August 13, 2019 • 21 mins
Dean Corll liked to give free candy to the kids, especially the young boys, and he loved throwing parties for the teens. So why was he often seen digging at night near the candy shop?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
represent those of I Heart Media, Stuff Media, or its employees.
Listener discretion is advised from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV.
Monster Presents Insomniac. It was August eight and the bullet
(00:30):
riddled nude body of Dean Coral, age thirty three, was
stretched out along the baseboard of a hallway in his
home in Pasadena, Texas, a city within the Greater Houston
metropolitan area. He fell facing the wall. He had been
shot six times with a twenty two caliber pistol, and
he was dead before he even hit the floor. The
(00:53):
young man who pulled the trigger, Elmer Wayne Henley, aged seventeen,
was also the one who called the authorities almost immediately
to tell them that he had just killed a man.
He and two other teenagers, Tim Curley and Ronda Williams
then waited for the Pasadena police on the front porch
(01:15):
of the small home. They knew they had some explaining
to do, especially the shooter. When the police arrived, the
three teams were placed in the back of the police
car and the officers went inside to confirm the shooting
victim was indeed dead. Dean Coral was dead all right,
(01:35):
and the three of them were taken into custody and
questioned about the shooting. Henley, the trigger man, claimed it
was justifiable homicide, a case of self defense. His story
was eventually verified, and much later that's the way it
would be ruled in court too. He would not be
(01:57):
charged for the shooting of Dean Coral in self defense.
But as the authorities inspected Dean Coral's home on that day,
they knew almost immediately there was far more to the story.
In particular, the items they found in the bedroom troubled
the most. They pointed to something sinister happening in the
(02:18):
home on Lamar Drive. The police said, questions, lots of questions.
The homeowner was dead. He wasn't much help. But beginning
the same afternoon, due to the guilty conscious of the
pistol wielding teenager that remained in custody, they would have
all the answers they were looking for, as he told
(02:40):
them everything over the next several days, The story that
Henley told and the grizzly evidence that was quickly being
unearthed under the watchful eye of the media both captivated
and sickened not only the entire state of Texas, but
the rest of the country and even the world. So
(03:07):
what really led to the early morning murder on August
Why was Dean Coral shot dead in his own home?
The authorities in Pasadena, Texas, We're going to learn every detail.
It was an appalling story that none of them wanted
to hear, and one that none of them would ever forget.
(03:32):
I'm Scott Benjamin, and everything I'm about to tell you
is real. This is insomniac. In late nineteen the entire
(03:53):
state of Texas watched as a real life horror story
unfolded right in front of their eyes in print and
on Tell Vision. But it wasn't just Texas that was watching.
The entire country and soon the world was gripped by
the daily reports of what was happening in the Houston area.
There were cameras there to capture the aftermath of the killings.
(04:15):
It would soon come to be known as the Houston
mass murders, and the name Dean Coral would be well known,
but for all the wrong reasons. Well, he's the main
focus of our attention. He'll quickly understand why there's simply
no way to tell this story without including two other
critical characters, David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, two
(04:40):
teenagers from a suburb of Houston, Texas that somehow found
themselves in a bad situation, one that only got worse
as the years passed. Let's begin by introducing you to
the man at the heart of our story. Dean Coral,
also known as the Handyman. Dean Coral, was born on
(05:07):
Christmas Eve in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He and his young brother,
Stanley had an unhappy childhood, with their parents constantly fighting.
They divorced in nineteen when Dean was just seven years old,
but later patch things up and remarried in nineteen fifty
(05:29):
That's when the family of four moved to Pasadena, Texas.
The second marriage didn't last long, however, and by nineteen
fifty three, Dean Coral's parents were divorced once again. His
mother married soon after, and by nineteen fifty five, Dean
and Stanley had a half sister named Joyce. His mother
(05:53):
made candies at home, pecan pralines, and apparently they were
good enough that a friend of the family, a pecan
nuts salesman, encouraged her and her new husband to start
their own small business, selling them as a way to
help support the family. The family operated company, Pecan Prince,
(06:16):
was initially operated out of the family's garage. Dean's days
were spent at high school, where he was an average
and well behaved student, and during the evenings he worked
in the candy shop, running the candy making machines and
packaging the finished product. He graduated from high school in
(06:37):
ninety and his family moved to the edge of Houston,
where most of their candy was sold. In nineteen sixty,
Dean's mother asked him to move to Indiana to live
with his widowed grandmother, but he was home again in
Houston by nineteen sixty two. Dean's mother and stepfather divorced
(06:58):
in nineteen sixty three, and she started a new candy
making business, the Coral Candy Company. Dean was vice president
and his younger brother, Stanley was secretary treasurer. The first
year in business, a teenage male employee of the Coral
(07:19):
Candy Company said that Dean had made sexual advances toward him.
Dean's mother fired the team in the summer of nineteen
at the age of twenty four, Dean was drafted into
the United States Army. He hated it. Just ten months later,
(07:39):
he requested and was granted a hardship discharge, stating that
he needed to return home to help his mother with
the family candy business. It was during his brief time
of service, during his training at Fort Benning, Georgia, the
Dean realized that he was a homosexual. This was a
secret he guard and fiercely he kept that part of
(08:02):
his life well hidden from nearly everyone, or at least
he thought he did. In the Coral Candy company moved again.
This time he was directly across the street from Helms
Elementary School in Houston Heights, and Dean soon became well
known as the candy Man, the neighborhood candy maker that
(08:24):
would give free samples to all the school children, especially
the young boys. In fact, a lot of people began
to notice how fon Dean was of being in the
company of young boys, but allowed it to happen without question.
At the time, he was a trusted member of the community,
just a good guy who liked doing nice things for
(08:46):
the children. In fact, he encouraged his teenage employees, along
with their young friends to use the back area of
the candy factory as a hangout. Even installed the pool
table to make the offer more attractive. This was how
he came to meet David Owen Brooks, a twelve year
(09:07):
old from the neighborhood. Dean was known to be a
little too flirty with the candy company's male employees, but
there was something that was even stranger about Dean Coral's behavior.
Sometimes Dean could be seen digging at night near the
(09:28):
candy shop. He always claimed he was disposing of the
spoiled candy. Almost every one of Dean Coral's murders involves
(09:54):
a common feature, his torture board. It's fairly easy to
find photos of Dean's torture board using a simple online search,
and when you do, if you look closely, you'll notice
that he had built more than one of these devices.
The board shown in some police evidence photos is eight
(10:14):
ft long and three ft wide, while the board shown
in other photos appears to be slightly wider yet shorter
in length, maybe just under six ft long if I
had to guess based on the county sheriff's deputy standing
next to it. Dean always kept a torture board close
(10:35):
at hand in every house he lived in. He hung
it up on the wall when it wasn't in use.
It was a simple design, nothing more than a piece
ofp ply wood with holes drilled in each of the
four corners. Nylon rope was tied through each of the holes,
and handcuffs were attached to the nylon rope at one
end to secure his victim's hands, while the ropes at
(10:59):
the other end were used to secure their feet. As
soon as a drunk or drugged teenage boy passed out,
he was stripped, naked and bound to the torture board.
At this point, the captive was already as good as dead,
but Dean made damn sure that didn't happen too fast
(11:20):
since he knew they wouldn't be able to escape. He
enjoyed the luxury of time and spent literally days molesting, torturing,
and eventually killing his helpless victims. In the end, Dean
Coral's victims were all killed either by gunshot or strangulation.
I imagine some, if not all, of his young victims
(11:44):
actually welcomed their own death as a form of relief
after having endured day after day of excruciating pain and
violent sexual assault. All Well strapped a Dean Coral's torture board.
But Dean Coral and his torture board are only part
of the story. There were other monsters in this nightmare too.
(12:10):
It was nineteen sixty seven when David Owen Brooks first
met Dean Coral. Brooks was in the sixth grade and
he was one of the many many young boys that
used coral Candy Company as a hangout, but the two
quickly became friends. Brooks looked up to Coral as a
father figure, and Coral well, he had other ideas. They
(12:36):
were an unlikely pair a twelve year old and year old,
but for a while the two seemed to be inseparable.
In fact, at one pot around David Brooks even moved
in with Dean Coral. It was later discovered that from
(12:57):
the age of just twelve, bro would allow Coral to
perform oral sex on him in exchange for gifts or cash.
The Coral's obsession with hanging around with young teen boys
didn't end with his friend David Brooks. In fact, he
found a comforting to have young boys around a lot.
(13:21):
He often picked up hitchhikers, and in late nineteen he
began a downward spiral that wouldn't end until the summer
of nineteen seventy three. About a month before the Thanksgiving holiday,
Dean Coral committed his first known murder. It was a
(13:43):
University of Texas student named Jeffrey Conan. He was an
eighteen year old freshman and he was last seen on
September as he was hitchhiking home to Houston. He was
picked up by Coral, who took him to his apartment,
bound his hands and feet, gagged him, and then sodomized
(14:07):
him before killing him and dumping his body. The area
that Coral lived in had a lot of teens, so
there were plenty of potential victims for him to choose from,
and luring them to his place was easy. All it
really took in most cases was the promise of a party,
(14:28):
which included paint sniffing, glue sniffing, pot smoking, and alcohol,
usually to the point of blacking out, and that's when
Coral would attack. But this tactic wasn't always necessary to
get what he wanted. A lot of the boys that
Coral had to his place were desperate for money, like
(14:51):
David Brooks, that allow him to perform Oral sex on
them for five dollars. The real problem again when oral
sex wasn't enough for Dean Coral. He wanted penetration, but
a lot of the teens refused that, and those were
the ones that ended up dead. One of the stories
(15:15):
that Brooks would later tell the police involved Dean Coral
caught in a very compromising position with a couple of
young teens. It was and Brooks had gone to Dean's
of Parpin without calling a head. When he arrived, Dean
was walking through the house naked and he was furious
(15:37):
with Brooks. Brooks was a little confused, but on his
way out he caught a glance of what was going on.
In the bedroom. He could see two young boys naked
and tied to Dean's bed. The next time Dean saw Brooks,
he explained that he was part of a group of
(15:58):
men that's old and traded young boys, a sexual slavery
ring based out of Dallas. This was never proven to
be true. Later, Brooks would learn that both of the
boys were killed and their bodies dumped. In an attempt
(16:21):
to buy Brooks's silence regarding the rape and murder of
the boys, Coral promised to buy Brooks, who was now
only a few months shy of sixteen years old, a
new car, and he made good on that promise, buying
Brooks a green Chevrolet Corvette. But the Corvette served a
(16:43):
dual purpose. Coral and Brooks would be able to cruise
the streets together in a car that would attract the
attention of teen boys. They used it in their search
for new victims. In the winter of David Brooks brought
(17:04):
another team with him to Dean Coral's home, potentially as
another victim, but the boy impressed Coral and he felt
that the team might be an asset to his operation.
That boy was Elmer Wayne Henley, aged fifteen, a year
younger than David Brooks. The three quickly became good friends
(17:29):
and even committed some break ins together as a test
of Henley's loyalty to the other two. Henley never told
anyone about their shared crimes, and after he had proven himself,
Coral asked him if he'd be willing to kill for him.
Henley said yes. When the crime scene investigators first called
(18:00):
to the home at Lamar Drive in Pasadena, even as
Dean Coral's body was still laying in the hallway, they
knew there was going to be a lot more to
the story than just a self defense shooting death. They
quickly discovered Coral's bedroom was set up as his own
private torture chamber. In his room, they found the plywood
(18:23):
torture board. It was stretched out on top of a
thick sheet of plastic that covered the entire floor. He
also had several tools he used for his various torture techniques,
more than a toolbox full, including the players he used
to plug out his victims public cares. One by one,
(18:45):
the authorities found lengths of rope, rolls of tape, a
large hunting knife, and spools of thick, clear plastic, the
same plastic used to protect the carpet. They also found
eight pairs of handcuffs, an electric motor with the wires
attached that was used to shock the victims genitals, and
(19:08):
an assortment of dildos and glass rods, lots of glass rods.
I'll tell you more about those later, but I will
tell you this right now. Dean Coral's use of those
glass rods is easily one of the most horrific, most painful,
and cruelest prolonged torture tactics. I've ever heard of, and
(19:32):
judging by the number of broken glass rods they found
on his floor, it was also one of his preferred methods.
But it seems that Dean didn't always require tools to
torture the teens. One of his victims angered him so
much the Dean bit off his genitals while he was
secured to the torture board. Later, when that particular victims
(19:56):
remains were exhumed, they found his penis and testicles in
a plastic bag separate from the body. The forensic researchers
soon discovered that, based on the size and the shape
of the wound, the boy was emasculated by a single
violent bite from his attacker. Dean Coral's bedroom was a
(20:20):
scene of so many horrifying crimes, and if you were
a teenage boy living in Pasadena, Texas in the nineteen seventies,
you wouldn't have made it out of their live. Dean
Coral was going to offer as two young apprentices a
perverse and sadistic business opportunity. What exactly was this deadly
(20:45):
trio up to between December of nineteen in August of
ninety and what awful secrets will be revealed in the Aftermath,
Next Time One. Insomniac Yeah. Insomniac is a production of
(21:09):
I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, written and hosted by
Scott Benjamin and produced by Miranda Hawkins, Alex Williams, Matt Frederick,
and Josh Thine. Music composed by Makeup and Vanity Set
and cover by Trevor Eisler. Follow on Twitter and Facebook
at Insomniac Pod, on Instagram at Insomniac Podcast, and at
(21:31):
our website insomniac podcast dot com. For more podcasts for
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
represent those of I Heart Media, Stuff Media, or its employees.
Listener discretion is advised from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV.
Monster Presents Insomniac. It was August eight and the bullet
(00:30):
riddled nude body of Dean Coral, age thirty three, was
stretched out along the baseboard of a hallway in his
home in Pasadena, Texas, a city within the Greater Houston
metropolitan area. He fell facing the wall. He had been
shot six times with a twenty two caliber pistol, and
he was dead before he even hit the floor. The
(00:53):
young man who pulled the trigger, Elmer Wayne Henley, aged seventeen,
was also the one who called the authorities almost immediately
to tell them that he had just killed a man.
He and two other teenagers, Tim Curley and Ronda Williams
then waited for the Pasadena police on the front porch
(01:15):
of the small home. They knew they had some explaining
to do, especially the shooter. When the police arrived, the
three teams were placed in the back of the police
car and the officers went inside to confirm the shooting
victim was indeed dead. Dean Coral was dead all right,
(01:35):
and the three of them were taken into custody and
questioned about the shooting. Henley, the trigger man, claimed it
was justifiable homicide, a case of self defense. His story
was eventually verified, and much later that's the way it
would be ruled in court too. He would not be
(01:57):
charged for the shooting of Dean Coral in self defense.
But as the authorities inspected Dean Coral's home on that day,
they knew almost immediately there was far more to the story.
In particular, the items they found in the bedroom troubled
the most. They pointed to something sinister happening in the
(02:18):
home on Lamar Drive. The police said, questions, lots of questions.
The homeowner was dead. He wasn't much help. But beginning
the same afternoon, due to the guilty conscious of the
pistol wielding teenager that remained in custody, they would have
all the answers they were looking for, as he told
(02:40):
them everything over the next several days, The story that
Henley told and the grizzly evidence that was quickly being
unearthed under the watchful eye of the media both captivated
and sickened not only the entire state of Texas, but
the rest of the country and even the world. So
(03:07):
what really led to the early morning murder on August
Why was Dean Coral shot dead in his own home?
The authorities in Pasadena, Texas, We're going to learn every detail.
It was an appalling story that none of them wanted
to hear, and one that none of them would ever forget.
(03:32):
I'm Scott Benjamin, and everything I'm about to tell you
is real. This is insomniac. In late nineteen the entire
(03:53):
state of Texas watched as a real life horror story
unfolded right in front of their eyes in print and
on Tell Vision. But it wasn't just Texas that was watching.
The entire country and soon the world was gripped by
the daily reports of what was happening in the Houston area.
There were cameras there to capture the aftermath of the killings.
(04:15):
It would soon come to be known as the Houston
mass murders, and the name Dean Coral would be well known,
but for all the wrong reasons. Well, he's the main
focus of our attention. He'll quickly understand why there's simply
no way to tell this story without including two other
critical characters, David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, two
(04:40):
teenagers from a suburb of Houston, Texas that somehow found
themselves in a bad situation, one that only got worse
as the years passed. Let's begin by introducing you to
the man at the heart of our story. Dean Coral,
also known as the Handyman. Dean Coral, was born on
(05:07):
Christmas Eve in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He and his young brother,
Stanley had an unhappy childhood, with their parents constantly fighting.
They divorced in nineteen when Dean was just seven years old,
but later patch things up and remarried in nineteen fifty
(05:29):
That's when the family of four moved to Pasadena, Texas.
The second marriage didn't last long, however, and by nineteen
fifty three, Dean Coral's parents were divorced once again. His
mother married soon after, and by nineteen fifty five, Dean
and Stanley had a half sister named Joyce. His mother
(05:53):
made candies at home, pecan pralines, and apparently they were
good enough that a friend of the family, a pecan
nuts salesman, encouraged her and her new husband to start
their own small business, selling them as a way to
help support the family. The family operated company, Pecan Prince,
(06:16):
was initially operated out of the family's garage. Dean's days
were spent at high school, where he was an average
and well behaved student, and during the evenings he worked
in the candy shop, running the candy making machines and
packaging the finished product. He graduated from high school in
(06:37):
ninety and his family moved to the edge of Houston,
where most of their candy was sold. In nineteen sixty,
Dean's mother asked him to move to Indiana to live
with his widowed grandmother, but he was home again in
Houston by nineteen sixty two. Dean's mother and stepfather divorced
(06:58):
in nineteen sixty three, and she started a new candy
making business, the Coral Candy Company. Dean was vice president
and his younger brother, Stanley was secretary treasurer. The first
year in business, a teenage male employee of the Coral
(07:19):
Candy Company said that Dean had made sexual advances toward him.
Dean's mother fired the team in the summer of nineteen
at the age of twenty four, Dean was drafted into
the United States Army. He hated it. Just ten months later,
(07:39):
he requested and was granted a hardship discharge, stating that
he needed to return home to help his mother with
the family candy business. It was during his brief time
of service, during his training at Fort Benning, Georgia, the
Dean realized that he was a homosexual. This was a
secret he guard and fiercely he kept that part of
(08:02):
his life well hidden from nearly everyone, or at least
he thought he did. In the Coral Candy company moved again.
This time he was directly across the street from Helms
Elementary School in Houston Heights, and Dean soon became well
known as the candy Man, the neighborhood candy maker that
(08:24):
would give free samples to all the school children, especially
the young boys. In fact, a lot of people began
to notice how fon Dean was of being in the
company of young boys, but allowed it to happen without question.
At the time, he was a trusted member of the community,
just a good guy who liked doing nice things for
(08:46):
the children. In fact, he encouraged his teenage employees, along
with their young friends to use the back area of
the candy factory as a hangout. Even installed the pool
table to make the offer more attractive. This was how
he came to meet David Owen Brooks, a twelve year
(09:07):
old from the neighborhood. Dean was known to be a
little too flirty with the candy company's male employees, but
there was something that was even stranger about Dean Coral's behavior.
Sometimes Dean could be seen digging at night near the
(09:28):
candy shop. He always claimed he was disposing of the
spoiled candy. Almost every one of Dean Coral's murders involves
(09:54):
a common feature, his torture board. It's fairly easy to
find photos of Dean's torture board using a simple online search,
and when you do, if you look closely, you'll notice
that he had built more than one of these devices.
The board shown in some police evidence photos is eight
(10:14):
ft long and three ft wide, while the board shown
in other photos appears to be slightly wider yet shorter
in length, maybe just under six ft long if I
had to guess based on the county sheriff's deputy standing
next to it. Dean always kept a torture board close
(10:35):
at hand in every house he lived in. He hung
it up on the wall when it wasn't in use.
It was a simple design, nothing more than a piece
ofp ply wood with holes drilled in each of the
four corners. Nylon rope was tied through each of the holes,
and handcuffs were attached to the nylon rope at one
end to secure his victim's hands, while the ropes at
(10:59):
the other end were used to secure their feet. As
soon as a drunk or drugged teenage boy passed out,
he was stripped, naked and bound to the torture board.
At this point, the captive was already as good as dead,
but Dean made damn sure that didn't happen too fast
(11:20):
since he knew they wouldn't be able to escape. He
enjoyed the luxury of time and spent literally days molesting, torturing,
and eventually killing his helpless victims. In the end, Dean
Coral's victims were all killed either by gunshot or strangulation.
I imagine some, if not all, of his young victims
(11:44):
actually welcomed their own death as a form of relief
after having endured day after day of excruciating pain and
violent sexual assault. All Well strapped a Dean Coral's torture board.
But Dean Coral and his torture board are only part
of the story. There were other monsters in this nightmare too.
(12:10):
It was nineteen sixty seven when David Owen Brooks first
met Dean Coral. Brooks was in the sixth grade and
he was one of the many many young boys that
used coral Candy Company as a hangout, but the two
quickly became friends. Brooks looked up to Coral as a
father figure, and Coral well, he had other ideas. They
(12:36):
were an unlikely pair a twelve year old and year old,
but for a while the two seemed to be inseparable.
In fact, at one pot around David Brooks even moved
in with Dean Coral. It was later discovered that from
(12:57):
the age of just twelve, bro would allow Coral to
perform oral sex on him in exchange for gifts or cash.
The Coral's obsession with hanging around with young teen boys
didn't end with his friend David Brooks. In fact, he
found a comforting to have young boys around a lot.
(13:21):
He often picked up hitchhikers, and in late nineteen he
began a downward spiral that wouldn't end until the summer
of nineteen seventy three. About a month before the Thanksgiving holiday,
Dean Coral committed his first known murder. It was a
(13:43):
University of Texas student named Jeffrey Conan. He was an
eighteen year old freshman and he was last seen on
September as he was hitchhiking home to Houston. He was
picked up by Coral, who took him to his apartment,
bound his hands and feet, gagged him, and then sodomized
(14:07):
him before killing him and dumping his body. The area
that Coral lived in had a lot of teens, so
there were plenty of potential victims for him to choose from,
and luring them to his place was easy. All it
really took in most cases was the promise of a party,
(14:28):
which included paint sniffing, glue sniffing, pot smoking, and alcohol,
usually to the point of blacking out, and that's when
Coral would attack. But this tactic wasn't always necessary to
get what he wanted. A lot of the boys that
Coral had to his place were desperate for money, like
(14:51):
David Brooks, that allow him to perform Oral sex on
them for five dollars. The real problem again when oral
sex wasn't enough for Dean Coral. He wanted penetration, but
a lot of the teens refused that, and those were
the ones that ended up dead. One of the stories
(15:15):
that Brooks would later tell the police involved Dean Coral
caught in a very compromising position with a couple of
young teens. It was and Brooks had gone to Dean's
of Parpin without calling a head. When he arrived, Dean
was walking through the house naked and he was furious
(15:37):
with Brooks. Brooks was a little confused, but on his
way out he caught a glance of what was going on.
In the bedroom. He could see two young boys naked
and tied to Dean's bed. The next time Dean saw Brooks,
he explained that he was part of a group of
(15:58):
men that's old and traded young boys, a sexual slavery
ring based out of Dallas. This was never proven to
be true. Later, Brooks would learn that both of the
boys were killed and their bodies dumped. In an attempt
(16:21):
to buy Brooks's silence regarding the rape and murder of
the boys, Coral promised to buy Brooks, who was now
only a few months shy of sixteen years old, a
new car, and he made good on that promise, buying
Brooks a green Chevrolet Corvette. But the Corvette served a
(16:43):
dual purpose. Coral and Brooks would be able to cruise
the streets together in a car that would attract the
attention of teen boys. They used it in their search
for new victims. In the winter of David Brooks brought
(17:04):
another team with him to Dean Coral's home, potentially as
another victim, but the boy impressed Coral and he felt
that the team might be an asset to his operation.
That boy was Elmer Wayne Henley, aged fifteen, a year
younger than David Brooks. The three quickly became good friends
(17:29):
and even committed some break ins together as a test
of Henley's loyalty to the other two. Henley never told
anyone about their shared crimes, and after he had proven himself,
Coral asked him if he'd be willing to kill for him.
Henley said yes. When the crime scene investigators first called
(18:00):
to the home at Lamar Drive in Pasadena, even as
Dean Coral's body was still laying in the hallway, they
knew there was going to be a lot more to
the story than just a self defense shooting death. They
quickly discovered Coral's bedroom was set up as his own
private torture chamber. In his room, they found the plywood
(18:23):
torture board. It was stretched out on top of a
thick sheet of plastic that covered the entire floor. He
also had several tools he used for his various torture techniques,
more than a toolbox full, including the players he used
to plug out his victims public cares. One by one,
(18:45):
the authorities found lengths of rope, rolls of tape, a
large hunting knife, and spools of thick, clear plastic, the
same plastic used to protect the carpet. They also found
eight pairs of handcuffs, an electric motor with the wires
attached that was used to shock the victims genitals, and
(19:08):
an assortment of dildos and glass rods, lots of glass rods.
I'll tell you more about those later, but I will
tell you this right now. Dean Coral's use of those
glass rods is easily one of the most horrific, most painful,
and cruelest prolonged torture tactics. I've ever heard of, and
(19:32):
judging by the number of broken glass rods they found
on his floor, it was also one of his preferred methods.
But it seems that Dean didn't always require tools to
torture the teens. One of his victims angered him so
much the Dean bit off his genitals while he was
secured to the torture board. Later, when that particular victims
(19:56):
remains were exhumed, they found his penis and testicles in
a plastic bag separate from the body. The forensic researchers
soon discovered that, based on the size and the shape
of the wound, the boy was emasculated by a single
violent bite from his attacker. Dean Coral's bedroom was a
(20:20):
scene of so many horrifying crimes, and if you were
a teenage boy living in Pasadena, Texas in the nineteen seventies,
you wouldn't have made it out of their live. Dean
Coral was going to offer as two young apprentices a
perverse and sadistic business opportunity. What exactly was this deadly
(20:45):
trio up to between December of nineteen in August of
ninety and what awful secrets will be revealed in the Aftermath,
Next Time One. Insomniac Yeah. Insomniac is a production of
(21:09):
I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, written and hosted by
Scott Benjamin and produced by Miranda Hawkins, Alex Williams, Matt Frederick,
and Josh Thine. Music composed by Makeup and Vanity Set
and cover by Trevor Eisler. Follow on Twitter and Facebook
at Insomniac Pod, on Instagram at Insomniac Podcast, and at
(21:31):
our website insomniac podcast dot com. For more podcasts for
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
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