September 22, 2025 • 59 mins
Friendly neighbor. Serial killer. Welcome to the Houston Mass Murders.
Meet Dean Corll — the "Candy Man" of Houston, whose friendly smile hid one of the most disturbing crime sprees in U.S. history. With teenage accomplices Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks, Corll lured neighborhood boys to their deaths, burying dozens in boat sheds, lakes, and beaches.
This episode dives into the shocking murders, the night Henley turned on Corll, and the investigation that uncovered the Houston Mass Murders — a case so horrifying it changed the way America thought about serial killers forever.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
When the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.
They'll eat your gods and spit them out.
And when your bones begin to rot, the worms remain, but you
do not. So don't ever laugh as the
hearse goes by, For someday you'll be next in life.
(00:22):
And when death brings his cold despair, ask yourself, will
anyone? Macabre may not be suitable for
all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
What were you listening to? Oh, it's it's called Acceptance.
It's a third book in a trilogy by Jeff Van der Meer.
(00:46):
It's fucking good. The first book is an elation and
the covers of the books are alsoreally cool.
They kind of look like a sciencefictiony Salvador Dali.
Oh wow. And they're very science or more
sci-fi thriller if Stephen King mixed with The Thing Happened.
(01:09):
Oh wow, I'm intrigued. Yeah, you should totally look
into it. I have the Libby app on my phone
and so they have them for free and they're always available,
which is super awesome. So I'm 45 minutes away from the
end of the whole trilogy and it's fucking wild.
And we might need to post a listof books and stuff that we are
(01:32):
reading or have read recently onthe Patreon page for book club
type stuff. We I know we really haven't done
much of that, but I totally. Agree.
Oh man, and I got to update our Goodreads page too.
I just finished that slew foot book.
Was it good? It took me 3 days to read it.
I could not stop reading it, it was so good.
(01:54):
That's awesome. I'm I have it on my list.
I might. So good.
Yeah, you'll love it. And then I'm listening to on
Audible, The Southern Book ClubsGuide to Slaying Vampires by
Grady Hendrix. It's it's good, but it's a
little slow for me. And to each their own.
If you love it, if you hate it. I wanted to give it a try.
(02:15):
It's it helps. I think that it's in the audio
format for me. I might not have stuck with it
if I was reading it. I'm very ADHD, it takes a lot to
get me sucked in and keep me, especially when I have a million
things to do in my personal lifethat I'm I could be doing
something. Else yeah, or listening to
something else and help me get through it.
(02:36):
Yeah, I'm with you. And sometimes it, it does depend
on the story, the tone that's supposed to be set versus who's
reading it 'cause sometimes if the reader, you know, and it's
totally fine to have that perspective in different tones
in your own head. And it's different for
everybody. But when you hear it, you're
(02:57):
matching their tone with what's really going on.
Sometimes it's not always a goodchemistry with you and the
reader, the audio portion. But yeah, this series and I will
say I, I want to own physical copies of these books.
That's how much I would like them.
(03:18):
Very good. And they're not even that old, I
think. Let me see when the first book
came out. There's actually a a movie too,
with Natalie Portman, which I haven't seen yet, but I think
that came out in 2018. But the first book by Jeff Van
der Meer came out in 2014. One of the genres it's under is
(03:49):
new. Weird.
Oh, I didn't know that was the thing neither.
I like it and I like it now I want to find more that.
But looking at the results, the elitist book review gave it a
three out of five. Goodreads gave it a 3.8 out of
five. But if you like sci-fi mixed
with thrills and suspense, I would actually rate it like a
(04:10):
4.5. OK.
And as the story goes on, I would say the first book is
always the best. The second, I mean, how it's
written throughout the trilogy is really good.
And the the build up that you get later can be a little dry.
But what's worth it are the scenes where you are in horror
(04:32):
of what they're describing. Like it's, yeah, I don't know.
I love it. Yeah, you'll have to maybe post
that on the Patreon group, Just a list of some of the stuff
you're into, so ways to find it and whatnot.
Eventually, when we have more time, it would be so fun to get
that book club going like we talked about.
Oh my God. Yeah, and craft night.
(04:54):
Patreon Craft nights. I would freaking love that I
gotta make a ghost or a skull. That's my new my new goal.
Also pumpkins. Yeah, yeah.
This will come out right before the spooky season episodes drop.
Nice. And it's a heavy one.
(05:17):
I'm not going to go into full onsuper graphic detail about some
stuff. So if you came here looking for
that, there's definitely going to be some.
It's unavoidable for me to not talk about some of the stuff
that we're going to talk about. But it's heavy enough as it is.
So I did what I could with it and it is a true crime episode,
(05:41):
so you'll know by the title whatyou're getting into.
But we've covered a lot of true crime lately just with the
macabre features and then some of these stories.
We'll break it up a little bit. Spooky season will help because
it's just a different, it's a little bit more of the
supernatural, paranormal type stuff.
And then there's some fun episodes we have built into you
(06:02):
to kind of break that up. So just bear with me.
We'll get through this one, and then we'll have a nice little
break for the month of October. Be like one big Halloween party
Halloween party right now I'm excited for this episode today
because I don't know a lot aboutthis topic so I'm.
Hearing hearing you word say theword excited.
(06:27):
More in Shock question mark. Yeah, I think at this point I'm
not even going to really do any housekeeping on the front end.
Every way to contact us is in the show notes.
I do appreciate all of you new listeners and long time
listeners. That goes without saying.
But we're going to say it again.We love you.
(06:48):
Thank you, appreciate you. I don't know how long this
episode is going to be, so I'm kind of just going to dig into
it and leave some time for us totalk about stuff as we go
through. Sounds good.
All right, friends listeners, myhype notes for this episode are
a little lengthy, so bear with me.
It's going to be more a little bit of a narrative set up, but
(07:12):
on you'll understand once we getinto the episode of why I chose
to do it that way. All right, let's dive in.
Today's episode is about a dark chapter in Houston's history.
The show is called Macabre. My name is Hallie.
I'm Blair. And we don't always talk about
(07:33):
ancient history. We talk about stuff that's
happening in our recent past two.
And this is one of those stories.
In the early 1970s, just a few miles from downtown Houston, the
neighborhood of Houston Heights looked like an ordinary
community. Families filled the streets,
children rode their bicycles, and evenings ended up with kids
(07:54):
rushing home for dinner. But behind that picture of
normalcy, something very dark was unfolding.
Between 1970 and 1973, at least 29 boys that we know now, young
men and boys, vanished seeminglywithout a trace.
(08:16):
Families filed their missing persons reports.
Helpless mothers plastered theirson's photos across telephone
poles, desperate for answers. Fathers went door to door
searching for their missing loved ones.
But they were left without answers.
Again and again, the police dismissed the missing boys as
runaways because, let's face it,it was easier than facing the
(08:40):
truth of what was actually happening.
Someone had murdered their children.
Behind the disappearances was a man whose name many of our
listeners might not have ever even heard of before.
This man was responsible for thedeaths of.
Now we know 29 victims in the Houston and Pasadena areas, and
(09:04):
his name was Dean Arnold Quarrel.
But the community knew him as the Candy Man, a quiet bachelor
who at one time worked at his mother's candy shop, gave out
free sweets, and hired local boys for odd jobs.
He was trusted. He was beloved, even.
(09:24):
But behind that harmless facade,Dean Coral carried out one of
the most brutal serial murder cases in American history up to
this time. He enticed the boys with candy,
drugs and the promise of excitement, then together with
two teenage accomplices, bound, tortured and killed them.
(09:46):
The scale of horror is staggering.
Yet this killer's name is barelyremembered compared to Dahmer,
Gacy or Bundy. But tonight, today, we are going
to change that. This is the story of Dean Coral,
the Candy Man of Houston. Yep, never heard of him.
(10:09):
Yep. So a lot of people have it and
we'll talk about that towards the end of why maybe his name
isn't something that that peopletalk about.
We'll get into that too, becauseit's a lot of victims and it's
not something you would think people would forget about.
Yeah. But we have to begin with his
(10:30):
early life, as we often do when we're talking about serial
killers, to kind of find out what might have happened, you
know, what would have shaped this person to begin with.
Dean Coral was born on ChristmasEve in 1939 in Fort Wayne, IN a
small town at that time, which is not too far from where I live
(10:51):
now. Dean's arrival should have been
a joyful occasion, but his childhood was far from picture
perfect, as is with a lot of these guys.
He was one of two boys. His parents, Arnold Coral and
Mary Robinson, fought constantly.
His father was strict and at times even abusive, and Mary,
(11:14):
his mother, was fiercely protective of both Dean and his
brother and she was known for being a little bit too coddling
and to the point of being overbearing, which is another
classic thing that you see. Dean and his younger brother
Stanley grew up in a House of complete chaos and eventually
(11:36):
because of the fighting and the different beliefs between the
parents, the marriage collapsed.Mary ended up taking both of the
boys and move them to I may say this wrong.
Apologies to our Texas listeners.
It looks like Vidor by door Texas.
Vidor, TX maybe. So they moved away and then Dean
(11:59):
started school. He pretty much blended in in the
school environment. His teachers described him as
being polite, well mannered, buthe was known for being shy.
And he wasn't the type of kid that caused disruptions in class
or anything like that. It wasn't loud or boisterous.
He was just quiet, the kind of kid who could go through life
(12:24):
pretty much unnoticed. And that in itself is a little
bit dangerous, I think. Yeah.
Definitely. The ones you don't suspect,
right? Yeah, exactly.
So further on in his childhood, neighbors recalled that Dean
never really fit in. Which is, again, we're checking
(12:44):
all the boxes here so far, people.
So while other kids were playingfootball and doing those things
that kids do, he spent his time tinkering with mechanical
gadgets or just observing peoplefrom the sidelines.
He was socially awkward, but he was an obedient kid.
He was respectful to the people around him and no one ever
(13:06):
really saw him as being a dangerous type of person.
But there were some hints, smallones, of something that was
lurking beneath the surface. Things like he struggled with
his close friendships, he didn'tdate, and when he was asked
about girls he just shrugged it off.
(13:28):
Instead, Dean gravitated towardsyounger boys and he liked to be
admired by them. There was something about young
boys gravitating towards him that he really enjoyed being
looked up to. And in the conservative 1950s,
when he was growing up in Texas,having these feelings, possibly
(13:54):
homosexual tendencies, wasn't something that was spoken about
out loud. It was kept very secret, and he
learned very early on how to keep those secrets and to hide
what he really wanted. By 1955, Dean's mother remarried
(14:14):
a man named Jack West, and together they opened up a candy
store, which at the time was called the Pecan Prince.
Here, Dean and his brother wouldoperate the candy making machine
and pack candy product. Between these years of 1954 and
58, Dean was then enrolled in high school and oddly enough,
(14:38):
played the tambourine, which is something that I can't picture
in my brain now that I know thisperson.
But that was. He really had no interest in
school other than playing the tambourine in the band.
An interesting fact about him. Yeah.
After graduation, he ended up moving with his family a little
bit closer to Houston. And then two years later, he
(15:01):
moved back to Indiana to live with his widowed grandmother for
a short period of time. So there's a lot going on with
him moving around. Stayed with his grandmother for
a little bit, and then in 1962, he moved back to Houston to help
his family with the candy business again.
So they must have been going through some struggles.
(15:22):
And his mother had also gotten adivorce, again, started a new
candy company, which she called the Coral Candy Company.
And at this time, Dean became the vice president of the candy
company. So he's very young still to be
taking on this role. But again, nothing really seemed
to last very long for Dean Coral.
(15:44):
And I'm sure you may in the backof your mind be thinking about
this kind of time frame, what was going on in the world.
The US government had other plans for Dean, and he was
drafted into the US Army at the age of 24 in 1964 to serve in
the Vietnam War like so many other young men at that time.
(16:09):
Yeah. He did some training at Fort
Polk in Louisiana, then to Fort Benning in Georgia, and finally
in Fort Hood in Texas. The Army, however, did not suit
him. He was too quiet, he was too
antisocial and was uninterested in any type of military
(16:31):
camaraderie. And this is where for the era it
got bad for him because of his sexual interest, rumors started
circulating about him having homosexual encounters with other
soldiers and this was truly the time in his life where he
(16:52):
realized for the first time or would admit to himself that he
was homosexual. OK.
And we both know how this would have gone over in the military,
especially at that time. Oh yeah.
So he very much felt like an outsider in that world.
(17:12):
So he was only there for about ayear.
So I don't think he ever was shipped off to anywhere.
He just got through all of the training and was stationed in
the US and, and maybe in the back of his mind, he was looking
for a way out. So he did actually apply for a
hardship discharge, claiming that his mother needed his help
(17:34):
for the family business, and it was granted.
So by June of 1965, he was back in Houston, working at his
mother's candy company. Again.
Again, that's like the third time.
Yeah, back at it again. Now, this is where Dean earned
his name as the Candy Man. This time frame, he was known
(17:59):
for giving away free candy to the local kids.
And who wouldn't want free candyin the 1960s?
Yeah, it's not Halloween if it'snot Halloween.
That was a real treat back then.And because he did this, he made
a name for himself in the community.
And not only was he giving away candy, but he was also hiring
(18:21):
teenage boys for part time jobs.To onlookers, he seemed like a
generous kind of guy, even kind,and parents made jokes about him
being a candy man and the name stuck from that point forward.
But as you know, those small gestures that seem generous were
(18:41):
not a kindness at all. Something much more sinister was
happening and this was a grooming tactic that he was
using. Coral used candy.
The way you think about in your childhood where your parents are
like, don't take candy from strangers.
That's exactly what he was doing.
(19:02):
He lured these children closer to him.
He built trust with them and also their parents.
But by the late 1960s, some of the families began to notice
some strange things about Dean. Teenagers were hanging around
his apartment late at night. Boys were bragging about
(19:25):
drinking beer with him, smoking pot, doing things that teenage
boys shouldn't be doing with a grown ass man.
But again, it's the 1960s and Houston Heights was a working
class neighborhood. Parents often worked really long
hours and kids roamed freely. Because of the culture and era,
(19:47):
this behavior was dismissed as Dean's an eccentric kind of guy,
but he was never really looked at as being harmful and this
left the door wide open for him to do whatever he wanted.
Yeah, man, especially man gaining trust of the parents
too. It's like this is not going to
(20:08):
go. It's going to go even worse than
I'm thinking, I think, yeah. Yeah, and I would, and we'll
talk about this too at the end, but I really put this guy in
comparison with Gacy, right there with Gacy.
Yeah, A. Lot of parallels.
A lot of them, yeah. Now, what makes him different is
(20:33):
the fact that he didn't do this alone.
He actually had two teenage accomplices.
So this is where it gets really it separates itself from John
Wayne Casey. So not only that, but one of the
teenagers would end up shooting and killing him later.
And yeah, so this is a very manipulative situation.
(20:55):
It's really messed up. But we have to talk about how we
get there, right? And we have to talk about the
accomplices, how they got connected.
So the first accomplice was David Owen Brooks, and they
actually met when Brooks was just 12 years old in 1967.
(21:16):
By that time, David's parents had divorced.
His father had already remarriedand was living elsewhere.
And David just naturally gravitated to Dean as this
fatherly figure that he was missing in his life.
And Dean took a liking to him quickly.
He showered him with gifts, including candy.
(21:39):
He gave him drugs and booze. He took him on trips down to the
beach, gave him all this attention.
And we're talking about a child here, people.
Grown man doing this all for a child.
By his teenage years, Brooks waspractically living with this guy
and his apartment. Dang.
(22:01):
And this connection between the two of them just continued to
intensify. By 1969, Dean was asking David
to seek out kids he knew were ondrugs, that liked alcohol and
were possible runaways. In his mind, these are the kids
that no one would miss or question why they went missing.
(22:23):
And the agreement was he would pay this kid David, up to $200
for every boy that he would bring back to the apartment.
Now, remember that this kid David now is 14 years old.
And this is only the this is only the beginning.
Here's your big fat trigger warning.
(22:43):
We should have had one at the beginning, but it is.
This is a true crime episode. But here's your trigger warning
for pedophilia. It doesn't get any better from
this point in the episode, I cantell you that.
So if this stuff triggers you orit's just too much, I'll, I'll,
we'll understand. You can just skip to a different
episode, but we're going to talkabout torture and sexual
(23:07):
assault, strangulation and murder throughout the remainder
of this episode. So just another warning for you.
Please feel free to bow out early.
But with that being said, Dean Coral was a monster.
When David was 16 years old, Dean started paying him 5 to $10
(23:31):
to allow Dean to perform oral sex on him.
And things just continued from there.
By 1970, David Brooks wasn't just Dean's companion, he was in
fact helping him. He lured boys to Coral's
apartment, sometimes his own friends, and Dean Coral paid him
(23:54):
cash or gave him drugs in exchange for doing that.
David Brooks later admitted thathe knew what Coral was doing,
but said he was too trapped to leave.
He described Dean Coral as someone who could be terrifying
1 moment and then generous the next, and that push and pull
(24:17):
kept him in line, kept him hooked.
Was he like truly afraid of him,or do you think it was like that
state of manipulation? Yeah, that's no one will ever
really know the answer to that question, I think.
But the way that he described it.
(24:38):
And again, what is the truth in all of this, right?
Because there's a lot more to this story.
So at the end, when you're beingquestioned and investigated,
what is the real truth? But just from my perspective, I
think he was so young. He was 12 years old when they
met and he was groomed. He came from a turbulent
(24:59):
background and was looking for love and acceptance just like
any kid would. And this guy did a lot of things
for him that I could see as a kid.
Oh, this guy's taking me on trips and he's giving me money
and he's giving me treats and he's buying me gifts.
It would be hard to say no to that.
(25:20):
And this went on for years before he started asking him to
do, to do that, to do that, those things.
So he was in and I think just hewas brainwashed at that point.
Yeah, absolutely. And then now we have our second
accomplice, which is the one that people would probably
(25:41):
recognize his name, Elmer Wayne Henley Junior.
And he, and often in media comesup as Wayne Henley because he
goes by Wayne. So second accomplice was Elmer
Wayne Henley. Yeah.
And then we'll talk about why too, because there is actually a
(26:01):
documentary out right now on HBOMax.
It's the first time that this person has ever done interviews
and spoken out. So you can watch that on HBO
Max. I do recommend that if you want
more insight from his perspective.
So Elmer Wayne Henley, known as Wayne, met the other kid, David
(26:25):
Brooks, at Hamilton Junior High School.
He was 15 years old when David introduced him to Dean Coral.
And Coral did the same thing. He pitched this idea as a
business deal, just like he had done with David Brooks.
The deal was he'd give them $200for every boy that Wayne Henley
(26:48):
would bring to him. And unlike David Brooks, Wayne
Henley knew almost immediately what was happening.
He admitted that Dean Coral toldhim point blank that the boys
were being killed. Oh.
And at first, Wayne rationalizedit, $200, especially at that
(27:12):
time, was a fortune for a kid who was poor.
And that's how he kind of made this work in his mind.
And then he just got in really deep.
Now for Wayne, he wasn't just recruiting, he actually helped
(27:33):
with the torture and eventually became fully complicit with what
was happening. And I think that's to why his
name is much more well known, because there's this question of
he knew what was happening, he participated, but how much can
(27:54):
you actually fault him for what happened?
So there's this, you know? The age.
The age of these kids. Yeah.
Now we're going to get into the actual crimes.
So as I mentioned early in the opening of the episode, this
stent of crimes happened over a three-year period.
(28:16):
So that's a lot that helps. Just do do the math.
So 29 people that we know of over the course of three years,
it's a lot. And these kids were disappearing
at an alarming rate. Most were between the ages of 13
and 17. Some of them were hitchhikers,
some of them were runaways, but many of them were friends of
(28:41):
these boys. His accomplices.
There were there were friends ofhis, which is also super fucked
up. Yeah.
So when this was happening, parents would go to the police
asking, begging for their help. But time and time again, their
claims and their cases basicallywere dismissed because the
(29:04):
police would be like, oh, your son, probably he's a teenager.
He probably just ran off. He'll come back.
And it was that they didn't lookinto it any further.
I always hate that reasoning andthat.
Yeah. How many decades was it like
that? Where it's Oh well, they just
ran away. It's really.
Every time, yeah. And like I said earlier, he was
(29:27):
looking for that demographic of boys that were on drugs maybe,
or who were known for having issues with their family or
whatever the case. He was smart about the targets
for the most part. And as far as the crimes go,
Dean Coral had a very precise method.
(29:49):
So he would lure the kids in or through his accomplices, lure
these victims in with promises of parties, having access to
drugs and alcohol. He'd promised them money or that
he'd be hiring them for odd jobs, anything to really feed
(30:09):
into what kids wanted and neededat that time.
And once he would get them luredin, he would give them alcohol
and would often drug them to incapacitate them.
Then after they were incapacitated he would restrain
them and trigger warning again. So he was known for having a
(30:34):
torture board and this was an 8 foot by two foot plywood slab
that he had drilled holes in to secure ropes and handcuffs.
The boys were tied down, unable to move.
And Can you imagine being drugged and then waking up and
(30:57):
realizing what where you are, what happened to you?
You're there having a good time,and then you get sleepy, you
pass out, you wake up, and then now you're in this position that
you can't get out of. So then once he had them tied
up, that's when the torture would begin.
So he would beat them, sexually assault them, and this would go
(31:21):
on for hours and sometimes even days.
Oh my God. Meanwhile, other people present
in a lot of these cases. Let's keep that in mind that
those accomplices were present in a lot of these instances.
Death was something that would eventually come, but it would
(31:43):
happen slowly and usually would.Their lives would be ended by
either strangulation or sometimes by gunshot, and then
their bodies would be taken to shallow graves.
And once the investigation happens, they did find that he
had three different sites that he would use to bury the boys.
(32:06):
One was in a boat shed that he rented.
Another was at Lake Sam Rayburn,and another location was at High
Island Beach. And they're spread out around
that Houston area, but not too terribly far away.
Now the victims, so the list of names is staggering.
(32:29):
At least 28 confirmed, now 29 I believe, with one victim still
being unidentified. And I will have a link in the
show notes to where you can viewthis person's profile.
They have a picture on there that they've created so you can
see what the person look like. I would encourage you to do that
(32:50):
just because this person still doesn't have a name, so you
never know. Cold cases are being solved all
the time. So definitely take a look at
that. Yeah.
But to understand the horror of what Dean Coral did, we have to
hear who these victims were not just as names on the list, but
(33:10):
as the lives that they lived as people.
Now, I'm not going to cover all of them.
I have a significant list of people that we're going to go
through. The rest you can look up online
For more information. And again, I encourage you to do
so if you have the stomach for it.
All right, so our first on my list is Jeffrey Conan.
(33:34):
He was 18 years old. He is the first confirmed
victim. And this took place in the
summer of 1970. Jeffrey had just graduated high
school in the Houston Heights area.
He was handsome, friendly and remembered as being adventurous.
That night he set out to hitchhike home after visiting
(33:55):
with some friends, which wouldn't have been unusual at
the time. But Jeffrey never made it back
home. Later, investigators would
determine that David Brooks and Dean Coral lured him in.
Jeffrey was tied to Corals torture board, assaulted and
strangled. His body was buried in a rented
(34:16):
boat shed. For his family, the loss was
devastating. He was their oldest son.
They thought he had simply left town.
They live with that uncertainty for three years, not knowing
that Jeffrey was buried just miles away.
And again, this kid was going places His family had His family
(34:39):
had high hopes for him. And then for three years they
live with the fact thinking thathe ran away from home.
That's just awful. And it's a heartbreak in itself.
Yeah. And then to then later find out
the actual truth is like. Yeah.
(35:00):
Our next victims are James Glassand Danny Yates.
They are. We're both 14 years old.
They were best friends, inseparable.
They loved fishing, goofing off after school, and hanging out in
the neighborhood. They were your typical teenage
boys, 2 peas in a pod and on September 25th of 1970 they
(35:26):
disappeared after a church service.
Both boys were restrained, assaulted and strangled and this
is the first time David Brooks would have been involved and it
is believed he walked in on thisscene.
The boys bodies were eventually buried together in Coral's boat
shed. Now this is awful.
(35:49):
James Mother remembered searching the streets at night
with a flashlight calling her son's name and Danny's father
begged the police to investigatebut they were both written off
as runaways. I.
Hate that. Anytime I hear that, I hate
that. Yeah, you're going to hear it a
(36:11):
lot in this one, unfortunately. Now the next.
Oh, go ahead. It just makes you wonder if that
never was a thing, if that was never an excuse that they used
right away and they would have been proactive, how many of
these things would have not goneas far as they did?
(36:32):
We wouldn't have as many Jane and John Doe's.
Yeah, I feel like we wouldn't have what we have with some of
these stories today if. They're yeah.
And it might, the victim count might have been a lot less,
significantly less if they wouldhave just looked a little bit
closer, because we know this washappening in the Houston Heights
(36:53):
area. And at that time, it wasn't a
big area. It wasn't like Houston today.
It was much smaller. So you look at the victims like
any investigators would start out the school and you're like,
oh, wait, this person from this school, this person from this
school, this where it was the common thread here, but they
didn't look at any of that. The answers would have just been
(37:14):
right in front of their face. But yeah, I don't know.
It's all wrong. Now, the next two, as you'll
notice, I'm starting to develop a pattern here of two and two.
So now we've got Donald and Cherry Waldrop, ages 15 and 13,
and they were brothers. On January 30th of 1971, the two
(37:41):
brothers, Donald Waldrop, 15, and Jerry, 13, had left home to
go to the bowling alley, a Saturday night ritual for the
two. Of course, their parents
wouldn't have questioned it because it was something that
they normally did and they were going together.
They were traveling together, but when they didn't return,
their father, Everett called thepolice immediately.
(38:03):
But again, the answer was the same.
They're probably just runaways. The truth was horrific.
Brooks and Henley lured the boysfrom the bowling alley and
delivered them to Dean Coral's apartment.
Both boys were restrained and killed.
Their bodies were buried in the boat shed, just like the others.
But the boy's father never gave up searching.
(38:26):
For years, he kept asking questions, knocking on doors.
And this is tragic. He actually died before he knew
the truth about what actually happened to his sons.
Now our next is Frank Randall Glass, known as Randall.
He was 15 years old. In March of 1971, Randall Glass
(38:52):
vanished. He was a classmate of Henley's.
Randall was funny, quick witted,and he loved music.
He was tricked into coming to Coral's home by Wayne Henley.
That betrayal, friends delivering friends, was part of
what made these murders so chilling.
(39:13):
Randall was killed and buried near Lake Sam Rayburn.
This is a long list, people. I think I document 12 here, and
that's not even half now. Next is Mark Scott, age 17, and
he was one of the most tragic murders.
Mark was popular, athletic and well liked, and more
(39:35):
importantly, he was a very closefriend of Wayne Henley.
Henley brought him to Coral's apartment, maybe under pressure,
maybe because he knew too much. When Mark realized what was
happening, he fought. He tried to talk Henley into
letting him go. Instead, Dean Coral forced
Henley to participate in the killing.
(39:58):
Mark Scott was strangled by Wayne Henley and this would be
the first time that Henley was hands on with the killing.
Henley later said that killing Mark broke him inside.
Quote broke him inside, but it didn't stop him from bringing
more boys to Dean. I don't get that.
I I don't get any of it to beginwith, but the fact that you
(40:24):
mentally are separating yourselffrom your friends, let alone
close friends for this kind of thing.
Yeah. And then again, that question
is, was he fearful that Dean would kill him if he didn't do
these things right, you know? Probably we can only speculate
(40:46):
like you said, but probably because of yeah.
And then not long after, the Balch brothers, again, another
set of brothers. And this was just a recurring
theme for Dean Coral in the victims.
And I don't understand that. I don't I we could probably
(41:07):
speculate why Dean had a brother.
He grew up with a brother. So I don't know what the
psychology of that is, but in 1973, Billy Balch, 17, and his
brother Michael, 15, disappearedtogether.
And again, this is just classic to his MO and something to think
(41:33):
about on a deeper level, why he was targeting these the
brothers? Was it just easier 'cause he hit
Do 2 at once? I I don't know, Right.
Yeah. What is the?
Was it a convenience thing because they were together and
no witnesses or, you know. Yeah, and Billy was an outgoing
(41:55):
kid. He played football.
Michael, the younger brother, was quieter, more reserved, but
again, they were inseparable. And Wayne Henley is the one who
lured them in, and he happened to be a friend.
Both of them were murdered like the others, and they were buried
in Coral's boat shed. Now, one name that you do hear
(42:18):
come up pretty often when talking about the victims of
Dean Coral is Billy Lawrence. Billy Lawrence was 15 years old,
and he was an ambitious kid. He wanted to be a mechanic and
he often helped his father in the garage.
But when he crossed paths with Dean Coral in 1972, his fate was
(42:40):
sealed. Dean kept Billy alive for
several days, tortured, bound and pleading for his life.
Billy was even forced to write aletter to his father saying that
he was leaving and would be backin August.
His father worked in a Houston post office at that time, and
(43:01):
the letter read, quote, Daddy, Ihope you know I love you, your
son Billy Henley later describedhow Billy begged to be killed
quickly. Instead, Coral strangled him
slowly and buried him at High Island.
The prolonged torture Billy endured as one of the darkest
(43:21):
details of the entire case. And Wayne Henley would later
comment about the extended torture by saying, quote, Dean
really liked Billy. That's awful.
By 1973, Coral's killing spree was escalating.
Timothy Curley, age 19, and Rhonda Williams, age 15.
(43:45):
Now, Rhonda was unusual. She was the only girl known to
be taken to Coral's home. She had run away from an abusive
household, and Henley thought hewas helping her, or at least, he
said, by offering her a place tostay.
But Dean Coral snapped. He did not like girls and this
(44:06):
this triggered him. He did not want her there.
What did he do? He tied up all three of them,
Timothy, Rhonda and Wayne Henley, his accomplice.
It was this night on August 8th of 1973 when Henley finally
(44:26):
turned on Dean Coral and shot him dead.
That final murder ended the killing spree and exposed the
horror of what had been happening in Houston Heights for
three years. We'll reflect a little bit and
then I'm going to continue on digging a little bit deeper.
At this point, we have confirmed28 victims and then a possible
(44:50):
29th that we know now, some of them as young as age 13 and most
of them from the same neighborhood, which blows my
mind that you can think that many kids can just run away.
Brothers, friends, a total failure in that respect.
But these kids were not runaways.
They weren't delinquents. They were sons, brothers and
(45:14):
friends. The scale of loss devastated
Houston, and the betrayal that the two boys their age, Henley
and Brooks, had lured so many ofthem in made it even harder to
comprehend. It's easy in cases like this to
focus on the killer, but it's the victims who matter.
They were kids that had features, they had hobbies, they
(45:37):
had dreams, and they had families who love them.
They deserve to be remembered for who they are, not just how
they died. Parents describe frantic night,
searching out in the streets with flashlights, begging the
police for answers. But over and over they got the
same fucking story. He probably ran away, or they
(45:58):
probably ran away. And in reality, these kids were
probably still bound to Coral's torture board or had already
been buried. So let's go back to that night
of August 8th, 1973 when this all came to an end.
By 1973, Wayne Henley was starting to unravel.
(46:23):
He was talking to his friends about how he wanted out of it,
but he stayed because allegedly he was afraid of coral and he
was addicted to the money sometimes again earning up to
$200 per victim. And we know that was not
insignificant at the time. So this night Henley brought his
two friends to Dean Coral's house for what they thought was
(46:46):
another party and Dean Coral wasfurious that Wayne had brought a
girl with him. This didn't fit his fantasy and
he got so irate that he pulled out the gun and tied all
teenagers up, including Wayne. Wayne begged Dean for his life
(47:06):
and Dean united him and said you're going to help me kill the
others. But once he was free, Henley
made a decision. He turned the gun on Coral and
fired six shots and Dean Coral collapsed dead on the floor.
Then Wayne called the police. Police officers responded to a
(47:30):
distress call at 2020 Lamar St. in Pasadena, TX, where Dean
Coral had moved earlier that summer.
Inside the small Houston home, police found 17 year old Wayne
Henley beside the lifeless body of Dean Coral.
Henley told them that he had fired the six shots in an act of
self-defense. What looked like an isolated
(47:51):
homicide was about to unravel into one of the most shocking
murder cases in American history.
When police investigated Dean Coral's apartment further, they
found undeniable evidence of foul play.
In a backroom, they found Dean'storture board, handcuffs and
other physical restraints, sex toys, and a floor covered in
(48:12):
plastic. All of this added up to much
more than investigators could have anticipated.
And once in custody, Wayne Henley began to confess and he
spilled it all. And when David Brooks heard the
news about Dean quarrel, he immediately went to the police
station and tried to deny his involvement.
(48:34):
Police were skeptical about everything that the boys were
saying, but when Henley and David Brooks started talking
more and more, the information that came out just could not be
denied. And this eventually LED
detectives to graves hidden across Southeast Texas.
The boat storage shed, the shores of Lake Sam Rayburn and
(48:55):
the sand dunes at High Island. And each site revealed the same
horror. Multiple bodies buried in
shallow graves, silent evidence of years of torture and murder.
And the boathouse itself had 17 bodies buried.
And it was a tiny space. Think of a small storage shed.
So there were different pits andmass graves dugout in that tiny
(49:19):
space. And when this new surface,
parents stood on the outskirts of mass graves, waiting and
hoping and dreading their new reality.
By the end, the youngest victim was only 13.
The oldest was 20. It was, and it still is, one of
the most horrifying serial killer cases in American
(49:42):
history, newspaper headlines read Houston Murders worst of
the century. This case became known as the
Houston Mass Murders, the largest serial killing case in
the US that they had seen up until that time.
So now you're probably thinking,what about Gacy and Ted Bundy
(50:03):
and Dahmer and Gary Ridgway, John, When Gacy's crimes weren't
discovered until 1978, along with Ted Bundy the same fucking
year. What a year to be alive.
And then Dahmer wouldn't be discovered until 1991, followed
by Gary Ridgway in 1998, and then BTK wasn't discovered until
(50:24):
2005. Which is also just crazy.
Yeah, but that's not all, folks.Let's get to what happened next,
right? Yeah.
Because we want to know. So.
David Brooks, the first accomplice of Dean Quarrel, was
(50:46):
sentenced to life in prison, andhe died in 2020 from
complications of COVID at the age of 65.
Elmer Wayne Henley confessed to being directly responsible for
six of the boy's murders, along with the murder of Dean Coral,
and he received 6 sentences of 99 years in prison each.
(51:10):
He requested a compassionate parole in 2022 but was denied.
The last living parent of one ofthe victims strongly advocated
against his release. And to be honest, I don't think
there's any chance in hell this guy is going to get out of
prison alive. No way.
And for Dean Quarrel, he never stood trial.
(51:32):
He faced a different kind of justice.
His crimes ended the night Henley pulled the trigger.
Some would say that he got off easy.
He didn't get a chance to rot injail or be subjected to what
happens to men in jail who are known for torturing, assaulting
and murdering young boys. And one victim still remains
unidentified today. But new clues have emerged that
(51:54):
will hopefully help give a name to the face of John Doe 1973.
Information on this unidentifiedvictim can be found at
missingkids.org and I will provide a link in the show
notes. The Houston mass murderers, as
they came to be called, left scars on the community that
would never fully heal. So many families were destroyed,
(52:16):
yet Dean Coral's name is not widely remembered or talked
about, perhaps because he was shot and killed before he could
stand trial and face a long formof justice.
But the lessons remain. Evil doesn't always look like a
monster. Sometimes it looks like the
neighbor who hands out candy, the man everyone thinks is safe,
(52:37):
and that whenever you're silent.I know, I know.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot to say
about this. There's a lot to discuss, and we
could probably spend another hour just talking about the
psychology of all of this. And maybe we will.
Maybe we'll have a side discussion on Patreon or
(52:59):
something. But we are at that point now in
the episode where we've reached basically an hour.
And I don't want to push it too far, but yeah.
Yeah, I think it would be a goodside episode for Patreon to go
over our discussion and debate because yeah, I mean, there's a
(53:21):
lot to be said, but honestly, this case has also just left me
completely speechless. Yeah, and I didn't even get into
all of the detail, you know whatI mean?
I just didn't want to do that. Oh gosh, no, because I can only
imagine what you found in the reports for each kid and the
(53:45):
Yeah. Yeah, and his routine was pretty
consistent for the most part. It's just some kids.
He he made it prolonged. And I don't know, but yeah.
So I yeah, that's pretty much all I have for today's episode.
(54:08):
If you made it through, I hope you're OK.
I hope this doesn't keep you awake tonight.
If you do want more info on thiscase, all the source links are
going to be in the show notes. And you can check out that
documentary I mentioned called The Serial Killer's Apprentice
on HBO Max that does feature discussion with Elmer Wayne
(54:31):
Henley Junior. Fuck that guy too.
I mean I I do have conflicted feelings about the manipulation
and the grooming I do. Yeah.
But at the end of the day, I think I would rather die myself
then to to take someone else's life in a situation like that.
(54:52):
I would rather go out fighting then.
But I can't speak for everyone and what they would do in those
situations. I don't know the full scope of
everything. I'm here to present some of the
facts and. Right.
There's always a little bit of speculation when the information
you have is from the person who was responsible for doing these
(55:14):
things, so take it with a grain of salt.
But at the end of the day, a bunch of kids died that
shouldn't have died and they died because they trusted their
friend and that is as a horriblething to think about.
Yeah, exactly. And let alone a friend and like
you said, you would rather die than have to put somebody else
through that. And it's somebody else.
(55:36):
But even on a deeper level of friend, Yeah, close.
Not a random stranger, Not that it's good or acceptable in any
form or. Fashion, but exactly.
But the fact that's a whole other level of messed up.
I don't know what it takes for the mind to be switched like
(55:59):
that. And yes, they were younger.
Obviously the age range here, itis your impressionable era of
your life. Things are different, and if
you're being manipulated and groomed and made to fear the
person in charge, of course that's going to change things.
It's going to skew your perspective and everything.
(56:21):
But at what level do you just wake up and go?
What's going on here? Yeah, just tell one adult.
Tell one adult. And truth is, I think that Wayne
Henley tried to get out of the sooner and he did hint to his,
(56:43):
not hint, but like he did sort of talk about this with his mom
at one point. And I think it was one of those
things where it got brushed under the rug.
Mom. Yeah, yeah.
And so you'll see in the interview with him that they do
have footage of when the police,he was with the police outside
(57:05):
at the boat shed. He's on the phone with his mom.
He admits to his mom that he shot Dean.
Like, you can hear her voice. All this isn't in that
documentary. So I would say, you know, if
you're interested, check that out.
But people get in denial if yourteenage son is.
Yeah, I don't know that he said I'm killing these people, but he
(57:28):
probably said, you know, Dean's up to some bad stuff or whatever
and she just was in denial, I think about it and just brushed
it under the rug. But happens a lot,
unfortunately. I yeah, there's always that same
psychological parental debate that we can get into about if
(57:53):
things were different, if the parents were different, if they
listened to their children aboutwhat was said, like Dahmer would
have been different. Yeah, telling his dad that he
needed help and yeah, so. Yeah, I'm.
Not a parent. But holy shit maybe listen to
your kids. Also don't be a shitty parent.
(58:16):
Honestly. Public macabre Service
announcement. If you don't want another serial
killer, or you don't want another evil person in the world
doing stuff like this, maybe youshould actually parent your
child just. And not.
And in some cases it's not the parents at all.
I won't put the fault on the parents but like.
(58:39):
A lot of it is. It's always it.
He just checked so many boxes. Yeah.
And it's like, oh, it's always like, gosh, ah, this makes me
angry. Yeah, fortunately friends, we've
got some lighter hearted stuff coming up in the world of
macabre for the month of October, so I feel a little bit
(59:03):
nauseous and sick to my stomach.I'm sorry if you feel the same
way. But that's it for now.
We love you and we hope you staysafe and as always, be kind to
your fellow humans. But keep in the Cobb and we will
catch you next time. Heck yeah.
You shocked me. Shock you later shock you later.
(59:27):
Love you. Guys, bye.
Love you love. You.
When the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.
They'll eat your gods and spit them out.
And when your bones begin to rot, the worms remain, but you
do not. So don't ever laugh as the
hearse goes by, For someday you'll be next in life.
(00:22):
And when death brings his cold despair, ask yourself, will
anyone? Macabre may not be suitable for
all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
What were you listening to? Oh, it's it's called Acceptance.
It's a third book in a trilogy by Jeff Van der Meer.
(00:46):
It's fucking good. The first book is an elation and
the covers of the books are alsoreally cool.
They kind of look like a sciencefictiony Salvador Dali.
Oh wow. And they're very science or more
sci-fi thriller if Stephen King mixed with The Thing Happened.
(01:09):
Oh wow, I'm intrigued. Yeah, you should totally look
into it. I have the Libby app on my phone
and so they have them for free and they're always available,
which is super awesome. So I'm 45 minutes away from the
end of the whole trilogy and it's fucking wild.
And we might need to post a listof books and stuff that we are
(01:32):
reading or have read recently onthe Patreon page for book club
type stuff. We I know we really haven't done
much of that, but I totally. Agree.
Oh man, and I got to update our Goodreads page too.
I just finished that slew foot book.
Was it good? It took me 3 days to read it.
I could not stop reading it, it was so good.
(01:54):
That's awesome. I'm I have it on my list.
I might. So good.
Yeah, you'll love it. And then I'm listening to on
Audible, The Southern Book ClubsGuide to Slaying Vampires by
Grady Hendrix. It's it's good, but it's a
little slow for me. And to each their own.
If you love it, if you hate it. I wanted to give it a try.
(02:15):
It's it helps. I think that it's in the audio
format for me. I might not have stuck with it
if I was reading it. I'm very ADHD, it takes a lot to
get me sucked in and keep me, especially when I have a million
things to do in my personal lifethat I'm I could be doing
something. Else yeah, or listening to
something else and help me get through it.
(02:36):
Yeah, I'm with you. And sometimes it, it does depend
on the story, the tone that's supposed to be set versus who's
reading it 'cause sometimes if the reader, you know, and it's
totally fine to have that perspective in different tones
in your own head. And it's different for
everybody. But when you hear it, you're
(02:57):
matching their tone with what's really going on.
Sometimes it's not always a goodchemistry with you and the
reader, the audio portion. But yeah, this series and I will
say I, I want to own physical copies of these books.
That's how much I would like them.
(03:18):
Very good. And they're not even that old, I
think. Let me see when the first book
came out. There's actually a a movie too,
with Natalie Portman, which I haven't seen yet, but I think
that came out in 2018. But the first book by Jeff Van
der Meer came out in 2014. One of the genres it's under is
(03:49):
new. Weird.
Oh, I didn't know that was the thing neither.
I like it and I like it now I want to find more that.
But looking at the results, the elitist book review gave it a
three out of five. Goodreads gave it a 3.8 out of
five. But if you like sci-fi mixed
with thrills and suspense, I would actually rate it like a
(04:10):
4.5. OK.
And as the story goes on, I would say the first book is
always the best. The second, I mean, how it's
written throughout the trilogy is really good.
And the the build up that you get later can be a little dry.
But what's worth it are the scenes where you are in horror
(04:32):
of what they're describing. Like it's, yeah, I don't know.
I love it. Yeah, you'll have to maybe post
that on the Patreon group, Just a list of some of the stuff
you're into, so ways to find it and whatnot.
Eventually, when we have more time, it would be so fun to get
that book club going like we talked about.
Oh my God. Yeah, and craft night.
(04:54):
Patreon Craft nights. I would freaking love that I
gotta make a ghost or a skull. That's my new my new goal.
Also pumpkins. Yeah, yeah.
This will come out right before the spooky season episodes drop.
Nice. And it's a heavy one.
(05:17):
I'm not going to go into full onsuper graphic detail about some
stuff. So if you came here looking for
that, there's definitely going to be some.
It's unavoidable for me to not talk about some of the stuff
that we're going to talk about. But it's heavy enough as it is.
So I did what I could with it and it is a true crime episode,
(05:41):
so you'll know by the title whatyou're getting into.
But we've covered a lot of true crime lately just with the
macabre features and then some of these stories.
We'll break it up a little bit. Spooky season will help because
it's just a different, it's a little bit more of the
supernatural, paranormal type stuff.
And then there's some fun episodes we have built into you
(06:02):
to kind of break that up. So just bear with me.
We'll get through this one, and then we'll have a nice little
break for the month of October. Be like one big Halloween party
Halloween party right now I'm excited for this episode today
because I don't know a lot aboutthis topic so I'm.
Hearing hearing you word say theword excited.
(06:27):
More in Shock question mark. Yeah, I think at this point I'm
not even going to really do any housekeeping on the front end.
Every way to contact us is in the show notes.
I do appreciate all of you new listeners and long time
listeners. That goes without saying.
But we're going to say it again.We love you.
(06:48):
Thank you, appreciate you. I don't know how long this
episode is going to be, so I'm kind of just going to dig into
it and leave some time for us totalk about stuff as we go
through. Sounds good.
All right, friends listeners, myhype notes for this episode are
a little lengthy, so bear with me.
It's going to be more a little bit of a narrative set up, but
(07:12):
on you'll understand once we getinto the episode of why I chose
to do it that way. All right, let's dive in.
Today's episode is about a dark chapter in Houston's history.
The show is called Macabre. My name is Hallie.
I'm Blair. And we don't always talk about
(07:33):
ancient history. We talk about stuff that's
happening in our recent past two.
And this is one of those stories.
In the early 1970s, just a few miles from downtown Houston, the
neighborhood of Houston Heights looked like an ordinary
community. Families filled the streets,
children rode their bicycles, and evenings ended up with kids
(07:54):
rushing home for dinner. But behind that picture of
normalcy, something very dark was unfolding.
Between 1970 and 1973, at least 29 boys that we know now, young
men and boys, vanished seeminglywithout a trace.
(08:16):
Families filed their missing persons reports.
Helpless mothers plastered theirson's photos across telephone
poles, desperate for answers. Fathers went door to door
searching for their missing loved ones.
But they were left without answers.
Again and again, the police dismissed the missing boys as
runaways because, let's face it,it was easier than facing the
(08:40):
truth of what was actually happening.
Someone had murdered their children.
Behind the disappearances was a man whose name many of our
listeners might not have ever even heard of before.
This man was responsible for thedeaths of.
Now we know 29 victims in the Houston and Pasadena areas, and
(09:04):
his name was Dean Arnold Quarrel.
But the community knew him as the Candy Man, a quiet bachelor
who at one time worked at his mother's candy shop, gave out
free sweets, and hired local boys for odd jobs.
He was trusted. He was beloved, even.
(09:24):
But behind that harmless facade,Dean Coral carried out one of
the most brutal serial murder cases in American history up to
this time. He enticed the boys with candy,
drugs and the promise of excitement, then together with
two teenage accomplices, bound, tortured and killed them.
(09:46):
The scale of horror is staggering.
Yet this killer's name is barelyremembered compared to Dahmer,
Gacy or Bundy. But tonight, today, we are going
to change that. This is the story of Dean Coral,
the Candy Man of Houston. Yep, never heard of him.
(10:09):
Yep. So a lot of people have it and
we'll talk about that towards the end of why maybe his name
isn't something that that peopletalk about.
We'll get into that too, becauseit's a lot of victims and it's
not something you would think people would forget about.
Yeah. But we have to begin with his
(10:30):
early life, as we often do when we're talking about serial
killers, to kind of find out what might have happened, you
know, what would have shaped this person to begin with.
Dean Coral was born on ChristmasEve in 1939 in Fort Wayne, IN a
small town at that time, which is not too far from where I live
(10:51):
now. Dean's arrival should have been
a joyful occasion, but his childhood was far from picture
perfect, as is with a lot of these guys.
He was one of two boys. His parents, Arnold Coral and
Mary Robinson, fought constantly.
His father was strict and at times even abusive, and Mary,
(11:14):
his mother, was fiercely protective of both Dean and his
brother and she was known for being a little bit too coddling
and to the point of being overbearing, which is another
classic thing that you see. Dean and his younger brother
Stanley grew up in a House of complete chaos and eventually
(11:36):
because of the fighting and the different beliefs between the
parents, the marriage collapsed.Mary ended up taking both of the
boys and move them to I may say this wrong.
Apologies to our Texas listeners.
It looks like Vidor by door Texas.
Vidor, TX maybe. So they moved away and then Dean
(11:59):
started school. He pretty much blended in in the
school environment. His teachers described him as
being polite, well mannered, buthe was known for being shy.
And he wasn't the type of kid that caused disruptions in class
or anything like that. It wasn't loud or boisterous.
He was just quiet, the kind of kid who could go through life
(12:24):
pretty much unnoticed. And that in itself is a little
bit dangerous, I think. Yeah.
Definitely. The ones you don't suspect,
right? Yeah, exactly.
So further on in his childhood, neighbors recalled that Dean
never really fit in. Which is, again, we're checking
(12:44):
all the boxes here so far, people.
So while other kids were playingfootball and doing those things
that kids do, he spent his time tinkering with mechanical
gadgets or just observing peoplefrom the sidelines.
He was socially awkward, but he was an obedient kid.
He was respectful to the people around him and no one ever
(13:06):
really saw him as being a dangerous type of person.
But there were some hints, smallones, of something that was
lurking beneath the surface. Things like he struggled with
his close friendships, he didn'tdate, and when he was asked
about girls he just shrugged it off.
(13:28):
Instead, Dean gravitated towardsyounger boys and he liked to be
admired by them. There was something about young
boys gravitating towards him that he really enjoyed being
looked up to. And in the conservative 1950s,
when he was growing up in Texas,having these feelings, possibly
(13:54):
homosexual tendencies, wasn't something that was spoken about
out loud. It was kept very secret, and he
learned very early on how to keep those secrets and to hide
what he really wanted. By 1955, Dean's mother remarried
(14:14):
a man named Jack West, and together they opened up a candy
store, which at the time was called the Pecan Prince.
Here, Dean and his brother wouldoperate the candy making machine
and pack candy product. Between these years of 1954 and
58, Dean was then enrolled in high school and oddly enough,
(14:38):
played the tambourine, which is something that I can't picture
in my brain now that I know thisperson.
But that was. He really had no interest in
school other than playing the tambourine in the band.
An interesting fact about him. Yeah.
After graduation, he ended up moving with his family a little
bit closer to Houston. And then two years later, he
(15:01):
moved back to Indiana to live with his widowed grandmother for
a short period of time. So there's a lot going on with
him moving around. Stayed with his grandmother for
a little bit, and then in 1962, he moved back to Houston to help
his family with the candy business again.
So they must have been going through some struggles.
(15:22):
And his mother had also gotten adivorce, again, started a new
candy company, which she called the Coral Candy Company.
And at this time, Dean became the vice president of the candy
company. So he's very young still to be
taking on this role. But again, nothing really seemed
to last very long for Dean Coral.
(15:44):
And I'm sure you may in the backof your mind be thinking about
this kind of time frame, what was going on in the world.
The US government had other plans for Dean, and he was
drafted into the US Army at the age of 24 in 1964 to serve in
the Vietnam War like so many other young men at that time.
(16:09):
Yeah. He did some training at Fort
Polk in Louisiana, then to Fort Benning in Georgia, and finally
in Fort Hood in Texas. The Army, however, did not suit
him. He was too quiet, he was too
antisocial and was uninterested in any type of military
(16:31):
camaraderie. And this is where for the era it
got bad for him because of his sexual interest, rumors started
circulating about him having homosexual encounters with other
soldiers and this was truly the time in his life where he
(16:52):
realized for the first time or would admit to himself that he
was homosexual. OK.
And we both know how this would have gone over in the military,
especially at that time. Oh yeah.
So he very much felt like an outsider in that world.
(17:12):
So he was only there for about ayear.
So I don't think he ever was shipped off to anywhere.
He just got through all of the training and was stationed in
the US and, and maybe in the back of his mind, he was looking
for a way out. So he did actually apply for a
hardship discharge, claiming that his mother needed his help
(17:34):
for the family business, and it was granted.
So by June of 1965, he was back in Houston, working at his
mother's candy company. Again.
Again, that's like the third time.
Yeah, back at it again. Now, this is where Dean earned
his name as the Candy Man. This time frame, he was known
(17:59):
for giving away free candy to the local kids.
And who wouldn't want free candyin the 1960s?
Yeah, it's not Halloween if it'snot Halloween.
That was a real treat back then.And because he did this, he made
a name for himself in the community.
And not only was he giving away candy, but he was also hiring
(18:21):
teenage boys for part time jobs.To onlookers, he seemed like a
generous kind of guy, even kind,and parents made jokes about him
being a candy man and the name stuck from that point forward.
But as you know, those small gestures that seem generous were
(18:41):
not a kindness at all. Something much more sinister was
happening and this was a grooming tactic that he was
using. Coral used candy.
The way you think about in your childhood where your parents are
like, don't take candy from strangers.
That's exactly what he was doing.
(19:02):
He lured these children closer to him.
He built trust with them and also their parents.
But by the late 1960s, some of the families began to notice
some strange things about Dean. Teenagers were hanging around
his apartment late at night. Boys were bragging about
(19:25):
drinking beer with him, smoking pot, doing things that teenage
boys shouldn't be doing with a grown ass man.
But again, it's the 1960s and Houston Heights was a working
class neighborhood. Parents often worked really long
hours and kids roamed freely. Because of the culture and era,
(19:47):
this behavior was dismissed as Dean's an eccentric kind of guy,
but he was never really looked at as being harmful and this
left the door wide open for him to do whatever he wanted.
Yeah, man, especially man gaining trust of the parents
too. It's like this is not going to
(20:08):
go. It's going to go even worse than
I'm thinking, I think, yeah. Yeah, and I would, and we'll
talk about this too at the end, but I really put this guy in
comparison with Gacy, right there with Gacy.
Yeah, A. Lot of parallels.
A lot of them, yeah. Now, what makes him different is
(20:33):
the fact that he didn't do this alone.
He actually had two teenage accomplices.
So this is where it gets really it separates itself from John
Wayne Casey. So not only that, but one of the
teenagers would end up shooting and killing him later.
And yeah, so this is a very manipulative situation.
(20:55):
It's really messed up. But we have to talk about how we
get there, right? And we have to talk about the
accomplices, how they got connected.
So the first accomplice was David Owen Brooks, and they
actually met when Brooks was just 12 years old in 1967.
(21:16):
By that time, David's parents had divorced.
His father had already remarriedand was living elsewhere.
And David just naturally gravitated to Dean as this
fatherly figure that he was missing in his life.
And Dean took a liking to him quickly.
He showered him with gifts, including candy.
(21:39):
He gave him drugs and booze. He took him on trips down to the
beach, gave him all this attention.
And we're talking about a child here, people.
Grown man doing this all for a child.
By his teenage years, Brooks waspractically living with this guy
and his apartment. Dang.
(22:01):
And this connection between the two of them just continued to
intensify. By 1969, Dean was asking David
to seek out kids he knew were ondrugs, that liked alcohol and
were possible runaways. In his mind, these are the kids
that no one would miss or question why they went missing.
(22:23):
And the agreement was he would pay this kid David, up to $200
for every boy that he would bring back to the apartment.
Now, remember that this kid David now is 14 years old.
And this is only the this is only the beginning.
Here's your big fat trigger warning.
(22:43):
We should have had one at the beginning, but it is.
This is a true crime episode. But here's your trigger warning
for pedophilia. It doesn't get any better from
this point in the episode, I cantell you that.
So if this stuff triggers you orit's just too much, I'll, I'll,
we'll understand. You can just skip to a different
episode, but we're going to talkabout torture and sexual
(23:07):
assault, strangulation and murder throughout the remainder
of this episode. So just another warning for you.
Please feel free to bow out early.
But with that being said, Dean Coral was a monster.
When David was 16 years old, Dean started paying him 5 to $10
(23:31):
to allow Dean to perform oral sex on him.
And things just continued from there.
By 1970, David Brooks wasn't just Dean's companion, he was in
fact helping him. He lured boys to Coral's
apartment, sometimes his own friends, and Dean Coral paid him
(23:54):
cash or gave him drugs in exchange for doing that.
David Brooks later admitted thathe knew what Coral was doing,
but said he was too trapped to leave.
He described Dean Coral as someone who could be terrifying
1 moment and then generous the next, and that push and pull
(24:17):
kept him in line, kept him hooked.
Was he like truly afraid of him,or do you think it was like that
state of manipulation? Yeah, that's no one will ever
really know the answer to that question, I think.
But the way that he described it.
(24:38):
And again, what is the truth in all of this, right?
Because there's a lot more to this story.
So at the end, when you're beingquestioned and investigated,
what is the real truth? But just from my perspective, I
think he was so young. He was 12 years old when they
met and he was groomed. He came from a turbulent
(24:59):
background and was looking for love and acceptance just like
any kid would. And this guy did a lot of things
for him that I could see as a kid.
Oh, this guy's taking me on trips and he's giving me money
and he's giving me treats and he's buying me gifts.
It would be hard to say no to that.
(25:20):
And this went on for years before he started asking him to
do, to do that, to do that, those things.
So he was in and I think just hewas brainwashed at that point.
Yeah, absolutely. And then now we have our second
accomplice, which is the one that people would probably
(25:41):
recognize his name, Elmer Wayne Henley Junior.
And he, and often in media comesup as Wayne Henley because he
goes by Wayne. So second accomplice was Elmer
Wayne Henley. Yeah.
And then we'll talk about why too, because there is actually a
(26:01):
documentary out right now on HBOMax.
It's the first time that this person has ever done interviews
and spoken out. So you can watch that on HBO
Max. I do recommend that if you want
more insight from his perspective.
So Elmer Wayne Henley, known as Wayne, met the other kid, David
(26:25):
Brooks, at Hamilton Junior High School.
He was 15 years old when David introduced him to Dean Coral.
And Coral did the same thing. He pitched this idea as a
business deal, just like he had done with David Brooks.
The deal was he'd give them $200for every boy that Wayne Henley
(26:48):
would bring to him. And unlike David Brooks, Wayne
Henley knew almost immediately what was happening.
He admitted that Dean Coral toldhim point blank that the boys
were being killed. Oh.
And at first, Wayne rationalizedit, $200, especially at that
(27:12):
time, was a fortune for a kid who was poor.
And that's how he kind of made this work in his mind.
And then he just got in really deep.
Now for Wayne, he wasn't just recruiting, he actually helped
(27:33):
with the torture and eventually became fully complicit with what
was happening. And I think that's to why his
name is much more well known, because there's this question of
he knew what was happening, he participated, but how much can
(27:54):
you actually fault him for what happened?
So there's this, you know? The age.
The age of these kids. Yeah.
Now we're going to get into the actual crimes.
So as I mentioned early in the opening of the episode, this
stent of crimes happened over a three-year period.
(28:16):
So that's a lot that helps. Just do do the math.
So 29 people that we know of over the course of three years,
it's a lot. And these kids were disappearing
at an alarming rate. Most were between the ages of 13
and 17. Some of them were hitchhikers,
some of them were runaways, but many of them were friends of
(28:41):
these boys. His accomplices.
There were there were friends ofhis, which is also super fucked
up. Yeah.
So when this was happening, parents would go to the police
asking, begging for their help. But time and time again, their
claims and their cases basicallywere dismissed because the
(29:04):
police would be like, oh, your son, probably he's a teenager.
He probably just ran off. He'll come back.
And it was that they didn't lookinto it any further.
I always hate that reasoning andthat.
Yeah. How many decades was it like
that? Where it's Oh well, they just
ran away. It's really.
Every time, yeah. And like I said earlier, he was
(29:27):
looking for that demographic of boys that were on drugs maybe,
or who were known for having issues with their family or
whatever the case. He was smart about the targets
for the most part. And as far as the crimes go,
Dean Coral had a very precise method.
(29:49):
So he would lure the kids in or through his accomplices, lure
these victims in with promises of parties, having access to
drugs and alcohol. He'd promised them money or that
he'd be hiring them for odd jobs, anything to really feed
(30:09):
into what kids wanted and neededat that time.
And once he would get them luredin, he would give them alcohol
and would often drug them to incapacitate them.
Then after they were incapacitated he would restrain
them and trigger warning again. So he was known for having a
(30:34):
torture board and this was an 8 foot by two foot plywood slab
that he had drilled holes in to secure ropes and handcuffs.
The boys were tied down, unable to move.
And Can you imagine being drugged and then waking up and
(30:57):
realizing what where you are, what happened to you?
You're there having a good time,and then you get sleepy, you
pass out, you wake up, and then now you're in this position that
you can't get out of. So then once he had them tied
up, that's when the torture would begin.
So he would beat them, sexually assault them, and this would go
(31:21):
on for hours and sometimes even days.
Oh my God. Meanwhile, other people present
in a lot of these cases. Let's keep that in mind that
those accomplices were present in a lot of these instances.
Death was something that would eventually come, but it would
(31:43):
happen slowly and usually would.Their lives would be ended by
either strangulation or sometimes by gunshot, and then
their bodies would be taken to shallow graves.
And once the investigation happens, they did find that he
had three different sites that he would use to bury the boys.
(32:06):
One was in a boat shed that he rented.
Another was at Lake Sam Rayburn,and another location was at High
Island Beach. And they're spread out around
that Houston area, but not too terribly far away.
Now the victims, so the list of names is staggering.
(32:29):
At least 28 confirmed, now 29 I believe, with one victim still
being unidentified. And I will have a link in the
show notes to where you can viewthis person's profile.
They have a picture on there that they've created so you can
see what the person look like. I would encourage you to do that
(32:50):
just because this person still doesn't have a name, so you
never know. Cold cases are being solved all
the time. So definitely take a look at
that. Yeah.
But to understand the horror of what Dean Coral did, we have to
hear who these victims were not just as names on the list, but
(33:10):
as the lives that they lived as people.
Now, I'm not going to cover all of them.
I have a significant list of people that we're going to go
through. The rest you can look up online
For more information. And again, I encourage you to do
so if you have the stomach for it.
All right, so our first on my list is Jeffrey Conan.
(33:34):
He was 18 years old. He is the first confirmed
victim. And this took place in the
summer of 1970. Jeffrey had just graduated high
school in the Houston Heights area.
He was handsome, friendly and remembered as being adventurous.
That night he set out to hitchhike home after visiting
(33:55):
with some friends, which wouldn't have been unusual at
the time. But Jeffrey never made it back
home. Later, investigators would
determine that David Brooks and Dean Coral lured him in.
Jeffrey was tied to Corals torture board, assaulted and
strangled. His body was buried in a rented
(34:16):
boat shed. For his family, the loss was
devastating. He was their oldest son.
They thought he had simply left town.
They live with that uncertainty for three years, not knowing
that Jeffrey was buried just miles away.
And again, this kid was going places His family had His family
(34:39):
had high hopes for him. And then for three years they
live with the fact thinking thathe ran away from home.
That's just awful. And it's a heartbreak in itself.
Yeah. And then to then later find out
the actual truth is like. Yeah.
(35:00):
Our next victims are James Glassand Danny Yates.
They are. We're both 14 years old.
They were best friends, inseparable.
They loved fishing, goofing off after school, and hanging out in
the neighborhood. They were your typical teenage
boys, 2 peas in a pod and on September 25th of 1970 they
(35:26):
disappeared after a church service.
Both boys were restrained, assaulted and strangled and this
is the first time David Brooks would have been involved and it
is believed he walked in on thisscene.
The boys bodies were eventually buried together in Coral's boat
shed. Now this is awful.
(35:49):
James Mother remembered searching the streets at night
with a flashlight calling her son's name and Danny's father
begged the police to investigatebut they were both written off
as runaways. I.
Hate that. Anytime I hear that, I hate
that. Yeah, you're going to hear it a
(36:11):
lot in this one, unfortunately. Now the next.
Oh, go ahead. It just makes you wonder if that
never was a thing, if that was never an excuse that they used
right away and they would have been proactive, how many of
these things would have not goneas far as they did?
(36:32):
We wouldn't have as many Jane and John Doe's.
Yeah, I feel like we wouldn't have what we have with some of
these stories today if. They're yeah.
And it might, the victim count might have been a lot less,
significantly less if they wouldhave just looked a little bit
closer, because we know this washappening in the Houston Heights
(36:53):
area. And at that time, it wasn't a
big area. It wasn't like Houston today.
It was much smaller. So you look at the victims like
any investigators would start out the school and you're like,
oh, wait, this person from this school, this person from this
school, this where it was the common thread here, but they
didn't look at any of that. The answers would have just been
(37:14):
right in front of their face. But yeah, I don't know.
It's all wrong. Now, the next two, as you'll
notice, I'm starting to develop a pattern here of two and two.
So now we've got Donald and Cherry Waldrop, ages 15 and 13,
and they were brothers. On January 30th of 1971, the two
(37:41):
brothers, Donald Waldrop, 15, and Jerry, 13, had left home to
go to the bowling alley, a Saturday night ritual for the
two. Of course, their parents
wouldn't have questioned it because it was something that
they normally did and they were going together.
They were traveling together, but when they didn't return,
their father, Everett called thepolice immediately.
(38:03):
But again, the answer was the same.
They're probably just runaways. The truth was horrific.
Brooks and Henley lured the boysfrom the bowling alley and
delivered them to Dean Coral's apartment.
Both boys were restrained and killed.
Their bodies were buried in the boat shed, just like the others.
But the boy's father never gave up searching.
(38:26):
For years, he kept asking questions, knocking on doors.
And this is tragic. He actually died before he knew
the truth about what actually happened to his sons.
Now our next is Frank Randall Glass, known as Randall.
He was 15 years old. In March of 1971, Randall Glass
(38:52):
vanished. He was a classmate of Henley's.
Randall was funny, quick witted,and he loved music.
He was tricked into coming to Coral's home by Wayne Henley.
That betrayal, friends delivering friends, was part of
what made these murders so chilling.
(39:13):
Randall was killed and buried near Lake Sam Rayburn.
This is a long list, people. I think I document 12 here, and
that's not even half now. Next is Mark Scott, age 17, and
he was one of the most tragic murders.
Mark was popular, athletic and well liked, and more
(39:35):
importantly, he was a very closefriend of Wayne Henley.
Henley brought him to Coral's apartment, maybe under pressure,
maybe because he knew too much. When Mark realized what was
happening, he fought. He tried to talk Henley into
letting him go. Instead, Dean Coral forced
Henley to participate in the killing.
(39:58):
Mark Scott was strangled by Wayne Henley and this would be
the first time that Henley was hands on with the killing.
Henley later said that killing Mark broke him inside.
Quote broke him inside, but it didn't stop him from bringing
more boys to Dean. I don't get that.
I I don't get any of it to beginwith, but the fact that you
(40:24):
mentally are separating yourselffrom your friends, let alone
close friends for this kind of thing.
Yeah. And then again, that question
is, was he fearful that Dean would kill him if he didn't do
these things right, you know? Probably we can only speculate
(40:46):
like you said, but probably because of yeah.
And then not long after, the Balch brothers, again, another
set of brothers. And this was just a recurring
theme for Dean Coral in the victims.
And I don't understand that. I don't I we could probably
(41:07):
speculate why Dean had a brother.
He grew up with a brother. So I don't know what the
psychology of that is, but in 1973, Billy Balch, 17, and his
brother Michael, 15, disappearedtogether.
And again, this is just classic to his MO and something to think
(41:33):
about on a deeper level, why he was targeting these the
brothers? Was it just easier 'cause he hit
Do 2 at once? I I don't know, Right.
Yeah. What is the?
Was it a convenience thing because they were together and
no witnesses or, you know. Yeah, and Billy was an outgoing
(41:55):
kid. He played football.
Michael, the younger brother, was quieter, more reserved, but
again, they were inseparable. And Wayne Henley is the one who
lured them in, and he happened to be a friend.
Both of them were murdered like the others, and they were buried
in Coral's boat shed. Now, one name that you do hear
(42:18):
come up pretty often when talking about the victims of
Dean Coral is Billy Lawrence. Billy Lawrence was 15 years old,
and he was an ambitious kid. He wanted to be a mechanic and
he often helped his father in the garage.
But when he crossed paths with Dean Coral in 1972, his fate was
(42:40):
sealed. Dean kept Billy alive for
several days, tortured, bound and pleading for his life.
Billy was even forced to write aletter to his father saying that
he was leaving and would be backin August.
His father worked in a Houston post office at that time, and
(43:01):
the letter read, quote, Daddy, Ihope you know I love you, your
son Billy Henley later describedhow Billy begged to be killed
quickly. Instead, Coral strangled him
slowly and buried him at High Island.
The prolonged torture Billy endured as one of the darkest
(43:21):
details of the entire case. And Wayne Henley would later
comment about the extended torture by saying, quote, Dean
really liked Billy. That's awful.
By 1973, Coral's killing spree was escalating.
Timothy Curley, age 19, and Rhonda Williams, age 15.
(43:45):
Now, Rhonda was unusual. She was the only girl known to
be taken to Coral's home. She had run away from an abusive
household, and Henley thought hewas helping her, or at least, he
said, by offering her a place tostay.
But Dean Coral snapped. He did not like girls and this
(44:06):
this triggered him. He did not want her there.
What did he do? He tied up all three of them,
Timothy, Rhonda and Wayne Henley, his accomplice.
It was this night on August 8th of 1973 when Henley finally
(44:26):
turned on Dean Coral and shot him dead.
That final murder ended the killing spree and exposed the
horror of what had been happening in Houston Heights for
three years. We'll reflect a little bit and
then I'm going to continue on digging a little bit deeper.
At this point, we have confirmed28 victims and then a possible
(44:50):
29th that we know now, some of them as young as age 13 and most
of them from the same neighborhood, which blows my
mind that you can think that many kids can just run away.
Brothers, friends, a total failure in that respect.
But these kids were not runaways.
They weren't delinquents. They were sons, brothers and
(45:14):
friends. The scale of loss devastated
Houston, and the betrayal that the two boys their age, Henley
and Brooks, had lured so many ofthem in made it even harder to
comprehend. It's easy in cases like this to
focus on the killer, but it's the victims who matter.
They were kids that had features, they had hobbies, they
(45:37):
had dreams, and they had families who love them.
They deserve to be remembered for who they are, not just how
they died. Parents describe frantic night,
searching out in the streets with flashlights, begging the
police for answers. But over and over they got the
same fucking story. He probably ran away, or they
(45:58):
probably ran away. And in reality, these kids were
probably still bound to Coral's torture board or had already
been buried. So let's go back to that night
of August 8th, 1973 when this all came to an end.
By 1973, Wayne Henley was starting to unravel.
(46:23):
He was talking to his friends about how he wanted out of it,
but he stayed because allegedly he was afraid of coral and he
was addicted to the money sometimes again earning up to
$200 per victim. And we know that was not
insignificant at the time. So this night Henley brought his
two friends to Dean Coral's house for what they thought was
(46:46):
another party and Dean Coral wasfurious that Wayne had brought a
girl with him. This didn't fit his fantasy and
he got so irate that he pulled out the gun and tied all
teenagers up, including Wayne. Wayne begged Dean for his life
(47:06):
and Dean united him and said you're going to help me kill the
others. But once he was free, Henley
made a decision. He turned the gun on Coral and
fired six shots and Dean Coral collapsed dead on the floor.
Then Wayne called the police. Police officers responded to a
(47:30):
distress call at 2020 Lamar St. in Pasadena, TX, where Dean
Coral had moved earlier that summer.
Inside the small Houston home, police found 17 year old Wayne
Henley beside the lifeless body of Dean Coral.
Henley told them that he had fired the six shots in an act of
self-defense. What looked like an isolated
(47:51):
homicide was about to unravel into one of the most shocking
murder cases in American history.
When police investigated Dean Coral's apartment further, they
found undeniable evidence of foul play.
In a backroom, they found Dean'storture board, handcuffs and
other physical restraints, sex toys, and a floor covered in
(48:12):
plastic. All of this added up to much
more than investigators could have anticipated.
And once in custody, Wayne Henley began to confess and he
spilled it all. And when David Brooks heard the
news about Dean quarrel, he immediately went to the police
station and tried to deny his involvement.
(48:34):
Police were skeptical about everything that the boys were
saying, but when Henley and David Brooks started talking
more and more, the information that came out just could not be
denied. And this eventually LED
detectives to graves hidden across Southeast Texas.
The boat storage shed, the shores of Lake Sam Rayburn and
(48:55):
the sand dunes at High Island. And each site revealed the same
horror. Multiple bodies buried in
shallow graves, silent evidence of years of torture and murder.
And the boathouse itself had 17 bodies buried.
And it was a tiny space. Think of a small storage shed.
So there were different pits andmass graves dugout in that tiny
(49:19):
space. And when this new surface,
parents stood on the outskirts of mass graves, waiting and
hoping and dreading their new reality.
By the end, the youngest victim was only 13.
The oldest was 20. It was, and it still is, one of
the most horrifying serial killer cases in American
(49:42):
history, newspaper headlines read Houston Murders worst of
the century. This case became known as the
Houston Mass Murders, the largest serial killing case in
the US that they had seen up until that time.
So now you're probably thinking,what about Gacy and Ted Bundy
(50:03):
and Dahmer and Gary Ridgway, John, When Gacy's crimes weren't
discovered until 1978, along with Ted Bundy the same fucking
year. What a year to be alive.
And then Dahmer wouldn't be discovered until 1991, followed
by Gary Ridgway in 1998, and then BTK wasn't discovered until
(50:24):
2005. Which is also just crazy.
Yeah, but that's not all, folks.Let's get to what happened next,
right? Yeah.
Because we want to know. So.
David Brooks, the first accomplice of Dean Quarrel, was
(50:46):
sentenced to life in prison, andhe died in 2020 from
complications of COVID at the age of 65.
Elmer Wayne Henley confessed to being directly responsible for
six of the boy's murders, along with the murder of Dean Coral,
and he received 6 sentences of 99 years in prison each.
(51:10):
He requested a compassionate parole in 2022 but was denied.
The last living parent of one ofthe victims strongly advocated
against his release. And to be honest, I don't think
there's any chance in hell this guy is going to get out of
prison alive. No way.
And for Dean Quarrel, he never stood trial.
(51:32):
He faced a different kind of justice.
His crimes ended the night Henley pulled the trigger.
Some would say that he got off easy.
He didn't get a chance to rot injail or be subjected to what
happens to men in jail who are known for torturing, assaulting
and murdering young boys. And one victim still remains
unidentified today. But new clues have emerged that
(51:54):
will hopefully help give a name to the face of John Doe 1973.
Information on this unidentifiedvictim can be found at
missingkids.org and I will provide a link in the show
notes. The Houston mass murderers, as
they came to be called, left scars on the community that
would never fully heal. So many families were destroyed,
(52:16):
yet Dean Coral's name is not widely remembered or talked
about, perhaps because he was shot and killed before he could
stand trial and face a long formof justice.
But the lessons remain. Evil doesn't always look like a
monster. Sometimes it looks like the
neighbor who hands out candy, the man everyone thinks is safe,
(52:37):
and that whenever you're silent.I know, I know.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot to say
about this. There's a lot to discuss, and we
could probably spend another hour just talking about the
psychology of all of this. And maybe we will.
Maybe we'll have a side discussion on Patreon or
(52:59):
something. But we are at that point now in
the episode where we've reached basically an hour.
And I don't want to push it too far, but yeah.
Yeah, I think it would be a goodside episode for Patreon to go
over our discussion and debate because yeah, I mean, there's a
(53:21):
lot to be said, but honestly, this case has also just left me
completely speechless. Yeah, and I didn't even get into
all of the detail, you know whatI mean?
I just didn't want to do that. Oh gosh, no, because I can only
imagine what you found in the reports for each kid and the
(53:45):
Yeah. Yeah, and his routine was pretty
consistent for the most part. It's just some kids.
He he made it prolonged. And I don't know, but yeah.
So I yeah, that's pretty much all I have for today's episode.
(54:08):
If you made it through, I hope you're OK.
I hope this doesn't keep you awake tonight.
If you do want more info on thiscase, all the source links are
going to be in the show notes. And you can check out that
documentary I mentioned called The Serial Killer's Apprentice
on HBO Max that does feature discussion with Elmer Wayne
(54:31):
Henley Junior. Fuck that guy too.
I mean I I do have conflicted feelings about the manipulation
and the grooming I do. Yeah.
But at the end of the day, I think I would rather die myself
then to to take someone else's life in a situation like that.
(54:52):
I would rather go out fighting then.
But I can't speak for everyone and what they would do in those
situations. I don't know the full scope of
everything. I'm here to present some of the
facts and. Right.
There's always a little bit of speculation when the information
you have is from the person who was responsible for doing these
(55:14):
things, so take it with a grain of salt.
But at the end of the day, a bunch of kids died that
shouldn't have died and they died because they trusted their
friend and that is as a horriblething to think about.
Yeah, exactly. And let alone a friend and like
you said, you would rather die than have to put somebody else
through that. And it's somebody else.
(55:36):
But even on a deeper level of friend, Yeah, close.
Not a random stranger, Not that it's good or acceptable in any
form or. Fashion, but exactly.
But the fact that's a whole other level of messed up.
I don't know what it takes for the mind to be switched like
(55:59):
that. And yes, they were younger.
Obviously the age range here, itis your impressionable era of
your life. Things are different, and if
you're being manipulated and groomed and made to fear the
person in charge, of course that's going to change things.
It's going to skew your perspective and everything.
(56:21):
But at what level do you just wake up and go?
What's going on here? Yeah, just tell one adult.
Tell one adult. And truth is, I think that Wayne
Henley tried to get out of the sooner and he did hint to his,
(56:43):
not hint, but like he did sort of talk about this with his mom
at one point. And I think it was one of those
things where it got brushed under the rug.
Mom. Yeah, yeah.
And so you'll see in the interview with him that they do
have footage of when the police,he was with the police outside
(57:05):
at the boat shed. He's on the phone with his mom.
He admits to his mom that he shot Dean.
Like, you can hear her voice. All this isn't in that
documentary. So I would say, you know, if
you're interested, check that out.
But people get in denial if yourteenage son is.
Yeah, I don't know that he said I'm killing these people, but he
(57:28):
probably said, you know, Dean's up to some bad stuff or whatever
and she just was in denial, I think about it and just brushed
it under the rug. But happens a lot,
unfortunately. I yeah, there's always that same
psychological parental debate that we can get into about if
(57:53):
things were different, if the parents were different, if they
listened to their children aboutwhat was said, like Dahmer would
have been different. Yeah, telling his dad that he
needed help and yeah, so. Yeah, I'm.
Not a parent. But holy shit maybe listen to
your kids. Also don't be a shitty parent.
(58:16):
Honestly. Public macabre Service
announcement. If you don't want another serial
killer, or you don't want another evil person in the world
doing stuff like this, maybe youshould actually parent your
child just. And not.
And in some cases it's not the parents at all.
I won't put the fault on the parents but like.
(58:39):
A lot of it is. It's always it.
He just checked so many boxes. Yeah.
And it's like, oh, it's always like, gosh, ah, this makes me
angry. Yeah, fortunately friends, we've
got some lighter hearted stuff coming up in the world of
macabre for the month of October, so I feel a little bit
(59:03):
nauseous and sick to my stomach.I'm sorry if you feel the same
way. But that's it for now.
We love you and we hope you staysafe and as always, be kind to
your fellow humans. But keep in the Cobb and we will
catch you next time. Heck yeah.
You shocked me. Shock you later shock you later.
(59:27):
Love you. Guys, bye.
Love you love. You.
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