Testimony discloses shooting of Dean Corll

Houston (AP)

A detective has given a pretrial hearing in the Texas mass murders his account of what occurred in the home of Dean Corll the day Corll was shot to death. The testimony of David Mullican of the suburban Houston community of Pasadena came Tuesday during the pretrial hearing for Elmer Wayne Henley, 17. Henley has been charged with murder in the deaths of six of 27 teenaged boys whose bodies were uncovered last August. but his forthcoming trial involves coly one of the slayings.

Mullican told the court a story of paint-sniffing and sexual perversion which ended when Henley killed Corll, 33. As the hearing recessed for the day, the officer was telling about digging efforts at a Houston boat shed rented by Corll where officers found the decomposed bodies of 17 of the victims, including that of Charles R. Cobble, 17. Henley will go on trial in Cobble’s death as soon as the pretrial hearing ends.

Lawyers for Henley are trying to have statements made by Henley ad mitting guilt in the Cobble slaying thrown out of court. Police have said that Corll was the mastermind in a homosexual murder ring and that he hired Henley and David Owen Brooks, 18, to procure victims. Brooks has been indicted in four deaths and is due to go on trial March 1. Mullican said he went to Corll’s home in neighboring Pasadena after Henley called police about the shooting.

He said that there he found Henley, Cordell Kerley, 20, and Rhonda Louise Williams, 15. The detective said the three told him they sniffed paint from a spray can at the Corll residence the night of April 7, passed out and awoke the next morning handcuffed. Mullican said Henley told him he had talked Corll into releasing him, but that Kerley and Miss Williams were handcuffed to a large wooden board and stripped of their clothing. “He (Corll) told Henley to have sex with Rhonda while he had sex with Kerley. Henley started sniffing more spray paint and got high again,” Mullican said about that time, Corll put down a pistol he had been holding and Henley picked it up and told Corll to stop what he was doing with Kerley.

Henley then shot Corll,” Mullican testified. The detective said although he had all three of the youngsters warned of their constitutional rights, he was not sure at that time whether any of them should be charged. A grand jury later ruled Henley acted in self-defense in Corll’s death. Mullican said it was during two interrogations of Henley that he first heard of the mass murders. “During Wayne’s affidavit he brought up the fact that there was a warehouse or boat stall where bodies were buried, according to Corll,” the detective said. “He said he knew where it was, and he would be willing to show us.” Mullican said Henley did not admit complicity in the slayings and that “up to this point the only statement he had made was that there were persons that Dean Corll had told him he had done away with.”