Dean Corll
Dean Arnold Corll (December 24, 1939 – August 8, 1973) was an American serial killer and sex offender who abducted, raped, tortured and murdered a minimum of twenty-eight teenage boys and young men between 1970 and 1973 in Houston and Pasadena, Texas.Other acquaintances noted subtle changes in Corll's mannerisms when in the company of teenage males after he had completed his service and returned to Houston, which led them to believe he may have been homosexual.[50] The nude body was found buried beneath a large boulder,[51] covered with a layer of lime, wrapped in plastic, and bound hand and foot with nylon cord, suggesting he had been violated.[6] On December 13, 1970, Brooks lured two 14-year-old Spring Branch youths named James Glass and Danny Yates away from a religious rally held in Houston Heights to Corll's Yorktown apartment.[56] Six weeks after the double murder of Glass and Yates, on January 30, 1971, Brooks and Corll encountered two teenage brothers, Donald and Jerry Waldrop, walking toward their parents' home.[33] However, Corll evidently decided the youth would make a good accomplice[33] and offered him the same fee of $200 for any boy he could lure to his apartment, informing Henley that he was involved in a "white slavery ring" operating from Dallas.[81] In Brooks's confession, he stated that both youths were tied to Corll's bed and, after their torture and rape, Henley manually strangled Baulch, then shouted, "Hey, Johnny!"Several hours later, both youths were strangled to death and subsequently buried in a common grave inside the boat shed directly above the bodies of James Glass and Danny Yates.[98] In addition, around the time of Lyles's murder, Henley spontaneously traveled to Florida with a long-haul truck driver uncle before temporarily relocating to Mount Pleasant in an apparent effort to distance himself from Corll.[105] The following day, Garcia telephoned his mother to say he was spending the night with a friend; he was shot and left to bleed to death in Corll's bathtub before he was buried at Lake Sam Rayburn.Brooks later described Dreymala as a "small, blond boy" for whom he had bought a pizza and in whose company he had spent forty-five minutes at Corll's home before the youth was attacked.[122] He then removed the adhesive tape from Kerley's mouth before informing him of his intentions to "look up" his anus as Henley again began inhaling paint fumes from a paper bag.[137] The younger male identified himself as Elmer Wayne Henley and told the officer that he was the individual who had made the call and indicated that Corll's body was inside the house.[15][n 11] Police initially were skeptical of Henley's claims, assuming the sole homicide of the case was that of Corll, which they had ascribed as being the result of drug-fueled fisticuffs that had turned deadly.In the rear of the vehicle, police found a coil of rope, a swatch of beige rug covered in soil stains,[148] and a wooden crate with air holes drilled in the sides.[151] Two prison trusties[21]: 3649 began digging through the soft, crushed-shell earth of the boat shed and soon uncovered the body of a blond-haired teenaged boy, lying on his side, encased in clear plastic and buried beneath a layer of lime.Inside the lakeside log cabin owned by Corll's family, police found a second plywood torture board, rolls of plastic sheeting, shovels, and a sack of lime.[181] On August 13, both Henley and Brooks again accompanied the police to High Island Beach, where four more bodies were found, making a total of 27 known victims – the worst killing spree in American history at the time.Also to testify at the hearing were the investigators who recounted the various statements and confessions provided by Henley and Brooks in the days following Corll's death and individuals tasked with supervising the exhumation of the victims' bodies.[21]: 3669 Both would later reject pretrial offers presented to them by Assistant District Attorney Don Lambright of life sentences in exchange for pleas of guilty to the murders for which they had been indicted.[224] Brooks's defense attorney, Jim Skelton, argued that his client had not committed any murders and attempted to portray Corll and, to a lesser degree, Henley as being the active participants in the actual killings.[225] Assistant District Attorney Tommy Dunn dismissed the defense's contention outright, at one point telling the jury: "This defendant was in on this killing, this murderous rampage, from the very beginning.[1] Footnotes In June 2008, Dr. Sharon Derrick, a forensic anthropologist with the medical examiner's office in Houston, released digital images of Corll's three still-unidentified victims.This unidentified victim was found wearing red-white-and-blue striped swimming trunks,[280] cowboy boots, a leather bracelet and a long-sleeved, khaki-colored T-shirt decorated with a peace symbol,[281][282] leading investigators to conclude that he was likely killed in the summer months.[287] In 2022, authorities announced that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science are actively working together to identify this victim.Following Hurricane Ike in 2008, the area of High Island Beach where Corll is known to have buried his victims remains submerged,[27] leaving a strong possibility that Scott's body will never be found.Prater was last seen by his mother in Dallas in the company of an adult male and two teenage youths with shoulder-length hair; he had previously lived in the same neighborhood as most of Corll's known victims and had attended the same high school as Henley between 1970 and 1971.[305] The discovery raised the disturbing possibility that the statements Corll had given to both Henley and Brooks that he was associated with a Dallas-based organization which "bought and sold boys"[259] may indeed have held a degree of truth.[306] The discovery of the material in Houston in 1975 subsequently led to the arrest of five individuals in Santa Clara, California, including the owner of the warehouse where the cache had been stored, Roy Ames, a known producer of child pornography, whose name police had found on a card in Corll's wallet.This police raid seized a card filing system containing up to 10,000 names of individuals across America ascribed to this network and the personal details of numerous teenage boys exploited by this sex trafficking ring.
Fort Wayne, IndianaPasadena, TexasExsanguinationSexual sadismControlConviction(s)serial killersex offenderabductedtorturedmurderedHoustonDavid Owen BrooksElmer Wayne Henleystrangulation.22 caliberpistolLake Sam RayburnJefferson CountyBolivar Peninsulalife imprisonmentPied PiperHouston HeightsMemphis, TennesseeUnited States Air Forcerheumatic feverheart murmurVidor, TexasVidor High Schoolbrass bandYoder, IndianaUnited States ArmyFort Polk, LouisianaFort BenningGeorgiaFort Hood, TexashomosexualSouth TexasfellatioBeaumontWaltrip High SchoolColoradoHouston Lighting and Power Companyelectrical relay systemsdowntown HoustonabductionsPlymouth GTXsexually assaultedkeepsakesUniversity of TexasWestheimer RoadUptownHigh Islandasphyxiationfour-poster bedSpring Branchalligator clipsOak Forestwhite slaveryDallasmarijuanasadisticstaminacommon graveMount PleasantemasculatedhydroceleFloridaBellaireOrange CountySouth Houstonsniffed paint fumessprained ankleVolkswagentransistor radioPasadena Police DepartmentMiranda rightsself-defensecorroboratedsodomyHouston Police Departmentdildosprison trustiesdecompositionpubic hairsrectumsurethraeHenleyBrooksJuan CoronaCaliforniaJohn Wayne GacyrunawaysperfunctoryHumble, Texasgrand juryHarris Countyindictedmotionconstitutional rightsSan Antoniodefensecross-examineclosing argumentsCarol Vancedeath penaltyHuntsville UnitappealedsequesteredCorpus ChristiinadmissibleMark Stiles UnitTerrell UnitRosharon, TexasCOVID-19GalvestonCaptain Joe Byrd CemeteryWalker CountyUniversity of Texas at AustinAustinBraeswood PlaceevangelicalFreeportMadisonvilleheart attackBaton Rouge, Louisiana