Early Life

Dean Arnold Corll was born on December 24, 1939, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the first child of Mary Emma Robison (1916–2010) and Arnold Edwin Corll (1916–2001). Corll’s father was strict with his children, whereas his mother was markedly protective of both her sons. Their marriage was marred by frequent quarreling and the couple divorced in 1946, four years after the birth of their younger son, Stanley Wayne Corll. Mary subsequently sold the family home and relocated to a trailer home in Memphis, Tennessee, where Arnold had been drafted into the United States Air Force after the divorce, to allow her sons to remain in contact with their father.

Corll was a shy, serious child who rarely socialized with other children, but at the same time displayed concern for the wellbeing of others. He was also markedly sensitive to any form of criticism or rejection. At the age of seven, he suffered an undiagnosed case of rheumatic fever, which was not recognized until doctors found Corll had a heart murmur in 1950. As a result of this diagnosis, Corll was told to avoid P.E. classes in school. Corll’s parents attempted reconciliation and remarried in 1950, subsequently moving to Pasadena, Texas, a suburb of Houston; however, the reconciliation was short lived, and, in 1953, the couple once again divorced, with the mother again retaining custody of her two sons.

The divorce was granted on amicable grounds and both boys maintained regular contact with their father. Following the second divorce, Corll’s mother married a traveling clock salesman named Jake West. The family moved to the small town of Vidor, Texas, where Corll’s half-sister, Joyce Jeanine (1955–2016), was born. Corll’s mother and stepfather started a small family candy company, initially operating from the garage of their home. From the earliest days of the business, Corll worked day and night while still attending school. He and his younger brother were responsible for running the candy-making machines and packing the product, which his stepfather sold on his sales route.

This route often involved West traveling to Houston, where much of the product was sold. From 1954 to 1958, Corll attended Vidor High School, where he was regarded as a well-behaved student who achieved satisfactory grades. As had been the case in his childhood, Corll was also considered somewhat of a loner, although he is known to have occasionally dated girls in his teenage years. In high school, Corll’s only major interest was the brass band, in which he played trombone. 

U.S. Army Service

Murders

First Known Murders

Elmer Wayne Henley

In the winter of 1971, Brooks encountered Wayne Henley; he later introduced him to Corll. Henley likely was lured to Corll’s address as an intended victim. However, Corll evidently decided the youth would make a good accomplice and offered him the same fee of $200 for any boy he could lure to his apartment, informing Henley that he was involved in a “white slavery ring” operating from Dallas. Henley later stated that, for several months, he ignored Corll’s offer, although he did maintain an acquaintance with Corll and gradually began to view him as something of a “brother-type person” whose work ethic he admired and in whom he could confide. In early 1972, he decided to accept Corll’s offer because he and his family were in dire financial circumstances. Henley said the first abduction he participated in occurred during the time Corll resided at 925 Schuler Street, an address he moved to on February 19. (Brooks later claimed that Henley became involved in the abductions while Corll resided at the address, he had occupied immediately prior to Schuler Street.) If Henley’s statement is to be believed, the victim was abducted from the Heights in February or early March 1972. In the statement Henley gave to police following his arrest, the youth stated he and Corll picked up “a boy” at the corner of 11th and Studewood and lured him to Corll’s home on the promise of smoking some marijuana with the pair.

At Corll’s residence—using a ruse he and Corll had prepared—Henley cuffed his own hands behind his back, freed himself with a key hidden in his back pocket, then duped the youth into donning the handcuffs before observing Corll bind and gag him. Henley then left the youth alone with Corll, believing he was to be sold into the sexual slavery ring. The identity of this first victim Henley assisted in the abduction of remains unknown. One month later, on March 24, 1972, Henley, Brooks, and Corll encountered an 18-year-old acquaintance of Henley’s named Frank Aguirre leaving a restaurant on Yale Street, where the youth worked. Henley called Aguirre over to Corll’s van and invited the youth to drink beer and smoke marijuana with the trio at Corll’s apartment. Aguirre agreed and followed the trio to Corll’s home in his Rambler. Inside Corll’s house, Aguirre smoked marijuana with the trio before picking up a pair of handcuffs Corll had left on his table. In response, Corll pounced on Aguirre, pushed him onto the table, and cuffed his hands behind his back. Henley later claimed that he had not known of Corll’s true intentions towards Aguirre when he had persuaded his friend to accompany him to Corll’s home. In a 2010 interview, he claimed to have attempted to persuade Corll not to assault and kill Aguirre once Corll and Brooks had bound and gagged the youth.

However, Corll refused, informing Henley that he had raped, tortured, and killed the previous victim he had assisted in abducting, and that he intended to do the same with Aguirre. Henley subsequently assisted Corll and Brooks in Aguirre’s burial at High Island Beach. Despite the revelations that Corll was, in reality, killing the boys he and Brooks had assisted in abducting, Henley nonetheless became an active participant in the abductions and murders. One month later, on April 20, he assisted Corll and Brooks in the abduction of another youth, 17-year-old Mark Scott. Scott—who was well known to Corll, Henley and Brooks—was specifically chosen by Corll to be his next victim as, according to Henley, he had recently “cheated [Corll] on a deal” relating to stolen property. He was grabbed by force and fought furiously against attempts by Corll to restrain him, even attempting to stab Corll with a knife. However, Scott saw Henley pointing a pistol toward him and according to Brooks, Scott “just gave up.” Scott was tied to the torture board and suffered the same fate as Aguirre: rape, torture, strangulation, and burial at High Island Beach. Brooks later stated Henley was “especially sadistic” in his participation in the murders committed at Schuler Street and Henley later admitted to gradually becoming “fascinated” with “how much stamina people have” when the recipient of the act of murder.

Before Corll vacated the address on June 26, Henley assisted Corll and Brooks in the abduction and murder of two youths named Billy Baulch and Johnny Delome. 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. Both youths were buried at High Island Beach. During the time Corll resided at Schuler Street, the trio lured a 19-year-old named William Ridinger to the house. Ridinger was tied to the plywood board, tortured and abused by Corll. Brooks later claimed he persuaded Corll to allow Ridinger to be released, and the youth was allowed to leave the residence. On another occasion during the time Corll resided at Schuler Street, Henley knocked Brooks unconscious as he entered the house. Corll then tied Brooks to his bed and assaulted the youth repeatedly before releasing him. Despite the assault, Brooks continued to assist Corll in the abductions of the victims. After vacating the Schuler Street residence, Corll moved to an apartment at Westcott Towers, where, in the summer of 1972, he is known to have killed a further two victims.

The first of these victims, 17-year-old Steven Sickman, was last seen leaving a party held in the Heights shortly before midnight on July 19. The youth was savagely bludgeoned about the chest with a blunt instrument before he was strangled and buried in the boat shed. Approximately one month later, on or about August 21, 19-year-old Roy Bunton was abducted while walking to his job as an assistant in a Houston shoe store. Bunton was gagged with a section of Turkish towel and his mouth bound with adhesive tape. He was shot twice in the head and buried in the boat shed. Neither youth was named by either Brooks or Henley as being a victim of Corll, and both youths were identified as victims only in 2011. On October 3, 1972, Henley and Brooks encountered two Heights teenagers, Wally Jay Simoneaux and Richard Hembree, walking to Hembree’s home. Simoneaux and Hembree were enticed into Brooks’s Corvette and driven to Corll’s Westcott Towers apartment. That evening, Simoneaux is known to have phoned his mother’s home and to have shouted the word “Mama” into the receiver before the connection was terminated.

The following morning, Hembree was accidentally shot in the mouth by Henley, with the bullet exiting through his neck. Several hours later, both youths were strangled to death and subsequently buried in a common grave inside the boat shed directly above the bodies of James Glass and Danny Yates. Sometime in November 1972, 18-year-old Willard Branch, an Oak Forest youth known to both Corll and Henley, disappeared while hitchhiking from Mount Pleasant to Houston. His gagged and emasculated body was buried in the boat shed. On November 11, a 19-year-old Spring Branch youth named Richard Kepner disappeared on his way to a phone booth. Kepner was strangled and buried at High Island Beach. Altogether, at least ten teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19 were murdered between March and November 1972, five of whom were buried at High Island Beach, and five inside the boat shed. On January 20, 1973, Corll moved to an address on Wirt Road in the Spring Branch district of Houston. Within two weeks of moving into this address, he had killed 17-year-old Joseph Lyles. Lyles was known to both Corll and Brooks. He had lived on Antoine Drive—the same street upon which Brooks resided in 1973. On March 1, Corll vacated his Wirt Road apartment; he briefly resided in an apartment on South Post Oak Road before moving to 2020 Lamar Drive, an address his father had vacated in Pasadena. 

Final Confrontation

Corll’s Death

Contacting Police

Accomplices’ Confessions

Search For Victims

Indictment

Trials and Convictions

Henley

Elmer Wayne Henley and David Owen Brooks were tried separately for their roles in the murders. Henley was brought to trial before Judge Preston Dial in San Antonio on July 1, 1974, charged with six murders committed between March 1972 and July 1973. Upon advice from his defense counsel, Henley did not take the stand to testify. His attorney, William Gray, did cross-examine several witnesses, but did not call any witnesses or experts for the defense. The prosecution called twenty-four of witnesses, including Kerley and Ridinger, and introduced eighty-two pieces of evidence, including Corll’s torture board and one of the boxes used to transport the victims. Inside the box, police had found hair which examiners testified came from both Cobble and Henley. Other incriminating testimony came from police officers who read from Henley’s written statements. In one part of his confession, Henley had described luring two of the victims for whose murder he had been brought to trial, Cobble and Jones, to Corll’s Pasadena residence. Henley had confessed that after their initial abuse and torture at Corll’s home, Cobble and Jones each had one wrist and ankle bound to the same side of Corll’s torture board. The youths were then forced by Corll to fight each other with the promise that the one who beat the other to death would be allowed to live.

After they had spent several hours beating each other, Jones was tied to a board and forced to watch Cobble again be assaulted, tortured, and shot to death before he himself was again raped, tortured, and strangled with a Venetian blind cord. Cobble and Jones were killed on July 27, 1973, two days after they had been reported missing. Several victims’ parents had to leave the courtroom to regain their composure as police and medical examiners described how their relatives were tortured and murdered. On July 15, 1974, both counsels presented their closing arguments to the jury the prosecution seeking life imprisonment, the defense a verdict of not guilty. In his closing argument to the jury, District Attorney Carol Vance apologized for his not being able to seek the death penalty, adding that the case was the “most extreme example of man’s inhumanity to man I have ever seen.” The jury deliberated for 92 minutes before finding Henley guilty of all six murders for which he was tried. The following day, July 16, formal procedures to sentence Henley for the six guilty verdicts began, and on August 8, Judge Preston Dial ordered that Henley serve each 99-year sentence consecutively (totaling 594 years), and he was transferred to the Huntsville Unit to formally begin his sentence.

Henley appealed his sentence and conviction, contending the jury in his initial trial had not been sequestered, that his attorneys’ objections to news media being present in the courtroom had been overruled, and citing that his defense team’s attempts to present evidence contending that the initial trial should not have been held in San Antonio had also been overruled by the judge. Henley’s appeal was upheld, and he was awarded a retrial in December 1978. Henley’s retrial began on June 18, 1979. This second trial was held in Corpus Christi, with Henley again represented by defense attorneys William Gray and Edwin Pegelow. Henley’s attorneys again attempted to have Henley’s written statements ruled inadmissible. However, Judge Noah Kennedy ruled the written statements given by Henley on August 9, 1973, as admissible evidence. The retrial lasted nine days, with Henley’s attorneys again calling no defense witnesses and again attacking the credibility of Henley’s written confession. The defense also contended the evidence provided by the state “belonged to Dean Corll, not Elmer Wayne Henley”. On June 27, 1979, the jury deliberated for over two hours before reaching their verdict; Henley was again convicted of six murders and sentenced to six concurrent 99-year terms.

Brooks

Brooks was brought to trial on February 27, 1975. He had been indicted for four murders committed between December 1970 and June 1973 but was brought to trial charged only with the June 1973 murder of 15-year-old William Ray Lawrence. Brooks’s defense attorney, Jim Skelton, argued that his client had not committed any murders and attempted to portray Corll and, to a lesser degree, Henley as being the active participants in the actual killings. Assistant District Attorney Tommy Dunn dismissed the defense’s contention outright, at one point telling the jury: “This defendant was in on this killing, this murderous rampage, from the very beginning. He tells you he was a cheerleader if nothing else. That’s what he was telling you about his presence. You know he was in on it.” Brooks’s trial lasted less than one week. The jury deliberated for just 90 minutes before they reached a verdict. He was found guilty of Lawrence’s murder on March 4, 1975, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Brooks showed no emotion as the sentence was passed, although his wife burst into tears. Brooks also appealed his sentence, contending that the signed confessions used against him were taken without his being informed of his legal rights, but his appeal was dismissed in May 1979.

Incarceration

Henley is serving his life sentence at the Mark Stiles Unit in Jefferson County, Texas. Successive parole applications dating from July 1980 have been denied. He is next eligible for parole in October 2025. Brooks served his life sentence at the Terrell Unit near Rosharon, Texas. He died of COVID-19-related complications at a Galveston hospital on May 28, 2020, at the age of 65. Brooks is buried at Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Walker County.

Victims

Corll and his accomplices are known to have killed a minimum of 28 teenagers and young men between September 1970 and August 1973, although it is suspected that the true number of victims is higher. As Corll was killed immediately prior to his murders being discovered, the true number of victims he had claimed will never be known. Twenty-seven of Corll’s known victims have been identified, and the identity of a 28th victim whose body has never been found, Mark Scott, is conclusively known. All of these victims were killed by either shooting, strangulation or a combination of both.