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The Man With The Candy: The Story of The Houston Mass Murders
The mass murder of almost thirty young boys in Houston may well have been the most heinous crime of the century. How could such a series of murders go undetected for almost three years before being exposed? The Man with the Candy is a brilliant investigative journalist's story of the crime and the answer to that question.
255 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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August 15, 2019
The title is misleading, it should have been called The Man Who Really Liked Killing Teenage Boys. That said, this is a beautifully written account of one of the worst crimes in American crime history, which is saying, you know, a lot. And it’s a strangely unknown crime too, not famous at all like your Bundys and Mansons and Gacys. I’m not sure why.
The place was Houston, 4th largest city in the USA now, 6th at that time, the early 1970s. Specifically, the place was The Heights, a poor white suburb. From 1971 boys started disappearing, one here, one there. So the parents would ring the cops and the cops would say yes? And the parents would say our son has been missing for two days now and the cops would say well, what do you want us to do about that? And the parents would say why, look for him, of course, and the cops would say file a missing persons report and the parents would say what? Huh? And the cops would heave a sigh and explain and the explanation was :
WE DON’T SEARCH FOR RUNAWAYS
Jack Olsen follows the first set of parents and at one point he says
They came to the full realisation that their son was unmistakeably, undeniably gone, and that no one was going to help.
The cops were cynical and dismissive. This was happening, says Olsen,
at a time when teenagers were deserting their homes and flocking into communes and hitchhiking all over the continent without so much as a twinge of remorse about the generation they had left behind
Or so it was believed by almost everyone. Plus, Houston had a huge murder rate, twice that of London in the 1970s, and London was six times bigger. Some years Houston had a murder rate larger than all of Great Britain.
It turned out that even if a body of one of these kids had turned up, the cops probably wouldn’t have investigated very hard. They were swamped. One cop explained:
Our division works only murders, period, and not every murder either. We just say “Well, how much time are we gonna spend on this murder? If society hasn’t suffered a great loss, why, let’s go home and call it a day.”
Okay well, this is the story of a guy called Dean Corll who was in his early 30s and his two teenage sidekicks, Wayne Henley and David Brooks. They were both 17. How the whole thing got started is not clear but the idea was that David and Wayne would bring teenage boys to parties at Dean’s place and he would supply them with all the goodies their hearts could desire, dope, booze and plenty of acrylic paint to huff from paper bags. Most of the boys would go home eventually but there was usually one conked out at the end, not going anywhere, and Dean would have his fun with that one, which ended up with him strangling the kid.
Sometimes Wayne pitched in with the killing, sometimes not.
Wayne Henley on the difficulties of killing a boy :
It ain’t like on TV. Man, I choked one of ‘em boys, and he turned blue and gurgled, and I jes’ couldn’t kill him. He jes’ wouldn’t die! I went in and got Dean, and he come out and helped.
Then they’d shove the body into Dean’s van and drive it usually to a boat house he rented and bury it.
David Brooks :
That Dean, he was powerful strong! When we’d come down here to bury a body, I’d stay in the car, and ol’ Dean, he’d put two shovels under one arm and a body under the other and just walk on down to the beach like he was carrying a fishing rod.
Half way through all this homicidal madness David Brooks dropped out and got married. Henley and Corll carried on. But as we know, all good things must come to an end, and the day came when Dean and Wayne had an awful fight and Wayne ended up shooting Dean dead. Then Wayne called the cops and started singing like a canary. He took the cops to Dean’s boathouse, a large barn type place, and told them where to dig. The cops spoke to Dean’s landlady, Mrs Meynier, she lived nearby :
“Why, Dean was the nicest person you’ll ever meet! He had the most infectious smile you’ll ever see! Why, we were always talking to him. Just two days ago he offered to give me some plants. He’d go out of his way to visit with me.”
Jack Olsen has a chilling turn of phrase here, describing the ghastly work the cops now had to do in the boathouse.
they had all seen death, but none had encountered the wholesale transfiguration of rollicking boys into reeking sacks of carrion.
The boys (aged 13 to 17) were buried in three different places. Eventually the cops found 27 bodies. This raises a few questions.
1) Can at least 27 boys vanish from one suburb of a city and no one realises there’s something going on? No one had the least notion of Dean Corll’s activities until he was dead. Are people vanishing all the time now, in every city?
2) There are two gaps in the chronology of the killings, five months here, four months there. Most unlikely that the murderers put their feet up and relaxed, more likely that there are other victims somewhere. We’ll never know.
3) What was going on with Corll and his two willing helpers? Is this another example of the phenomenon described by Christopher Browning in his brilliant book Ordinary Men (about the first phase of the Holocaust) and revealed in the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment? These observations seem to reveal that some, maybe many, people who are otherwise quite normal can turn into murderers or torturers quite easily, given the right circumstances. We think almost all people have a common decency, a basic morality, that would stop them either killing or torturing another human being, but perhaps that is a pleasant fantasy. Perhaps the truth is that many people, given the go ahead by someone like Dean Corll, will gladly have a go at strangling a young boy. And then another. And then another.
This has been your feel bad review of the day.
For true crime fans, a classic.
The place was Houston, 4th largest city in the USA now, 6th at that time, the early 1970s. Specifically, the place was The Heights, a poor white suburb. From 1971 boys started disappearing, one here, one there. So the parents would ring the cops and the cops would say yes? And the parents would say our son has been missing for two days now and the cops would say well, what do you want us to do about that? And the parents would say why, look for him, of course, and the cops would say file a missing persons report and the parents would say what? Huh? And the cops would heave a sigh and explain and the explanation was :
WE DON’T SEARCH FOR RUNAWAYS
Jack Olsen follows the first set of parents and at one point he says
They came to the full realisation that their son was unmistakeably, undeniably gone, and that no one was going to help.
The cops were cynical and dismissive. This was happening, says Olsen,
at a time when teenagers were deserting their homes and flocking into communes and hitchhiking all over the continent without so much as a twinge of remorse about the generation they had left behind
Or so it was believed by almost everyone. Plus, Houston had a huge murder rate, twice that of London in the 1970s, and London was six times bigger. Some years Houston had a murder rate larger than all of Great Britain.
It turned out that even if a body of one of these kids had turned up, the cops probably wouldn’t have investigated very hard. They were swamped. One cop explained:
Our division works only murders, period, and not every murder either. We just say “Well, how much time are we gonna spend on this murder? If society hasn’t suffered a great loss, why, let’s go home and call it a day.”
Okay well, this is the story of a guy called Dean Corll who was in his early 30s and his two teenage sidekicks, Wayne Henley and David Brooks. They were both 17. How the whole thing got started is not clear but the idea was that David and Wayne would bring teenage boys to parties at Dean’s place and he would supply them with all the goodies their hearts could desire, dope, booze and plenty of acrylic paint to huff from paper bags. Most of the boys would go home eventually but there was usually one conked out at the end, not going anywhere, and Dean would have his fun with that one, which ended up with him strangling the kid.
Sometimes Wayne pitched in with the killing, sometimes not.
Wayne Henley on the difficulties of killing a boy :
It ain’t like on TV. Man, I choked one of ‘em boys, and he turned blue and gurgled, and I jes’ couldn’t kill him. He jes’ wouldn’t die! I went in and got Dean, and he come out and helped.
Then they’d shove the body into Dean’s van and drive it usually to a boat house he rented and bury it.
David Brooks :
That Dean, he was powerful strong! When we’d come down here to bury a body, I’d stay in the car, and ol’ Dean, he’d put two shovels under one arm and a body under the other and just walk on down to the beach like he was carrying a fishing rod.
Half way through all this homicidal madness David Brooks dropped out and got married. Henley and Corll carried on. But as we know, all good things must come to an end, and the day came when Dean and Wayne had an awful fight and Wayne ended up shooting Dean dead. Then Wayne called the cops and started singing like a canary. He took the cops to Dean’s boathouse, a large barn type place, and told them where to dig. The cops spoke to Dean’s landlady, Mrs Meynier, she lived nearby :
“Why, Dean was the nicest person you’ll ever meet! He had the most infectious smile you’ll ever see! Why, we were always talking to him. Just two days ago he offered to give me some plants. He’d go out of his way to visit with me.”
Jack Olsen has a chilling turn of phrase here, describing the ghastly work the cops now had to do in the boathouse.
they had all seen death, but none had encountered the wholesale transfiguration of rollicking boys into reeking sacks of carrion.
The boys (aged 13 to 17) were buried in three different places. Eventually the cops found 27 bodies. This raises a few questions.
1) Can at least 27 boys vanish from one suburb of a city and no one realises there’s something going on? No one had the least notion of Dean Corll’s activities until he was dead. Are people vanishing all the time now, in every city?
2) There are two gaps in the chronology of the killings, five months here, four months there. Most unlikely that the murderers put their feet up and relaxed, more likely that there are other victims somewhere. We’ll never know.
3) What was going on with Corll and his two willing helpers? Is this another example of the phenomenon described by Christopher Browning in his brilliant book Ordinary Men (about the first phase of the Holocaust) and revealed in the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment? These observations seem to reveal that some, maybe many, people who are otherwise quite normal can turn into murderers or torturers quite easily, given the right circumstances. We think almost all people have a common decency, a basic morality, that would stop them either killing or torturing another human being, but perhaps that is a pleasant fantasy. Perhaps the truth is that many people, given the go ahead by someone like Dean Corll, will gladly have a go at strangling a young boy. And then another. And then another.
This has been your feel bad review of the day.
For true crime fans, a classic.
August 28, 2020
Hauntingly horrifying and heartbreaking.
January 17, 2020
2.5 Stars
The Man With the Candy, to my knowledge (which is often proven incorrect), is one of the first true crime books of the modern era. Perhaps it's better to say that it ushered in a proliferation of true crime books--the ones with plenty of pictures and glossy covers and the occasional sinister title, such as Olson's later book, 'Misbegotten Son,' about Rochester, New York serial killer Arthur Shawcross.
Olson wrote this book when he was around 47 years old. By then he had already had a long career as a journalist, including a stint as Senior Editor-in-Chief of the "Chicago Sun Times," Midwest bureau chief for "Time" magazine and also was a senior editor for "Sports Illustrated" magazine. He also was a regular contributor to some of America's best magazines and had already written a couple of books of investigative journalism--"Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt, an account of a wrongly-convicted Black Panther Party member who served 25 years in prison. He also wrote, "The Bridge at Chappaquiddick," a book giving his take on the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a girl in her late 20's who perished after the car Senator Ted Kennedy was driving plunged off a bridge. Senator Kennedy saved himself but claimed he could not rescue Miss Kophechne. He did not report the incident until the next morning and there was some suspicion that he was intoxicated. He got off with what Americans call a "slap on the wrist," a sixteen-month suspension of his driver's license. A normal driver would have probably been charged with vehicular homicide and failure to report an accident. Olson, by a wide margin, probably had the best journalistic credentials of anyone who's ever written in the true crime genre.
In 1973, Olson published, "The Man with the Candy." This was a seminal event, though not realized at the time, because it was to usher in a spate of "true crime" books with glossy covers and pictures and live reports from court proceedings, etc. It is a genre that has given life to many readers through accounts of death and heinous depredations.
In retrospect, I have probably been too hard on this book. I gave it the low rating not due to poor writing or reporting but due to it having no pictures or glossy cover or, most importantly, any accounts of the trials and fates of the perpetrators. Likewise, no attempt was made to get inside the head of the main perpetrator--Dean Corll--not that any such accounts have usually given us much insight into why people do evil shit. It is an interesting read that helped usher in a wave of true crime which has never rolled back.
Dean was a man who befriended poor children in one of Houston's many shoddy neighborhoods and used these boys to recruit other youths so that he could rape, torture and kill them. This was back in the early 1970's before things like FBI profiling and children's pictures on milk cartons and a realization that America was chock-full of murdering types who yanked children off the street and did unspeakable things to them before depositing their remains in shallow graves or sinking them in rivers and lakes.
'The Man with the Candy' was one of the first books to bring these gruesome facts to life, so to speak. Points deducted for no pics of various players/victims and also for no reports on the disposition. One of Dean's helpers, in fact, received 18 consecutive life sentences for murder, while another received only one life sentence for the one murder they could prove he committed. If these omissions had been included, this would have been a 4-star book. Jack Olson went on to write many more classic true crime tales, but his budding talent comes through in this disturbing account of the murders of at least twenty-seven Houston youth, all lured into a psychopath's lair to spend their final hours being sexually assaulted and ritually tortured. What is striking about the case is that police ignored many reports of the children's disappearances, assuming they were runaways, and this case wouldn't have been solved at all except that one of Dean's helpers fessed up and led police to many burial sites.
The Man With the Candy, to my knowledge (which is often proven incorrect), is one of the first true crime books of the modern era. Perhaps it's better to say that it ushered in a proliferation of true crime books--the ones with plenty of pictures and glossy covers and the occasional sinister title, such as Olson's later book, 'Misbegotten Son,' about Rochester, New York serial killer Arthur Shawcross.
Olson wrote this book when he was around 47 years old. By then he had already had a long career as a journalist, including a stint as Senior Editor-in-Chief of the "Chicago Sun Times," Midwest bureau chief for "Time" magazine and also was a senior editor for "Sports Illustrated" magazine. He also was a regular contributor to some of America's best magazines and had already written a couple of books of investigative journalism--"Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt, an account of a wrongly-convicted Black Panther Party member who served 25 years in prison. He also wrote, "The Bridge at Chappaquiddick," a book giving his take on the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a girl in her late 20's who perished after the car Senator Ted Kennedy was driving plunged off a bridge. Senator Kennedy saved himself but claimed he could not rescue Miss Kophechne. He did not report the incident until the next morning and there was some suspicion that he was intoxicated. He got off with what Americans call a "slap on the wrist," a sixteen-month suspension of his driver's license. A normal driver would have probably been charged with vehicular homicide and failure to report an accident. Olson, by a wide margin, probably had the best journalistic credentials of anyone who's ever written in the true crime genre.
In 1973, Olson published, "The Man with the Candy." This was a seminal event, though not realized at the time, because it was to usher in a spate of "true crime" books with glossy covers and pictures and live reports from court proceedings, etc. It is a genre that has given life to many readers through accounts of death and heinous depredations.
In retrospect, I have probably been too hard on this book. I gave it the low rating not due to poor writing or reporting but due to it having no pictures or glossy cover or, most importantly, any accounts of the trials and fates of the perpetrators. Likewise, no attempt was made to get inside the head of the main perpetrator--Dean Corll--not that any such accounts have usually given us much insight into why people do evil shit. It is an interesting read that helped usher in a wave of true crime which has never rolled back.
Dean was a man who befriended poor children in one of Houston's many shoddy neighborhoods and used these boys to recruit other youths so that he could rape, torture and kill them. This was back in the early 1970's before things like FBI profiling and children's pictures on milk cartons and a realization that America was chock-full of murdering types who yanked children off the street and did unspeakable things to them before depositing their remains in shallow graves or sinking them in rivers and lakes.
'The Man with the Candy' was one of the first books to bring these gruesome facts to life, so to speak. Points deducted for no pics of various players/victims and also for no reports on the disposition. One of Dean's helpers, in fact, received 18 consecutive life sentences for murder, while another received only one life sentence for the one murder they could prove he committed. If these omissions had been included, this would have been a 4-star book. Jack Olson went on to write many more classic true crime tales, but his budding talent comes through in this disturbing account of the murders of at least twenty-seven Houston youth, all lured into a psychopath's lair to spend their final hours being sexually assaulted and ritually tortured. What is striking about the case is that police ignored many reports of the children's disappearances, assuming they were runaways, and this case wouldn't have been solved at all except that one of Dean's helpers fessed up and led police to many burial sites.
December 22, 2021
Dean Corl, a candy shop owner, raped and killed over 30 boys in Texas. Also known as The Houston Murders. The title is misleading. Corl was a serial killer, not a mass murderer. He killed his victims over time, not all at once. The Houston PD dropped the ball on this one. I think they chose to look the other way until too many boys came up missing. Corl usually chose trouble, at risk young males. There is also some documentation that Corl was involved in sex trafficking too.
June 16, 2019
True Crime Commemoration # 28
Setting: 1970s Houston, Texas
RTC
Setting: 1970s Houston, Texas
RTC
February 3, 2010
I have read more than my share of true crime and this is by far the most horrifying and frustrating case of them all. Dean Corl," a "candy shop" owner, raped, tortured, castrated, mutilated and murdered TWENTY SEVEN boys from 1970-73 in a shitty Texas town near Houston. Some of the boys were tortured and abused for days before being murdered, by either strangulation, beating or shooting and then buried in Corl's shed. He took a teenage boy under his wing and somehow got him to assist him in the kidnapping and murdering of boys just like himself.
Even more horrifying than the "grisly details" of the murders is the fact that the boys kept disappearing, one after another and nobody connected the dots or considered that there may be a maniac afoot. The authorities couldn't have cared less or been more inept. One father of a boy who had disappeared was quoted as saying something like "boys just keep on disappearin' around here, soon there will be none left". There is speculation that there may be even more victims, creepily buried under or around Corll's candy shop, but Texas authorities showed no continuing interest in pursuing this. CASE CLOSED.
April 15, 2023
Story 4/5
Narration 5/5
Narration 5/5
October 3, 2023
Finally, finally, a book to answer my questions about Dean Corll and Elmer Wayne Henley. Revolting serial-killing case. Well-written and seems pretty complete, despite the many years that passed between the discovery of the bodies and the publication of the book. The victims' lives are conspicuously absent, I have to say.
August 20, 2019
Vintage true crime: dark, unpleasant, but fascinating and unusually well-written. Olsen's interviewing was obviously extremely thorough, and he weaves his investigation into a powerful narrative.
Nothing here is for the faint of heart, including a lot of "period" opinions about matters like sexuality and race that are reported verbatim--and, while not endorsed by the author, not really commented on either. The fact that this case predates John Wayne Gacy but is comparatively unknown is interesting and disturbing on several levels. The boys who were murdered by Dean Corll were so undervalued by the Houston police that the crimes were not uncovered until after Dean was himself killed by one of his teenage accomplices--despite the fact that the boys' parents had been trying to raise the alarm for years.
Corll didn't dress as a clown, but he did literally drive around in a van passing out candy to children, so I guess there's another horror trope with disturbing basis in fact.
In summary: yikes.
Nothing here is for the faint of heart, including a lot of "period" opinions about matters like sexuality and race that are reported verbatim--and, while not endorsed by the author, not really commented on either. The fact that this case predates John Wayne Gacy but is comparatively unknown is interesting and disturbing on several levels. The boys who were murdered by Dean Corll were so undervalued by the Houston police that the crimes were not uncovered until after Dean was himself killed by one of his teenage accomplices--despite the fact that the boys' parents had been trying to raise the alarm for years.
Corll didn't dress as a clown, but he did literally drive around in a van passing out candy to children, so I guess there's another horror trope with disturbing basis in fact.
In summary: yikes.
May 18, 2022
My lower rating for this one had to do with writing style and info. It was was too bogged down in unnecessary historical type information at the beginning. I had to actually skim past some of it because it just wasn’t necessary. I really disliked how the author chose to phonetically write how the characters spoke as well. I get they had they’re specific accents l but it slowed the book right down.
I did find it interesting how the author chose to tell us about deans north and life towards the back of the book though, that’s not something you see too often. The overall story and events, are like every other serial killer though, horrific 🥲
I did find it interesting how the author chose to tell us about deans north and life towards the back of the book though, that’s not something you see too often. The overall story and events, are like every other serial killer though, horrific 🥲
December 20, 2012
I have to say that the most terrifying thing about the Dean Corll case is the fact that it was in large part the attitudes of the Houston Police Department and the overall culture of Houston, TX from 1970-73 that allowed Corll to murder so many for so long, undetected.
To me, the most chilling line in the entire book was a quote from a Houston resident explaining one of the reasons Corll was never suspected as the culprit, despite so many of the disappearing boys having direct ties to him. According to the man, during a time when it was common to be suspicious of hippies and people with "excessive" hair, one reason very few people thought that Dean Corll could have been the culprit was because
"He didn't have a beard."
I have no words.
It's a tragic story no matter how you look at it, but one of the things that makes "The Man With The Candy" so compelling is because much of the text is told through the eyes of grieving (and soon-to-be grieving) parents of the missing boys. The utterly callous attitude of the police when presented with evidence of years-spanning serial murders is one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read. The fact that some of the victims were not even identified until 2008 gives me the impression that not much has changed for the city of Houston, and that is something that will haunt me for the rest of my days.
To me, the most chilling line in the entire book was a quote from a Houston resident explaining one of the reasons Corll was never suspected as the culprit, despite so many of the disappearing boys having direct ties to him. According to the man, during a time when it was common to be suspicious of hippies and people with "excessive" hair, one reason very few people thought that Dean Corll could have been the culprit was because
"He didn't have a beard."
I have no words.
It's a tragic story no matter how you look at it, but one of the things that makes "The Man With The Candy" so compelling is because much of the text is told through the eyes of grieving (and soon-to-be grieving) parents of the missing boys. The utterly callous attitude of the police when presented with evidence of years-spanning serial murders is one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read. The fact that some of the victims were not even identified until 2008 gives me the impression that not much has changed for the city of Houston, and that is something that will haunt me for the rest of my days.
January 19, 2018
After reading Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr., the man who killed serial killer Dean Corll was up for parole (something that likely will not happen,) I was compelled to re-read Jack Olsen’s account of the Houston murders of over twenty young men in the early 1970s. Henley was one of two young men, the other was David Brooks, convicted of helping Corll to procure and murder a string of young men, mostly from a Houston neighborhood known as The Heights. Corll’s story began unraveling when Henley killed him. I was not only reminded of the killings when I read of the parole hearing, but I also was reminded that I live less than three miles from The Heights, and thus I felt I would get more from The Man With the Candy: the Story of the Houston Mass Murders when I read it again, some forty years from the first time I read it. And I was very pleased, indeed. It is hard to use the word “enjoy” when talking of reading of such horrible doings. But Olsen is a fine writer and researcher. He makes the boys human, not only the victims but the murderers themselves. He particularly takes issue with the Houston police at the time and their almost indifference to crimes that involved kids who were marginal, kids who could have been runaways, kids who may or may not have engaged in homosexual activity with Corll. Olsen’s indictment of the police force must have been very telling back when his book first came out, the time when these murders had just happened. Olsen’s ending of the book is wonderful. He profiles Dean Corll in depth, quoting from his mother, his stepmother, and others who knew and worked with him, painting a picture of a man who was liked and who—and this seems to be often the case—no one would ever have thought capable of doing his heinous deeds. Then Olsen turns to the accomplices, making them more than faceless killers. Finally, he turns to many of the parents of the victims, most of whom he has focused on earlier in the book, and shows us their reactions and the aftermath for them, dealing with the deaths of their young sons. And Olsen ends with the adamant statement of Dean Corll’s mother, who apparently went to her grave declaring her son was incapable of such murders, that he could never have been homosexual, and that because he was killed, no one will ever be able to refute the allegations of Henley and Brooks, Corll’s partners in crime. This is a powerful examination of serial killing, not just some quickly put together sensational account of a sensational crime.
July 13, 2023
Solid true crime read of a case that is, by necessity, lacking in facts or a true sense of resolution. This was also written just after the murders were discovered, so there is of course some dated stuff here.
April 1, 2008
Oh, shit! I don't usually read these 'true crime' bks for a slew of reasons. &, now, here I am reviewing them. I'm severely disturbed by knowing about these people b/c I'm hyper-aware that they're really HERE, they're really w/ us, AND they're inside US too. I'm sickened by the people who vicariously get off on these things, who see such crimes as 'entertainment' safely viewed from a distance. There is no safe distance.
Being an introspective person, I study the psychopathology in myself - & reading about the psychopathology of someone like mass murderer & torturer Dean Corll is almost like knowing that there's a tumor in one's own brain that's eating away at everything that one values about one's self - except that, in this case, what's being eaten away is not in my personal body but in the body politic.
& Corll, like many others of his ilk, had accomplices. The back cover of the bk advertises it w/ this: "How could almost thirty teen-age boys from the same neighborhood disappear without a trace?" The parental warning "Don't take candy from strangers" might've originated w/ Dean Corll. I don't know. He wasn't the only one who used candy as a lure but he might be the only one who actually had a candymaking business.
I think my aversion to Houston probably started w/ reading this bk. I already have a low opinion of Texas as a place that produces an abnormally high percentage of deranged killers, after all, look at the president, but reading this bk made me feel like kidnapping, raping, torturing, & killing teen-age boys was little more than an average day in the average life of some average people in an average neighborhood in Houston. These particular crimes didn't happen w/o a social enviroment that supported it somehow - if only by being so sexually oppressive that for males like Corll this was the 'logical' outlet.
& what about the people who WRITE these bks? How many have a sincere drive to take a hard look at what's there that 'normals' wd rather be in denial about? I think of someone like Genesis P. Orridge as being in the category of sincere investigators (even though he hasn't written such a bk). How many write them for the money? Knowing that such 'sensational crimes' are hot items for the flip side of the very same 'normals'? The 'sickness' of alienated capitalist society (or, perhaps, any large society) is the very same 'sickness' that produces people like Corll & people like the people who surreptitiously get off on Corll at the same time that they hypocritically disavow the possibility of the potential to BE HIM w/in themselves.
Being an introspective person, I study the psychopathology in myself - & reading about the psychopathology of someone like mass murderer & torturer Dean Corll is almost like knowing that there's a tumor in one's own brain that's eating away at everything that one values about one's self - except that, in this case, what's being eaten away is not in my personal body but in the body politic.
& Corll, like many others of his ilk, had accomplices. The back cover of the bk advertises it w/ this: "How could almost thirty teen-age boys from the same neighborhood disappear without a trace?" The parental warning "Don't take candy from strangers" might've originated w/ Dean Corll. I don't know. He wasn't the only one who used candy as a lure but he might be the only one who actually had a candymaking business.
I think my aversion to Houston probably started w/ reading this bk. I already have a low opinion of Texas as a place that produces an abnormally high percentage of deranged killers, after all, look at the president, but reading this bk made me feel like kidnapping, raping, torturing, & killing teen-age boys was little more than an average day in the average life of some average people in an average neighborhood in Houston. These particular crimes didn't happen w/o a social enviroment that supported it somehow - if only by being so sexually oppressive that for males like Corll this was the 'logical' outlet.
& what about the people who WRITE these bks? How many have a sincere drive to take a hard look at what's there that 'normals' wd rather be in denial about? I think of someone like Genesis P. Orridge as being in the category of sincere investigators (even though he hasn't written such a bk). How many write them for the money? Knowing that such 'sensational crimes' are hot items for the flip side of the very same 'normals'? The 'sickness' of alienated capitalist society (or, perhaps, any large society) is the very same 'sickness' that produces people like Corll & people like the people who surreptitiously get off on Corll at the same time that they hypocritically disavow the possibility of the potential to BE HIM w/in themselves.
February 11, 2024
“Murder was always something that happened someplace else.”
I picked this true crime story up from a Houston bookstore called “Murder by the Book” — taken in by the atmosphere of the book store and the flashy title of the book itself. I’m also just a sucker for supporting any kind of local bookstore.
I was really turned off by the author’s insistence on using a Southern dialect for any bits of dialogue or reports. Git yew ‘nother treek mister Olsen.
It was very abrasive and made it difficult to focus on sections of the book (this coming from someone who has lived in Texas for nearly two decades). I also feel like I was berated with too many names and families in the early chapters to be able to distinguish from them much by the time we got around to knowing what happened to everyone.
I DID appreciate the care Olsen took in humanizing the victims by adding discourse about their families — I just think it could have been interwoven better into the overall narrative vs. being front-loaded.
In short, this didn’t wow me. But it may still be of interest to Texans who also happen to be true crime fans.
I picked this true crime story up from a Houston bookstore called “Murder by the Book” — taken in by the atmosphere of the book store and the flashy title of the book itself. I’m also just a sucker for supporting any kind of local bookstore.
I was really turned off by the author’s insistence on using a Southern dialect for any bits of dialogue or reports. Git yew ‘nother treek mister Olsen.
It was very abrasive and made it difficult to focus on sections of the book (this coming from someone who has lived in Texas for nearly two decades). I also feel like I was berated with too many names and families in the early chapters to be able to distinguish from them much by the time we got around to knowing what happened to everyone.
I DID appreciate the care Olsen took in humanizing the victims by adding discourse about their families — I just think it could have been interwoven better into the overall narrative vs. being front-loaded.
In short, this didn’t wow me. But it may still be of interest to Texans who also happen to be true crime fans.
September 20, 2019
I don't know how I feel about this book. On one hand, it was incredibly difficult to get through, not because it was poorly written, but because the author went in-depth on a lot of the victims--which I think, as a true crime perspective is interesting and good. Did make it sad though. On the other hand, this book has definitely suffered from the fact that it came out literally a year after the case happened. When this book came out, this case was fresh. And you can tell.
I would have liked to learn more about the murders themselves. I would have liked to know more about Brooks and Henley--I know that Brooks is famously tight-lipped about everything and Henley famously never-shuts-up-about-anything, and that is what this book came out with, too, but I would've liked to know more. I would've liked to have a perspective on Dean Corrl that was not like, his mom saying what a nice guy he was because like obviously he wasn't a nice guy Jesus christ. I dunno. This gave me a taste for the case and I would like the full meal, is what I'm trying to say.
I would have liked to learn more about the murders themselves. I would have liked to know more about Brooks and Henley--I know that Brooks is famously tight-lipped about everything and Henley famously never-shuts-up-about-anything, and that is what this book came out with, too, but I would've liked to know more. I would've liked to have a perspective on Dean Corrl that was not like, his mom saying what a nice guy he was because like obviously he wasn't a nice guy Jesus christ. I dunno. This gave me a taste for the case and I would like the full meal, is what I'm trying to say.
January 30, 2022
This book is a dark mood.
Written in 1974, so barely a year after the discovery of Houston’s “Lost Boys” , 28+ teenagers murdered by Dean Corll, it doesn’t have any neat wrap-up or trial coverage, or ‘what happened after?’ epilogues.
A fair amount of space is taken up with brief histories of Houston, the Heights neighborhood, and the policies of the Houston PD at the time, which allowed Corll to operate with impunity for years. They also made the choice to stop looking for more bodies after they’d found 28.
The focus is on the families and their sons. Corll himself is a dark wisp floating around the edges, seen only through peripheral vision. More attention is paid to Brooks and Henley, his young acolytes.
Updates, such as the confessions of Brooks and Henley, trial transcripts, later identifications of unknown victims, etc. can be found online.
Brooks died in 2020 of covid. Henley is up for parole in 2025.
This is still the best book about the so-called “Houston Mass Murders”.
Written in 1974, so barely a year after the discovery of Houston’s “Lost Boys” , 28+ teenagers murdered by Dean Corll, it doesn’t have any neat wrap-up or trial coverage, or ‘what happened after?’ epilogues.
A fair amount of space is taken up with brief histories of Houston, the Heights neighborhood, and the policies of the Houston PD at the time, which allowed Corll to operate with impunity for years. They also made the choice to stop looking for more bodies after they’d found 28.
The focus is on the families and their sons. Corll himself is a dark wisp floating around the edges, seen only through peripheral vision. More attention is paid to Brooks and Henley, his young acolytes.
Updates, such as the confessions of Brooks and Henley, trial transcripts, later identifications of unknown victims, etc. can be found online.
Brooks died in 2020 of covid. Henley is up for parole in 2025.
This is still the best book about the so-called “Houston Mass Murders”.
December 4, 2017
Four stars with a couple disclaimers - (1) I'm from Houston, live close to the Heights, and lived in Pasadena as a kid about the time the murders took place, so I have a strong interest in the subject matter. (2) This was written in 1974, sounds dated, and his racial terminology can be a little discomfiting.
Otherwise - if you have an interest, great true crime - especially because it was written so soon after the murders took place.
Otherwise - if you have an interest, great true crime - especially because it was written so soon after the murders took place.
June 24, 2018
Another Jack Olsen classic narrated by Kevin Pierce. Engaging, informative, suspenseful. 4 solid stars.
December 24, 2021
Creepy story of the worst serial killer you've never heard of
September 29, 2017
What a hell of a book this was! My version is a 1974 printing, so I'm missing any new updates. However, being familiar enough with Dean Corll outside of this book, I'm surprised to see how little David Brooks is known of in 2017. By Jack Olsen's reporting, Brooks had just as large (if not larger) role as Wayne Henley, Jr as an accomplice during Corll's killings and obsessions yet Henley seems to have always taken the spotlight.
The first part of this book I felt dragged on and on about needless details about Houston at the time of the murders. The description of The Heights and the people that lived there, I felt, were really unnecessary at the time I was reading it, however this does really set the stage for understanding how it was possible for Corll and gang to do what they did. If you start reading this book and get bogged down in the details for the first 100 pages or so, just stick with it and you'll be glad you did. It really helps you understand what normal life was like for the people of this neighborhood during this time and see how 27+ missing kids from this area in a few years didn't stand out too much.
This was a very well written and interesting journey and look into one of the more bizarre cases of serial murder I've ever known about.
The first part of this book I felt dragged on and on about needless details about Houston at the time of the murders. The description of The Heights and the people that lived there, I felt, were really unnecessary at the time I was reading it, however this does really set the stage for understanding how it was possible for Corll and gang to do what they did. If you start reading this book and get bogged down in the details for the first 100 pages or so, just stick with it and you'll be glad you did. It really helps you understand what normal life was like for the people of this neighborhood during this time and see how 27+ missing kids from this area in a few years didn't stand out too much.
This was a very well written and interesting journey and look into one of the more bizarre cases of serial murder I've ever known about.
July 26, 2012
Fascinating story. Olsen writes like a long-form journalist, exploring the facts while capturing emotion, both of which he does extremely well. My only quibble is that he comes across as condescending in his descriptions of his Texan subjects' lives and lifestyles. He frequently, but not always, phoenetically spells direct quotations in dialect, and it's tough to tell if he's doing so for character or his own bemusement. But that's a quibble. He solicted some extremely candid interviews from the friends and relations of the killers and their victims. Many of them seem as though they'd been longing to talk to someone, anyone, who was willing to listen. Olsen not only tells their stories, but weaves them into a compelling narrative of a community bereft of many of its sons. In doing so, he raises the obvious question: how could someone get away with these crimes for so long, with so little reaction from the police? I still don't really know the answer.
November 4, 2015
Excellent book..a well written true crime story by the talented writer Jack Olsen.. i gave a four star rating for brilliant true crime reporting .. So many boys from the same area called ''The Heights'' went missing and were later killed by Dean Corll and his two teenaged accomplices David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley..Jack Olsen really did his research while writing this book as much background imformation is given to the victims families as well as killers themselves .. The Houston Police force could have not done a worst job of investigating the disappearances of the missing boys by documenting the missing boys as runaways,and not following up on any of the disappearances .. This book is about the worst Serial murder case ever in American history at the time of 1973..A case of murder of many boys going on for 3 years..and i am convinced that not all the victims were found in this case. An interesting book,well worth picking up to read.
May 31, 2018
I was lost at the beginning of this book until I realized that I was actually enjoying all the background information about the Houston area and how well that background information helped to lay the foundation for how ineffectual the local police were in even putting together that there was a larger crime going on. The book wrapped up with interesting opportunities for interpretation. On one hand, you want to say they blamed the right guy for the murders and his accomplices were punished properly... on the other hand, with how inept the local authorities were at the time and how little they wanted to actually do their jobs and even find all the bodies of the victims, one can make a case that they pinned the crimes on the easy target and the ones who perpetrated the crimes were allowed to accept little blame. The novel was well-written and narrated in any case and I enjoyed/was disgusted by it.
This book was given to me for free at my request for my voluntary and unbiased review.
This book was given to me for free at my request for my voluntary and unbiased review.
July 7, 2012
i read a couple of books and watched a movie or two on this serial killer. since it happened around the time i was born, and most likely when my parents were starting to go to mcfaddin beach area (close to where i grew up), it was interesting to me. the lazy attention paid to missing children for days that led into the fear we live in today is fascinating. also, this killer had numbers that blew other killers away and Gacy admired him so much. very much a must read if you are from SE texas or are interested in serial killers and motives.
September 28, 2011
this book shows how in any neighbourhood anywhere how a killer could stike out against a community , and that things are not what they seem. It also states how the police department let down these families when their sons went missing in the 70's , and how easy it for them to believe that kids do not die, but only run away. It also shows how the community and the neighourhood stood together after the murders where discovered.
September 25, 2016
A Serial Killer Disguised
The choice of the boys he took reminds me of the missing children in Atlanta, lower middle class to low income homes where often children are bored and roam the streets. Our society needs to do better in adding recreation departments for children to play and I feel some of our larger churches could also set up after school and summer programs.
The choice of the boys he took reminds me of the missing children in Atlanta, lower middle class to low income homes where often children are bored and roam the streets. Our society needs to do better in adding recreation departments for children to play and I feel some of our larger churches could also set up after school and summer programs.
November 27, 2016
Good book
This all happened during the time my husband was a teen in the Heights area, and Dean lived down the street from him. He asked my husband to go to a movie, my husband said no, and I'm sure glad he did, because my husband probably wouldn't be here today if things had gone another way.
This all happened during the time my husband was a teen in the Heights area, and Dean lived down the street from him. He asked my husband to go to a movie, my husband said no, and I'm sure glad he did, because my husband probably wouldn't be here today if things had gone another way.
May 3, 2015
I did not think this was as good as some of the other Olsen books.
June 12, 2023
I read this book because a podcast I listen to covered the case of Dean Corral; I will say that the book had more information than the podcast (and the podcast used the book as a resource). With that being said; I mention I think Olsen is a journalist further down in the review and state that it was written close to the crimes because that was stated in the podcast (I think).
The style that the book was written in bothered me a bit. I'm not a fan of using heavy dialect while quoting people, and this book is full of it. I understand it might give the reader a better feel for how the people spoke, but I honestly had to reread a few things to understand what was being said. The book also lays out some of the crimes, details Wayne killing Dean, circles back to Dean's childhood and leaves us just barely knowing what happened. I think a part of this might be because the person that wrote it was/is a journalist-- So he laid it out in the way that the story unfolded. I also think this was written pretty close after the events, so he wouldn't be able to say what happened at the trial, etc.
The story itself is horrific, and it's very unsettling that the Houston police basically threw up their arms after the fact and said well, 27's enough, we're not going to keep looking for more. A lot of the families, former friends and even police investigating believe there were more bodies and for there not to be further investigation to put other families at ease is terrible.
You can tell Olsen took a lot of care gathering the interviews with the victim's families and with those that knew Dean. I believe he took the interviews himself, but if not he compiled them in a compelling way.
The style that the book was written in bothered me a bit. I'm not a fan of using heavy dialect while quoting people, and this book is full of it. I understand it might give the reader a better feel for how the people spoke, but I honestly had to reread a few things to understand what was being said. The book also lays out some of the crimes, details Wayne killing Dean, circles back to Dean's childhood and leaves us just barely knowing what happened. I think a part of this might be because the person that wrote it was/is a journalist-- So he laid it out in the way that the story unfolded. I also think this was written pretty close after the events, so he wouldn't be able to say what happened at the trial, etc.
The story itself is horrific, and it's very unsettling that the Houston police basically threw up their arms after the fact and said well, 27's enough, we're not going to keep looking for more. A lot of the families, former friends and even police investigating believe there were more bodies and for there not to be further investigation to put other families at ease is terrible.
You can tell Olsen took a lot of care gathering the interviews with the victim's families and with those that knew Dean. I believe he took the interviews himself, but if not he compiled them in a compelling way.
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