The Candy Man – Part Two [10]

Dean Corll was one of the deadliest killers in history. But it wasn’t the cops who brought him down. It was his own accomplice.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
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. I'm Scott Benjamin and everything I'm about

(00:28):
to tell you is real. This is Insomniac. Beginning in
nineteen and all the way through August of nineteen seventy three,

(00:49):
there was a pattern forming in the community of Houston
Heights in the northwest central area of Houston, Texas. Young boys,
lots of them, were disappearing, more than forty in all
before it finally ended. Parents were frantic reporting the missing

(01:10):
children to the Houston police, but the police were quick
to dismiss the cases, all of them as runaways. It
was a decision that they would later regret, as community
backlash was intense when the real nature of the disappearances
was soon uncovered. Occasionally, the parents would receive a note

(01:32):
from their missing sons, written in their own handwriting, stating
that they had moved away to find work, or they
were going to stay with a friend for a while.
Some even received telephone calls and their missing sons stating
the same. Of course, none of that was true. The

(01:52):
boys were forced to write those notes or to make
those calls to their parents. Now that the circle of
rust included Elmer Wayne Henley, Dean Coral raised the stakes
in his deadly game. He offered both of his young companions,
Brooks and Henley, two hundred dollars for each boy they

(02:13):
could lure into his house as a victim. Henley waiter
claimed that he ignored Coral's offer until early nine, when
his family was in need of the money. The truth is,
we'll never really know the first time Henley claimed his
two bounty for the life of a friend, but we

(02:35):
do know that it became a regular occurrence. Here's the
way it worked. Henley and Coral came up with a
plan that coincidentally was almost identical to what John Wayne
Gacy was doing in Chicago at the very same time.
They thought of a way to get a team to

(02:55):
willingly wear a pair of handcuffs. It was almost like
a game him to them. Henley would first wear the
cuffs himself behind his back, and he would somehow escape,
making it look easy. The secret was he had a
key hidden in his back pocket. The teenage victim would
attempt the same, but when the cuffs didn't release, Dean

(03:19):
would pounce on the victim, quickly binding and gagging them
so that no one could hear them scream. Henley claimed
that's when he would leave the victim alone with Coral,
believing that he was to be delivered to the Dallas
based sex slavery ring. Again, there was never any evidence
of Dean Coral belonging to such a group. Maybe the

(03:42):
most chilling part of all this, at least so far,
is that the teens and younger kids in the neighborhood
that Brooks and Henley were delivering to Dean Coral for
just two dollars each were their neighbors and childhood friends,
the same kids they grew up with and the same
kids they went to school with. The date was auguste

(04:15):
and Henley, now aged seventeen, had invited a friend, Timothy Curly,
aged nineteen, to a party at Dean's house. When Henley
and Curly made it to Dean's house that evening, they
drank alcohol, had sniffed paint fumes before leaving around midnight
to buy some sandwiches David Brooks was not at Dean's

(04:38):
house that evening. Along the way, the two teens stopped
near Henley's house, and Henley walked to the home of
Rhonda Williams, aged fifteen. She was a friend of Henley's
and her drunk father had beaten her early in the evening.
She said she wanted to get out of the house
until he was sober. Henley invited her to join them

(05:03):
at Dean Coral's home that evening, and the three teens
drove to Dean's house in Pasadena. It was about three
am on August eight when the three arrived at Dean's house.
Dean was extremely angry with Henley for inviting a girl
to his house, telling him that he had ruined everything.

(05:26):
Henley explained the situation to Coral, and he seemed to
calm down as he offered the three of them more
alcohol and marijuana. As they continued to sniff paint fumes,
Dean sat back and watched. After two hours, all of
the teens had passed out. When Henley finally awoke, he

(05:48):
was lying on his stomach and Dean Coral was placing
handcuffs on his wrists. He already had his mouth taped
shut and his ankles were bound together. Both Timothy Curly
and Rohnda Williams were lying beside Henley on the floor
similar to his situation. They were both gagged with tape

(06:10):
and bound with nylon rope. Timothy Curley was already completely naked,
while Ronda Williams still had her clothes on. When Dean
noticed that Henley was awake, he removed his gag just
long enough to tell him that he had made a
fatal mistake in bringing a girl to the house. He

(06:33):
was going to kill all three of them after he
tortured Curly. Dean then shoved a twenty two caliber pistol
into Henley's stomach and threatened to shoot him. Henley was
able to calm Coral by telling him that he would
assist him in the torture and murder of the other
two teens, but he would have to release him from

(06:53):
his restraints. Surprisingly, Dean agreed to this and untied Henley
and then tied Curly and Williams to opposite sides of
his torture board. Dean's plan was for Henley to rape
and kill Williams while he raped and killed Curly. By
now the other two teens had awakened and the reality

(07:16):
of the situation was sinking in. Both were terrified, and Williams,
whose gag was now also removed, asked Henley is this
for real? Henley told her it was, and then as
Dean if he could take Williams into the other room,

(07:36):
Coral was busy violating curly and ignored Henley's request. It
was at this point that Henley made a grab for
Dean's pistol and began shouting a Dean that he had
gone far enough. He couldn't go on any longer. He
couldn't have Dean killing all of his friends. Dean shouted

(08:00):
back defiantly and taunted Henley by yelling kill me, Wayne,
and then as he moved closer to Henley, he yelled,
you won't do it. That's when Henley fired the first shot,
hitting Dean Coral in the forehead, but the bullet didn't
go through his skull. As Dean moved even closer, Henley

(08:24):
fired another two rounds into Coral's left shoulder. This stopped him,
and Dean staggered out of the room. As Henley fired
three more rounds into his lower back and shoulder, Dean
was dead. Henley had killed Dean Coral and saved the
lives of two of his friends as well as his own.

(08:47):
Curly and Williams were released in the torture board by Henley,
and the three of them dressed and talked about what
they should do next. Henley just wanted to leave, but
Curly said l they should call the police. They all
agreed and Henley made the call. Aside from the Corvette

(09:24):
that Dean Coral had purchased for David Owen Brooks, which
Dean still had limited access to, he owned another flashy car,
a Plymouth GTX. It wasn't a coincidence that he drove
a car like this. It was fast and loud, and
it seemed to attract the attention of all the teenage
boys in the neighborhood, exactly what Dean wanted. Coral, along

(09:51):
with Brooks and Henley, would cruise the neighborhood looking for
potential victims and then lure the boys either into the
car or to Coral's home with a promise of candy
or alcohol, or even a party. But the g t
X wasn't Dean's only car. He owned another vehicle that

(10:11):
served a more useful purpose afford a con line van.
This is the universal sketchy van that your parents warned
you to stay away from. Prior to his killing, years,
Coral would occasionally invite the neighborhood kids that lived near
the candy store to picnic with him at the beach,

(10:32):
using the van for transportation. Of course, according to those
that had accepted a ride years earlier, it was much
nicer at the time, carpeted and clean. However, by the
time the authority sees the van immediately after Dean's death,

(10:54):
it was just as creepy an awful inside as you
might guess. By then, it was in regular use to
haul dead bodies from Dean's house to one of several
burial places. It was even rumored that he used this
as a mobile torture van, similar to the torture room
he had set up in the bedroom of his house,

(11:16):
complete with pegboard like walls featuring drilled holes that served
the same purpose as his torture board did in his home.
The van's room windows were completely covered by thick blue curtains,
impossible to see in and impossible to see out. The
cargo area of the van was no longer neatly carpeted,

(11:37):
but instead hold a worn out section of a beige rug.
It was covered in stains. Police also found a length
of rope and a handbuilt wooden crate with air holes
drilled in the sides. Around the same time, police found
a similar wooden crate in Dean Coral's backyard, but inside
that one they also found strands of human hair, leaving

(12:01):
little doubt that Dean used these creates to secure and
transport some of his victims. The sad truth is all
of the young boys that we're seeing getting into the
van or car along with Dean and his two accomplices
between the years of nineteen seventy in ninety three, well,

(12:23):
they never came back. Initially, Henley was treated as a
hero saving the lives of two of his friends from
a real life monster, but Henley soon began to tell
the authorities a lot more than they ever bargained for.

(12:49):
He told them how he and David Brooks were in
charge of finding teenage boys for Dean Coral's rape, torture
and murder fantasies. He also told them he himself had
assisted in several abductions and murders and helped to torture
and mutilate six or eight victims before they were killed.

(13:10):
He told them about the Southwest Houston boat storage shed
that Dean Coral had rented, where most of the victims
had been buried, while others were buried at High Island
Beach and Lake sam Rayburn. Police didn't want to believe
his stories initially, that is until he mentioned a few
specific names of the boys he had helped to a

(13:31):
Ductford Dean. All of the names he provided were listed
as missing children. Later that very same day, AUGUSTE. Henley
agreed to go to the Southwest Houston boat storeage shed
with the authorities. He claimed he could lead them to

(13:53):
the bodies of the missing children. When they opened the
door to the enclosed boat shed, there was some sort
of junk to be moved, a half stripped stolen car,
a kid's bicycle, two sacks of lime, and boxes full
of teenage boy's clothing. When it came time to dig,

(14:17):
the work was done by prison trustees and the soft
dirt inside the boat shed was relatively easy to move.
Almost right away they uncovered the body of a young
teenage boy, wrapped in clear plastic and buried beneath a
layer of lime. As they continued to dig, they found

(14:39):
several more sets of human remains, each in different stages
of decomposition. Most of the bodies were wrapped in the
same thick, clear plastic sheeting. Some had been strangled and
the ropes were still wrapped around their neck, while others
had been shot. Digging up to cane bodies in an

(15:03):
enclosed metal shed is hard enough to imagine, but when
you also consider this was Texas in August, the heat
and the smell must have been unbearable. On that first day,
the bodies of eight young boys were pulled from the
ground in the boat shed. All of them had been sodomized,

(15:27):
and all of them showed evidence of sexual torture, including
chew genitals, objects inserted into the rectums, pubic hair is
plucked out, and one other particularly sadistic treatment. Authorities learned
through examining the bodies the dean coral had inserted glass

(15:48):
rides into the boy's penises, and then he would snap
them off and shatter them while they were inside. The
pain that's inflicted would make a person beg to be
put out of their misery. The coral would keep the
teens alive for several days of this type of abuse.

(16:22):
While conducting my research for the Dean Coral story, I
kept returning to the one fact I simply couldn't wrap
my mind around for the longest time, and to be
honest with you, I still can't completely understand it. My
question was this, why weren't the Houston police more concerned
about the pattern of missing teens Over a relatively short

(16:46):
span of time, Around two and a half years, there
were approximately fortys missing from the same neighborhood. Two families
had lost not just one son, but two kids each,
teen brothers, all taken at separate times. What had to

(17:06):
happen for the authorities to finally take action? What was
the hesitation? Well, I think I found the answer, or
at least the best explanation I've heard so far. It
comes from a book written in four by a man
named Jack Olsen titled The Man with the Candy The

(17:27):
Story of the Houston mass Murders. In it, Olsen states
that it was not just one factor, but rather a
combination of factors that led to the oversight. First, the
Houston Police Department simply lacked the resources to search for
missing children's request to do so, or often declined. It's

(17:52):
also true that teens occasionally choose to leave home in
pursuit of something new, different and exciting, a perceived new
life just somewhere else. It was easy for the police
to tell the parents that they're missing teen was merely
a runaway, easy because that's what they truly believed it happened.

(18:16):
It's also important to remember that the term serial killer
wasn't even coined until ninety Before that it was almost
unimaginable that a killer of this sort was living in
the same neighborhood along with the families of the kids
he was killing. Unimaginable, that is until Henley shot and

(18:36):
killed Dean Coral in the early morning hours of auguste,
and the truth was then known. Any way you look
at it, this was an especially dark time for the
community of Houston Heights, the senseless destruction of dozens of
young men, all with the rest of their lives ahead

(18:59):
of m as they were taken far too young, being
Coral's oldest victim was twenty years old, his youngest was
only nine. David Brooks turned himself in at the Houston

(19:24):
Police Station. He was accompanied by his father as He
denied being involved in the murders, but stated that he
did know that Coral had raped and killed two boys.
In the next day, August nine, Henley accompanied the authorities
to Lake sam Rayburn, where two additional bodies were found

(19:48):
in shallow, lime covered graves. At the same time, police
continued to search the boat shed, and they discovered an
additional nine bodies on their second day of digging. Henley
insisted there were still two more bodies inside, but they
were never located. Later that evening, David Brooks finally gave

(20:12):
a full confession, admitting to being present while some of
the killings occurred and helping to bury some of the bodies.
The next day, August t, Henley accompanied the authorities to
Lake sam Rayburn, where they were able to find two
more bodies. That same afternoon, both Henley and Brooks went

(20:34):
with the authorities to High Island Beach and led the
police to two more shallow graves. Days later, on August
Hemley and Brooks returned to High Island Beach with the police,
where they located four more bodies. Again, Henley insisted that
there were still two additional bodies to be found on

(20:54):
the beach, but they were never located. In total, they
had uncovered twenty seven known victims, with the possibility of
at least four more. According to Henley. At the time,
it was the worst killing spree in American history, a
grizzly record that would only stand for five more years

(21:17):
until John Wayne Gaze he was captured in after killing
thirty three young men and boys and burying them in
his crawl space. In the end, Dean Coral was the
only one who escaped without suffering to consequences. Maybe he
paid the ultimate price, losing his life, but it was

(21:38):
his young accomplices that eventually had to answer for all
of his wrongdoings, along with her own, of course, and
they're still paying for it today. In David Owen Brooks
was found guilty of abduction and murder and received a
life sentence. He's been up for p roll several times,

(22:01):
but has been denied every time. His most recent chance
for freedom came in two thousand and fifteen. He's still
locked away. Elmer Wayne Henley is currently serving six consecutive
terms of ninety nine years for a grand total of
five years in prison for his role in the Houston

(22:22):
mass murders. With no chance of parole. He'll die in prison.
There's no question my entire view of the world around
me has changed. When I started this journey, I wanted

(22:43):
to know why serial killers did what they did, what
motivated them, what made them tick and well. I did
find some answers to those questions. I also found darkness,
a lot of darkness to go along with it. I
know they are good people around us, but we should
also never forget. They're bad people around us too, very

(23:05):
bad people who are capable of doing things you and
I could never imagine everything I've gone through my personal life.
In addition to delving into the lives of these serial killers,
the sadness and death that I've read about every single
day has led me to the biggest question of all.
Is this healthy? We all consume violence in one way

(23:26):
or another on a daily basis. It's on our televisions,
it's on the radio, and in our podcasts. Is what
drives storylines and plots? We turned to true crime as
a means of enjoyment. I'm guilty of this myself. But
what are the consequences, the long lasting implications on all
of us as individuals, as a society. I don't know.

(23:49):
If I'll ever be able to forget what I've seen
in my third year so years a true crime infatuation.
But I'm hoping some of those vivid images will begin
to fade into the distance as I grow older. I
haven't been able to entirely stabilize or separate my dreams
from reality. I'm still working on it. For now, though
I've reached the end of my fascination with true crime.

(24:12):
It's time to take a break, and hopefully with that
break the nightmares that have kept me up all night,
we'll transition back into normal dreams once again. Well, today
is one of those unusual days when I actually got
some sleep last night, about six hours of sleep, and

(24:36):
I feel pretty good. Um it's almost like a like
a fog is lifted from my head, like I can
I can think clearly. I'm kind of ready for the day,
which is really pretty unusual. They's pasted a few uh
well years, but um, yash, I don't know. It feels good.
It feels like today might be a good day and
I'm kind of looking forward to it. So not all

(24:57):
doom and gloom all the time, um as far as
sleep goes, But most of the time it is, but
I thought, you know, hey, I'm having a good day.
I'll talk about that too. Insomniac is a production of
I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, written and hosted by

(25:21):
Scott Benjamin and produced by Miranda Hawkins, Alex Williams, Matt Frederick,
and Josh Than. 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
our website insomniac podcast dot com. For more podcasts for

(25:43):
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