Storage Story

[Vertigo58]

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

That seems like just yesterday

We knew a neighborhood kid that bit an apple with a razor blade in it. It barely grazed his lip and had the scar to prove it. My bros/sis & pals stopped trick or treating around 74 anyway. We also felt too big for it. I do feel sorry for todays kids they miss out on the real fun way of doing things around holidays. Kids today are just forced to become adults way too soon (new topic). They probably trick or treat "online" scary too.

[Heights2Bastrop]

The reality of bad things happening hit me, and others my age, with the bombing at Poe Elementary. I never felt "unsafe" exactly, but I did become aware that bad things can happen without warning, and for no apparent reason.

[Vertigo58]

I guess most of you have seen this on the news last week?

Heights teen slain by notorious serial killer remembered

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nb/hei...ws/6127116.html

[carol802]

I worked at HL&P off of S. Shaver in 1974 with Dean Coryll's room mate. Dean Coryll had also been an HL&P employee. The room mate said he had never noticed anything strange going on. He soon quit due to harrassment. The boathouse that was in Houston was off Stella Link & Willowbend by the South Main Drive-in. This was blocks from my house. The spot on Bolivar was blocks from my family's beach house.

Houston had been known as the murder capital of the world for years before these monsters but it did help bring awareness that every missing kid was not a runaway and helped start the Runaway Hotline.

[Native Son]

I worked at HL&P off of S. Shaver in 1974 with Dean Coryll's room mate. Dean Coryll had also been an HL&P employee. The room mate said he had never noticed anything strange going on. He soon quit due to harrassment. The boathouse that was in Houston was off Stella Link & Willowbend by the South Main Drive-in. This was blocks from my house. The spot on Bolivar was blocks from my family's beach house.

Houston had been known as the murder capital of the world for years before these monsters but it did help bring awareness that every missing kid was not a runaway and helped start the Runaway Hotline.

the boat storage was south of Main back off of Hiram Clark, just about 2 miles from where I grew up on Wuthering Hts. This horrific event always comes to mind when someone tells me how much more dangerous it is now than when we grew up

[Vertigo58]

I worked at HL&P off of S. Shaver in 1974 with Dean Coryll's room mate. Dean Coryll had also been an HL&P employee. The room mate said he had never noticed anything strange going on. He soon quit due to harrassment. The boathouse that was in Houston was off Stella Link & Willowbend by the South Main Drive-in. This was blocks from my house. The spot on Bolivar was blocks from my family's beach house.

Houston had been known as the murder capital of the world for years before these monsters but it did help bring awareness that every missing kid was not a runaway and helped start the Runaway Hotline.

Now this may seem like a silly question but by "harrassment" I assume you mean sexual harassment? and not towards females? and you are right that terrible moniker Murder Capitol of the World remained in the media and psyche for years it seemed.

Is it possible that there could have been more remains in Boliver and are now permanently washed away to see by Ike? We may never know.

[FilioScotia]

Now this may seem like a silly question but by "harrassment" I assume you mean sexual harassment? and not towards females?

Not necessarily. It's entirely possible that the guy quit because he got tired of all the unwanted attention and probable harassment he was getting just for being Corll's roommate. He was probably the victim of the harassment.

This is the first time I've heard that Corll had a roommate. By "roommate" I mean someone who once shared an apartment or rent house with Corll. And it didn't have to be a "gay" relationship either. It could have been something as simple and as innocent as someone renting a room in a house from a coworker. I did that on a couple of occasions when I was much younger.

I'm sure that at some point his name was mentioned in news stories, which wouldn't have gone over very well with some of his coworkers at HL&P because of the kind of guy Corll was revealed to be.

Edited December 2, 2008 by FilioScotia

[brucesw]

I don't remember a roommate either but I haven't read any of the books on this.

There was a man who claimed to be Corll's lover and had visited the house in Pasadena and may have stayed overnight but never lived there. As I recall he claimed he had been warned by Corll to stay out of one bedroom.

This guy was discovered by one of the newsmen at KAUM, two of whom were gay though not out at the time. He was up at the station for an interview but I never saw him or met him and don't recall his name. I believe the romantic couple had met in a T-room at a Weingarten's in the Heights only recently.

I haven't read the books so don't know if he was ever mentioned but I had my doubts about the claims; I thought it was possible he was just a publicity seeker.

Does anybody know if he was ever mentioned in the books on this subject? There was never much about him, but then there was never anywhere near as much focus on Brooks as there was on Henley.

[Rammer]

the boat storage was south of Main back off of Hiram Clark, just about 2 miles from where I grew up on Wuthering Hts. This horrific event always comes to mind when someone tells me how much more dangerous it is now than when we grew up

Silver Bell street & Player

[carol802]

Not necessarily. It's entirely possible that the guy quit because he got tired of all the unwanted attention and probable harassment he was getting just for being Corll's roommate. He was probably the victim of the harassment.

This is the first time I've heard that Corll had a roommate. By "roommate" I mean someone who once shared an apartment or rent house with Corll. And it didn't have to be a "gay" relationship either. It could have been something as simple and as innocent as someone renting a room in a house from a coworker. I did that on a couple of occasions when I was much younger.

I'm sure that at some point his name was mentioned in news stories, which wouldn't have gone over very well with some of his coworkers at HL&P because of the kind of guy Corll was revealed to be.

[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.

[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

[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?