Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and this week on Pushing Up Lilies, we’re diving into one of the most disturbing and often overlooked cases in true crime history - the horrifying crimes of Dean Arnold Corll, also known as The Candy Man. Operating in Houston during the 1970s, Corll was responsible for the brutal abduction, torture, and murder of at least 29 young boys, making it one of the most chilling serial killer cases in the U.S. I’ll walk you through how he gained the trust of his victims, the twisted role candy and a van played in luring them in, and how two teenage accomplices helped him carry out these unimaginable crimes. We’ll also discuss how Corll’s reign of terror finally came to an end, and the shocking way the truth was uncovered. This episode is not for the faint of heart, but it’s one we absolutely need to talk about. Join me as we peel back the layers of this truly disturbing case. * Listener discretion is advised.
CONNECT WITH JULIE MATTSON:
• Website: https://pushinguplilies.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pushinguplilies
00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey guys, it's been another crazy week here in the big city of Denton, Texas. I've gotten called out every day this week, early in the morning, like my phone will ring around 5-5:30, which is when my shift starts.
00:45
And then I basically hit the floor running. I mean, I've been out of here going on scenes. And I kind of miss that, you know, some weeks it's not that busy. Some weeks I spend a lot of my time in the office doing paperwork and following up with doctors.
01:02
And, you know, don't get a lot of scenes. I feel like the night shift sometimes gets more scenes. Nothing good, you know, happens after midnight is what they say. But I can remember when I first started doing death investigation, I was working nights.
01:18
And as much as I hated it, I loved it because I was busy. And I kind of got to see more if that makes sense. School is going as good as it can, I guess. I had two like really quick three week classes.
01:36
And I mean, as soon as they started, they were over. That was kind of crazy. And then in the middle of a five week course now, and then I have three more classes before my clinical starts. I'm not really sure what to do about clinical with work.
01:52
So it's going to get kind of tricky. I thought I might talk to some other nurse practitioners and see how they did it, how they balance. because I don't know. I mean it's gonna be kind of crazy. It's already kind of hard to balance work in school and the podcast.
02:12
I'll figure it out. Strangely enough I always have and it's always kind of worked out but it's just kind of hectic right now because school is having us start to get ready for clinicals. We've got to get all of our shots and get a lot of our paperwork done and it's just a lot but you know what we're going to muddle through.
02:34
Other than that it's just been a crazy hectic week all the way around but I don't know what I'd do if it wasn't that way. I think most of y'all who know me or have heard me talking I kind of function better in chaos which is nutty but it is what it is.
02:55
We're having thunderstorms here this morning so I got Woken up at around four with thunder and what sounded like hail. I'm not sure I always love how People put on facebook, you know a tailing and it happens a lot in texas I always say if you're gonna store a vehicle Somewhere outside of your home to get it under cover somewhere because you literally never know when it's gonna hail around here.
03:22
It's It's a crap shoot. So Anyway this week we're going to talk about a serial killer. His name is Dean Arnold Corll and He was an American serial killer and sex offender He abducted raped tortured and murdered a minimum of 29 men teenage and young men between 1970 and 1973 in Houston and Pasadena, Texas Now this was way before I was there So I was a little girl when this happened But I think cases like this would be really fun to work to try to put it all together I know that years ago We thought and of course I left right in the middle of it,
04:10
but we thought we might have had a serial killer in the Houston area he was abducting prostitutes and Cutting their hands off and then wrapping plastic bags around their heads and throwing them in I believe it's a river river lake something a body of water The reason for cutting their hands off was because they couldn't be identified because they couldn't be fingerprinted Cases like that.
04:35
I don't know are just so interesting to me, especially if it's a serial killer So I'm glad we haven't had a serial killer around here But this would have been a very interesting case to me to work This guy was aided by two teenage accomplices David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley and so there were teenagers and he basically basically recruited them to help him murder, which is sick.
05:05
The crimes were known as the Houston Mass Murderers. They came to light after Elmer Wayne Henley shot and killed Dean Corll, and the case was considered the worst example of serial murder in U.S. history.
05:23
Dean Corll was born December 24, 1939 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He died at the age of 33 in Pasadena, Texas on August 8, 1973. He essentially died of exsanguination, which is bleeding out from gunshot wounds to the left chest, back, and lungs.
05:50
Now, Corll's victims were normally lured with an offer. He would say, hey, let's go. go to this party or I'll give you a ride somewhere and so he enticed people by basically trying to make them think he was doing them a favor.
06:09
They would then be restrained either by force or deception and each of his victims was killed by strangulation or shooting with a .22 caliber pistol. So this is I'm sure typical of serial killers and abductors who basically try to make you think that they're doing you a favor.
06:32
I don't know if y'all watch the I think it's YouTube or Instagram videos where parents ask the kids like I'm a man and I have a puppy and if I came to you and asked you if you wanted to come into the back of my van and my puppy what would you say and the kids say okay you know it's so cute when they say that and I know that the parents are using it as an example to try to teach the children that that's not right but it is cute when they get it on video and then they you know say I have candy do you want to come into my car pretend I'm a stranger and the kids will be like what kind of candy do you have I think it's so cute.
07:13
Again they're using it as a teaching tool essentially they teach them at the end of the video that that's not the correct thing to do but Corll and his accomplices buried 18 of their victims they buried them in different places 18 of them though were buried in a rented boat shed now four victims were buried in a woodland near Lake Sam Rayburn and one victim was buried on a beach in Jefferson County at least six victims were buried in a beach on the Bolivar Peninsula.
07:53
Now the two guys that he suckered into helping him I guess Yes, the two accomplices, Brooks and Henley, actually confessed to helping Corll in several abductions and murders and both of them were essentially sentenced to life in prison and we'll go into them and who they are a little bit later.
08:18
But Corll was known as the Candy Man and the Pied Piper because he and his family previously owned a candy factory in Houston and had been known to give free candy to children which again is… creepy. And who knows maybe this is where the story about the white van with the candy started but that was his nickname, and they owned this candy factory.
08:44
Again, he was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana to Mary Emma Robison and Arnold Edwin Corll. His father was strict and his mom was very protective. The couple fought frequently and essentially they divorced in 1946.
09:05
Mary sold the family home and relocated actually in a trailer house in Memphis, Tennessee. Arnold was drafted into the Air Force after the divorce. She moved to Tennessee to allow her sons to be closer and to be in better contact with their father, which is super nice.
09:26
Now, Corll was a shy, serious child. He rarely socialized, but he was also just genuinely concerned about other people. Came across as a nice kid, just super shy, super serious, as a lot of children are very sensitive, and adults, very sensitive to criticism or rejection.
09:50
So at the age of seven, he suffered an undiagnosed case of rheumatic fever, which was found later when doctors discovered in 1950 that he had a heart murmur. He was told to avoid physical activity, so no PE class at school.
10:11
Now, even though his parents had divorced, they remarried in 1950, moved to Pasadena, and then divorced again in 1953. Both kids, they had two children, maintained contact with their dad, but they continued to live with their mom.
10:32
After the second divorce, Corll's mother married a traveling clock salesman named Jake John West. That's kind of a weird job to have, traveling clock salesman. It doesn't sound super lucrative, but who knows?
10:47
We don't really have traveling salesman anymore. Do y'all remember when they used to come to the door and sell encyclopedias? My parents bought some, so we had some for you. And I used them like crazy and now we didn't even use encyclopedias.
11:01
We just Google whatever life is so different now I mean, I know that does my age know the difference but kids definitely don't it's like me with a map like there's no way That you can hand me a map and I can get in my car and figure out where to go I've got to have my GPS.
11:19
It's got to be talking to me It has to tell me where to turn and has the time I have to be looking at it too So that I truly know where to turn cuz it'll say turn left But you're supposed to pass three streets before you do it.
11:32
So I'm very visual I'm very thankful for ways and for Google Maps and all the great tools that I use to get me around But traveling clock salesman, that's interesting. I wonder if they met when he was trying to sell her a clock.
11:49
I don't know Interesting can't see a huge markup in clocks, but Anyway, the two, they moved to Vidor, Texas, when his half-sister Janine was born. So, Janine was a result of Jake John West and Corll's mom.
12:06
Corll's mom and stepfather started a small family candy company. And it started in their garage, which a lot of good businesses do. I think we know Amazon started that way in the guy's garage. So, Corll worked there while attending school.
12:24
He ran the candy making machines and helped pack the product. The product was sold by his stepdad on a sales route. Sounds like a pretty lucrative business. The route occasionally involved traveling to Houston, where much of the product was sold.
12:42
We all know how big Houston is. So, Corll went to school in Vidor from 1954 to 1958, where he was, again, regarded as a well-behaved student. And he did get good grades. And that's one thing about a lot of serial killers.
13:01
Many times they're good in school. They get good grades. They're considered well-behaved. They're mostly quiet, I believe. But this is how Corll was. He was considered a loner, but he did occasionally date girls when he was a teenager.
13:19
And he played the trombone in the brass band. I always wished we'd had a band at our high school. We were just too small. We didn't have enough people. Now, he graduated in the summer of 1958, and him and his family moved to the northern outskirts of Houston so the family business could thrive.
13:39
And they opened a new shop called Pecan Prints. So this is their new candy store. In 1960, at his mom's request, Corll moved to Yoder, Indiana. to live with his widowed grandmother, so I guess she wanted him to go stay with grandma because grandpa was no longer living and she wanted somebody to keep an eye on her.
14:04
So he moved to Indiana. He met a local girl and actually she proposed to him in 1962 and he rejected that proposal. Now he lived in Indiana for almost two years before he moved back to Houston to help with the candy business and then essentially when he moved back to Houston, he lived in an apartment above the candy store.
14:31
His mom divorced West, so his mom and stepdad got divorced in 1963 and she opened a new candy business which she named Corll Candy Company. Corll was appointed vice president, and the younger brother was secretary and treasurer.
14:51
The same year that she started this company in 1963, one of their male employees complained to his mom that he had made advances towards him. She didn't really like this at all, or believe it, and so she fired the teenager.
15:09
The teenager no longer had a job because he told. Now, Carl was drafted into the army on August the 10th of 1964, and he went to basic training in Fort Polk, Louisiana. He later went to Fort Benning, Georgia before a permanent assignment here in Texas at Fort Hood, and he hated it.
15:32
And so he applied for a hardship discharge stating that his family needed him to come back home and help them with the business. So that's the excuse that he used to try to get out of the military. Now, after only 10 months of service, he was given an honorable discharge.
15:52
He did diverge to his close friends that he realized he was homosexual, and his mannerisms changed when he was around teenage boys. I'm sure that made a lot of his friends nervous when he disclosed that.
16:08
And then again, he acted different when he was around young boys. Now, after he left the military, he returned to Houston Heights, and he resumed his position as Vice President of the Candy Company. Now, his former stepfather retained the former family business, Pecan Prince, and then here, him and his mom and his brother were running the Corll Candy Company.
16:36
Competition between the two candy companies was fierce, so he devoted much of his time to the candy store. So he was helping his mom. Okay, so in 1967, he'd be befriended 12-year-old David Owen Brooks.
16:55
Again, super creepy. Brooks was a sixth-grade student that Corll frequently gave free candy to and so he would join Corll on trips to South Texas beaches in the company of various other young boys and Corll gave Brooks money when he asked for it and then he began to view Corll as a bit of a father figure Which he's basically grooming him.
17:23
We know that now I mean, he's giving him money giving him free candy and his kids a 12 year old sixth grader upon Corll's urging a sexual relationship developed between Corll and Brooks in 1969 and Corll would pay Brooks either in cash or gifts in return for fellatio sick Brooks' father still lived in Houston, and his mother lived in Beaumont, and so he dropped out of Waldrop High School when he was 15 and moved to Beaumont with his mom.
18:04
Now, when he visited his dad in Houston, he also visited Corll. Corll allowed him to stay in his apartment, and Brooks later moved back to Houston and pretty much regarded Corll's apartment as his second home, so he stayed with him quite a bit.
18:22
By the time Brooks dropped out of high school, Corll's mom and his half-sister moved to Manitou Springs, Colorado after her third marriage failed and the candy company closed in June of 1968. Okay, so this is when I was born.
18:40
Corll's mom opened a new candy farm there in Colorado, but he opted to stay in Houston, and they spoke on the phone frequently, but apparently after she moved to Colorado with his half-sister, she never saw him again, which is really sad.
19:01
Corll then worked as an electrician at Houston Power and Light while working for the candy company before it closed, and he would eventually become a supervisor and work there until the day he died. Now, between 1970 and 1973, Corll is known to have killed a minimum of 29 victims.
19:23
Could you imagine 29? All were males between the ages of 13 and 20, and most of them were abducted from Houston Heights because it was a low-income neighborhood. Now, in most of the abductions, he was assisted by one or both of his accomplices, so either David Owen Brooks or Elmer Wayne Inley assisted him in conducting most of these young boys and young men.
19:55
Several victims were friends of the accomplices. Others were hitchhikers or even just acquaintances, people that Corll had just met along the way. Two victims, Billie Jean Balch Jr. and Gregory Mallie Winkle, were actually former employees of the Corll Candy Company.
20:16
I mean, he knew a lot of people from working and then I guess he thought with the help of these accomplices he could get even more people. His victims were lured into one of the vehicles that he owned.
20:30
He owned a Ford Ecolon van, see, there you go, candy in the van, a Plymouth GTX, and a 1969 Chevy Corvette. And now the Corvette was one he actually purchased for Brooks in 1971. So he was buying him big, nice gifts in return for favors.
20:50
He enticed these young men and boys by offering them a ride or saying that he would take them to a party and he would drive them to his house. He would give them alcohol and drugs until they passed out.
21:06
Either by force he would grab them or trick them into putting on handcuffs so that they were basically unable to defend themselves. Many of them were stripped naked and tied to the bed or a plywood torture board, which he regularly kept hanging on his wall.
21:27
I don't know that I would sink anything. I mean, I don't know. It's weird for somebody to keep a plywood torture board hanging on their wall. I don't know that I would, as a young kid, know what that was.
21:36
So it wouldn't necessarily throw up red flags, but he kept this torture board hanging on his wall. They would then be sexually assaulted, beaten, tortured, and sometimes after several days killed by strangulation or shooting with a .22 caliber pistol.
21:55
Now their bodies were many times tied in a plastic sheeting and again buried in one of the four places, either the rented boat shed, a beach on the Bolivar Peninsula, a woodland area near Lake Sam Rayburn, or a beach in Jefferson County.
22:13
So those were the four different locations where he buried the bodies. Now in several instances, Corll would force his victims to either phone or write their parents with explanations for their absences.
22:27
So basically what he was trying to do was ease the parents' fears for their son's safety and also keep them from looking for them. He had it all planned out. He would have these boys reach out to their parents and say, hey, I'm being well taken care of.
22:42
Don't worry about me. And so then basically no one would be looking for these kids. And he would also keep keepsakes, usually keys from his victim, so he always kept something from each victim. During the years in which he abducted and murdered his victims, he often moved around.
23:02
He lived in or close to Houston Heights, which was that low-income area where he abducted most of his victims from, until he moved into his father's former home in Pasadena in the spring of 1973. His very first victim was an 18-year-old college freshman named Jeffrey Conan.
23:23
Conan vanished on September 25th of 1970 while he was hitchhiking with another student from the University of Texas. So he had been dropped off alone on the corner of Westheimer Road and South Voss Road in Houston and again was hitchhiking to try to get to his parents' home.
23:46
It was around 6.30 p.m. Corll Road. likely offered Conan a ride home because he was hitchhiking and Conan evidently accepted. Now, at the time of his disappearance, Corll lived in an apartment in that area, and he had just paid the deposit and moved in on the 21st and Conan was abducted on the 25th of September in 1970.
24:14
Now, Brooks later led police to Conan's body and this was in 1973. The body was buried at High Island Beach. He apparently died of asphyxiation caused by manual strangulation and a cloth gag that had been placed in his mouth.
24:32
The nude body was buried under a large boulder covered with a layer of lime wrapped in plastic and bound with a nylon cord. This is crazy real stuff. Shortly after his murder, Brooks interrupted Corll in the act of sexually assaulting two teenage boys that Corll had strapped to a four-poster bed.
24:57
Now, he promised Brooks a car in return for his silence. Brooks accepted. So, this is where the green Chevy Corvette came in. So, this is when Brooks got the car from Corll because he saw this happening and paid him basically to be quiet.
25:15
So, Corll later told Brooks that he actually killed the two youths and offered him $200 for any boy that he could lure to his apartment for him. So, this is so sick y'all. I don't like these stories about kid abductions, but it's really history.
25:34
I mean, it's like really happened, so not a made-up story. And so, that's why I find it so interesting. I just wish I could get into the brain of someone like Dean Corll. Now, on December 13th of 1970, Brooks, the accomplice, lured two 14-year-old Spring Branch youths named James Glass and Danny Yates away from a religious rally held in Houston Heights to an apartment that Corll had recently rented,
26:04
and this was at 3300 Yorktown. Glass was an acquaintance of Brooks who had previously visited Corll's address, but both of these young men were restrained to Corll's four-poster bed with rope and handcuffs and subsequently raked, strangled, and buried in the boat shed that he rented.
26:24
An electrical cord with alligator clips was attached to each end and was buried alongside him. Now, six weeks after the murder of Glass and Yates on January 30, 1971, Brooks and Corll encountered two teenage brothers, Donald and Jerry Waldrup, walking to their parents' house.
26:47
They'd been driven to a friend's home by their father with plans to discuss forming a bowling league and then started walking home when they realized that their friend that they were supposed to go talk to about the bowling league wasn't home.
27:00
So dad dropped him off, friends weren't home, dad didn't wait, so the boys walked home. Both boys were enticed into Carl's van and driven to an apartment that he had rented where they were raped, strangled, and again buried in the boat shed.
27:19
Between March and May of 1971, Corll had killed three victims, all of whom lived in Houston Heights and all of whom were buried toward the rear of the boat shed. Now in each of these abductions, Brooks is known to be a participant.
27:36
He kind of became just like Corll. One of the three victims, 15 year old Randall Harvey, was last seen on March 9th cycling towards Oak Forest where he worked as a gas station attendant. Harvey was driven to Corll's apartment where he was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head.
27:57
The other two victims, 13-year-old David Heliguist and 16-year-old Gregory Mallie Winkle, were abducted and killed together on the afternoon of May 29th and both were murdered at one of Corll's apartments.
28:11
Both sets of parents launched a frantic search for their sons and who would not? I mean I can only imagine I see all these documentaries where people's kids are missing and I would completely lose mine.
28:23
So they were frantically searching for their kids. One of the youths who voluntarily offered to distribute posters the parents had printed, offering a monetary reward for information leading to the boys whereabouts was 15 year old Elmer Wayne Henley.
28:42
He was a lifelong friend of Heliguist, so one of these boys and he would pin the reward posters to try to help find this kid. On July 1st of 1971, a 17-year-old named David Falcon disappeared and sections of his body were later discovered from the boat shed.
29:05
Seven weeks later, on August 17th, Corll and Brooks encountered a 17-year-old acquaintance of Brooks named Reuben Watson Haney walking home from a movie. Brooks persuaded Haney to attend a party, so again, this is how they lured him in, and Haney agreed he was taken to Corll's home where he was strangled and again buried in the boat shed.
29:29
In September of 1971, Corll moved to an apartment on Columbia Street, and Brooks stated that he assisted Corll in the abduction and murder of two youth during that time. Brooks stated that The youth killed immediately prior to Henley's involvement in the murders was abducted from the heights and kept alive for four days before his murder, so he was likely tortured.
29:52
The identities of a lot of his victims remain unknown. Super scary story. And it's kind of a long story. And so what I'm going to do is next week I'm going to talk about how Brooks encountered Elmer Wayne Henley and what part he took in the abductions and murders of these boys.
30:16
It's horrifying and I can only imagine, I mean, most of these kids were missing from the same area of town and most of the time Corll lived in that area. I mean, it sounds like he moved around a lot because it keeps talking about how he got different apartments in different parts of town.
30:33
But this must have been where the candy in the van thing started way back in the 60s and 70s with Dean Corll, since he owned, or his mom owned this candy company. But anyway, so we're going to talk about Elmer Wayne Henley and a little bit more about this story next week.
30:55
Hopefully the weather lets up today, otherwise I'll be swimming to work and hopefully the city or the county behaves itself since I'm going into the office. Wednesdays usually, knock on wood, are not too bad.
31:10
Mondays are hectic. Mondays are always catch up from the weekend and they're always really hard when it's after a holiday. So Friday was good Friday. So our office was essentially closed. I use the term loosely.
31:24
We always have an investigator on call from home, but no one's in the office to answer the phone. No one's in there running our desks on the log and keeping up with the paperwork end of things when there's a holiday.
31:37
So Monday we really played catch up. So anyway, we'll see how this weather turns out. out today. I hope y'all have an amazing rest of your week. Again, cereal boxes are available for sale on my website.
31:51
There's a link at the top. Go to www.pushinguplilies.com. You can order yours now. I will tell you there are only 30 of the initial box. So if you're listening and you want one, please go online today.
32:06
Those are almost ready to be shipped. I have all the items already received from them. They're going to be killer y'all. All right. Have a great week. Talk to y'all soon. Bye. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies. If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcast. This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public. Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.