Like Brooks, however, Henley had endured a difficult relationship with his father, who, according to published reports, would get drunk and physically assault his wife and children. At one point, Marys third husband, the merchant seaman, told his wife that he suspected Corll might be homosexual because of the number of young boys he invited over to the candy factory after hours. I like knowing that they need me. For a moment, she started to look down the street. I want to try to help you, Derrick said. The one thing Chief Short did do, in a misguided attempt to make sure such crimes didnt happen again, was order his officers to raid the citys gay bars. The Astrodome, which had opened in 1965, was still being called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Dean Corll The Candy Man.. One day, she told the police that she had learned that Malley had a friend who drove a Plymouth GTX. It always bothered me, says Larry Earls, the young homicide detective. This is a private property. He had seen so many broken marriages. True to form, she divorced the merchant seaman in 1968, and based on her visits to Houston psychics, who told her that she needed to get as far away from him as possible, she closed the candy factory and moved to Colorado. The apartment was located a few blocks from the Galleria, a 600,000-square-foot indoor luxury shopping mall, complete with an ice skating rink in the center and Neiman Marcus as its anchor, that was preparing to open in November. He later How that man was able to go out to that storage shed, time after time, and bury one more dead boy is something Ill never understand, Mullican says after a few seconds. Dorothy Hilligiest's son David disappeared one day on the way to a neighborhood swimming pool in 1971. In those years, of course, plenty of people tended to believe, falsely, that homosexuality was linked to pedophilia. The officer who got Dannys report also labeled him a runaway, after finding out that someone thought hed seen him at a house where runaways often gathered. They ask if there is any new information about the handful of bodies from the killings that have never been identified. Skip Hollandsworth specializes in long-form narratives. The Harris County Appraisal District website, which has owner records dating back to 1995, shows five different owners in that time. Jimmy Glasss family was able to identify him only because his beloved leather jacket was next to his skeleton. They said they had lured boys into Corlls Plymouth GTX muscle car or his white van, asking if they needed a ride or if they wanted to go drink beer. For weeks the story of the murders stayed on the front pages of the Houston newspapers. When friends would come to visit, the parents tried to talk fondly about their sons, but they inevitably ended up saying such things as If only I had picked him up from school that day or If I hadnt said anything about him needing a haircut or If I had just given him one last hug.. In response, Mary West simply fired the youth. Corll The boat shed where Dean Corll buried 17 of his victims. RELATED: HOUSTONS OTHER CANDY MAN - The year after Corlls death, another Houston man also was dubbed the Candy Man for poisoning his son with a cyanide-laced pixy stix. Of the 28 murders that he committed, eight took place at this address. Mrs. Scott, who is 83 years old, lives on West Twenty-fifth Street in the Heights, a Houston neighborhood about five miles northwest of downtown. But Ill never forget getting out early one day from high school, and I came home and found her with all the photos and all the newspaper stories spread out. I found out that Dean screwed him in the ass before killing him.. Mama! They basically vanished into thin air., Jimmy, the son of a mining engineer, was a handsome teenager who wore trendy, loud-patterned shirts with wide lapels, leather necklaces dotted with beads, and a leather jacket with fringe that hung off the sleeves. One of the bodies at High Island was identified as Jeffrey Konen, who had been a salutatorian at St. Thomas High School, a private Catholic school west of downtown Houston, before he enrolled at the University of Texas. He angrily declared that reports of links among the victims and the killers were a myth created by the media. While he was at it, he took his own shot at Izvestia. Some parents and family members stood outside the gallery on opening night, holding signs that read Hang Henley! She had twice married and divorced Corlls father, who lived in Pasadena, where he worked as an electrician; then she had married and divorced a salesman. She walked outside to feed her doves. Later she had impulsively married a merchant seaman she had met through a newly opened Houston computer-dating service (she filled out a questionnaire; her answers were then fed into a giant mainframe computer; and after several days, the computer produced a list of potential dates for her based on other applicants questionnaires). A day or so later I found out that Dean had killed the boy, Henley said in his confession. Henley then brought his friend Mark Scott to Corlls. He had taken care of him, given him money when he needed it, and let him stay with him whenever David needed to get away from his real father. On August 8, Henley arrived at Corlls with his buddy Tim Kerley and his new girlfriend, Rhonda Williams, a popular girl from the Heights whose previous boyfriend had been Frank Aguirre, whom Henley had brought to Corll more than a year before. All she had to do was get a DNA sample from one of them and compare it with a new sample she had taken from the bone. One day, a kid named Malley Winkle told his mother, Selma, that he had been given a job sweeping up pecan scraps and peeling caramel off the floor at the factory. Mrs. Scott escorted Derrick into the living room. And then there was Betty Hawkins, the single mother who first met Corll when she worked at the candy factory and who started dating him in 1968. You know, a man like that can have a lot of influence over a young, insecure boy.. WebHenley would ultimately be the person to end Corlls life in that house by shooting him. When she visited Mrs. Scott and Jeff, Derrick said that because DNA technology was now so advanced, she would be able to let them know if Mark was in their columbarium. Other locations that are relatively close to this place. Although the two teenagers were the products of what were then called broken homes (their parents were divorced) and they had dropped out of school, they were hardly regarded around the Heights as troublemakers. The doves around her fluttered, then settled, then fluttered again. But they promised the families that if their sons were spotted on the streets, they would be told to go back to school. And if the past doesn't haunt you, you just might find a deal. My mom did her best to forgive, recalls the Hilligiests youngest son, Stanley, who now works for a Houston oil field services company. Over two and a half years, Corll and his 17-year-old accomplice kidnapped, raped, tortured, and killed upwards of 28 young men and boys. It wasnt just the number of murders that caught everyones attention. He cried into the receiver, Mama! He began inviting teenage boys over to his apartment, some of whom he had been eyeing since his days at the candy factory. Leave them blank to get signed up. 8 notorious Houston-area locations plagued by suicides, murders Of the victims the medical examiners office was able to identify, at least twenty of them had been residents of either the Heights or an adjoining neighborhood. She would have had some peace when she died.. Do you realize I hadnt even gotten my drivers license, and there I was, out committing murders with Dean just because I wanted to please him?. Discussing his early days with Corll, he said, surprisingly, I wish I had told my mother what he was doing to me. This is an aerial image of the yard that Elmer Henley led the police to. The house has three bedrooms that feature the same light gray hue that can be found throughout the house, and one full bath that has the same black and white countertops and cabinets that are in the kitchen. And it's also where her husband, Dr. John Hill, was gunned down. Bob Wright, the executive director of marketing and communications at Stephen F. Austin University, in Nacogdoches, who was a Houston radio reporter in 1973, says that he was told by a detective that once the body count surpassed the U.S. mass murder record, the excavations were halted. Mrs. The families were on their own. . Americas city of the future got hit with a torrent of negative publicity. If I had told her, I wouldnt be here now. He mentioned that the girl he had married in July 1973 had given birth to their daughter, who regularly visited him when she got older. In the photograph above, we've marked the victims that died at Lamar Drive with a red rot. As the weeks dragged on, Dorothy called the police constantly, passing on any rumor she heard and suggesting potential witnesses for them to interview. Dad began to fall apart right in front of our eyes, recalls Cyndi. They found the first body in a matter of minutes. They got in their car and roamed the streets, peering down alleys and stopping at the local drive-in restaurants. Indeed, if Corll had been able to maintain his alliance with his accomplices, theres no telling how long his killing spree might have lasted. He was this smart, clean-cut, nicely dressed man. Henley then left. Did civic leaders want the search stopped because they were concerned about how high the count would go? Though he had agreed to meet her, she had no idea if he would cooperate: He had never spoken to anyone other than a few close friends about his role in the murders. Ill never forget one mother coming up to the newsroom on a Saturday afternoon, recalls Tom Kennedy, a retired Houston Post reporter. Henley and Brooks told us that they thought there were more bodies, and there were other places where we wanted to dig, but we were told no.. They thought we were all child molesters and killers, says Ray Hill, one of the citys first gay activists. It was like a blood lust, says Henley. The fact that Henley had allowed a girl to return with them angered Corll so much that it eventually led to a physical confrontation between the pair. She returned to the Scotts home and asked Mrs. Scott and Jeff to sit down. Suddenly, Henley grabbed Corlls gun. If you're against it, you want to be informed. I looked at her and said, Honey, I wish I could explain it to you., Hes now 54 years old, five feet five inches tall, about 150 pounds. Two teenagers from the Heights admitted to the police that Corll had recruited them to be his assistants: seventeen-year-old Wayne Henley, a wiry kid with acne on his cheeks and thick brown hair, and eighteen-year-old David Brooks, an ascetic-looking blond-haired youth who wore wire-rimmed glasses. Corll - known as the Candy Man because his family owned a candy shop - was a serial killer who, with the help of young boys, would lure victims back to his home where he would abuse and torture them before killing them with a .22 caliber pistol. They captured and killed a twenty-year-old father who had been living in the Heights and was hitchhiking home to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to see his wife and new baby. Mrs. Scott was then 44 years old, a switchboard operator for Dresser Industries. A home that once belonged to one of Houston's most infamous serial killers is up for sale. Below, you will find the address and the GPS coordinates for this location. Corll severed Branchs genitals with a knife and placed them in a plastic bag, which he buried next to the body. One was sixteen-year-old Malley Winkle, who years earlier had worked at the Corlls candy factory with his mother. Some of the bodies were covered with a layer of lime powder and shrouded in clear plastic, their faces looking up at the men uncovering them. Or that the mystery of what happened to so many of his victims would haunt the city to this day. Mrs. Scott said nothing. They ended up at Corlls new apartment. Throughout the summer and into the fall, families huddled around open graves at Houstons cemeteries, burying their boys. She read the original police case files of the murder investigation, and she tracked down as many of the missing persons reports as she could find that had been filed with the Houston Police Department between 1970 and 1973. There are no plaques or memorials to honor the boys who were murdered. Therefore, you should be respectful and not step foot on the property without permission. At that stage, Corll would rape, beat, and torture them for days on end until he finally decided to strangle them to death. Copyright 2023 Click2Houston.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. Dean was appointed as vice-president of the new family firm. Now nearly 50 years later, the 1,231 square foot home, located at 2020 Lamar Drive in Pasadena, is on the market for $184,900, and has been refurbished into a modern A Right-wing Cabal Took Over Odessas Municipal Government. They sat across a table from each other in an office, and Derrick took a breath. When the police arrived at Southwest Boat Storage, a dry-land marina, the detectives opened the windowless stall number eleven, and they started digging. Trying to beat back her despair, Betty Cobble, the mother of one of the victims, returned to her job delivering flowers, only to find herself providing arrangements at funerals for other victims. Mrs. Scott had noticed a young man down the block, walking past one of the new three-story townhomes that now line the street, some of them still unoccupied, the builders signs advertising wood-paneled ceilings, recessed lighting, and granite countertops. There he read Brookss confession, which had been reprinted in a newspaper. The Lost Boys (from left): David Hilligiest, Jerry Waldrop, Jimmy Glass, Danny Yates, Homer Garcia, James Dreymala, Mark Scott, Marty Jones, Billy Lawrence. Or they were Houston boys who had been somewhere in the Heights right before they disappeared. Please log in if you don't want to post On the right, you can see a photograph of Dean and his half-sister, Joyce. I try to keep myself busy, and I try not to sleep much, he says. It didnt. People were flooding into Houston, the population rapidly approached two million, and the apartments around the Galleria were swarming with single people hoping to someday make their mark on the world. His co-workers at Houston Lighting and Power always had good things to say about him, and the manager of one apartment complex where Corll had lived and committed murders called him as good a tenant as weve ever had. When he began to come around the Henley house, he worked on Mrs. Henleys car and got along so well with all the Henley boys that a charmed Mrs. Henley invited him to Easter dinner. He drank beer, smoked pot, and chased girls, and he could usually be found at one of the neighborhood hangoutsthe swimming pool, the Long John Silvers on Twenty-third, or the Jack in the Box on Twentieth. . So, how do you know if something happened in a house you want to buy? Maybe they were being tortured right next door and I didnt know it., Some parents turned to pills or alcohol to cope with the pain. In March 2009 Kerley died in South America, reportedly from a heart attack. By the next day, police officers were exhuming bodies from a wooded area near Sam Rayburn Reservoir, outside Lufkin, and on a beach at High Island, east of Houston. After Henley promised to murder Williams, Corll untied him. He listened to me. A few arrived from as far away as Japan and Pakistan. In the note he was forced to write to his father, promising he would be back in late August, he added at the very end, Daddy, I hope you know I love you. It was just supposed to be a night of fun, he says, adding that he only had Williams with him because she had been arguing with her father. Hes been up since five oclock, working his shift at the prison laundry and dabbling on a painting of a landscape dotted with pine trees in the craft shop. She added that she had seen a GTX puttering through the neighborhood with the license plate TMF 724. Forrest Wilder writes about politics and the outdoors. @ 29.68135776, -95.21422424 South Houston, Texas (TX), US This was the last home of the serial killer where at least six teenage boys were tortured and killed. Checking their notes, the reporters said Corll had once been a resident of the Heights, where he had helped his mother run a small candy factory on West Twenty-second Street. Driving around with Corll one afternoon, he saw a teenager with long hair, asked him if he wanted to smoke some pot, and soon had him in the car and at Corlls apartment. Corll was a sadistic serial killer who tortured and murdered at least 28 teenagers during the early 1970s. Other parents, who learned from Brookss and Henleys confessions that their sons had been murdered, remain convinced that they were given the wrong remains and buried someone elses child. He wrote backhe typed his letter and didnt sign itsaying, Lets stay in touch. But we never did. Instead Henley let slip that Corll had once bragged about killing boys and burying them in a storage shed. I think this might give you some peace of mind, Derrick said to Mrs. Scott, who nodded and replied, I would like to know. Derrick swabbed Jeffs cheek and returned to her office, where she sent the DNA to a laboratory at the University of North Texas to be processed. They snatched Homer Garcia, a boy from southwest Houston who was attending a drivers education class with Henley, and they carted off two boys who had just moved into an apartment across the street from Henleys house. His parents divorced when he was young and his mother, Mary, remarried several times. But we hit it off. Your son, Billy.. She also perused a stack of other missing persons reports, the pages yellowed by time, that had been mailed to the medical examiners office in the seventies from parents and police departments around the country (one of Derricks colleagues had come across the reports stashed in the back of a file cabinet). I know people will always think that Im evil, Henley says. According to the reporters, a 33-year-old man named Dean Corll had been shot to death at his home in Pasadena, a Houston suburb. At night, whenever I heard a noise, Id get out of bed and walk to the front door, Mrs. Scott says. The family was preparing to leave the next day for a Hill Country vacation. If you can't find the OP only, Subject only Dean Corll's house demolished. Dean Corll abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered at least 28 teenage A serial killer lived in a nondescript home in Pasadena. In September, when her neighbor Mrs. Hilligiest died in her home at the age of 88, Mrs. Scott told her younger son Jeff, who had moved back in with his mother to look after her, that she could be the last parent left in the neighborhood who had lost a son to Corll. Nevertheless, the teenage runaway story got traction. Corll himself was shot here by his accomplice, Elmer Henley. The authorities did dig up the backyard of the Pasadena home where Corll was living, and they searched behind the old candy factory. For more details, please read our Privacy & Cookie Policy. David idolized him. Meanwhile, when a California legislator learned that the sex-education textbook used in the states schoolsHuman Sexuality, written by University of Houston psychology professor James Leslie McCaryhad been found among Corlls belongings, he wrote Governor Ronald Reagan a letter, demanding that the book be withdrawn from California schools, in part because it suggested that homosexuality was not an abnormal behavior. anonymously (anonymous users cannot post links). Not long after Luis pulled into his driveway, a police officer arrived to tell him and his wife, Doris, that Homers body had been identified as one of Corlls victims. I like that they come to see me, she said, throwing an extra handful of birdseed toward Miss Whitey. Youre here to talk about my Mark?. Wayne saved my life, and he saved Tims life too. 17-year-old John Manning Sellars was also killed at this house. Even when Corll told him that he had abducted his childhood friend David Hilligiest, Henley didnt back away. 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