September 11, 2024 • 44 mins
Dr. Katherine Ramsland is a professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University. Dr. Ramsland has written over 70 books and appeared in more than 200 crime documentaries. Her work includes interviews with notorious criminals, including BTK (Dennis Rader).
Tracy Ullman: A documentary producer and director, Tracy has worked on numerous true-crime series for Discovery and PBS. She is best known for her work on John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise and her recent book with Dr. Ramsland, The Serial Killer's Apprentice.
Resources:
John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise
The Serial Killer's Apprentice
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, sits down with Dr. Katherine Ramsland and Tracy Ullman, two crime experts who have spent years investigating and documenting the case of Elmer Wayne Henley Jr., the infamous accomplice to serial killer Dean Corll. Together, they explore the complexities of Henley's involvement, his eventual decision to stop Corll, and the psychological and emotional manipulation that Wayne faced as a young teenager.
Wayne himself, joins Zone 7 as a special guest to provide personal insight into his mindset during his time with Corll. Wayne shares his story, from being groomed and manipulated into participating in heinous crimes to his ultimate decision to kill Corll to prevent further murders.
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
- (0:20) Sheryl introduces guest, Dr. Katherine Ramsland to Zone 7
- (2:00) Sheryl introduces second guest, Tracy Ullman to Zone 7
- (3:00) Tracy introduces surprise guest, Elmer Wayne Henley to Zone 7
- (5:10) Meeting Dean Corll
- (5:20) "The first thing he said to me was an obscene joke, so I won't repeat it, but it made me feel like, hey, I'm part of this, I'm part of this group."
- (7:45) The blurred line between victim and apprentice
- (10:30) Wayne's future plans derailed
- (11:30) Dr. Ramsland discusses the term ‘Murdar’ for victim selection
- (13:50) Tracy speaks on building trust with Wayne
- (17:00) Wayne talks about the grooming process
- (19:10) Attempting to join the Navy to escape
- (24:00) Turning point - Wayne describes the moment he decided to end Corll's killing spree
- (30:30) Tracy’s Methodology
- (34:00) Correcting the narrative
- (36:00) Who Was Dean Corll?
- (37:10) “Young people have absolutely nothing in common with an adult. And when they spend time with you, when they make it seem like they do have, it's all a lie.”
- (38:00) Advice for younger people from Wayne
- (43:10) “I have to accept that any child, because that's what I was, any child could be manipulated given the right buttons were pushed and Dean pushed all my buttons.” -E.W.H
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review!
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Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Wayne's calling now an inmate at Telford Units. This call
is being here and I can.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
To accept this free call for us once.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Y'all better buckle up. This episode might need to come
with a warning because you are going to be knocked out.
We have doctor Catherine Ramslin. She teaches at the master's
level at de Sales University. She has appeared in more
than two hundred crime documentaries and magazine shows. She has
(00:43):
authored more than fifteen hundred articles and more than seventy books. Now,
I'm going to tell y'all something. If you feel like
you hadn't really accomplished much, you don't need to listen
to the rest of her CV or resume or her accolades.
Let me tell you how accomplished she is. She is
so accomplished. Her horse has written a book. I looked
(01:07):
straight at Traveler McCollum, my dog, and I said, Traveler,
you need to tighten up. We are behind. We are pitiful.
So I'm just telling you when you look at what
she has done. She has written books like How to
Catch a Killer, The Psychology of Death Investigations, which sits
on my desk at work, The Mind of a Murderer,
y'all know she helped BTK on his autobiography Dennis Raider.
(01:33):
Her area of expertise is extreme offenders, serial killers, mass murderers,
and sex offenders. She is also graciously answered questions from
me on several cases, which I appreciate. Doctor. It is
an honor for you to be with us, and welcome
(01:53):
to Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Next, we have Tracey Ullman. She is also an author.
She is a documentary producer, director, and writer. Now, y'all,
one of those jobs is a lot. She is all
three you talk about a triple threat. This is a
talented woman. She has produced dozens of nonfiction TV programs
(02:20):
for Discovery, Oxygen, and PBS. Her most recent project was
a six part limited documentary series about the serial killer
John Wayne Gacy that you can find on Peacock. We
also have a buddy in common, Karen Conti, who's also
been on the show. Tracy, Welcome to Zone seven. I
(02:42):
appreciate you being here so much.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
We've got a surprise for everybody, and I'm going to
let Tracy introduce our surprise special guest.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Our book myself and doctor Ramsland is called The Serial
Killer Apprentice and it looks more deeply into the case
of Dean Coral. And the only living person from that
case who knows it from the inside is onma Wayne Henley,
and we have him here on the phone today.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Wayne. I appreciate you being here and I just want
to tell you welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Thank you, and I hope this will release some people
and help some people.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
You know it can't help, but do that because I'm
going to tell you, until doctor Ramsland and Tracy Ullman
wrote this book, I don't know that I have ever
read anything that truly focused on somebody that was targeted
and pulled into something. And the title of the book,
(03:46):
of course, just knocked you in the face because when
you realize somebody was an apprentice to a serial killer.
So Wayne, I'm going to let you kind of drive
this train. You start talk and tell us where you
want to go, and then the rest of us will
join you.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
What I'm hoping to do with all of this, and
my participation, is to spread the message stead if this
happens to too many children, teenagers, young people, way too
often we've concentrated over the years on the females, on
the young girls who are prostituted or made to cell
(04:28):
growths or a rob banks or whatever. But we fail
to realize that this is happening to young boys. It
runs their lives and get caught up to something beyond
their control, and they don't really have any avenue to
sea killed. And I want people to be aware of
(04:49):
this and to listen to their to the young people,
talk to them.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
And Wayne, you were only fourteen.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I was fourteen when I'm being called fourteen to young age. Actually,
to be honest with you, I really hadn't really realized
how young until doctor Ramdam made me realize that, recognize
that I was fourteen.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I mean that's a child, Yes, this child. You made
a statement in the book where you said the first
thing that Coral ever said to you was a joke.
Can you talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
The first thing he said to me was that it
was an obscene joke, so I won't repeat it, but
it was It made me feel like I am I'm
I'm part of this group. It made it made me
think that i'm i'm I'm old enough to appreciate something.
These things, and that really wasn't but it's a pattern
(05:45):
that these people have. They that make themselves available to
make the young people feel like they are being heard
and they're part of They're recognized and part of the group.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Now, doctor Ramslin, that is a pattern. And it was
a test that was a straight up test to see
how Wayne would react.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, So when I first started talking to Wayne, he
told me that, and I said, that's probably the first thing.
The most common first thing they do is to test
somebody with an off color joke to see if they'll
go for it. And if they do, they know they
can push them a little more and a little more
(06:25):
until they can push them past their soft limits and
get them to do things they wouldn't themselves have ever
thought of. And I will also say when I first
started talking to Wayne, he wanted to take adult responsibility
for decisions he made at age fourteen and fifteen. And
(06:45):
we talked a lot about the research we have now
about the juvenile brain and the way it processes information
and the way it approaches moral kinds of questions and
problem solving, and I think he had not really realized
a lot of that until we talked, and at that
(07:06):
point he began to see that he was just not
prepared to deal with an adult predator who was targeting
him and grooming him, and grooming the entire community around him,
including his own family, so that nobody would question the
moves he was making, and he could, little by little
(07:28):
leverage Wayne into doing what he wanted.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
And Tracy, I think you did such a great job
when you first made contact and develop the relationship with Wayne,
and y'all make a point in the book where you
talk about there is a blurred line between victim and accomplice.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 4 (07:47):
I think that when I first talked to Wayne, I
was calling him because I was finishing off John Wayne
Gacy Devil in Disguise, the six part series for Peacock,
and I wanted to understand Wayne's sense of himself and
what was going on around him as an accomplice, because
we discovered that Gaycy similarly had accomplices, one of whom
(08:10):
was still living, and I wanted to get an insight.
And as Wayne was telling me about his experiences, it
occurred to me, wait, here you are serving this more
than five hundred year sentence, and your understanding of your
role is, you know, how could you take how could
(08:31):
you have agency in making these decisions when you were
so young and you're up against somebody who is completely
out maneuvering you and taking advantage of his adult position.
And as we started talking about it, I thought, you
know what, it'll be great to have doctor Ramsland really
(08:51):
dig into that aspect of it. And it was in
some ways it felt like a relief, I think for
both Wayne and I to be able to talk openly
about that. Nobody had ever said, wait, how young were you?
Because what I thought about myself as a fourteen year old,
I thought I did not have this kind of cognition.
(09:11):
I wasn't world worry. I didn't I didn't really understand
how the world functioned. And you only realize that as
you're an adult. But when you're a kid, you know,
in some ways, like you're saying through this joke, you
feel like, oh, wait, I'm more adult than I thought
I was. I'm being you know, kind of you know,
leveled up here, when actually all you're doing is being
(09:34):
manipulated and your natural instincts are being taken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Absolutely and that's why predators give victims beer and pot
and let them watch porn. They're making them feel grown
where nobody else in their world is. So that's another
way you start grooming them. You start getting their you know,
defenses down and they think, hey, I'm part of this
group where they see me as an a cool Now, Wayne,
(10:02):
you at fourteen had lots of future plans. You were
a good student, you were well groomed. You wanted to
be a preacher.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
To me, before I became involved with being Carl, is
totally opposite of who I was with Karl. It made
it makes no sense to me. Now I can't. I
can't see it because I had I'm just square. I
(10:31):
enjoyed school. I still enjoy learning. I didn't have many
streets marts. When I wasn't in school, I was working
Dean now I know that didn't kind of have a
clean slate work with and he worked. He worked hard
at it. He started making me question my faith in
God and who God was and was he even there?
(10:54):
And he worked hard at that. How can it be
a god if if your father teacher, your mother and
your brothers like this, Mama, God left that happen. So
he was connecting that to the real experiences and yeah,
and I began to question. I think that his is
(11:15):
also also his failure with me was the fact that
he was never able to completely ressert God in my life.
You will ride the conditioning and training that I've gotten.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
From my mother and now doctor Ramslin to me, what
he's explaining is victim selection. So can you talk a
little bit about how these predators select these victims.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I have a term I use in the book the
murder like the radar, the gadar, the sense of who
can be successfully manipulated, What do they need that will
work to ensure that whatever move the predator makes will
be received. And they look for somebody like that. They
(12:04):
could be wrong. There certainly have been some of these
predators who chose the wrong person entirely, and that person
then turn them in. But they really hone their ability
to look for ul particular types of vulnerabilities that they
know they can meet. Like David Brooks needed money in
(12:25):
a place to stay, someone else might need might want drugs.
Someone else might have been thrown out of their home,
or be lonely or not doing well in school. They
look for vulnerabilities that make that person into appliable partner.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
And you know, when I read that part of the book,
I mean, I have people in my life that talk
about that gut feeling, that radar, and people willingly accept it,
they don't question that it's absolutely true. And when you
said that about Mr Dar it just was a truck
that hit me, and I'm like, of course, of course
(13:04):
these killers have it, and they.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Developed the predator's eye. I talk about the what in
sports is called the quiet eye, the eye that really
can see the ball in a very intense, almost slowed
down way, so that they're able to master it. And
the predators do the same thing. They have a quiet
eye for certain specific behaviors traits that they know are
(13:29):
going to work in their favor.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Now, Tracy, when you first started talking to Wayne, how
did you gain his trust? And Wayne, I'm going to
ask you to follow up and talk about how long
it took you to really trust Tracy Olmen. I don't
know that.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
That was something that I thought through really hard. I
think that I just knew that I wanted to speak
with him, and we talking, and I think we had
an agreement that, you know, this was not simply going
to be a usery relationship, you know, where it was transactional.
It had to be an in depth relationship. So I
(14:13):
formed a friendship with Wayne's mother and I was in
fairly constant communication with her as well, and so it
felt like, you know, we were going towards the same
goal and that was kind of bolstered by friendship.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Well that's exactly what happened. We actually talked for a
number of several years before things began to move forward
any kind of way. But I had seen how Tracy had.
She never pushed me, she never asked questions that I
think were very egregious and morbid. You know, she just
(14:53):
trying to be there. And then I appreciated that. But
the trust comes in that I that I learned over
my life. Trust is and you don't earn trust. Someone
gives you their trust and then you've earned the right
to keep it. And I finally had made up my
(15:14):
mind that I was going to trust Tracy and consequently
chat for in uh and I told Catherine, Sat Fawn,
this is it. We're gonna do this. I'm gonna trust you,
and uh, it's gonna be one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Well it works because this is a powerful book that
I think is going to give some insight to a
lot of people. You know, doctor Eric Hickey obviously wrote
about your book, and I want to quote him. Dtor
Ramsland offers us insights into the mind of a serial killer,
rarely seen in criminological literature. Now, doctor Hickey and I
(15:53):
got to do something really unique together. Several years ago.
He came to Atlanta and we went to everyvery single
body disposal site of Wayne Williams to show some insight
to what he might have been thinking and how he
made the decision to kidnap from here and dispose in
(16:13):
a separate place. And it was just amazing having somebody
at his level to do that with us and give
us this information. And Tracy, when I hear that what
this is doing and what y'all are able to do
with Wayne is quote a true story of how Houston's
deadliest murderer turned a kid into a killing machine. And
(16:39):
so again I think what the three of y'all are
doing for junior officers, rookie detectives, criminologists, crime sine investigators
like myself prosecutors is invaluable.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
And I would add teachers and counselors and parents to
that list because they need to know the signals, the signs,
the things to look for, and the importance of listening
when kids are in trouble and need to say something.
Because Wayne did try talking, I think he should address
that he tried talking to somebody to help him and
(17:15):
nobody would. So I think Wayne, Wayne can probably speak
to that better than me.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Oh I spoke to four different adults. I actually committed
a burgery and turned myself into importance the next day,
normal COMPETI but the po was is I was seeking
hell and I couldn't get it. And it's not just
the parents, with every adult in Every adult needs to
(17:42):
be aware that people who are dependent on their ad
bias or on their strength. I want to say weaker,
but it sounds bad. I don't need to be bad.
Those people may come to you. It may be somebody
that you never even thought about it for some reason,
trust you, and they're going to come to you and
ask for help, ask for help. And we need to
(18:06):
hear that. And not only we need to hear that,
but they've get prepared to do something about it. If
you can't, if we don't know what to do, call Prisball,
get somebody in. Uh, don't don't walk the way, don't
don't take time to think about it. Do something, because
those people may never ever wrote the subject again. If
you turn them away the first time, a young person
(18:28):
will not come to you again. I think anybody. Everybody
knows that.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And whenne there's two things that really jumped out at
me in the book. Your mama talks about she didn't
even recognize you. That you used to be so well groomed,
and you had all these plans and you were just
moving forward to success, and then suddenly you let your
looks go. You didn't want to do anything. You stayed
locked up in your room. And there was even one
(18:54):
point you were so desperate to get away from this
life you tried to enlist in the arm.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Sir, I left town three times. Of all, I tried
to live town three times. I left Clown twice, and
tried to join the navy. Uh. And here here's the
funny buck. The reason I couldn't join the baby is
because I couldn't tell a lie. That's what company, That's
why I make me. I lied and said I had
never spoken any any any marijuana, and it ate at
(19:20):
me so bad that I went back said not a
lot about that and of course that that wouldn't take
me after that wasn't me. I was and I still am.
I'm kind of fastidious, like my hands to be dirty.
I got a handkerchief of a pocket all the time,
my hair was parting correctly, bully your area. That was
(19:40):
that two of who I was and I had. I
had to give it up. I didn't expect to live
in the eighteen I no longer thought I had a future.
I knew that at some point Dean or his organization
was gonna kill me. And if they didn't, you know,
if I went to the police, that were put so
(20:01):
any time I had sought hell for sort assistance.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I was reboth and Catherine. When you hear Wayne and
you realize he's talking about Dean Carroll, who in the
seventies was known as the candy Man killer, I mean,
he killed at least twenty eight people. This is the
man that a fourteen year old boy is trying to
(20:23):
figure out on his own how to get away from.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, well he was actually fifteen and sixteen when he
was with Coral. But I will say Wayne is the
only accomplice to a serial killer who killed the killer
to end it. I think and then also told the
police where the bodies were, and had he not done that,
they would have never found them. So we have to
(20:48):
give him some credit for getting it done and then
making sure the police knew where to find these boys.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
And Tracy, that's the thing. This, this man that you
have developed this relationship with, he was pushed, he was
tormented to the point that he had to stop this
threat himself.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
I think, what's going through my mind right now, and
I'm just being completely frank is you know, during this
entire process we've tried to think through you have twenty
eight families who really suffered the loss of a loved
one in the worst way, and part of that was
due to these murders. And so what we're trying to
(21:35):
do is separate that and have a look at what
Wayne experienced. We're not trying in any way to take
away from these families grief or to somehow make Wayne
seem like a traditional victim. But when you do look
at this in bass relief, you see that this is
(21:56):
an individual who could not have escaped vironment that, you know,
his whole kind of mindset is rewired to participate in
this until he does come to the point where he
can no longer stomach it. And I think that the
important part, going back to what Wayne said earlier in
(22:17):
this call, is that he was raised to be a gentleman.
And you know, I think that we've always talked about
these last two potential victims, Tim Curley and Randa Williams.
And with Randa Williams a female in the room, and Wayne,
maybe you should speak to this. That completely changed Wayne's
(22:40):
way of looking at how he was going to proceed.
He had to protect this young lady. When you want
to talk about them.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
I'll that and and something else has been it's been
a fallacy that is me forever. But first, respiculus the female.
I was raised by h sincely by two women, my
mother and her mother. Uh And I was raised to
be a Southern gentleman to grow up and uh be
uh father and a husband and a father and that's
(23:12):
all I was step was the aspiration. Uh And and
I'm still like that. Uh So men, and you know
this may not be actually the correct thing way to pay,
but men took care of women what the southern gentleman
did and and and when uh when he when being
(23:35):
one of her David had one her a woman. Uh,
I just could that was that was the steps she bought. Uh.
But then he had Tim Curley in there. Him was
my friend. Uh Uh. What happened early on is the
second time being and then and this is the time
(23:56):
when I found out that he had actually killed someone
because he he jumped up, jumped on and tied up
a friend of mine. Uh, someone that I had known
for years and years that I've grown up with, a FRANKN. Garry.
And when I when I tried to argue about that,
Dean told me, I reaped to kill the last guy.
(24:17):
This is what I'm gonna do. This what you're already
involved in the murder, So you know, forget about that
you already are already involved. But I made up my
mind at that time that Dean would never kill another
one of my friends. Uh. And I don't mean to
listen who these other victims were, because they never, not
(24:38):
for a second, deserved any of that. H But they
want my friends. Kim was when he got kill and
Ronda together, he managed to just overload me to the
point where I was finally able to take action.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I can compartmentalize things, and I can talk about what
happened to you and the training and education that you're
going to be able to give people through this book
and through doctor Ramslin and Tracy Omen, because for the
last seven years, I have worked with a serial killer,
Carl Patten, the Flint River killer, whose daughter was murdered
(25:24):
in Atlanta. She was beheaded and dismembered, and it was
cold for twenty five years, and we worked on this
thing for seven years. But Carl has a gift, and
that gift is to teach young detectives and young prosecutors,
and I have found it to be extraordinary. It is
(25:47):
separate for me what happened to his victims. I have
also talked with them. I've given them an open microphone
as well. They are part of the research, and they're
part of, you know, the overall understanding of Carl, because
I've got to understand him in order to understand the
victimology of his daughter when he gives that to me
(26:09):
only through letters. So I'm just saying again I know
from the book, and this is another quote, Doctor Ramslin
and Tracy Omen do not just, you know, diminish in
any way your responsibility. But you haven't either, Wayne. And
the day that they came to arrest Carl Patten. He
(26:29):
capt to it. He not only admitted to the four murders.
At the last hearing that took place, there were three
different jurisdictions for four murders. He admitted his involvement. He
admitted everything. And at the last day they were concluding
and Carl says, well, do y'all want to know about
the fifth one or not? They had no idea there
(26:52):
was a fifth victim. So again that honesty that coming forward, Wayne,
you doing that again, It's gonna be a gift not
just for counselors and parents and teachers and prosecutors and detectives,
but like doctor Ranslin said, these parents that have got
to know these signs. So I'm gonna let you take
(27:15):
it back from here and talk a little bit about
your friend. When you're in that house and you know
what they want you to do, tell everybody what you did.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I knew exactly what was going to happen, and well
now exactly because Deane never kind of thing though before.
But I just could not allow that to happen. I
had went to to a lot of efforts to keep
(27:48):
my friends, the people that I that I grew up with,
the ones that I have to associate with Freddy majors
Kim curly the number of I mean, I had my
little brother who had decided that something was going on
with Call, and I needed to share. It's hard to
(28:08):
make him stay away from me, so I had to
have fought hard to do that. But when he finally
had had got it, you know, and I just I
just couldn't say I couldn't Again, it sounds awful. It
is awful that I couldn't do something for the other people,
but I just did not have the dump shot of
(28:30):
the strength, for lack of better word, to stop Call.
He finally had to push me to a point where
where I would act, because I knew by acting, I
was giving up everything, and it's it's a hard decision
to make it seventeen years old. The only reason I'm
able to talk about this now is because I'm to
the point now where I want people to understand this.
(28:53):
I'm not trying to mitigate my responsibilities. I'm not trying
to get out of doing so fifty one plus here
is a prison. I'm not trying to get out of
doing any time. But I want people to understand what happened.
I need people to understand what happened. I need you
to understand what happened. If I hadn't been for doctor Ramsam,
(29:13):
I don't think I ever would a bunched it.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
And that's another piece that I think is critical. I mean,
doctor Ramselin is able to help you, You're then able
to help doctor Ramseln and Tracy complete this book in
a way that's going to help most people. And both
of you, ladies are fact mattered folk. I mean, y'all
(29:36):
stay so focused on what the truth is. Y'all stay
in that lane all the time. You don't waiver. This
is not about being sensational. This is not about hey,
can you know we just blow people's mind. This is
we're going to give you information from the best source
(29:57):
you can get it from and deliver it in a
way that you can go back to it, highlight, make
notes in the margin. So again I want people to know.
I mean, doctor Ramselin, you spent five years with Dennis
Rader researching and writing his book, and Tracy you spent
ten years on the John Wayne Gacy project. Y'all get
(30:19):
connected to your people, You get connected to these topics
and these projects, but you do it in a way
that all of us can learn from it.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, I think it's pretty important to stay immersed, to
do as a sustained study, to let the person show
themselves in various moods, responding to different things, getting a
(30:50):
full dimensional sense of them telling their story as fairly
as possible. I have to say Wayne was easier than Raider,
much more articulate, well read, easy to talk to, even
when he was going through some hard stuff with all
of this, when he was really soul searching. The fact
(31:12):
is he was soul searching in a way I don't
think Rater is capable of doing so. Coming off of
the Raider book and all the years I spent with him,
it was a lot more interesting to work with Wayne
because I think because it was more difficult to pin
down exactly how this was going to work, looking at
(31:35):
him as both the perpetrator and the victim for which
we have no language whatsoever to be able to really
speak about it, and I think his cooperation and frankly
it surprised me because he had tried telling things to
media and they had turned on him so many times
(31:56):
that I could not believe he was willing to trust me.
There was no reason for him to trust me, in particular,
especially after he'd seen what they'd done. Like there was
one talk show host who recorded Wayne for an hour
or so that's what he said. I'm not going to
(32:16):
name who it was. But then he wouldn't play it,
and he told his audience it was so horrific. He
just couldn't put that out to them. And I know
that that's not at all what he got, but it
was just his way of sensationalizing this and making it
seem as if he had been through such an ordeal
talking to Wayne. It was stupid.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
About that.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, So I thought Wayne was very, very courageous and
wanted to do it, and I was grateful that he
really put in the work. But it took hours and hours,
days and months to really work our way through this,
and I think that's what it takes, and not a
lot of researchers have that kind of of time and
ability to do that.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
And you know, you want to talk about researching, Tracy
omen is kind of ridiculous in that area, and she because.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
She's reading this researcher I have ever worked with it, right.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I mean reading through this book. I mean, all of
a sudden Truman Capodi's name leaps off the page and
I'm like what. And then of all places she is
able to find notes that he wrote. They may have
been undated, but where he's talking about certain things. And
she found these notes in the New York City Library.
(33:37):
She researched the daylight side of this thing. So, Tracy,
can you talk about that just a little bit.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
The greatest piece of chemistry, you know, it happens when Catherine,
who is such an established author, has a great innate
sense of organization, and I have a lot of cure reosity,
and so I wanted to know everything I could about
(34:05):
this case because once I had an imagination for the
sex trafficking aspect of it. It's the same thing that
drove me through John Wayne Baisy. I absolutely hate sex
trafficking and so driven to kind of get that across,
but also to kind of look at the more science
(34:27):
angle of grooming. Katherine organized all the details and said
I need this, and the minute she would say that,
let me get go into my files and find these things,
and her and I have tons of conversations very early
in the morning looking at you know, do we have
a hole here? We are we reaching is this kind
(34:49):
of coming off as a conspiracy theory rather than a
fact based argument. And so it was a lot of
back and forth making sure that we didn't create a story,
but simply we corrected the narrative that had been wrong
all along.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
No, it's stellar, Wayne. Again, We are so lucky to
have you. But I think one thing we really have
not done yet is talk about who Coral was. Can
you just give maybe a brief history of who he was,
(35:31):
how he got the nickname Candy Man from the factory
that he and his mama ran, and giving Candy a way.
Just give just a quick synopsis, and then what I
would like for you to do is give the best
advice you can for young people, if it's bullet points
or whatever. And then I'll come back to Catherine and
(35:52):
Tracy one second. But I'm going to give you the
floor right now if you would do that for me.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
First, I save it. Had Tracey not put all this together,
I would never met doctor Emslin. Uh, this will never happen. Uh.
The idea that there was actually UH an organization that
Carl was hooked up to seemed like it was never
going to come to light, even though it was one
of the first things I told the police. Uh. So
(36:18):
Tracy brought all this together. I don't want, I don't
want anybody did not know that, and I want to
thank her for that. Being called he's kind of an enigma.
I didn't really now that. I maybe in hindsight, I
didn't know that much about him. He loved Mission Impossible.
(36:38):
Everything was a Mission Impossible episode with him. Uh, but
he was also a geek and a nerd. He was
not socially adept. It was childlike in many many ways.
I don't I don't want to know if there's really
a bold we could fit him in.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
What what I do think that young people should should
understand when we all think we're growing, no matter how
we are, is that an adult has absolutely nothing in
common with you. Nothing. I don't beat that. Young people
have absolutely nothing in common with an adult, And when
(37:22):
they spend time with you, when they make it seem
like they do have, it's all alive. They're thinking differently
than we are. There, they're aims are different than ours. Uh,
They're everything's different. So it's all they don't have anything
(37:42):
in common with They might be interested in about moments
that might be bring to your family h but they're not.
They won't spend time, they're not wonna hang out with you.
And if they're won't hang out with you, than there's
stop uh over writing purpose behind it than other than that,
I just know want young people to know that if
(38:05):
something seems wrong, that it probably hear is wrong and
there's a vote to get to fear. I wish that.
I wish the young people could understand it. You know,
when you do a good leading or something's not right,
it's not right. That's that's true, that's your your subconscious
pick it up on keating and you said, our actions
(38:28):
or sights that they can't fit into what it knows
to be the correct propression of things. So if you
have if you fear the something wrong, if you think
that something's wrong, ask somebody the insistent that they listen
to you. Make whoever it is, making your dad, your mom,
(38:48):
your aunt and your uncle or whoever, make them stop
and look at you and tell them that's if you
want to be an adult. That's the one thing you
can do as an adult. Make your voice. That's about
all I.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Can recommend, y'all. I am a go to the source person.
I have worked cases where I went to the Imperial
Wizard of the Klan Johnny Lee Cleary. I have worked
murder for hires where I went to the mob hitman
Frank Colatta. Y'all know that I've worked a case where
(39:23):
I went to the serial killer Carl Patten. And tonight,
y'all have been able to go to the source. Everything
he just said was solid information. I think the three
of you are going to save a lot of lives.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
That would be our privilege. And I think the one
thing that I did pick up from Wayne along the
way is that Dean Coral was able to manipulate Wayne
because he felt culpable. And when you're that young, you
aren't an equivalent to a mass murderer serial murderer. You
(40:01):
are an individual who is being taken advantage of in
a great power and balance. And if you if you
fear law enforcement, they are really truly the best recourse
if you do feel that something is wrong with the
relationship with an adult like this, because I think once
Wayne was scared that he'd be persecuted, he wouldn't be
(40:25):
believed he would always be on the losing end. I
think once he believed that Coral really had him.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Actually, it's been proven to be true, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
Yeah, that's you suffered the consequences.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
The first thing I did wrong with Call is not
a murder. It was not a rape. It was a kidnapping.
But but at that I had I had other reasons
that I thought I was doing it, but none of
those matters. I didn't and I did not. I was
not happy about it, and it can't and uh, that's
(40:59):
what he jumped on front of gears. Uh and and
I hated that that was my friend and one. But
when I when I full called aside and said, no,
we can't do this. You can't do this for the
go haha, We'll laugh. It all all a joke anyway,
It'll be all right. He told me, you're already I
(41:20):
raped and murdered the other guy's all right to murder
the other guy. And you are in Paul and they
are going to put you in enough care. That was
and that was my perception. I wasn't old enough to
understand that, I wasn't old enough to be responsible. I
was wise enough to understand that no, no ignorant son
(41:43):
of the law, and that's not the law means they're
law means ignorant of the law, not of the teach,
and not if I went to then if I had
went to the police, who can't take me attention. But
I went to the police and they had they take
me attention, meaning many people would not have died, and
(42:04):
that probably would be But I did feel responsible, and
I was responsible, totally responsible, totally, completely responsible.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
I think this is a book that delves into an
area of crime that most people don't really think about,
the nuances of the accomplished relationship and how to prevent it,
especially for kids who don't know what they're getting into,
(42:35):
who don't know what they're being drawn into, and we
need to do better to protect them. And I'm hoping
this book will offer those tips and offer a good
demonstration of how to listen when a kid is in trouble.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Yeah, it's it's raising the issue way.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
And again, I cannot thank you enough for being here
and sharing your story.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
If I can help somebody, us food association, let us
some knolk streets. If I can help somebody, I would
whatever I can.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
That's powerful, y'all. I'm going to end Zone seven the
way that I always do with a quote. I have
to accept that any child, because that's what I was.
Any child could be manipulated. Given the right buttons were pushed,
and Dean pushed all my buttons. Elmer Wayne Henley Jr.
(43:35):
From the book The Serial Killers Apprentice by doctor Katherine
Ranslin and Tracey Ullman. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is
Zone seven.
Wayne's calling now an inmate at Telford Units. This call
is being here and I can.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
To accept this free call for us once.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Y'all better buckle up. This episode might need to come
with a warning because you are going to be knocked out.
We have doctor Catherine Ramslin. She teaches at the master's
level at de Sales University. She has appeared in more
than two hundred crime documentaries and magazine shows. She has
(00:43):
authored more than fifteen hundred articles and more than seventy books. Now,
I'm going to tell y'all something. If you feel like
you hadn't really accomplished much, you don't need to listen
to the rest of her CV or resume or her accolades.
Let me tell you how accomplished she is. She is
so accomplished. Her horse has written a book. I looked
(01:07):
straight at Traveler McCollum, my dog, and I said, Traveler,
you need to tighten up. We are behind. We are pitiful.
So I'm just telling you when you look at what
she has done. She has written books like How to
Catch a Killer, The Psychology of Death Investigations, which sits
on my desk at work, The Mind of a Murderer,
y'all know she helped BTK on his autobiography Dennis Raider.
(01:33):
Her area of expertise is extreme offenders, serial killers, mass murderers,
and sex offenders. She is also graciously answered questions from
me on several cases, which I appreciate. Doctor. It is
an honor for you to be with us, and welcome
(01:53):
to Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Next, we have Tracey Ullman. She is also an author.
She is a documentary producer, director, and writer. Now, y'all,
one of those jobs is a lot. She is all
three you talk about a triple threat. This is a
talented woman. She has produced dozens of nonfiction TV programs
(02:20):
for Discovery, Oxygen, and PBS. Her most recent project was
a six part limited documentary series about the serial killer
John Wayne Gacy that you can find on Peacock. We
also have a buddy in common, Karen Conti, who's also
been on the show. Tracy, Welcome to Zone seven. I
(02:42):
appreciate you being here so much.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
We've got a surprise for everybody, and I'm going to
let Tracy introduce our surprise special guest.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Our book myself and doctor Ramsland is called The Serial
Killer Apprentice and it looks more deeply into the case
of Dean Coral. And the only living person from that
case who knows it from the inside is onma Wayne Henley,
and we have him here on the phone today.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Wayne. I appreciate you being here and I just want
to tell you welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Thank you, and I hope this will release some people
and help some people.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
You know it can't help, but do that because I'm
going to tell you, until doctor Ramsland and Tracy Ullman
wrote this book, I don't know that I have ever
read anything that truly focused on somebody that was targeted
and pulled into something. And the title of the book,
(03:46):
of course, just knocked you in the face because when
you realize somebody was an apprentice to a serial killer.
So Wayne, I'm going to let you kind of drive
this train. You start talk and tell us where you
want to go, and then the rest of us will
join you.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
What I'm hoping to do with all of this, and
my participation, is to spread the message stead if this
happens to too many children, teenagers, young people, way too
often we've concentrated over the years on the females, on
the young girls who are prostituted or made to cell
(04:28):
growths or a rob banks or whatever. But we fail
to realize that this is happening to young boys. It
runs their lives and get caught up to something beyond
their control, and they don't really have any avenue to
sea killed. And I want people to be aware of
(04:49):
this and to listen to their to the young people,
talk to them.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
And Wayne, you were only fourteen.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I was fourteen when I'm being called fourteen to young age. Actually,
to be honest with you, I really hadn't really realized
how young until doctor Ramdam made me realize that, recognize
that I was fourteen.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I mean that's a child, Yes, this child. You made
a statement in the book where you said the first
thing that Coral ever said to you was a joke.
Can you talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
The first thing he said to me was that it
was an obscene joke, so I won't repeat it, but
it was It made me feel like I am I'm
I'm part of this group. It made it made me
think that i'm i'm I'm old enough to appreciate something.
These things, and that really wasn't but it's a pattern
(05:45):
that these people have. They that make themselves available to
make the young people feel like they are being heard
and they're part of They're recognized and part of the group.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Now, doctor Ramslin, that is a pattern. And it was
a test that was a straight up test to see
how Wayne would react.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, So when I first started talking to Wayne, he
told me that, and I said, that's probably the first thing.
The most common first thing they do is to test
somebody with an off color joke to see if they'll
go for it. And if they do, they know they
can push them a little more and a little more
(06:25):
until they can push them past their soft limits and
get them to do things they wouldn't themselves have ever
thought of. And I will also say when I first
started talking to Wayne, he wanted to take adult responsibility
for decisions he made at age fourteen and fifteen. And
(06:45):
we talked a lot about the research we have now
about the juvenile brain and the way it processes information
and the way it approaches moral kinds of questions and
problem solving, and I think he had not really realized
a lot of that until we talked, and at that
(07:06):
point he began to see that he was just not
prepared to deal with an adult predator who was targeting
him and grooming him, and grooming the entire community around him,
including his own family, so that nobody would question the
moves he was making, and he could, little by little
(07:28):
leverage Wayne into doing what he wanted.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
And Tracy, I think you did such a great job
when you first made contact and develop the relationship with Wayne,
and y'all make a point in the book where you
talk about there is a blurred line between victim and accomplice.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 4 (07:47):
I think that when I first talked to Wayne, I
was calling him because I was finishing off John Wayne
Gacy Devil in Disguise, the six part series for Peacock,
and I wanted to understand Wayne's sense of himself and
what was going on around him as an accomplice, because
we discovered that Gaycy similarly had accomplices, one of whom
(08:10):
was still living, and I wanted to get an insight.
And as Wayne was telling me about his experiences, it
occurred to me, wait, here you are serving this more
than five hundred year sentence, and your understanding of your
role is, you know, how could you take how could
(08:31):
you have agency in making these decisions when you were
so young and you're up against somebody who is completely
out maneuvering you and taking advantage of his adult position.
And as we started talking about it, I thought, you
know what, it'll be great to have doctor Ramsland really
(08:51):
dig into that aspect of it. And it was in
some ways it felt like a relief, I think for
both Wayne and I to be able to talk openly
about that. Nobody had ever said, wait, how young were you?
Because what I thought about myself as a fourteen year old,
I thought I did not have this kind of cognition.
(09:11):
I wasn't world worry. I didn't I didn't really understand
how the world functioned. And you only realize that as
you're an adult. But when you're a kid, you know,
in some ways, like you're saying through this joke, you
feel like, oh, wait, I'm more adult than I thought
I was. I'm being you know, kind of you know,
leveled up here, when actually all you're doing is being
(09:34):
manipulated and your natural instincts are being taken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Absolutely and that's why predators give victims beer and pot
and let them watch porn. They're making them feel grown
where nobody else in their world is. So that's another
way you start grooming them. You start getting their you know,
defenses down and they think, hey, I'm part of this
group where they see me as an a cool Now, Wayne,
(10:02):
you at fourteen had lots of future plans. You were
a good student, you were well groomed. You wanted to
be a preacher.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
To me, before I became involved with being Carl, is
totally opposite of who I was with Karl. It made
it makes no sense to me. Now I can't. I
can't see it because I had I'm just square. I
(10:31):
enjoyed school. I still enjoy learning. I didn't have many
streets marts. When I wasn't in school, I was working
Dean now I know that didn't kind of have a
clean slate work with and he worked. He worked hard
at it. He started making me question my faith in
God and who God was and was he even there?
(10:54):
And he worked hard at that. How can it be
a god if if your father teacher, your mother and
your brothers like this, Mama, God left that happen. So
he was connecting that to the real experiences and yeah,
and I began to question. I think that his is
(11:15):
also also his failure with me was the fact that
he was never able to completely ressert God in my life.
You will ride the conditioning and training that I've gotten.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
From my mother and now doctor Ramslin to me, what
he's explaining is victim selection. So can you talk a
little bit about how these predators select these victims.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I have a term I use in the book the
murder like the radar, the gadar, the sense of who
can be successfully manipulated, What do they need that will
work to ensure that whatever move the predator makes will
be received. And they look for somebody like that. They
(12:04):
could be wrong. There certainly have been some of these
predators who chose the wrong person entirely, and that person
then turn them in. But they really hone their ability
to look for ul particular types of vulnerabilities that they
know they can meet. Like David Brooks needed money in
(12:25):
a place to stay, someone else might need might want drugs.
Someone else might have been thrown out of their home,
or be lonely or not doing well in school. They
look for vulnerabilities that make that person into appliable partner.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
And you know, when I read that part of the book,
I mean, I have people in my life that talk
about that gut feeling, that radar, and people willingly accept it,
they don't question that it's absolutely true. And when you
said that about Mr Dar it just was a truck
that hit me, and I'm like, of course, of course
(13:04):
these killers have it, and they.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Developed the predator's eye. I talk about the what in
sports is called the quiet eye, the eye that really
can see the ball in a very intense, almost slowed
down way, so that they're able to master it. And
the predators do the same thing. They have a quiet
eye for certain specific behaviors traits that they know are
(13:29):
going to work in their favor.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Now, Tracy, when you first started talking to Wayne, how
did you gain his trust? And Wayne, I'm going to
ask you to follow up and talk about how long
it took you to really trust Tracy Olmen. I don't
know that.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
That was something that I thought through really hard. I
think that I just knew that I wanted to speak
with him, and we talking, and I think we had
an agreement that, you know, this was not simply going
to be a usery relationship, you know, where it was transactional.
It had to be an in depth relationship. So I
(14:13):
formed a friendship with Wayne's mother and I was in
fairly constant communication with her as well, and so it
felt like, you know, we were going towards the same
goal and that was kind of bolstered by friendship.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Well that's exactly what happened. We actually talked for a
number of several years before things began to move forward
any kind of way. But I had seen how Tracy had.
She never pushed me, she never asked questions that I
think were very egregious and morbid. You know, she just
(14:53):
trying to be there. And then I appreciated that. But
the trust comes in that I that I learned over
my life. Trust is and you don't earn trust. Someone
gives you their trust and then you've earned the right
to keep it. And I finally had made up my
(15:14):
mind that I was going to trust Tracy and consequently
chat for in uh and I told Catherine, Sat Fawn,
this is it. We're gonna do this. I'm gonna trust you,
and uh, it's gonna be one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Well it works because this is a powerful book that
I think is going to give some insight to a
lot of people. You know, doctor Eric Hickey obviously wrote
about your book, and I want to quote him. Dtor
Ramsland offers us insights into the mind of a serial killer,
rarely seen in criminological literature. Now, doctor Hickey and I
(15:53):
got to do something really unique together. Several years ago.
He came to Atlanta and we went to everyvery single
body disposal site of Wayne Williams to show some insight
to what he might have been thinking and how he
made the decision to kidnap from here and dispose in
(16:13):
a separate place. And it was just amazing having somebody
at his level to do that with us and give
us this information. And Tracy, when I hear that what
this is doing and what y'all are able to do
with Wayne is quote a true story of how Houston's
deadliest murderer turned a kid into a killing machine. And
(16:39):
so again I think what the three of y'all are
doing for junior officers, rookie detectives, criminologists, crime sine investigators
like myself prosecutors is invaluable.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
And I would add teachers and counselors and parents to
that list because they need to know the signals, the signs,
the things to look for, and the importance of listening
when kids are in trouble and need to say something.
Because Wayne did try talking, I think he should address
that he tried talking to somebody to help him and
(17:15):
nobody would. So I think Wayne, Wayne can probably speak
to that better than me.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Oh I spoke to four different adults. I actually committed
a burgery and turned myself into importance the next day,
normal COMPETI but the po was is I was seeking
hell and I couldn't get it. And it's not just
the parents, with every adult in Every adult needs to
(17:42):
be aware that people who are dependent on their ad
bias or on their strength. I want to say weaker,
but it sounds bad. I don't need to be bad.
Those people may come to you. It may be somebody
that you never even thought about it for some reason,
trust you, and they're going to come to you and
ask for help, ask for help. And we need to
(18:06):
hear that. And not only we need to hear that,
but they've get prepared to do something about it. If
you can't, if we don't know what to do, call Prisball,
get somebody in. Uh, don't don't walk the way, don't
don't take time to think about it. Do something, because
those people may never ever wrote the subject again. If
you turn them away the first time, a young person
(18:28):
will not come to you again. I think anybody. Everybody
knows that.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And whenne there's two things that really jumped out at
me in the book. Your mama talks about she didn't
even recognize you. That you used to be so well groomed,
and you had all these plans and you were just
moving forward to success, and then suddenly you let your
looks go. You didn't want to do anything. You stayed
locked up in your room. And there was even one
(18:54):
point you were so desperate to get away from this
life you tried to enlist in the arm.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Sir, I left town three times. Of all, I tried
to live town three times. I left Clown twice, and
tried to join the navy. Uh. And here here's the
funny buck. The reason I couldn't join the baby is
because I couldn't tell a lie. That's what company, That's
why I make me. I lied and said I had
never spoken any any any marijuana, and it ate at
(19:20):
me so bad that I went back said not a
lot about that and of course that that wouldn't take
me after that wasn't me. I was and I still am.
I'm kind of fastidious, like my hands to be dirty.
I got a handkerchief of a pocket all the time,
my hair was parting correctly, bully your area. That was
(19:40):
that two of who I was and I had. I
had to give it up. I didn't expect to live
in the eighteen I no longer thought I had a future.
I knew that at some point Dean or his organization
was gonna kill me. And if they didn't, you know,
if I went to the police, that were put so
(20:01):
any time I had sought hell for sort assistance.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I was reboth and Catherine. When you hear Wayne and
you realize he's talking about Dean Carroll, who in the
seventies was known as the candy Man killer, I mean,
he killed at least twenty eight people. This is the
man that a fourteen year old boy is trying to
(20:23):
figure out on his own how to get away from.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, well he was actually fifteen and sixteen when he
was with Coral. But I will say Wayne is the
only accomplice to a serial killer who killed the killer
to end it. I think and then also told the
police where the bodies were, and had he not done that,
they would have never found them. So we have to
(20:48):
give him some credit for getting it done and then
making sure the police knew where to find these boys.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
And Tracy, that's the thing. This, this man that you
have developed this relationship with, he was pushed, he was
tormented to the point that he had to stop this
threat himself.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
I think, what's going through my mind right now, and
I'm just being completely frank is you know, during this
entire process we've tried to think through you have twenty
eight families who really suffered the loss of a loved
one in the worst way, and part of that was
due to these murders. And so what we're trying to
(21:35):
do is separate that and have a look at what
Wayne experienced. We're not trying in any way to take
away from these families grief or to somehow make Wayne
seem like a traditional victim. But when you do look
at this in bass relief, you see that this is
(21:56):
an individual who could not have escaped vironment that, you know,
his whole kind of mindset is rewired to participate in
this until he does come to the point where he
can no longer stomach it. And I think that the
important part, going back to what Wayne said earlier in
(22:17):
this call, is that he was raised to be a gentleman.
And you know, I think that we've always talked about
these last two potential victims, Tim Curley and Randa Williams.
And with Randa Williams a female in the room, and Wayne,
maybe you should speak to this. That completely changed Wayne's
(22:40):
way of looking at how he was going to proceed.
He had to protect this young lady. When you want
to talk about them.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
I'll that and and something else has been it's been
a fallacy that is me forever. But first, respiculus the female.
I was raised by h sincely by two women, my
mother and her mother. Uh And I was raised to
be a Southern gentleman to grow up and uh be
uh father and a husband and a father and that's
(23:12):
all I was step was the aspiration. Uh And and
I'm still like that. Uh So men, and you know
this may not be actually the correct thing way to pay,
but men took care of women what the southern gentleman
did and and and when uh when he when being
(23:35):
one of her David had one her a woman. Uh,
I just could that was that was the steps she bought. Uh.
But then he had Tim Curley in there. Him was
my friend. Uh Uh. What happened early on is the
second time being and then and this is the time
(23:56):
when I found out that he had actually killed someone
because he he jumped up, jumped on and tied up
a friend of mine. Uh, someone that I had known
for years and years that I've grown up with, a FRANKN. Garry.
And when I when I tried to argue about that,
Dean told me, I reaped to kill the last guy.
(24:17):
This is what I'm gonna do. This what you're already
involved in the murder, So you know, forget about that
you already are already involved. But I made up my
mind at that time that Dean would never kill another
one of my friends. Uh. And I don't mean to
listen who these other victims were, because they never, not
(24:38):
for a second, deserved any of that. H But they
want my friends. Kim was when he got kill and
Ronda together, he managed to just overload me to the
point where I was finally able to take action.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I can compartmentalize things, and I can talk about what
happened to you and the training and education that you're
going to be able to give people through this book
and through doctor Ramslin and Tracy Omen, because for the
last seven years, I have worked with a serial killer,
Carl Patten, the Flint River killer, whose daughter was murdered
(25:24):
in Atlanta. She was beheaded and dismembered, and it was
cold for twenty five years, and we worked on this
thing for seven years. But Carl has a gift, and
that gift is to teach young detectives and young prosecutors,
and I have found it to be extraordinary. It is
(25:47):
separate for me what happened to his victims. I have
also talked with them. I've given them an open microphone
as well. They are part of the research, and they're
part of, you know, the overall understanding of Carl, because
I've got to understand him in order to understand the
victimology of his daughter when he gives that to me
(26:09):
only through letters. So I'm just saying again I know
from the book, and this is another quote, Doctor Ramslin
and Tracy Omen do not just, you know, diminish in
any way your responsibility. But you haven't either, Wayne. And
the day that they came to arrest Carl Patten. He
(26:29):
capt to it. He not only admitted to the four murders.
At the last hearing that took place, there were three
different jurisdictions for four murders. He admitted his involvement. He
admitted everything. And at the last day they were concluding
and Carl says, well, do y'all want to know about
the fifth one or not? They had no idea there
(26:52):
was a fifth victim. So again that honesty that coming forward, Wayne,
you doing that again, It's gonna be a gift not
just for counselors and parents and teachers and prosecutors and detectives,
but like doctor Ranslin said, these parents that have got
to know these signs. So I'm gonna let you take
(27:15):
it back from here and talk a little bit about
your friend. When you're in that house and you know
what they want you to do, tell everybody what you did.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I knew exactly what was going to happen, and well
now exactly because Deane never kind of thing though before.
But I just could not allow that to happen. I
had went to to a lot of efforts to keep
(27:48):
my friends, the people that I that I grew up with,
the ones that I have to associate with Freddy majors
Kim curly the number of I mean, I had my
little brother who had decided that something was going on
with Call, and I needed to share. It's hard to
(28:08):
make him stay away from me, so I had to
have fought hard to do that. But when he finally
had had got it, you know, and I just I
just couldn't say I couldn't Again, it sounds awful. It
is awful that I couldn't do something for the other people,
but I just did not have the dump shot of
(28:30):
the strength, for lack of better word, to stop Call.
He finally had to push me to a point where
where I would act, because I knew by acting, I
was giving up everything, and it's it's a hard decision
to make it seventeen years old. The only reason I'm
able to talk about this now is because I'm to
the point now where I want people to understand this.
(28:53):
I'm not trying to mitigate my responsibilities. I'm not trying
to get out of doing so fifty one plus here
is a prison. I'm not trying to get out of
doing any time. But I want people to understand what happened.
I need people to understand what happened. I need you
to understand what happened. If I hadn't been for doctor Ramsam,
(29:13):
I don't think I ever would a bunched it.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
And that's another piece that I think is critical. I mean,
doctor Ramselin is able to help you, You're then able
to help doctor Ramseln and Tracy complete this book in
a way that's going to help most people. And both
of you, ladies are fact mattered folk. I mean, y'all
(29:36):
stay so focused on what the truth is. Y'all stay
in that lane all the time. You don't waiver. This
is not about being sensational. This is not about hey,
can you know we just blow people's mind. This is
we're going to give you information from the best source
(29:57):
you can get it from and deliver it in a
way that you can go back to it, highlight, make
notes in the margin. So again I want people to know.
I mean, doctor Ramselin, you spent five years with Dennis
Rader researching and writing his book, and Tracy you spent
ten years on the John Wayne Gacy project. Y'all get
(30:19):
connected to your people, You get connected to these topics
and these projects, but you do it in a way
that all of us can learn from it.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, I think it's pretty important to stay immersed, to
do as a sustained study, to let the person show
themselves in various moods, responding to different things, getting a
(30:50):
full dimensional sense of them telling their story as fairly
as possible. I have to say Wayne was easier than Raider,
much more articulate, well read, easy to talk to, even
when he was going through some hard stuff with all
of this, when he was really soul searching. The fact
(31:12):
is he was soul searching in a way I don't
think Rater is capable of doing so. Coming off of
the Raider book and all the years I spent with him,
it was a lot more interesting to work with Wayne
because I think because it was more difficult to pin
down exactly how this was going to work, looking at
(31:35):
him as both the perpetrator and the victim for which
we have no language whatsoever to be able to really
speak about it, and I think his cooperation and frankly
it surprised me because he had tried telling things to
media and they had turned on him so many times
(31:56):
that I could not believe he was willing to trust me.
There was no reason for him to trust me, in particular,
especially after he'd seen what they'd done. Like there was
one talk show host who recorded Wayne for an hour
or so that's what he said. I'm not going to
(32:16):
name who it was. But then he wouldn't play it,
and he told his audience it was so horrific. He
just couldn't put that out to them. And I know
that that's not at all what he got, but it
was just his way of sensationalizing this and making it
seem as if he had been through such an ordeal
talking to Wayne. It was stupid.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
About that.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, So I thought Wayne was very, very courageous and
wanted to do it, and I was grateful that he
really put in the work. But it took hours and hours,
days and months to really work our way through this,
and I think that's what it takes, and not a
lot of researchers have that kind of of time and
ability to do that.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
And you know, you want to talk about researching, Tracy
omen is kind of ridiculous in that area, and she because.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
She's reading this researcher I have ever worked with it, right.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I mean reading through this book. I mean, all of
a sudden Truman Capodi's name leaps off the page and
I'm like what. And then of all places she is
able to find notes that he wrote. They may have
been undated, but where he's talking about certain things. And
she found these notes in the New York City Library.
(33:37):
She researched the daylight side of this thing. So, Tracy,
can you talk about that just a little bit.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
The greatest piece of chemistry, you know, it happens when Catherine,
who is such an established author, has a great innate
sense of organization, and I have a lot of cure reosity,
and so I wanted to know everything I could about
(34:05):
this case because once I had an imagination for the
sex trafficking aspect of it. It's the same thing that
drove me through John Wayne Baisy. I absolutely hate sex
trafficking and so driven to kind of get that across,
but also to kind of look at the more science
(34:27):
angle of grooming. Katherine organized all the details and said
I need this, and the minute she would say that,
let me get go into my files and find these things,
and her and I have tons of conversations very early
in the morning looking at you know, do we have
a hole here? We are we reaching is this kind
(34:49):
of coming off as a conspiracy theory rather than a
fact based argument. And so it was a lot of
back and forth making sure that we didn't create a story,
but simply we corrected the narrative that had been wrong
all along.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
No, it's stellar, Wayne. Again, We are so lucky to
have you. But I think one thing we really have
not done yet is talk about who Coral was. Can
you just give maybe a brief history of who he was,
(35:31):
how he got the nickname Candy Man from the factory
that he and his mama ran, and giving Candy a way.
Just give just a quick synopsis, and then what I
would like for you to do is give the best
advice you can for young people, if it's bullet points
or whatever. And then I'll come back to Catherine and
(35:52):
Tracy one second. But I'm going to give you the
floor right now if you would do that for me.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
First, I save it. Had Tracey not put all this together,
I would never met doctor Emslin. Uh, this will never happen. Uh.
The idea that there was actually UH an organization that
Carl was hooked up to seemed like it was never
going to come to light, even though it was one
of the first things I told the police. Uh. So
(36:18):
Tracy brought all this together. I don't want, I don't
want anybody did not know that, and I want to
thank her for that. Being called he's kind of an enigma.
I didn't really now that. I maybe in hindsight, I
didn't know that much about him. He loved Mission Impossible.
(36:38):
Everything was a Mission Impossible episode with him. Uh, but
he was also a geek and a nerd. He was
not socially adept. It was childlike in many many ways.
I don't I don't want to know if there's really
a bold we could fit him in.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
What what I do think that young people should should
understand when we all think we're growing, no matter how
we are, is that an adult has absolutely nothing in
common with you. Nothing. I don't beat that. Young people
have absolutely nothing in common with an adult, And when
(37:22):
they spend time with you, when they make it seem
like they do have, it's all alive. They're thinking differently
than we are. There, they're aims are different than ours. Uh,
They're everything's different. So it's all they don't have anything
(37:42):
in common with They might be interested in about moments
that might be bring to your family h but they're not.
They won't spend time, they're not wonna hang out with you.
And if they're won't hang out with you, than there's
stop uh over writing purpose behind it than other than that,
I just know want young people to know that if
(38:05):
something seems wrong, that it probably hear is wrong and
there's a vote to get to fear. I wish that.
I wish the young people could understand it. You know,
when you do a good leading or something's not right,
it's not right. That's that's true, that's your your subconscious
pick it up on keating and you said, our actions
(38:28):
or sights that they can't fit into what it knows
to be the correct propression of things. So if you
have if you fear the something wrong, if you think
that something's wrong, ask somebody the insistent that they listen
to you. Make whoever it is, making your dad, your mom,
(38:48):
your aunt and your uncle or whoever, make them stop
and look at you and tell them that's if you
want to be an adult. That's the one thing you
can do as an adult. Make your voice. That's about
all I.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Can recommend, y'all. I am a go to the source person.
I have worked cases where I went to the Imperial
Wizard of the Klan Johnny Lee Cleary. I have worked
murder for hires where I went to the mob hitman
Frank Colatta. Y'all know that I've worked a case where
(39:23):
I went to the serial killer Carl Patten. And tonight,
y'all have been able to go to the source. Everything
he just said was solid information. I think the three
of you are going to save a lot of lives.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
That would be our privilege. And I think the one
thing that I did pick up from Wayne along the
way is that Dean Coral was able to manipulate Wayne
because he felt culpable. And when you're that young, you
aren't an equivalent to a mass murderer serial murderer. You
(40:01):
are an individual who is being taken advantage of in
a great power and balance. And if you if you
fear law enforcement, they are really truly the best recourse
if you do feel that something is wrong with the
relationship with an adult like this, because I think once
Wayne was scared that he'd be persecuted, he wouldn't be
(40:25):
believed he would always be on the losing end. I
think once he believed that Coral really had him.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Actually, it's been proven to be true, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
Yeah, that's you suffered the consequences.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
The first thing I did wrong with Call is not
a murder. It was not a rape. It was a kidnapping.
But but at that I had I had other reasons
that I thought I was doing it, but none of
those matters. I didn't and I did not. I was
not happy about it, and it can't and uh, that's
(40:59):
what he jumped on front of gears. Uh and and
I hated that that was my friend and one. But
when I when I full called aside and said, no,
we can't do this. You can't do this for the
go haha, We'll laugh. It all all a joke anyway,
It'll be all right. He told me, you're already I
(41:20):
raped and murdered the other guy's all right to murder
the other guy. And you are in Paul and they
are going to put you in enough care. That was
and that was my perception. I wasn't old enough to
understand that, I wasn't old enough to be responsible. I
was wise enough to understand that no, no ignorant son
(41:43):
of the law, and that's not the law means they're
law means ignorant of the law, not of the teach,
and not if I went to then if I had
went to the police, who can't take me attention. But
I went to the police and they had they take
me attention, meaning many people would not have died, and
(42:04):
that probably would be But I did feel responsible, and
I was responsible, totally responsible, totally, completely responsible.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
I think this is a book that delves into an
area of crime that most people don't really think about,
the nuances of the accomplished relationship and how to prevent it,
especially for kids who don't know what they're getting into,
(42:35):
who don't know what they're being drawn into, and we
need to do better to protect them. And I'm hoping
this book will offer those tips and offer a good
demonstration of how to listen when a kid is in trouble.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Yeah, it's it's raising the issue way.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
And again, I cannot thank you enough for being here
and sharing your story.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
If I can help somebody, us food association, let us
some knolk streets. If I can help somebody, I would
whatever I can.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
That's powerful, y'all. I'm going to end Zone seven the
way that I always do with a quote. I have
to accept that any child, because that's what I was.
Any child could be manipulated. Given the right buttons were pushed,
and Dean pushed all my buttons. Elmer Wayne Henley Jr.
(43:35):
From the book The Serial Killers Apprentice by doctor Katherine
Ranslin and Tracey Ullman. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is
Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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