The Man With The Candy e-Book Available for PC iPhone/iPod Touch Blackberry Amazon Kindle

Time for a change? Click Here

Dean Corll - The Man with the Candy: The Story of
the Houston Mass Murders

Jack Olsen (1925-2002)

The Man with the Candy: The Story of the Houston Mass Murders is a true crime story about Dean Corll, a 33-year-old electrician living in Houston, Texas, who with two teen accomplices was responsible for kidnapping, torturing, raping and murdering at least 27 young boys in Houston in the early 1970s.

Dean Corll was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1939. After his parents divorced, Dean and his brother Stanley moved with their mother to Houston, Texas. Dean seemed to adjust to the change, had a good grade average and was described by teachers as being polite and well-behaved. He was drafted into the military in 1964, where it is thought he first realized he was homosexual, but he was given a military discharge the following year so that he could help his mother run her candy business. He eventually took over the business and invited local children to the store for free candy. This is how he earned the nickname "the Candy Man". After the business closed his mother moved to Colorado and Dean began training to become an electrician.

There was nothing unusual about Corll except for his choice of friends, who were mostly young male teens. A 14-year-old boy named Elmer Wayne Henley (left) and a 15-year-old boy named David Owen Brooks (right) were particularly close to Corll. The three spent a lot of time hanging around at Corll's house or riding with him in his van. On August 8, 1973, that changed when Henley shot and killed Corll at his home. When police interviewed Henley about the shooting and searched Corll's home for evidence, a bizarre and brutal story of torture, rape and murder began to unfold.

Henley began telling the police about his relationship with Corll. He said Corll paid him $200 "per head" to lure young boys to his house. Most of the boys were from low-income Houston neighborhoods and were easily persuaded to come to a party where there would be free alcohol and drugs. Many were also childhood friends of Henley and had no reason to distrust his intentions. But once inside Corll's home, they would soon become victims of his sadistic and murderous obsessions.

When the police searched Corll's house, they found a bedroom that looked as if it was designed for torture and murder. There was a board with handcuffs attached, ropes, a large dildo and plastic covering the carpeted floor. There was also a wooden crate with what appeared to be air holes cut into it.

According to Henley, he made Corll furious when he brought his young girlfriend over to the house with another friend, Tim Kerley. The group drank and did drugs and fell asleep. When Henley awoke, his feet were bound and Corll was handcuffing him to his "torture" board. His girlfriend and Tim were also bound with electrical tape over their mouths. Henley knew what was about to happen since he had witnessed this same scenario before.

Henley convinced Corll to free him by promising to participate in the torture and murder of his friends. Once free, he went along with some of Corll's instructions, including attempting to rape the young woman. In the meantime Corll was trying to rape Tim, but the young boy fought so hard Corll became frustrated and left the room. Henley immediately went for Corll's gun which he left behind. When Corll returned, Henley shot him six times, killing him.

Henley led the police to where many of the victims were buried. The first location was a boatshed Corll had rented in southwest Houston. The police uncovered the remains of 17 of the boys murdered by Corll. Ten more bodies were found at other burial sites in or near Houston. Altogether there were 27 bodies recovered.

The young victims ranged in ages from nine to age 21, however most were in their teens. Two families lost two sons to Corll's deadly rage. An examination of the victims determined that some of the boys had been shot, others strangled to death. Some had been castrated, had objects inserted into their rectums and glass rods pushed into their urethras. All had been sodomized.

Henley confessed to knowing about Corll's brutal crimes and also participating in murdering one of the boys. Brooks told police that he had no knowledge of the crimes. When tried, Brooks was found guilty of one murder and sentenced to life in prison. Henley was convicted of six of the murders and sentenced to six 99-year-terms. Because Henley acted in self-defense, he was not convicted of killing Corll.

Other best selling books by Jack Olsen:

• SON: A Psychopath and His Victims (1983) is the story of Kevin Coe, Spokane's South Hill rapist whose rich and influential mother was sent to prison after trying to hire a hit man to kill the judge and prosecutor who convicted her son.

• Give a Boy a Gun: The True Story of Law and Disorder in the American West (1985)- "Give a boy a gun and you're makin' a man," Claude Dallas, Sr., said this about his son, Claude Jr., a self-made cowboy, trapper, and "mountain man'' who was convicted of manslaughter in the shooting deaths of two Idaho game wardens.  Was this a case of self-defense or outright murder?

• Cold Kill: The True Story of a Murderous Love (1987) - A double murder of Texas lawyer James Campbell and his wife Virginia by their daughter Cindy and her lover, David West.

• Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (1989) is an incredible account of a rural Wyoming doctor who relied on his patients' naiveté and Mormon female submissiveness to rape generations of women on his examining table.

• Predator: Rape, Madness, and Injustice in Seattle (1991) - This book focuses on three men: McDonald ("Mac") Smith, a serial rapist who preyed on women; Steve Titus, a carefree partygoer who was wrongly convicted of the predator's crimes; and Paul Henderson, a reporter for the Seattle Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for tracking down the truth.

• The Misbegotten Son: A Serial Killer and His Victims (1993)- An account of the life and crimes of convicted killer Arthur Shawcross describes how Shawcross, after being found guilty of the murders of two children, was released only to murder eleven prostitutes.

• Charmer: A Ladies' Man and his Victims (1994) - A true crime story of George Russell, Jr., a charismatic young African American from an affluent Seattle suburb who targeted and killed three beautiful women and whose charming outward appearance kept him from suspicion.

• Salt of the Earth: A Mother, A Daughter, A Murder (1996) - Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his twelve-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared. It was left to Brenda's mother Elaine to sustain her stricken family, search for her missing child, and pressure the authorities for justice. From the first minutes of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing "Mr. Universe" hopeful, but there was no proof of a crime, leaving police and prosecutors stymied.

• Hastened to the Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation (1998) - This true crime features a delightful hero: a female private investigator who calls herself "Rat Dog Dick." Rat Dog relies on an ancient Everex 286 computer (Evil Evie), a Toyota Tercel (The Frog Prince) that is so outrageously green it's useless for surveillance, and a big, funny-looking dog (Beans). Once she gets her teeth into the "Foxglove" case in which several old people have dwindled and died quickly after being "befriended" by a local Gypsy family, Rat Dog is outraged that the police are ignoring clear evidence of elder abuse.

• Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt (2000) - This is a story of true crime American injustice. Pratt, a war hero and leader of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murder based on the perjured testimony of a paid FBI informant. After spending twenty-seven years in prison, he was finally declared innocent and released.

• I: The Creation of a Serial Killer (2002) - In February 1990, Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovke and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of 23-year-old Taunja Bennet. Pavlinac had come forth and confessed, implicating her boyfriend and producing physical evidence that linked them to the crime. Authorities closed the case. There was just one problem. They had the wrong people...

For more information on Jack Olsen, click on this link Jack Olsen

Back to Jack Olsen Page from The Man With The Candy

Back to Mystery Crime Scene Home Page

---

© 2007 MysteryCrimeScene.com  All rights reserved

Background design and logo courtesy of 
 DigitalDesigns Designer Elliott Houston