93 Facts About Dean Corll

Dean Corll was aided by two teenaged accomplices, David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley.

Dean Corll's victims were typically lured with an offer of a party or a lift to one of the various addresses at which he resided between 1970 and 1973.

Dean Corll was known as the Candy Man and the Pied Piper, because he and his family had previously owned and operated a candy factory in Houston Heights, and he had been known to give free candy to local children.

Dean Arnold Corll was born on December 24,1939, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the first child of Mary Emma Robison and Arnold Edwin Corll.

Dean Corll's father was strict with his children, whereas his mother was markedly protective of both her sons.

Dean Corll was a shy, serious child who rarely socialized with other children, but at the same time displayed concern for the wellbeing of others.

Dean Corll was markedly sensitive to any form of criticism or rejection.

At the age of seven, he suffered an undiagnosed case of rheumatic fever, which was not recognized until doctors found Dean Corll had a heart murmur in 1950.

Dean Corll's parents attempted reconciliation and remarried in 1950, subsequently moving to Pasadena, Texas, a suburb of Houston; however, the reconciliation was short lived and, in 1953, the couple divorced, with the mother again retaining custody of her two sons and briefly residing a trailer home upon a rural farm while supporting her children via menial employment.

From 1954 to 1958, Dean Corll attended Vidor High School, where he was regarded as a well-behaved student who achieved satisfactory grades.

Dean Corll graduated from Vidor High School in the summer of 1958.

Dean Corll's family opened a new shop, which they named Pecan Prince in reference to the brand name of the family product.

In 1960, at the request of his mother, Dean Corll moved to Yoder, Indiana, to live with his widowed grandmother.

Dean Corll lived in Indiana for almost two years but returned to Houston in 1962 to help with his family's candy business, which by this date had moved to Houston Heights.

Dean Corll later moved into an apartment of his own above the shop.

Dean Corll's mother divorced West in 1963 and opened a new candy business, which she named Dean Corll Candy Company; her eldest son was appointed vice president of the new family firm, with his younger brother Stanley being appointed secretary-treasurer.

Dean Corll was drafted into the United States Army on August 10,1964, and assigned to Fort Polk, Louisiana, for basic training.

Dean Corll was later assigned to Fort Benning, Georgia, to train as a radio repairman before his permanent assignment to Fort Hood, Texas.

Dean Corll reportedly hated military service; he applied for a hardship discharge on the grounds that he was needed in his family's business.

Reportedly, Dean Corll divulged to some of his close acquaintances after his release from the army that it was during his military service that he had first realized that he was homosexual and had experienced his first homosexual encounters.

Dean Corll was known to give free candy to local children, in particular teenage boys.

In 1967, Dean Corll befriended 12-year-old David Owen Brooks, then a sixth grade student and one of the many children to whom he gave free candy.

Dean Corll joined Corll on the regular trips he took to South Texas beaches in the company of various youths, and later commented that Corll was the first adult male who did not mock his appearance.

Whenever he visited his father in Houston, he visited Dean Corll, who allowed him to stay at his apartment if he wished.

Shortly before the closure of the candy company, Dean Corll took a job as an electrician at the Houston Lighting and Power Company while simultaneously working for the family firm.

Dean Corll worked in this employment until the day of his death.

Between 1970 and 1973, Dean Corll is known to have killed a minimum of twenty-nine victims.

Dean Corll's victims were usually lured into either one of the two vehicles he owned or a 1969 Chevrolet Corvette he is known to have purchased for Brooks in February 1971.

In several instances, Dean Corll forced his victims to either phone or write to their parents with explanations for their absences in an effort to allay the parents' fears for their sons' safety.

Dean Corll killed his first known victim, an 18-year-old college freshman named Jeffrey Konen, on September 25,1970.

Dean Corll was dropped off alone at the corner of Westheimer Road and South Voss Road near the Uptown area of Houston at approximately 6:30pm Corll likely offered Konen a lift to his home, which Konen evidently accepted.

Dean Corll promised Brooks a car in return for his silence; Brooks accepted the offer and Dean Corll later bought him a green Chevrolet Corvette.

Dean Corll later told Brooks that he had killed the two youths, and offered him $200 for any boy he could lure to Dean Corll's apartment.

On December 13,1970, Brooks lured two 14-year-old Spring Branch youths named James Glass and Danny Yates away from a religious rally held in Houston Heights to an apartment Dean Corll had recently rented at 3300 Yorktown.

Six weeks after the double murder of Glass and Yates, on January 30,1971, Brooks and Dean Corll encountered two teenage brothers, Donald and Jerry Waldrop, walking toward their parents' home.

Between March and May 1971, Dean Corll abducted and killed three victims, all of whom lived in Houston Heights and all of whom were buried toward the rear of the boat shed.

Brooks persuaded Haney to attend a party at an address Dean Corll had moved to on San Felipe Street the previous month.

In September 1971, Dean Corll moved to an apartment on Columbia Street.

However, Dean Corll evidently decided the youth would make a good accomplice and offered him the same fee of $200 for any boy he could lure to his apartment, informing Henley that he was involved in a "white slavery ring" operating from Dallas.

Henley later stated that, for several months, he ignored Dean Corll's offer, although he did maintain an acquaintance with Dean Corll and gradually began to view him as something of a "brother-type person" whose work ethic he admired and in whom he could confide.

In early 1972, he decided to accept Dean Corll's offer because he and his family were in dire financial circumstances.

One month later, on March 24,1972, Henley, Brooks, and Dean Corll encountered an 18-year-old acquaintance of Henley's named Frank Aguirre leaving a restaurant on Yale Street, where the youth worked.

Brooks later claimed he persuaded Dean Corll to allow Ridinger to be released, and the youth was allowed to leave the residence.

Dean Corll then tied Brooks to his bed and assaulted the youth repeatedly before releasing him.

Dean Corll was shot twice in the head and buried in the boat shed.

Dean Corll's gagged and emasculated body was buried in the boat shed.

On January 20,1973, Dean Corll moved to an address on Wirt Road in the Spring Branch district of Houston.

On March 1, Dean Corll vacated his Wirt Road apartment; he briefly resided in an apartment on South Post Oak Road before moving to 2020 Lamar Drive, an address his father had vacated in Pasadena after residing in the property for twenty-two years.

Dean Corll is known to have suffered from a hydrocele in early 1973, which may have contributed to this period of inactivity.

Dean Corll was furious that Henley had brought a girl to his house, telling him in private that he had "ruined everything".

Dean Corll appeared to calm down and offered the trio beer and marijuana.

Henley awoke to find himself lying on his stomach and Dean Corll snapping handcuffs onto his wrists.

Dean Corll's mouth had been taped shut and his ankles had been bound together.

Henley calmed Dean Corll, promising to participate in the torture and murder of both Williams and Kerley if Dean Corll released him.

Dean Corll removed the adhesive tape from Kerley's mouth before informing him of his intentions to "look up" his anus as Henley again began inhaling paint fumes from a paper bag.

Dean Corll then asked Corll whether he might take Williams into another room.

Dean Corll began coughing up blood as he ran out of the room, trapping his right foot in a loose telephone wire and hitting the wall of the hallway.

Henley fired three additional bullets into his lower back and shoulder as Dean Corll slid down the wall in the hallway outside the room where the two other teenagers were bound.

Dean Corll died where he fell, his naked body facing the wall.

Dean Corll's call was answered by an operator named Velma Lines.

The younger male identified himself as Elmer Wayne Henley and told the officer that he was the individual who had made the call and indicated that Dean Corll's body was inside the house.

Dean Corll recounted the events of the previous evening and that morning, explaining that he had shot Corll in self-defense.

Dean Corll had paid up to $200 for each victim Brooks or he were able to lure to his apartment.

Also found at Dean Corll's address were a large hunting knife, rolls of clear plastic of the same type used to cover the floor, a portable radio rigged to a pair of dry cells to give increased volume, an electric motor with loose wires attached, eight pairs of handcuffs, a number of dildos, thin glass tubes, and lengths of rope.

Henley agreed to accompany police to Dean Corll's boat shed in Southwest Houston, where he claimed the bodies of several victims could be found.

Dean Corll stated the "only three" abductions and murders Brooks had not assisted him and Corll with were committed in the summer of 1973.

That afternoon, Henley accompanied police to Lake Sam Rayburn, where he, Brooks, and Dean Corll had buried four victims killed that year.

Families of Dean Corll's victims were highly critical of the HPD, which had been quick to list the missing boys as runaways who had not been considered worthy of any major investigation.

Everett Waldrop, the father of Donald and Jerry Waldrop, complained that shortly after his sons had disappeared in 1971, he had informed police an acquaintance had observed Dean Corll burying what appeared to be bodies at his boat shed.

Henley had confessed that after their initial abuse and torture at Dean Corll's home, Cobble and Jones each had one wrist and ankle bound to the same side of Dean Corll's torture board.

The youths were then forced by Dean Corll to fight each other with the promise that the one who beat the other to death would be allowed to live.

Dean Corll had been indicted for four murders committed between December 1970 and June 1973, but was brought to trial charged only with the June 1973 murder of 15-year-old William Ray Lawrence.

Dean Corll tells you he was a cheerleader if nothing else.

Dean Corll was found guilty of Lawrence's murder on March 4,1975, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Dean Corll is next eligible for parole in October 2025.

Dean Corll died of COVID-19-related complications at a Galveston hospital on May 28,2020, at the age of 65.

Twenty-seven of Dean Corll's known victims have been identified, and the identity of a twenty-eighth victim whose body has never been found, Mark Scott, is conclusively known.

In June 2008, Dr Sharon Derrick, a forensic anthropologist with the medical examiner's office in Houston, released digital images of Dean Corll's three still-unidentified victims.

Dean Corll was listed as a possible victim of Corll after the other murders were discovered in 1973.

At the time of his disappearance, Dean Corll resided in an apartment at 1855 Wirt Road, where he lived between January 20 and March 1,1973, when he moved to his father's Pasadena bungalow.

Brooks had specifically stated Dean Corll had "got one boy by himself" during the time he lived at this address.

Henley had stated in his confession to police that he and Dean Corll had "choked" Michael Baulch and buried him at Lake Sam Rayburn.

Bunton's family had always believed him to be a victim of Dean Corll and had contacted Dr Derrick in 2009 to submit a DNA sample for comparison with the unidentified bodies.

Dean Corll is last known to have phoned his parents claiming to need money in much the same manner as victims Charles Cobble and Marty Jones had been forced to telephone their parents before their murder.

Dean Corll stated he was burying spoiled candy to avoid contamination by insects.

Dean Corll was observed digging in waste ground that was later converted into a parking lot.

The suspicion is that Dean Corll began killing much earlier than 1970 and had been abusing youths prior to this date.

The earliest of Dean Corll's victims mentioned by Brooks in his confession were two teenage boys killed at 3300 Yorktown, where Dean Corll had only resided between October 1970 and January 1971.

Dean Corll's last known victim of 1971 was Ruben Watson Haney, who disappeared on August 17.

The individual depicted has been ruled out by the Harris County Medical Examiner as being any of Dean Corll's known victims, including his one remaining known unidentified victim.

Prater was last seen by his mother in Dallas in the company of an adult male and two teenage youths with shoulder-length hair; he had previously lived in the same neighborhood as most of Dean Corll's known victims and had attended the same high school as Henley between 1970 and 1971.

Dean Corll was last seen alive climbing into a van close to his family's English Oaks apartment.

The arrests in Santa Clara do suggest possible validity in Brooks's statements to police that Dean Corll had informed him that his earliest murder victims had been buried in California.