Facade Shredded by Revelations Corll Story Still Baffling to Many in Houston
by Ellen Warren
“My boy was that far away from death” hollered James Joslin across the bar at Reagan’s Lounge in northwest Houston “That far away from death” he repeated measuring an inch with his thumb and index finger as he peered over a tall brown bottle of beer Then came what Joslin considered the ultimate indictment: “He bought my boy Coke!” Joslin was reflecting on his 13-year-old son who once accepted a ride in the van that Dean Corll used to pick up young boys and later transport their sliced abused bodies to obscure burial places in Texas. Nothing ever came of Wayne Joslin’s ride in Corll’s truck, except a stop for a soft drink. But Joslin 47 interrupts the heated conversation about motorcycles at Reagan’s Lounge to expound on his son’s close call “It’s a wonder my boy’s not six feet under” Joslin sputters Corll was shot to death last Aug 8. Elmer Wayne Henley Jr, one of his alleged accomplices has admitted killing Corll. It’s rare now to hear people talk about Corll in Houston.
They prefer to spew their revulsion on his two alleged teenage accomplices, Henley, 18 and David Brooks, 18. Henley was found guilty yesterday in the torture killings of six of the 27 boys who were mutilated, sexually assaulted then shot or strangled to death. Brooks is to be tried later. But when the conversation turns to Corll 33 the purported ringleader and idea man behind the three-year killing spree there is more angst than anger “You have never” never met a nicer boy” offered Mayme Meynier, 64, the proprietor of the Southwest Boat Storage Shed in Houston where 17 of the bodies were found last August. “Kids worshiped him. Everybody worshiped him” said Selma Winkle Allstott whose son Gregory Malley Winkle, 16, was one of the victims. After all she said Corll “always wore a white shirt.” That’s the kind of thing everyone remembers about Corll. He was quite polite punctual. He was neat unobtrusive and loved children. Dean Arnold Corll had all the virtues that Boy Scouts are supposed to have and some vices the scouts never dreamed of.
“Very ordinary people can get swept away into very bizarre events” observed William Simon a sociologist and director of sociology and anthropology for Chicago’s Institute for Juvenile Research. All that was known about Corll before the bodies were unearthed during four excruciatingly hot Texas summer days shows him to be very ordinary indeed though peril a p s more compassionate than most. “He was almost too good” a relative recalled. He moved to Indiana for two years (1960-62) to help out his recently widowed maternal grandmother. He was drafted in 1964 but received an honorable hardship discharge from the Army 10 months later because he said he was needed to keep the family candy business going. The Corll Candy Co by that time had moved to quarters on West 22nd Street in the Heights a neighborhood in northwest Houston. The shop was just the street from the James F Helms Elementary School. That was in 1965 and many of Corll’s would-be victims would come running across the school playground yapping at the candy company door like hungry pups.
Dean Corll was their pal the candy man He’d give them scraps of the pralines his mother made from Texas pecans He would invite the youngsters out back for a game of pool in his trailer. “My son David would come home all excited saying the man was giving away candy to the children. It was the talk of the neighborhood” said Dorothy Hilligiest who lives on 27th Street a few blocks from the now defunct candy operation. Mrs. Hilligiest was suspicious of Corll’s behavior and told her son not to go back to the candy man. Later David was one of the victims He was only 13 years old While working nights at the candy factory Corll completed a training program at Houston Lighting & Power Company and became an electrician like his dad. Corll used his electronic wizardry to create a frog shaped gadget to entertain his young friends. When the telephone rang the immense frog’s eyes would light up It seemed so perfectly innocent to Corll’s mother and at that time perhaps it was. Psychiatrists say that murderous homosexual sadism doesn’t come over a person in a flash but builds slowly.
The killings and torture and rapes gradually become acceptable behavior to someone who creates his own personal reality they say. The earliest of the murders that police have traced to Corll was in September 1970, but experts say Corll’s sadistic rage could have seen brewing since early childhood. Certainly, his growing-up years were not ideal He was a Christmas Eve baby born in 1939 in Waynedale, Indiana just outside Ft Wayne to Mary and Arnold Corll. About six years and another son later the Corlls were divorced. But they remarried in Memphis in 1950 and divorced again. By 1954, Mrs. Corll had married a man named West and they moved to Vidor, Texasa northeast of Houston near Beaumont. Dean entered Vidor High School played trombone in the school band took his girlfriends to the drive-in and said his mother “did everything we asked him to do.” He would drive west from Vidor and gather pecans along the Trinity River for his mom’s new candy business.
The family which now included a half-sister Joyce returned to Houston and set up the candy business in the Heights where Dean worked part-time while studying to be an electrician. Dean’s mother and West were divorced. She married and divorced again. Then she found religion. Tired of Houston she and Joyce moved to Manitou Springs Colo more than five years ago. Dean stayed on in Houston moving 10 times in those years. He never saw his mother again though they often talked on the phone. In 1969 he met David Brooks who introduced Corll to Wayne Henley. Brooks has said Corll would pay him. $5 or $10 to submit to his homosexual advances They shared several apartments in Houston No questions were asked when a building manager replaced the door at one of them because of bullet holes Brooks 18 told police that some of the murders were committed in those apartments though Brooks denied that he participated He has been charged with four of the killings.
Finally in May or June 1973 Corll moved to a two-bedroom bungalow in Pasadena a Houston suburb. He died there. Henley then 17 shot Corl six times in what has been ruled justifiable self-defense after an all-night drinking and paint-sniffing party. Then Henley led police to the bodies. A few days before Corll died his family says he was nervous distraught about something. He talked to his mother She sent him a box of candy and a book: “Help for Today”.
