Henley Guilty Of All Charges
by Jim Barlow (AP)
The jury sentenced Elmer Wayne Henley, 18, to six prison terms of 99 years each today for his part in the sex torture slayings of six youths who were among the 27 who died in the nation’s largest mass slaying case in modern history. The jury convicted Henley Monday of the six murders. Henley’s attorney said the convictions will be appealed by Texas parole laws. He could be freed in eight years and four months under perfect conditions. The sentence came after District Attorney Carol Vance told the jury, “I apologize to the jurors that the laws of the state of Texas do not permit the death penalty in these cases.” Vance asked the jury to assess six 99-year sentences, and it complied.
Both the prosecution and defense decided not to introduce new evidence at the punishment hearing. Ed Pegelow, a defense lawyer, urged the jurors to consider as they debated Henley’s sentence that he was only 15 years old when he became involved with Dean Corll, 33, the man police say was the mastermind in the Houston mass murders. “Dean Corll was able to gain mastery over Elmer Wayne Henley and keep him under control,” Pegelow said, “Dean Corll: was the man: who had perpetrated this monstrous tragedy for at least a year and a halt before Wayne became involved.”
Defense lawyer Will Gray said the prosecution and defense agreed in advance to submit no new evidence for the jury to consider in passing sentence. The jury debated just under an hour Monday before sending out word they had reached a verdict in the trial. They had to wait about 30 minutes more while District Court Judge Preston Dial was fetched off a tennis court. Gray has already indicated he plans to appeal whatever the sentence given Henley. Gray fled 59 objections to the charges read to the jury by Judge Dial to go with the more than 100 objections he voiced during the trial itself. The defendant sat unmoved as clerk Mildred Volkel read each of the six verdicts, pronouncing Henley guilty in the murders of Charles C. Cobble, 17; Frank Anthony Aguire, 18; Johnny Delome, 16; Marty Ray Jones, 18; William Ray Lawrence, 15; and Homer Garcia, 15.
He then favored his lawyers with a weak smile and shook hands with one of them. Henley’s mother, Mrs. Mary Henley, 35, was in the courtroom as the verdict was read. Her face slowly crumpled as the guilty verdicts mounted and she broke into sobs. Afterward, she told reporters, “It’s what I expected. Do you think it was fair? No, it wasn’t fair,” she said, answering her own question. “We’ll wait here for the sentencing and then we’ll start our appeals.” Mrs. Henley’s mother, Mrs. Christine also broke down when the verdict was read. Mrs. Bettye Shirley, mother of Marty Ray Jones, she was happy with the verdict. “I am very relieved.
I’m just thankful it turned out this way,” she said. Mrs. Shirley earlier had run screaming and sobbing from the courtroom as Don Lambright, an Assistant District Attorney, reviewed the case in final arguments to the jury. The prosecutor reminded the jury that according to Henley’s own statement given to officers, Jones was strapped to a board and watched while his friend, Charles Cobble, was first tortured and then killed. What about the boy who lay there and watched the other little boy being raped and tortured. What do you think he thought about when it was his turn?” Lambright asked, Henley’s statement, read to the jurors, said he had procured young boys for Dean A. Corll, 33, getting first $200 but then being paid only $5 or $10 a piece.
Henley shot Corll last Aug. 8 during one of the sex and torture parties. “If you take a friend’s life for five or ten dollars, out you’ve got to get a little more of Lambright said, alluding to the fact that most of the victims were neighbors of Henley, “The only thing I can think about is that it was fun to watch him play and scream and squirm,” Lambright added. A pathologist had testified that an injury to the neck of one victim could only have come as he struggled for three minutes while being slowly strangled to death. “You stop while you’re deliberating back in the jury room and you look at your watch for three minutes and think about a little boy fighting for his life that long,’ Lambright told the jurors. Gray, in his summation after Lambright had finished talking, told the jurors, “You’ve been subjected to an appeal to every bias and prejudice known to humanity by this young prosecutor.”.
