentenced to life
imprisonment, with Brooks drawing an identical term in March 1975. A year later,
Houston authorities announced that recent investigations of child pornography
had linked other local pedophiles with Corll's murder ring, but no prosecutions
were forthcoming. Elmer Henley's conviction was overturned on appeal in December
1978, based on the issue of pre-trial publicity, but he was convicted and
sentenced a second time, in June 1979.
Elmer Wayne Henley
Read an Inteview with Elmer Wayne Henley Jr
Art By Elmer Henley