Dean Corll: The Candy Man
8:24 a.m., Aug. 8, 1973, Pasadena, Texas: A call comes in to the Pasadena Police Department. On the other end, a male voice yells, “Y’all better come here right now! I just killed a man!” He gives the address, 2020 Lamarr. Officers and EMTs are quickly dispatched.
Once there, officers see three teens — two boys and a girl — sitting on the curb in front of the small house. Near them, lying on the driveway, is a .22 caliber pistol. One of the young men — 17-year-old Elmer “Wayne” Henley — tells police he was the one who called. Inside, he tells them, they would find the body of 33-year-old Dean Corll.
Indeed, they find Corll’s naked body face-down against a wall just outside a bedroom door. He has multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and shoulder.
But that isn’t all they find. Inside the bedroom, the floor is covered in clear plastic sheeting. There are also several sex toys, a knife, and a large plywood board with handcuffs and ropes attached.
Police arrest Henley and take the other two teens — 19-year-old Timothy Kerley and 15-year-old Rhonda Williams — in for questioning. All three tell the same harrowing tale.
Henley had invited Kerley to Corll’s house to party earlier that night. There, they huffed paint and drank alcohol until about midnight. Then they drove back to Houston to get some snacks.
While there, they stopped and picked up Williams. When they returned to Corll’s house, the boys told police, Corll was livid that they had brought a girl to his house, that she had “ruined everything.” But Henley had been able to calm the older man down, and they all went back to partying. After a few hours, they all passed out.
Henley said when he woke up, Corll was handcuffing him. His mouth was covered in tape and his ankles were bound. He could see Williams and Kerley were bound to the “torture board,” one on each side. He said Corll pointed his pistol at him and threatened to kill him, but not until after he’d “had his fun.”
Somehow, Henley convinced Corll to let him go, telling Corll he could help him kill the other two. Corll put the gun down and freed Henley, then handed him a large knife and instructed him to cut Williams’ clothes off and rape her while Corll raped Kerley.
While Corll began torturing Kerley on the other side of the board, Williams looked Henley in the eyes and whispered, “Is this for real?”
Henley told her it was. She then asked, “Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”
Henley said that question “flipped a switch” inside his mind. He said he grabbed the gun and pointed it at Corll, demanding he free the two teens, yelling, “I can’t go on any longer! I can’t have you kill all my friends!”
Corll then taunted Henley, daring the teen to shoot him, saying he didn’t have it in him. Henley shot Corll in the forehead, but the bullet only grazed his skull. Henley fired twice more into Corll’s chest. As Corll staggered out of the bedroom, Henley continued shooting until there were no more bullets left.
At first, Henley had wanted all three of them to just leave and never speak of it again. But the other two convinced him to call the police. As they sat on the porch waiting for the police, Henley told Kerley he’d done that — shot someone — four or five times.
The evidence at the scene corroborates the three’s story. It looks like a clear-cut case of self defense, and Henley is a hero for saving his two friends from what would have been a terrible fate.
As officers search Corll’s house and property, they find even more disturbing evidence: more sex toys, a total of eight pairs of handcuffs, ropes, vaseline, and some thin glass tubes. In a shed they find a home-made wooden box, the size of a casket, with holes drilled in the side. Nearby sits a bag of lime.
Corll’s van is suspicious, too. The windows are blocked out with thick blue curtains, the walls covered in peg boards with hooks and rings attached. The floor is covered by a piece of carpeting, stained with dirt. The van also contains another casket-sized wooden box. Inside the box is what looks like human hair.
It is beginning to look like these three might not have been Corll’s first victims. And Henley’s statement that he had done that — shot someone — before raised questions.
When police question Henley about his statement, he confesses something that will take this case in a very different direction and expose Henley not as a hero, but as a monster.
Henley had known Corll since he was 14. He’d met Corll through a mutual friend, David Brooks, who was a year or so older.
Brooks had known Corll since he was in elementary school. He, like most of the kids in the working-class Houston neighborhood known as the Heights, often hung out at Corll’s candy factory, which was just across the street from the school.
Corll’s mother, Mary, had started the candy company several years before, and Corll had worked there full time since high school. He lived in the apartment above the factory and was known by the employees as a well-mannered, friendly guy.
And he loved kids. Corll would give them the broken candies, earning him the nickname “the Candy Man.” He would often hire youngsters from the neighborhood to do small jobs around the factory.
He furnished the lobby with couches and installed a pool table in a back room to encourage kids to hang out there. He outfitted his van with carpet, cushions, and a TV, and he would often give neighborhood kids rides to the beach.
After his mother left Texas, Corll ran the candy factory a few years more, but it eventually dried up. He found work as an electrician and moved around frequently — though never too far from the Heights.
Wherever he lived, he always had a crowd of teenaged boys hanging around. Corll would buy them beer and weed and let them hang out at his house to party.
Brooks was a quiet kid who wore glasses — a sore disappointment for his roughneck father, who had custody of the boy. Frequently bullied and berated by his father, Brooks began spending more and more time with Corll, at times even living with him.
When Brooks was 15, Corll began sexually abusing him. Afterwards, Corll would give the boy money or other gifts.
Then in December 1970, Brooks walked in on a horrific scene. In Corll’s bedroom were two boys, naked, shackled to a four-poster bed. Corll was sexually assaulting them. Brooks immediately left.
But he did not go to the police. Later, he returned to Corll’s house. Corll explained that the two boys were part of a gay porno ring; he offered to buy Brooks a car if he didn’t tell anyone.
Brooks kept his end of the bargain, and Corll bought him a green Corvette.
That would be the first of many, much more sinister, bargains.
At the police station, Henley confesses that for the past three years, he and Brooks had been bringing Corll victims to rape, torture, and kill. He denies taking part in raping anyone, but confesses that he participating in torturing and killing at least six victims.
To prove it, Henley tells them that he can take them to a “warehouse of bodies.”
At first, the police don’t believe the doped-up teen. But Henley tells them they will find Charles Cobble, David Hilligiest, and Marty Jones there — three boys who had gone missing from the Heights between 1971 and 1973.
Still skeptical, police let Henley lead them to a low-rent boat storage facility at the end of a dead-end street in southwest Houston. There, Henley leads them to shed number 11.
Police get a warrant to search the metal shed, which is rented in the name of Dean Corll. Inside, they find the usual junk — including some shovels and bags of lime. The dirt floor is partially covered by old carpeting, uneven with soft spots beneath. The dark, unventilated shed broils in the August heat, and the smell of decomposition is thick.
The police draft two trustees from the local jail to come and dig up the floor. Mere inches beneath the surface, they come upon a layer of lime. Right beneath that, they find a naked body wrapped in plastic sheeting, a cord tied tight around his neck. Henley tells them, “That’s Dreymala,” James Dreymala, who had been missing only a few days.
The trustees are dismissed and the medical examiner, along with a team of anthropologists, take over. They find body after body — some stacked three deep. They recover the remains of eight boys that day, and when they return the next day, nine more.
The press covers the search extensively, running to a nearby pay phone to update their producers and editors each time a body is discovered. The story of Corll’s shooting, and the uncovering of so many of his victims, is the lead story on every network. Soon reporters from all over the world — including Truman Capote — are in Houston to cover the gruesome case.
For dozens of families whose sons are missing, the story dredges up their worst fears — and sparks righteous outrage.
That evening, Brooks comes in to the police station, accompanied by his father. He gives a statement that he knew of the two boys who had been killed in 1970, whose assault he had walked in on, but that was all.
However, Henley has already confessed and implicated Brooks in much more.
Soon Brooks breaks down and confesses he had, in fact, been Corll’s first accomplice. After he had accepted the Corvette in exchange for his silence, Corll offered him another deal: for every good-looking teenaged boy Brooks brought him, Corll would give him $200.
Brooks said he thought about it for some time before taking Corll up on his offer.
Then on Dec. 13, 1970, he lured 14-year-old friends Danny Glass and James Yates away from a church revival. Once at Corll’s apartment, they were both stripped, tied to the plywood board, raped, tortured, strangled, and buried in the boat shed.
Brooks continued luring young boys to Corll, offering them rides or, if they were the partying type, drugs. He lured brothers Jerry and Donald Waldrop, 13 and 15, at the end of January. They suffered the same fate as Glass and Yates.
In March, he lured in Randall Harvey, 15. After his rape and torture, he was shot in the head and buried in the boat shed.
Then Brooks brought Corll another Heights teen: Henley. Only this time, Corll seemed to take a shine to the acne-riddled 14-year-old dropout. Not only did he not attack Henley, he befriended him. Corll also befriended Henley’s single mom, frequently helping her out around the house and even having Easter dinner with them.
At first, Corll made Henley an offer to buy anything the teen might want to sell, so he could make money for his family. So Henley began stealing items from around the neighborhood and selling them to Corll.
Then Corll made Henley the same deal he’d made Brooks: $200 for each good-looking boy he brought. He claimed they would be sold to a Dallas-based gay porno/sex-trafficking ring.
Like the DC Snipers or the Hillside Stranglers, soon the two boys were working tightly with their sadistic father figure, luring in more and more victims.
Friends David Hilligiest, 13, and Mally Winkle, 16, were the trio’s next victims, picked up as they walked to the local swimming pool. Later that evening, Corll made Winkle call his mother and tell her he went with some friends to the lake to go swimming. She scolded him for going so far without permission, and told him to come home right away. That was the last time she ever spoke to him.
In August, Ruben Haney, 17, was picked up on his way to the theater. That evening, he called his mother to tell her he was hanging out with Brooks. He, too, would end up in the boat shed.
As 1971 turned to 1972, then 1973, the trio continued luring in teen boys — even after Corll stopped paying for them.
A few of the boys’ parents figured their sons had run away or were just out with their friends. But not all of them. Many parents went to the Houston Police Department to report their sons missing. But the Houston police didn’t have a missing person’s department. And, since the boys were teenagers, the police assumed they had just run away — even when they had left behind money, clothes, and, in one case, a treasured motorcycle. Their cases were never pursued.
Some of the victims would be forced to write notes to their families, saying they had found work out of town and wouldn’t be back home for a while. No matter how suspicious the parents were of these notes, police believed they were proof their sons had left town for jobs.
The only boy who survived Corll’s attacks was Billy Ridinger. He had, like the other boys, been lured into Corll’s apartment by the trio in 1972. After Corll spent some time assaulting and torturing him, Brooks, in a singular moment of compassion, allowed Ridinger to leave with the promise he would never tell anyone what had happened. Ridinger kept that promise.
Besides the missing persons flyers posted by the families, there were no newspaper stories or news broadcasts about the dozens of boys going missing from the Heights. There was no way for anyone to know a trio of serial killers was stalking their neighborhood.
Until that hot August day in 1973.
Seventeen boys are found in the rented boat shed. Henley insists there are probably more bodies to be found there, but the police shut down the dig anyway.
Henley and Brooks next take police to Lake Sam Rayburn, where Corll’s family has a fishing cabin. There, the boys lead police to the graves of four more victims. While searching, police discover two more victims buried near the dirt road. Inside the Corll family cabin, police find another “torture board,” rolls of plastic sheeting, shovels, and sacks of lime.
Next, they go to High Island beach, where over the next two days, six more victims are found. One victim, later identified as Jeffrey Konen, was an 18-year-old student at University of Texas at Austin.
He had been hitchhiking through the area in September 1970 when Corll picked him up. Konen appears to be Corll’s first known victim, taken before he enlisted the help of Brooks and Henley. The boys only knew of his burial site because, while burying another victim, Corll had pointed the site out to them.
A total of 27 victims are recovered from the three crime scenes — making Corll the most prolific serial killer at that time.
Once police uncover the last two victims, they call the search off. Brooks and Henley are positive there are more victims buried at High Island, but they don’t know exactly where.
The autopsies confirm Brooks and Henley’s horrific confessions. The bodies showed evidence of beatings and sexual torture and mutilation — including one victim whose genitals had been severed and placed in a plastic bag next to his remains. Many had objects inserted into their rectums. Some had been strangled with cords or ropes; others had been shot with a .22-caliber weapon.
Most were, thankfully, able to be identified right away using their clothing, dental records, and, in a couple of cases, ID cards buried with them.
However, three of the victims went unidentified for many years. In 2008, the Houston medical examiner’s office released digital facial reconstructions of these victims in the hopes of identifying them.
Two had been found in the boat shed, and were estimated to have been killed in 1970 or ’71. The third was found near Lake Sam Rayburn, and was estimated to have been killed in June 1973.
A few months later, one of the victims found in the boat shed was identified as Randall Harvey. His hair, clothing, and boots were recognized by his surviving sisters, and DNA tests confirmed his identity.
Unfortunately, because the remains had been recovered before DNA testing was invented, there were some misidentifications. In 2010, one set of remains that had been misidentified as a different victim were finally correctly identified as Michael Baulch. The correct ID was a result of a reporter’s investigation, and confirmed by DNA.
The following year, the victim who had previously been misidentified as Baulch was identified through DNA testing as Roy Bunton.
One set of remains had been identified as Mark Scott, based on an early DNA test in the 1990s. But Henley and Brooks both insisted that Scott had been buried at High Island, not at the boat shed, where these remains had been found.
In 2011, the remains were analyzed using a newer, more accurate DNA test, which determined that the remains were those of Steven Sickman. Unfortunately, in 2008, Hurricane Ike submerged the area of High Island beach where the bodies had been buried, making it highly unlikely Scott’s remains will ever be recovered.
To this day, one victim has yet to be identified. The boy, found with Corll’s other victims in the boat shed, was about 15, was wearing striped swim trunks and may have gone missing in late 1971 or early ’72. There were tips that the boy could be Bobby French, but there hasn’t been any updates on this case since 2018.
Parents and community members were outraged at the way the Houston police had mishandled the investigation. Nearly all of the victims had been residents of the Heights, a small neighborhood in northwest Houston. Eleven of them went to the same junior high school, and several of them had worked for Corll at the candy factory. How had no one noticed? And why hadn’t the police done more to find these boys?
Chief of Police Herman Short, along with Houston Mayor Louie Welch, went on the defensive, blaming the boys’ parents for not keeping track of their sons. It was the early 70s; lots of teenagers were running away to “drop out” and join the hippie movement. Without evidence of foul play, the police said, they had no reason to investigate.
Yet there had been some evidence. After one boy’s disappearance, police records show a tip came in saying he had been killed by Brooks. It was never followed up.
Another boy’s parents told police that they had learned their son had a friend who drove a Plymouth GTX. They had spotted that car cruising through the neighborhood and had written down the plate number. Had the police traced that license plate, they would have discovered it was registered to Corll.
In a brutally misguided attempt to deflect blame, the police department began retaliating against Houston’s gay community, conducting raids on gay bars where they believed he might find more “sex deviants” like Corll victimizing boys. Of course they found no such thing.
Henley and Brooks were tried separately. Henley stood trial July 1, 1973. He was charged with the murders of Charles Cobble, Marty Jones, Frank Aguirre, Johnny Delome, Billy Lawrence, and Homer Garcia. All the victims were between the ages of 15 and 18.
Dozens of witnesses testified, including Billy Ridinger. Nearly 100 pieces of evidence were entered, including his written confession to the police, the torture board, and the homemade coffin found in Corll’s van.
After only 94 minutes, the jury found Henley guilty on all six counts. He was given six life sentences, to be served consecutively. He appealed and was granted a new trial in 1979, where he was again convicted and his sentence upheld. He is serving his time at the Mark W. Michael Unit in Anderson County, Texas.
Brooks was indicted for four murders, but in the end, charged with only one, that of Billy Lawrence. Brooks was also found guilty; he was sentenced to 99 years. He was serving his sentence at the Charles T. Terrell Unit in Rosharon, Texas, when he contracted Covid-19. He died of complications of the virus May 28, 2020.
Even after the convictions, the Candy Man’s story was yet to be finished. In 1983, an eroded sandbank on a beach in Jefferson County, Texas, crumbled away to reveal human bones, rope, and plastic sheeting.
It would be 26 years before the remains were identified as belonging to 17-year-old Joseph Lyles, who had gone missing from the Heights in 1973, and who had long been suspected of being one of Corll’s victims. This now brought Corll’s known victim count to 28 — now no longer a record, but still horrific.
Because the police had abruptly stopped the search, many — including Brooks and Henley — have suspected there might be more victims out there. Corll had admitted to Brooks that he killed the two boys Brooks caught him assaulting, and those bodies were never recovered. Were there others before Jeffrey Konen?
Despite Corll’s shocking crimes, he would soon be forgotten, overshadowed by even more ruthless killers. In fact, John Wayne Gacy, who broke Corll’s record when he murdered 33 young men in a similar fashion in Chicago, said that he was “influenced” by the Candy Man.
Though his name and crimes may have been forgotten, he left a deep mark on the nation’s psyche. Corll might not have been the only pedophile to give candy to children and pick them up in his van, but he was the first, the blueprint for the monster that frightens children — and parents — to this day.
