American Serial Killers

by Peter Vronsky

Twenty of the disappearances occurred in Houston Heights, where the small Corll family candy factory was located and where Dean Corll lived and worked, or in the adjacent neighborhood. Eleven of the missing boys attended the same junior high school.6

  The Heights was described at the time as Houston’s “cast off community.”7 Once a vibrant turn-of-the-century “streetcar suburb,” it had declined significantly after World War II and by the 1970s was on the brink of becoming a slum. It was inhabited by mostly poor white, dispossessed, often broken and dysfunctional families struggling to survive in a transitioning economy, whose teenage sons began mysteriously disappearing in the 1970s, one by one. When families turned to the Houston Police for help, they were told, “we don’t search for runaways.” Since the 1950s when Houston had the highest murder rate in the United States, it had been nicknamed “Murder City,” and the understaffed Houston PD was very selective as to what murders they would allocate resources to investigate, let alone search for missing youths. Murders of less-dead African Americans or poor white trash victims were referred to inside the Houston PD as “misdemeanor murders,” and very little effort was put into investigating these deaths. As for missing teenagers in the Heights, or anywhere in the United States for that matter, male or female, they were not investigated unless there was conclusive evidence that an abduction had occurred. The vanishing teenage boys, some of them troubled, some deeply into drinking, smoking weed and huffing paint thinner, some with juvenile records, were automatically written off by police as “good riddance” runaways.8

  Dean Corll was well-known in the Heights. Corll’s Candy Kitchen once stood at 505 West 22nd Street behind the schoolyard of James F. Helms Elementary School. They produced divinity, pralines, pecan chewy and other types of candy popularly branded as “Mexican Candy.” Some of the parents in the Heights would occasionally work in the candy factory as did their teenage sons. Dean Corll was known to frequently hand out free broken trims and leftovers from the candy production line to eager children who would flock to the factory facing the rear schoolyard. Rather than shooing them away, Corll installed a pool table in the back and invited the boys to come in and play. A few parents forbade their children to hang out at the candy factory, but most had no problem with it. Corll appeared to be an even-tempered, polite and well-spoken young Texan gentleman. Nothing about him was threatening.

  One of the mothers who occasionally worked in the factory and whose sixteen-year-old son Gregory Malley Winkle would be identified among the twenty-seven unearthed bodies said of Corll:

  He was crazy about children; he’d let them walk all over him. Every afternoon that doorbell would ring and there’d be a gang of little kids from the Helms grammar school, beggin’ for broken candy. Then Dean put a pool table in the back and the boys used to knock at all hours. “Can we play pool?” When I found out Malley was goin’ there after work, I told him to cut it out. Not that I had any feelin’ that Dean was doing wrong. I just felt that he shouldn’t be disturbed. He worked awfully hard and I respected the man for it. . . .

  He was like a man that had nothin’ on his mind but success. The lights were on many a night, all night. I got to feelin’ sorry for him, that the job was too much for a poor kid like him maybe in his mid-twenties. His mother seemed to be involved in the business, but she really wasn’t much help. . . . She’d want to know why he hadn’t done this or done that.9

  Dean became known to hundreds of elementary school kids growing up in the Heights as the Candy Man.

  Dean Arnold Corll was born in 1939. His father, it was reported, had been strict, but his mother, Mary, lax and indulgent with her son according to some, overbearing and domineering according to others. She eventually divorced her husband, but then several years later remarried him, then divorced him again. She entered the candy-making business with a new husband but later divorced him and set up her own business in the early 1960s, Corll Candies, in which Dean became a vice president and his younger brother the secretary-treasurer. Dean grew up putting in long hours in the candy company and was its operational manager.

  In 1964, twenty-four-year-old Dean was drafted into the US Army but after serving ten months was given an early “hardship” honorable discharge on the grounds his family’s business needed him. His military record was apparently unblemished. Acquaintances of Dean would later state that he had realized that he was gay while serving in the Army and that his behavior changed upon returning home.

  After Dean’s return from military service, there had been complaints from some of the teenage male employees that Dean had attempted to molest them, but Mary responded by firing anybody who complained. Soon the complaints stopped.

  The candy factory was liquidated in 1968 when Mary retired. Dean Corll took a job as a circuit board tester with the Houston Lighting and Power Company and eventually moved an hour away to the suburb of Pasadena, Texas, near the Gulf shore. But the Candy Man, a familiar figure to teenagers since their childhoods in elementary school, frequently visited the Heights driving a Plymouth GTX muscle car or a white van, inviting random teens to attend wild parties at his place, where fireworks, alcohol, solvents and weed were freely available.

  Corll snared youths who passed out at his parties. They would regain consciousness finding themselves facedown and naked, shackled spread-eagle to his plywood torture board. Corll would torment and rape them sometimes for days in a sadistic frenzy. One of his favorite methods of torture was to take a thin glass tube and force it up the urethra of his bound victim’s penis and shatter the glass with a fist-tight squeeze. Corll might have been inspired by James A. Michener’s 1957 bestselling Cold War polemic, The Bridge at Andau, in which he described the Hungarian secret police using this torture method during the 1956 revolt.

  The Bridge at Andau was a staple in public school libraries for decades, where with squeamish horror that lingers to this day, I read about the torture in my school library when I was eleven years old. I too am a juvenile product of the rape-and-kill-crazy culture of the 1950s and 1960s, not quite damaged enough to have become a serial killer myself, but by the age of eleven exposed and deadened to literary accounts and pulp adventure magazine and true-detective illustrations of torture, rape and murder to be able to contemplate and write about serial killing as an adult historian without waking in the middle of the night gasping for air from nightmares.

  Afterward, Corll either strangled his victims or shot them in the head with a .22 handgun. Others he lured into his van, in which he installed a soundproofed wooden box fitted out with restraining hooks. The bodies of the victims were all buried either on remote Texas beaches, in woodlands or under a boat storage shed Corll had rented.

  The Disciples

  David Brooks, a longtime neighborhood acquaintance of Henley’s, had been groomed by Corll in the candy factory since the age of twelve. He eventually began engaging in sex with Corll, was introduced to the abductions and killings, and was given a 1969 Corvette as a present and was paid for every victim he procured for Corll. Brooks had originally brought his friend Henley to Corll to sell as a potential victim, but for some reason Corll took a liking to Henley and, instead of raping and killing him, adopted him as a disciple too. In a 2010 prison interview, Henley would say, “Maybe Dean was considering me as one of his next victims. But we hit it off. He was this smart, clean-cut, nicely dressed man. He listened to me. He explained things to me.

  “I’ll be honest with you, it was important that Dean liked me. He was kind.”10

  Wayne Henley was also plied by Corll with lavish gifts of drink and drugs and cash payments for any boys he would bring him. Henley would later claim he didn’t even know that Corll was gay, and when he did figure it out, he thought his friend Brooks was just “fag-hustling” Corll. Henley stated that he was told at first the boys he lured to Corll’s place would be sold to a child slavery ring. Later, he began to witness what Corll was doing to them and assist him with the transport a
nd burial of the bodies, and then he began helping him to abduct, subdue and murder some of the boys. Some of the victims were forced to write letters to their parents stating that they had run away and were well.

  When asked why he didn’t flee from Corll, Henley stated he tried joining the Navy but was rejected. He claimed, “I couldn’t leave anyway. If I wasn’t around, I knew Dean would go after one of my little brothers, who he always liked a little too much.”11

  While people in the Heights commented on how unusual it was for a man in his late twenties to be associating with teenage juveniles, nothing otherwise in Corll’s behavior sparked any open suspicions that there was something sexual going on, let alone sadistic murder. At least nobody brought it up, even if they might have thought it.

  “Is This for Real?”

  In August 1973, fifteen-year-old Rhonda Williams, described as “a cherub with the face and figure of an early Brigitte Bardot,” had reached a crossroads in her young and hard life.12 Her mother had died from a thoracic aortic aneurysm when Rhonda was eighteen months old, leaving her and her two older sisters to be raised by her father, Ben. When Rhonda was seven, her father moved into a house on 23rd Street in the Heights and took up with a neighboring woman, Dorris, who did not get along with the girls. Her older sisters eventually married and moved out, leaving eleven-year-old Rhonda behind. Ben and Dorris could not manage the now-rebellious girl, and Rhonda was bounced between a children’s home from which she escaped and stays with her grandmother or aunt, returning back to her father’s place, where she was not welcomed nor wanted.

  Rhonda was friends in school with Wayne Henley’s younger brother and came to know Wayne very well. When Rhonda was thirteen years old, she developed a romantic relationship with a friend of Wayne’s, eighteen-year-old Frank Aguirre. They fell in love and became engaged to be married when she turned fourteen. Frank was a hardworking and likable local boy who worked at a Long John Silver’s seafood franchise. Even Rhonda’s father liked Frank, who never failed to bring a bucket of food when he would visit Rhonda at her home. Frank worked diligently to build a stake so that he and Rhonda could be married if her father would give his consent.

  On March 24, 1972, Frank was supposed to come over to Rhonda’s after he finished work, but he never showed up. Rhonda went looking for him. She found his car in the Long John Silver’s parking lot, but Frank was gone. She never heard from him again and became despondent. Her friends told her to move on, that he got a new girlfriend.

  Her friendly neighbor Wayne Henley stepped into the vacuum as a big-brother figure. He told Rhonda that the Mafia killed Frank and that he was never coming back. She should really move on. Over the next year and a half, she would often turn to Wayne whenever she felt troubled or despondent.

  Wayne of course knew exactly what happened to Frank on the day he disappeared. Wayne had lured him to Dean Corll’s place. Frank’s corpse was among the twenty-seven later dug up by police. The medical examiner concluded that Frank was killed by asphyxiation as the result of having a rag stuffed into his mouth and taped into place. When found, there was a noose tied around his neck.

  Rhonda was arrested for possession of marijuana and put on probation. She was required to see a therapist and would often bike to his office accompanied by Wayne. Her father wanted her out of the house. The only advice the therapist gave her was “What you need to do is go home and cook dinner every night and every day, clean the house, and your dad will love you.”13

  One day, according to Rhonda’s recent account, Wayne accompanied her on their bikes to the therapist’s office. Wayne appeared troubled and asked Rhonda if perhaps her therapist could see him that day. The therapist refused. On their way back to the Heights, Rhonda’s bike got a flat and they began trudging home, pushing their bikes on foot when Corll pulled up in his white van. They loaded their bikes into his van, and before driving away with Wayne, Corll gave Rhonda a ride home. She recalled sitting on a box in the back lined with soundproofing corkboard.

  On the night of August 7 and 8, 1973, Rhonda had a huge argument with her father, enraging him to the point that she had to lock herself in a room of the house. Wayne showed up to console her with a nineteen-year-old friend, Tim Kerley. Rhonda did not want to stay at the house with her father in the state that he was in. Wayne told her she could come with him in Tim’s car to Dean’s place in Pasadena and spend the night hanging out with them there. When they arrived at about 3:00 a.m. at Corll’s house, he became immediately upset to see Rhonda. He berated Wayne for “ruining everything” by bringing a girl. Wayne explained that Rhonda had no place to go. It appeared to Wayne that he had mollified Corll, who now generously offered the three youths some marijuana and a paper bag and rag with a can of solvent paint for a “huffing party.” Within the hour, the three teens huffed themselves into a state of unconsciousness.

  When Wayne awoke, he found himself with his hands handcuffed behind his back while Tim and Rhonda had been bound and gagged next to him on the carpeted floor. Corll dragged Wayne by his handcuffed wrists into the kitchen and thrust his .22 handgun in his stomach, accusing him again of “ruining everything” and threatening to kill him. Rhonda, in the meantime, still in a daze, thought that all this was some kind of party prank.

  Wayne began desperately pleading with Corll not to hurt him and offered to help Corll torture and kill the two teens he had brought to his house; to do anything he wanted. Corll was not interested in Rhonda and ordered Wayne to rape and kill her himself.

  Corll threw himself on Tim, ripping off his clothing. He dragged the naked boy to the torture board and shackled Tim facedown to one side while ordering Wayne to secure Rhonda faceup to the other side. Corll handed Wayne a knife and told him to cut away Rhonda’s clothing and rape her. Corll then stripped naked, laid his handgun on a nightstand nearby, climbed up behind Tim and began raping him.

  Wayne had removed Rhonda’s gag and was cutting away her clothing, when she raised her head and asked him giddily, “Is this for real?”

  Wayne responded, “Yes, this is for real.”

  “Well, are you going to do anything about it?”

  Many years later, Wayne would say, “I would like to think that it was because she trusted me. The belief that she trusted me is what gave me the . . . push I needed to do something.”

  Wayne turned to Corll and said, “Hey, Dean, why don’t you let me take the chick outta here? She don’t wanna see that.”

  Corll ignored him.

  Wayne scooped up Corll’s handgun from the nightstand and pointed it at him, yelling, “Back off now! Stop.”

  Dean Corll then uttered many a murder victim’s famous last words: “Go ahead shoot. You won’t do it.”14

  Wayne fired six shots into Corll, who turned and ran out of the room, collapsed curled up naked on the hallway floor and died.

  Wayne then untied Rhonda and Tim and called the police. They waited on the front porch for them to arrive.

  Wayne confessed to everything, named David Brooks as his accomplice and led police to the graves. At the time, police recovered twenty-seven bodies but determined there was a twenty-eighth victim. Recently, a documentary filmmaker found a Polaroid amongst Wayne Henley’s stored possessions showing an unidentified boy apparently restrained next to Corll’s torture toolbox.15

  Rhonda was charged with murder and held by the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department for weeks until everything was sorted out. Her father came by to visit and told her she had shamed the family and was never to return home. Eventually, her probation officer took Rhonda home to stay with her and her husband, and a juvenile court judge took interest in her case and ensured that she received counseling and other kinds of help.

  David Brooks was found guilty in the murder of one victim and sentenced to life in prison. He died on May 28, 2020, in a Galveston prison hospital as a result of a COVID-19 infection.16 Also dead from COVID-19 is serial killer Edd
ie Lee Mosley, “The Rape Man,” connected to at least sixteen rape murders in south Florida of girls and women, and forty rapes between 1973 and 1987. With an IQ between 50 and 60, Mosley was found to have the mental capacity of an eight-year-old and did not stand trial on the grounds of mental incompetence. He died on May 29, 2020 while incarcerated in Sunland Center, a criminal psychiatric facility in Marianna, Florida. In the meantime, a number of serial killers have joined lawsuits filed by eager lawyers calling for “temporary release” of convicts over the age of fifty on the grounds that “Department of Corrections was unable to provide safe conditions amid the global pandemic.” Gary Ridgway, “The Green River Killer,” seventy-one-years-old and serving life for forty-nine murders was a party to such a motion in Washington State, but the courts dismissed it.17

  Wayne Henley was charged with six counts of murder, found guilty and sentenced to six consecutive ninety-nine-year terms of imprisonment. The charges in the murder of Dean Corll were dismissed on the grounds of self-defense. Henley has been petitioning for parole since 1980 with no success. At this writing, his next eligible parole date is 2025, when he will be sixty-nine years old.

  In a poignant article for the Houston Press, “The Girl on the Torture Board,” journalist Craig Malisow chronicled the subsequent lives of Rhonda and Tim. Tim ended up a bitter, traumatized alcoholic and died in 2008 from a heart attack. Rhonda too was haunted and traumatized for the rest of her life. Today, she has mixed feelings about Wayne. On one hand, he had saved her life, but on the other hand, he had murdered her fiancé and brought her and Tim to Corll’s house, knowing at least what awaited Tim.

  In 2005, Rhonda visited Wayne in prison to find out for herself what Wayne Henley was about. She discovered he was a monster after all, Malisow reports. Rhonda said that Wayne told her during her visit with him that he had contemplated shooting her in the back of the head that night and saving his own skin and freedom.