Grand Jury Gets a Look at Case
by Houston (AP)
A Harris County grand jury was expected to get its first official look today at the evidence in the worst recorded mass murder case in the nation’s history. While the district attorney’s office wasn’t making any announcements, official sources said District Attorney Carol Vance planned to seek indictments today against Elmer Wayne Henley, 17. Henley is accused two of the 27 known murders. He also faces three murder charges in San Augustine County, 150 miles to the north. Police say he has admitted nine slayings. Another youth who has admitted being present during some of the slayings, David Brooks, 18, has been charged with one count of murder. Both said they lured other teenage boys to Dean Corll, 33, for acts of sodomy. They claimed Corll killed most of the victims.
Henley said he killed Corll last Wednesday after a quarrel over Henley’s having brought a girl to a sex and paint sniffing party. Henley made his first court appearance Monday before a crowd that included his mother and grandmother. Nothing was resolved in the 10-minute hearing requested by defense attorneys, but both Vance and Henley’s lawyers agreed he should be isolated from other prisoners. “The police have treated him fine. We have no complaints. But the prisoners have been verbally abusing him,” said defense lawyer Charles Melder. Vance said isolation was “a good idea,” and Assistant District Attorney Sam Robertson said the youth would be kept under the “very tightest security.” Henley had other ideas, though. “I hate to be put in solitary,” he told another of his lawyers, Ed Pegelow, after the hearing. Pegelow said it was necessary. “Ain’t there no way to get out of there except on bond?” he asked in a nasal, pleading voice. “No,” said Pegelow.
Bond has been set at $100,000 in each of the two killings with which he has been charged here and in the three slayings with which San Augustine County authorities have charged him. Four bodies have been found in that county, 150 miles northeast. “Ain’t there somebody they can put me to?” Henley asked, evidently hoping he could be placed in the custody of a relative or other adult. “No,” Pegelow said. Henley’s mother and grandmother, Mrs. Christine Weed, had a hard time seeing him in the packed courtroom. Someone asked Mrs. Henley why she came. “I wanted to see him. Because he hasn’t seen a doctor. He’s cold and he isn’t being fed enough. He hasn’t any extra clothes and he hasn’t anything to blow his nose with. I just wanted to see him,” she said. What the courtroom audience saw was a boy who is smaller than he looked in newspaper photographs. His brown, sun-bleached hair is collar length and droops over his forehead. He looks younger than 17, despite the beginnings of a mustache and a goatee. He has a mild case of acne, with acne scars over his cheekbones. He wore a neatly pressed bright blue shirt, with stripes of a paler blue, black denim tight-fitting trousers, a tooled belt’ of brown leather and handcuffs.
