Dean Corll

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. The night David Hilligiest didn't come home was both like and unlike other nights when other Houston boys disappeared between the years 1971 and 1973. At three in the morning the police were called, but they just said that boys were running away from the best of homes nowadays and that they'd list David as a runaway. No, there would be no official search for the youngster. Aghast, the Hilligiests, in the months that followed, hired their own detective, put up posters, even sought the aid of clairvoyants. But David never did come home again because, along with at least twenty-six other Houston boys, he had been murdered and buried by the homosexual owner of a candy factory, the mass murderer of the century, Dean Corll, according to his two teenage confessed accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr., and David Brooks. Many of the young boys had not even been reported as missing, and the fact that they were dead would probably never have come to light had not one of the murderers confessed. For in Houston, where in a typical year the total number of murders is twice that of London despite the fact that London is six times as large and far more densely populated, missing persons and violence are likely to be considered commonplace. In the months before the trial of Henley and Brooks, Jack Olsen interviewed and probed for answers about the criminals, the victims and the city itself, which remained for the most part silent, angry and defensive. The result is a classic of true crime reportage.

In an area of Houston known as the Heights, boys had been going missing for years, but it was the peace-and-love 1970s, so police just called them runaways, even if they'd left with little more than a swimsuit and some change. When the truth was uncovered, and police - and the rest of Houston - realized the boys had become victims of notorious American serial killer Dean Corll, Houston recoiled in horrified shock. Residents realized that they had not only become the site of the most grisly mass murder in Texas history, but the worst mass murder in all of U.S. history. The word serial killer had not yet been coined, and as body after decomposing body was uncovered from the dirt floor of the boat shed where Corll and his two young accomplishes had buried most of the victims, there were hardly words for what this sadistic lust killer had done. The depraved evil that Corll and his accomplices - two teen boys themselves who were promised money but eventually developed a thrill for the kill - was revealed as one of the cohorts, Wayne Henley, calmly, affably, told the stories of how after Corll sexually assaulting them and tortured them in unimaginable fashion, they would kill them and take the boys' bodies away to bury them beneath the dirt. This serial killer's biography will haunt you, especially as you learn more about the sadistic torture methods lust killer Corll used on his young victims, all lured to his various apartments by people they believed were their friends. While Corll is dead, killed by Henley during the lust killer's last night of depravity, the case remains entwined in Houston history, and unforgettable for the families of those who lived it.

Dean Corll was an electrician for Houston Power and Light, but most of Henley's friends knew him as the Candy Man, so named because he had labored for years in the candy manufacturing plant that he and his mother had once owned. Corll was famous for giving away candy to the kids. Little did they know that 'the Candy man of Houston' was in fact a sadistic, cruel, remorseless rapist and murderer. Between September 25, 1970–August 3, 1973, Corll killed at least 28 young men and boys, and the actual number of victims may have been more than thirty. They were all systematically lured into his trap and then beaten, tortured, raped and strangled to death, and most victims found bore evidence of sexual torture: pubic hairs had been plucked out, genitals had been chewed, objects had been inserted into their rectums, and glass rods had been shoved into their penis and smashed. In the aftermath, two young men, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks, Corll's two main accomplices in the heinous crimes, confessed that they had been forced to participate against their will, and Corll himself – by now having been shot dead by Henley – was the lone culprit in the torturous murders. But was he? Author Brian Lee Tucker – having culled information from documented interviews, taped confessions, newspaper coverage, magazine articles, court transcripts, provides an in depth, behind the scenes look into who the real culprits were the crimes, which at the time of their discovery, the Houston Mass Murders were considered the worst example of serial murder in American history.

"How that man was able to go out to that storage shed, time after time, and bury one more dead boy is something I'll never understand. You get close to evil like that, no matter how long ago it was, and it never leaves you." Detective David Mullican, recollecting the Houston Mass Murders, April 2011 During the early 1970s, more than three dozen teenage boys went missing from the working-class neighborhood of Houston Heights, in the south of Texas. The parents of a number of these boys received strange postcards from their sons, telling them that they were fine and that they had found jobs somewhere else in the state, anywhere from Dallas to Austin. Then, in August 1973, the Houston Police Department made a shocking discovery; something that would later become known as the Houston Mass Murders. After further spine-chilling investigations, the police found that prior to the murders, in the late 1960s, a young man by the name of Dean Corll had been handing out free candy to teenagers in Houston Heights. This man - who was vice-president of his mother's candy company - was described by fellow residents as gentle, friendly and well-mannered. They couldn't have been more wrong... The Candy Cards is the shocking true story of Dean Corll, a.k.a. The Candy Man, one of the deadliest serial killers in American history. Robert Browns thrilling account of this chilling story will have readers draw into to this story as much as any page turning crime thriller. Disclaimer: The material in this publication has a strong adult theme and is intended for an adult audience. Reader discretion is advised.

Those who knew Houston's 'Candy Man' Dean Corll all described him the same way - well-mannered, considerate, quiet, neatly groomed, and cheerful. He could usually be found in one of the more affluent communities within Houston, entertaining young boys at a small candy factory owned by his mother - the boys would pop in to watch as the pieces of candy came off the assembly line, and they all got along well with Dean.But some boys saw a completely different side of the Candy Man.From December 13, 1970 to July 25, 1973, 28 boys between the ages of 13 and 20 vanished from a neighbourhood just west of downtown Houston. The young men had all been tortured, then killed, by Dean Corll - who was, at that time, America's most prolific serial killer.

An equal parts haunting and hilarious deep-dive review of history's most notorious and cold-blooded serial killers, from the creators of the award-winning Last Podcast on the Left

A New York Times bestseller, The Midnight Assassin is a sweeping narrative history of a terrifying serial killer--America's first--who stalked Austin, Texas in 1885. In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley's spree of torture, sexual abuse, and murder of children in the 1960s was one of the most appalling series of crimes ever committed in England, and remains almost daily fixated upon by the tabloid press. In The Gates of Janus, Ian Brady himself allows us a glimpse into the mind of a murderer as he analyzes a dozen other serial crimes and killers. Criminal profiling by a criminal was not invented by the dramatists of Dexter. Novelist and true-crime writer Colin Wilson, author of the famous and influential book The Outsider, remarks in his introduction to Brady's book that one must first explore the depraved reaches of human consciousness to truly understand human character. When first released in 2001, The Gates of Janus sparked controversy attended by a huge media splash. The new edition, the first in paperback, provides the reader with a decade and a half of updates, including Brady's letters to the publisher, both providing information regarding his own demented history along with demands that Feral House remove its unflattering afterword written by author Peter Sotos.

Based on access to interviews, diaries, court records and the criminal himself, this is the story of serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson, who wrote confession signed with a happy face.

Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet’s largest public work: the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them—the highway killer. He went by many names: the “Hitcher,” the “Freeway Killer,” the “Killer on the Road,” the “I-5 Strangler,” and the “Beltway Sniper.” Some of these criminals were imagined, but many were real. The nation’s murder rate shot up as its expressways were built. America became more violent and more mobile at the same time. Killer on the Road tells the entwined stories of America’s highways and its highway killers. There’s the hot-rodding juvenile delinquent who led the National Guard on a multistate manhunt; the wannabe highway patrolman who murdered hitchhiking coeds; the record promoter who preyed on “ghetto kids” in a city reshaped by freeways; the nondescript married man who stalked the interstates seeking women with car trouble; and the trucker who delivered death with his cargo. Thudding away behind these grisly crime sprees is the story of the interstates—how they were sold, how they were built, how they reshaped the nation, and how we came to equate them with violence. Through the stories of highway killers, we see how the “killer on the road,” like the train robber, the gangster, and the mobster, entered the cast of American outlaws, and how the freeway—conceived as a road to utopia—came to be feared as a highway to hell.