State To Call More to Stand in Henley Case

by San Antonio (AP)

The state is expected to call five more witnesses today and wind up its testimony in the trial of Elmer Wayne Henley 13 accused in the Houston mass murders. District Court Judge Preston Dial told lawyers yesterday he expects the defense to immediately start presenting its side when the state rests today. District Attorney Carol Vance said he plans to call as witnesses the parents of four of the victims today as well as a detective to wind up testimony. Will Gray, the chief defense lawyer has not revealed his plans. Gray has issued subpoenas for more than 60 persons but said last week during questioning of jurors that he might not put on a single witness. One person who won’t be testifying is the defendant Gray said before the trial started that he would not put Henley accused of six counts of murder on the stand.

Prosecutors paraded witness after witness to the stand yesterday in an attempt to link Henley to physical evidence recovered in the case. Mrs. Vernon Cobble mother of one of the victims Charles C. Cobble, 17 identified a blue shirt found in a Houston boatshed as one worn by her son when he disappeared last July 25 from his Houston apartment. She also identified other clothing worn by her son and Marty Ray Jones, 18, who disappeared along with Cobble. The two youths were found buried together in the boatshed. Police also found 15 other bodies of young teenaged males. In all 27 bodies were dug up in three locations.

However yesterday Dr. Joseph A. Jachimczyk, the Harris County, Houston Medical Examiner said in his opinion one of the bodies found was not a victim in the mass murders. He referred to John Manning Sellers, 17 of Orange whose body was one of six buried on a beach at High Island Texas. The body was not identified until April. Dr Jachimczyk said Sellers was shot with a rifle and his body was fully clothed when found. The 26 other victims were either shot with a pistol or strangled and their bodies were buried nude. Asked if Sellers was a victim of the murder-torture ring Jachimczyk replied “In my opinion he probably was not but I can’t say for sure.” Also testifying yesterday were:

• Houston police chemist James A. Zotter who said Cobble’s shirt found in the boatshed contained hair which matched hair samples taken from Henley. He also said a hair found in a “body box” used to transport dead youths to burial contained a hair from Henley’s head.
• Mrs. Shirley Dollens, a neighbor of Cobble who said on the night Cobble she saw them walking with a youth resembling Henley. But she could not positively identify Henley as the youth.
• Gerald Oncale of Houston, the stepfather of victim Johnny Ray Delone, 16, said Delone disappeared from the same neighborhood in which Henley lived in May of 1972.
• Louis Garcia of Houston, father of another victim, Homer Garcia, 15, who disappeared July 13, 1973, after graduating from a Houston driver’s school that night.
• John F. Tomlin, a supervisor at the school who told the jury that Garcia and Henley were both attending classes at the school on the night Garcia disappeared.
• Fred R. Rymer, a firearms expert with the Texas Department of Public Safety in Austin. He said a pistol introduced by the state was the gun used to shoot and kill Cobble and Garcia.

The gun was the same one Henley told police he used to kill Dean A. Corll, 33, the man police say was the leader of the three-member group. In statements given to police both Henley and David Owen Brooks, 19 admitted procuring youths for Corll who homosexually raped them. The two youths also said they helped torture and kill the victims and disposed their bodies. Brooks charged with four deaths has not had a trial date set.