- Trigger Warning: mentions of murder, torture, and gruesome true crime bits
No other case is as creepy as the one about serial killer Dean Corll. He is not as well known as Bundy or Dahmer, but once you start getting into true crime and really digging into the grit of the cases, you realize that the world of murderers holds more than the ones we first think of. As someone who has been interested in true crime for over half my life, you would think I would know the ends and outs of every huge case that has ever come across news headlines. I was introduced to the case of Dean Corll when I was a sophomore in high school, when I read a brief overview of his story in a book I got for my birthday. I didn’t realize how insane and disturbing his crimes were until I listened to a podcast that went into further details of what he did. Dean Corll is definitely one of those gold star serial killers that you would have to work yourself up to, however the news recently broke about his body count, and how it was much larger than we thought it was.
So who is Dean Corll and what makes his crimes so skin-crawling? Dean Corll was a known character in his Texas community, mostly because he worked at his family’s candy factory and gave free candy to kids in the neighborhood. Corll’s crimes spanned from 1970 to 1973, and he was accused of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering over 28 teenage boys and young men, along with his two accomplices, David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley. While Brooks and Henley were also guilty of the crimes and both received life sentences in Texas prison, it is said that both teenagers were most likely victims of Corll and committed the crimes as a means of survival. Corll was eventually shot by Henley, after an altercation occurred due to the fact that Henley brought his girlfriend to Corll’s “party”. Obviously this is a brief summary that is missing important details, however there is a reason this was deemed one of the worst examples of serial murder in U.S. history, so for the sake of the reader, I’m doing my best to explain the severity of Dean Corll without breaching into touchy and incredibly triggering terrority. I will encourage my audience to read further into the crimes of Dean Corll, but I do so with extreme caution because like I stated before, this is not a story for the faint of heart or for those new to true crime.
Dean Corll never got to stand trial or serve a prison sentence due to the fact that Elmer Wayne Henley shot and killed him, however his victims were found in various places. Seventeen were found in a rented boat shed, four in nearby woodlands, and around seven in different beaches. These locations were located with the help of Henley and Brooks. Almost all the bodies were identified, with the exception of one boy from the boat shed. It is speculated that Corll’s body count was so high because the boys that went missing were members of the impoverished side of the community, and while they were trying to be found by their family, the local police just wrote them off as runaways looking for a better life. The accepted number of victims is the 28 that were found in the 1970s, however Tim Miller of Texas Equusearch has been in contact with Henley and believes there are still bodies out there that have yet to be discovered. Miller works with the organization, Equusearch, that specializes in locating missing persons, no matter when they disappeared. On November 10, 2021, Miller received information that there were approximately twenty more victims that could be tied back to Dean Corll and he wrote to Henley who informed his team that they would most likely be at the residence in Pasadena. While the search in the backyard turned up nothing but animal bones, Miller states that it’s still a positive outcome, considering many families who had missing members wondered for decades if their loved ones were in Corll’s backyard. While they may not have the definitive answers, they can at least eliminate one location. We will most likely never know for certain what Dean Corll’s victim count was, if Henley and Brooks were his only accomplices, or any concrete facts about Corll other than what can be assumed, however the search for the whereabouts of dozens of teenagers continues to this day.