Tragically, Johnny Delome was one of the victims of Houston’s serial killer and sex offender Dean Arnold Corll who abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered a minimum of twenty-eight teenage boys and young men between 1970 and 1973 in Houston and Pasadena, Texas. He was aided by two teenaged accomplices. Their crimes became known as the Houston Mass Murders, and he was known as the “The Candy Man.”

On May 21, 1972, 16-year-old Johnny Delome and 17-year-old Billy Gene Baulch, Jr. and were last seen walking to a local store. He was forced to write a letter to his parents claiming he and Delome had found work in Madisonville. In Brooks’s confession, he stated that both youths were tied to Corll’s bed and after their torture and rape, Henley manually strangled Baulch, then shouted, “Hey, Johnny!” and shot Delome in the forehead, with the bullet exiting through the youth’s ear. Delome then pleaded with Henley, “Wayne, please don’t!” before he was strangled and buried at High Island Beach.