Dean ‘Candy Man’ Corll Murders

[carol802]

You are exactly right. This was a guy who I had known since elementary school and he was a very kind, quiet & shy "bookish" kind of guy. It was very sad because it had been known (by the HL&P linemen) that he had been a roomate (don't remember how long,etc) of Corll's & back then if you were gay (never thought he was) you didn't stand a chance in that extreme macho environment. Not to mention a possible gay lover of a monster. He was just flat hounded out of the place. I think some of them had questioned themselves as to why they never thought that Corll was a monster when they had been working with him every day.

What is strange for me is that I hadn't thought of any of this IN YEARS until I found this website the other day and started scanning the post. As soon as I saw "Storage Story" it came rushing back like a flash flood.

Along with the posts about Don Mahoney & Jenna Clair, Kitirick, Cadet Don and so many other childhood POSITIVE memories.

I'm going to look for some of the books mentioned & I hope for my old friends sake he's NOT in them.

Peace to the victim's families.

[Ptarmigan]

Same thing happened with Halloween - trick-or-treating used to be a big deal in practically every neighborhood, but participation withered away to almost nothing after a different "Man with the Candy" than Dean Corll killed his son with poisoned Pixy Stix in the early 70s:

Ronald Clark O'Bryan

He really changed Halloween as we know it today. Dean Corll is the personification of evil right there!

[sevfiv]

The case was a forensic nightmare, providing only the slimmest clues. Parts of the skeleton, plucked from an eroded site in Jefferson County, were missing. The skull had no teeth, making dental identification impossible. For 25 years, the bones lay at the Harris County morgue without a name. Finally, last November, they were buried.

On Wednesday, though, investigators got lucky. DNA testing revealed the remains were those of a Houston teenager who disappeared in 1973. Authorities believe he was a victim of serial killer Dean Corll, who along with accomplices Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks sexually tortured and murdered at least 27 young men.

Coincidentally, the identification of the remains as those of 17-year-old Joseph Lyles came just one day before Harris County Medical Examiner's Office workers planned to bury another set of unidentified remains thought to be those of a Corll victim.

“Without DNA testing, we would not have been able to make this identification,” said Dr. Jennifer Love, the medical examiner's director of forensic anthropology. “There had been a significant time lapse before the remains were found.”

If Lyles was a victim of the serial killer, his remains would be the first located in Jefferson County. Remains of Corll's other victims were recovered from San Augustine County, High Island and a Harris County boathouse. The Jefferson County remains were found scattered near an eroding sandbank in 1983.

more:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6715974.html

[sevfiv]

And now, questions about remains:

Scientists with the Houston Institute of Forensic Sciences — the new name for the medical examiner's office — encountered an unexpected wrinkle this week when they learned that one of the last two sets of anonymous remains are those of Michael Baulch, who disappeared in August 1972. Problem is, Baulch was already known to police as a victim, and what was thought to be his remains were buried along with those of his brother, Billy, another Corll victim.

So, if Baulch's actual remains had been sitting for decades in a cooler at the ME's office before finally being laid to rest in 2004, then who was buried alongside Billy Gene Baulch Jr.? It's a question that cannot be answered until the casket is disinterred and the remains separated. The exhumation should be done sometime this fall.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7206677.html

[editor]

Creepy. Very creepy. A good book just became a better movie.

[icepickphil]

For those of us who are old enough to remember this and how it was covered by the local Houston media at the time, it will always be one of the most horrific events of a lifetime.

[FilioScotia]

And now, questions about remains:

So, if Baulch's actual remains had been sitting for decades in a cooler at the ME's office before finally being laid to rest in 2004, then who was buried alongside Billy Gene Baulch Jr.? It's a question that cannot be answered until the casket is disinterred and the remains separated. The exhumation should be done sometime this fall.

This story just won't go away until all the bodies are identified.

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/pasadena/news/article_ad3b368d-11ee-553d-b715-2cb0bff09844.html

[Heightsite]

Anyone know what address Corll lived at on Columbia Street? A friend said it was by 9th, but I've never found an actual address for the apartments.

[sinister1]

There is a discussion on my FB page on weather or not Dean Corll ever actually bury any of his victims in the woods along White Oak Bayou in what is now a park. I say it's just a myth and have actually looked online and there is no mention of him even actually ever dumping bodies in that area but I have a small group who claim differently. Help me prove them wrong.

[Michelle C]

I have an old detective magazine that covers the whole story pretty thoroughly and there is no mention of it in there. The usual places like the boat sheds and High Island, but no mention of White Oak bayou.

[LarryDierker]

I thought all his victims were buried at Lake Sam Rayburn, the beach, and his storage unit.

[sinister1]

Thanks guys, I am starting to think that people got the truth mixed up with rumors.

[sinister1]

Where there bodies ever found in White Oak Park?

[LarryDierker]

I watched a few docs on youtube(just search) a few months back and read the wiki, but don't recall anything about white oak bayou or park.

[FilioScotia]

I was a reporter covering that story when it was happening in the early 70s, and this is the first time I've ever seen any mention of White Oak Bayou or the city park. That park, by the way, is Stude Park. This has to be a rumor somebody started somewhere along the line.

 

In the first place, Dean Corll and friends buried all those bodies in out-of-the-way places where they thought they would never be found. It's why they were able to do what they did and get away with it for so long. It's ridiculous to think they would have risked being caught by doing something as brazen as burying bodies in a place as "public" as a city park next to a freeway. They were crazy, but they weren't stupid.

 

And while we're on the subject, there are those in Houston law enforcement who don't believe all of Corll's victims have been found. They think it's possible that more bodies are still buried somewhere "out there" and probably won't ever be found. 

Edited March 26, 2014 by FilioScotia

[innerlooper]

It was Coral (or Carl) Eugene Watts who killed and left at least one body in a wooded area to the west of Houston Ave/ White Oak intersection. Back then it was heavy scrub and could easily conceal a victim.

 

 

 

From one site:

 

"April 16, 1982: Carrie Jefferson, 32, was strangled and then stabbed twice as she returned home from her job at Houston's downtown post office. Watts buried Jefferson's body along White Oak Bayou."

 

 

General info:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Eugene_Watts

Edited March 26, 2014 by innerlooper

[bxbby70]

I've read 915 Columbia St...GoogleMaps shows it to be a small house, but an old apartment complex exists literally next door. Maybe the address was provided incorrectly or the address somehow changed? Either way, I'm betting he lived in a unit in the old red building located right next door to 915 Columbia as I have read that his residence on Columbia was an apartment.

[sevfiv]

Well, it's that time of year: http://blogs.houstonpress.com/news/2014/10/the_girl_on_the_torture_board_rhonda_williams_opens_up_for_the_first_time_about_dean_corll.php

 

The Girl on the Torture Board: Rhonda Williams Opens Up About Being Attacked by Dean Corll

She wakes up to a sharp pain in her side -- someone kicking her, telling her to wake up, bitch.

For a moment, she thinks it's her dad. Then she opens her eyes and sees it's Dean Corll, the electrician who's renting this house in Pasadena. She looks over and sees her friend Wayne Henley handcuffed, his feet bound, his mouth duct-taped. She looks to the other side, and there's the boy Tim she hadn't met until the night before, when she escaped from her father's home in the Heights. He's tied and taped, too.

 

 

[icepickphil]

I've heard that Corll also lived in a couple of apartment complexes on the west side — Yorktown apartments on Yorktown between San Felipe and Westheimer and Woodway Square apartments on Woodway near Voss. Can anyone verify this?

Edited October 22, 2014 by icepickphil

[JoeFM]

FOR SALE: Up until the Oklahoma City bombing, the site of the largest mass murder in U.S. history was a rental boat stall in southwest Houston, where Elmer Wayne Henley and Dean Corral buried the bodies of young men they raped and tortured. The owner is now asking 1.8 million for the property. For those of you too young to remember what happened, here's a video ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlfhxKugbfk

 

 

Edited September 2, 2015 by 93Q.TV

[MSJoy]

Absolutely not!

[Fringe]

Creepy

[MirrersTrucking]

You would have to wonder if there might possibly still be bodies hidden there to this day.

[GEM]

[vstroud21]

Between 1970 and 1973, Corll is known to have killed a minimum of 28 victims. All of his victims were males aged 13 to 20, the majority of whom were in their mid-teens. Most victims were abducted from Houston Heights, which was then a low-income neighborhood northwest of downtown Houston. With most abductions, he was assisted by one or both of his teenaged accomplices: Elmer Wayne Henley, and David Owen Brooks. Several victims were friends of either or both of Corll's accomplices; others were individuals with whom Corll had himself become acquainted prior to their abduction and murder,[11][26] and two other victims, Billy Baulch and Gregory Malley Winkle, were former employees of the Corll Candy Company.[27][28]

Corll's victims were usually lured into one of two vehicles he owned, a Ford Econoline van or a Plymouth GTX,[21] with an offer of a party or a lift, and then driven to his house.[29] There, they were plied with alcohol or other drugs until they passed out, tricked into putting on handcuffs,[30] or simply grabbed by force.[31] They were then stripped naked and tied to either Corll's bed or, usually, a plywood torture board, which was regularly hung on a wall. Once manacled, the victims would be sexually assaulted, beaten, tortured and—sometimes after several days—killed by strangulation or shooting with a .22-caliber pistol. Their bodies were then tied in plastic sheeting[32] and buried in any one of four places: a rented boat shed; a beach on the Bolivar Peninsula; a woodland near Lake Sam Rayburn (where Corll's family owned a lakeside log cabin); or a beach in Jefferson County.[2]

In several instances, 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.[33] Corll is also known to have retained keepsakes—usually keys—from his victims.[34]

During the years in which he abducted and murdered young men, Corll often changed addresses.[35] However, until he moved to Pasadena in the spring of 1973, he always lived in or close to Houston Heights

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 17, 2017 by vstroud21

[torimask]

there've been several threads over the years on Corll. This one probably has the most memories: 

 

 

[bknight]

As a kid I drove by the infamous boat storage sheds daily. I lived in the neighborhood just to the south of the sheds. I was to young to remember the incident but I heard all the stories growing up from my parents. I never thought much of it until here recently when I learned about how horrific the killings were. I honestly thought it was a tactic used by my parents to scare me so I wouldn't run off as a child. It's kinda eery to think I lived right down the street from the sheds. I've been wanting to take my kids to see my old neighborhood now I have more if reason to make the trip. I was able to find the boat sheds on Google maps and looks like they are still standing with the number of the units still painted on like the photos showed during the discovery. 4500 Silver Bell and go to street view. I think Dean Corll's storage unit was #11.

[GV1]

On 7/18/2008 at 6:40 AM, Retama said:

When I worked for the Pasadena Citizen I talked to people who had some interesting things to say -- verifiable things -- about Corll. 

 

Could you share some of these things?

[ChannelTwoNews]

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/houston/2023/08/08/459013/new-facial-image-released-for-victim-of-houston-candy-man-dean-corll-whose-killings-came-to-light-50-years-ago/

"Fifty years after Houston serial killer Dean Corll was shot to death by one of his teenage accomplices, one of his known victims remains unidentified.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children hopes newly released reconstruction images of the boy and items found with him will help to change that.

The national nonprofit released a new facial sketch this week for the victim known only as "John Doe 1973," whose body was discovered along with several others at a Houston boat storage shed on Aug. 9, 1973. He was estimated to be between 15 and 18 years old at the time he died, likely more than a year beforehand, according to his case page on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) website."