Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and this week on Pushing Up Lilies, we’re heading back into the terrifying world of Dean Corll, also known as The Candyman. But this time, we’re focusing on his young accomplice - Elmer Wayne Henley, the teen who went from high school student to serial killer’s apprentice. Elmer didn’t just know about the murders, he helped lure the victims in, tie them up, and ultimately played a role in one of the most horrifying true crime cases in U.S. history. In this episode, I’ll walk you through how Elmer got pulled into Dean Corll’s twisted web, the manipulative relationship they had, and the shocking moment he finally turned on his mentor. This is a tough story, especially because so many of the victims were so young, but it’s one that needs to be told. Join me as we dig deep into the psychological pull of a predator and the horrifying legacy of The Candyman Murders. * Listener discretion is advised.
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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, today was Tuesday, but it was Monday all over again. Absolutely crazy day. We were a little short-handed, which is fine. I think as a nurse, we're always kind of used to being a little bit short-handed.
00:48
I've noticed even some of our local police departments are short-handed. I was on a scene the other day and a call came in and several of them had to leave a scene to go to another scene because they didn't have very many officers.
01:02
It's weird though because there's a lot of people looking for jobs that can't get them, but I don't think anybody wants, not many people want to be nurses and cops and teachers anymore. I know even a lot of people in those career fields who are thinking about changing their career and I don't necessarily know why.
01:21
I don't always think it's because of burnout. I think sometimes people just want a change. It's not that they absolutely hate what they're doing, but they just want to do something different. Whoo, today I got my booty handed to me on a silver platter.
01:36
My phone started ringing at 5:01. My shift starts at 5 a.m. So 5:01, my phone's going off like crazy and that's when it all started. I had a homicide, I had a hospital death, I had two hospice deaths, and then I had a nursing home calling a death.
01:58
We run into this a lot. thought I might mention it, where people don't have family. And I know we've talked about this before. A lot of people are estranged from their family. When they die, like there's nobody for us to call.
02:11
This particular nursing home was like, there's no family. Like the person was admitted and never listed a next of kin on their paperwork. And so there's no one to call. It's so sad, but in those cases, the social worker at the facility has to step in.
02:32
And in our county, we have them contact one of the four local funeral homes who offer county cremation. The county basically pays for their family member to be cremated. And then the family can get the cremains.
02:47
I don't know how far in depth they go as far as like researching their ability to pay. I do know that recently that has become an issue. So if someone has assets, they might. Refuse to actually pay for it But I've often thought about starting like a nonprofit to help with that sort of thing I just don't know how to go about doing it if anybody knows anything about nonprofits reach out to me I'd like to learn more Last week we talked about Dean Corll and all of his murders in Houston and what was going on while he was there he also known as the candy man and Elmer Henley was actually one of his accomplices We're gonna go in a little bit to how Elmer Wayne Henley participated and how he got to be a part of the plan back in 1971 Brooks who was also a cohort of Corll encountered Elmer Wayne Henley from high school they went to junior high I guess and Brooks introduced Henley to Corll. Henley Likely was lured to Corll’s address as an intended victim,
04:10
which would be really scary for me to know later But Corll evidently decided that the youth would make a good accomplice And so he offered him the fee the same fee that he offered Brooks $200 for any boy that he could lure into his apartment and He informed Henley that he was involved in a white slavery ring operating from Dallas Henley later stated that for several months.
04:39
He ignored the offer although he did keep the relationship with Corll and gradually began to view him as Like a brother For some reason, he admired his work ethic I really don't know how you could do that, but he admired his work ethic and felt like he could confide in Corll.
05:01
So, in early 1972 he decided to accept Corll's offer and then he, I mean his family was in trouble financially, so he was probably like $200 for every young boy, like I'm gonna do it. Because they needed money he decided to be a little more involved.
05:20
Henley said the first abduction he participated in occurred during the time Corll resided at 925 Shuler Street, an address that he moved to on February 19th, again 1972. Brooks later had claimed that Henley became involved in abductions while Corll resided at the address he occupied immediately prior to Shuler Street.
05:44
So there's a little bit of discrepancies there on exactly when Henley started helping abduct young boys, but if Henley's statement is to be believed the victim was abducted from the heights in February or early March 1972.
06:05
In a statement that Henley gave police following his arrest, Henley stated that he and Corll picked up a boy at the corner of 11th and Studewood, lured him to Corll's home on the promise of smoking marijuana.
06:20
So, he was like, hey, come over here, we're going to smoke some weed at Corll's house. Henley, they kind of came together and worked out a plan. Henley cuffed his own hands behind his back, and then he freed himself with a key hidden in his back pocket.
06:35
And then he basically tricked this kid into this kid that he first abducted, tricked him into putting handcuffs on. And then Henley observed Corll bind and gag him, and then he left the kid alone with Corll.
06:54
Believing that he was to be sold into the sexual slavery ring. So the identity of this first victim that Henley assisted in the abduction of actually remains unknown. No one knows who that was. Now, a month later, on March 24th, 1972, Henley, Brooks, and Corll both encountered an 18-year-old acquaintance of Henley's named Frank Aguirre.
07:21
He was leaving a restaurant on Yale Street where he worked, and Henley called him over to Corll's van and invited him to drink beer and smoke marijuana. And so, the three of them took Aguirre to Corll's apartment.
07:37
He followed them in his rambler, and inside Corll's house, he smoked marijuana with Henley, Brooks, and Corll before picking up a pair of handcuffs that Corll had left on the table. In response, Corll pounced on Aguirre and pushed him onto the table and cuffed his hands behind his back.
07:57
So he loved catching people off guard, he loved tricking people, offering them again beer and marijuana to try to get them to come to his house. Henley later claimed that he had not known of Corll's true intentions towards Aguirre when he had persuaded his friend to accompany him over to Corll's house.
08:16
But in a 2010 interview, he said that he had attempted to persuade Corll not to assault and kill Aguirre. However, Corll actually refused at that time, informing Henley that he had rape tortured and killed the previous victim he had assisted in abducting, and that he intended to do the same with Aguirre, and Henley subsequently assisted Corll and Brooks in Aguirre's burial at High Island Beach.
08:44
So I feel like at some point, these guys kind of got scared of him. I don't know. I mean, they weren't good guys either. I'm not defending them at all. But I feel like Maybe it got to the point where they felt like they had a participator, they were going to be victims.
09:01
Despite the revelations that Corl was killing the boys that he and Brooks had assisted in abducting, Henley became an active participant. So he helped with the abductions and the murders. Again, he was initially going to be a victim and Corl kind of showed interest in him coming to work for him like Henley.
09:23
And then because his family was low on money, he decided that it would be a good thing for him to bring boys to Corl for $200 apiece. All right, so strangely enough, there were no victims killed between February 1st and June 1st of 1973.
09:42
And this is because Corl suffered from a Hydra seal in early 73. And so they feel like that that's maybe one reason why he cut back on killing is, you know, he had that period of inactivity because he was sick.
09:58
From June on Corll’s rate of killings increased dramatically and both Henley and Brooks had later testified to the increase in the level of brutality of the murders committed while Corl resided at the address on Lamar Drive.
10:15
Now Corll’s death, I'm going to explain a little bit about him in an apparent attempt to desensitize himself. During an abduction episode, Henley began kind of pacing the room. He asked Corl to take a victim into the other room and Corl ignored him.
10:36
And then Henley grabbed Corll’s pistol and said, you've gone far enough. The two continued to fight, continued to argue, and then Henley fired at Corl, hitting him in the forehead. So the bullet failed to fully penetrate his skull.
10:52
Man, he's thick-headed and neat like could you imagine? I've never really seen a bullet fail to penetrate someone's head when it's fired right at him, but he continued to lurch towards Henley and Henley fired another two rounds, hitting him in the left shoulder and one bullet actually penetrated his lungs and lodged into his spine.
11:16
Corll started coughing up blood as he ran out of the room and then Henley fired three additional bullets into his lower back and shoulder as Corll slid down the wall in the hallway outside the room where they had these two teenagers bound that Henley was trying to get him to let go.
11:34
Corll died when he fell. He was completely nude and there's my #DieNaked is easier as death investigators. It is a lot easier for people to die naked. We can better visualize their jewelry because we do remove it and then we can also there's no documentation as far as clothing.
11:58
Sometimes when you're at a scene, I mean, I always have to go back and look at my pictures to document the position of the body and medical intervention and jewelry that I removed and property I pulled out of the pockets and sometimes we rely a lot on our photo documentation to jog our memory when we get back home to write our reports but it's so much easier if someone doesn't have clothes on because then when you get back to the office,
12:25
you don't have to document what they were wearing. You don't have to worry about checking the pockets. Any jewelry that's on them is easier to visualize and usually easier to get off. It's just always so much easier.
12:40
So going back to Corll getting shot, strangely he thought that Corll might have been proud of the way he had behaved during the confrontation and said that Corll had trained him to react quickly and forcefully, which is exactly what he did.
12:57
After Henley shot him, Henley and one of the victims began weeping and the victim actually thanked Henley for saving his life and then Henley released him and then at this point one of the victims actually said we should call the police because Henley was kind of like okay go get out of here I've kind of set you free and the victim was I mean smart he said no we should call the police so Henley agreed and he looked up the number for the Pasadena Police Department and I worked a lot of scenes in Pasadena when I worked for Harris County in Houston.
13:35
At 8 24 a.m. on August the 8th 1973 Henley placed a call to Pasadena Police Department and his call was answered by an her name was Velma Lines and he blurted to the operator. You know this just reminds me of Texas Ex and it says y'all better come here right now.
13:54
I just killed a man. Henley gave the address to the operator as 2020 Lamar Drive in Pasadena. And the victims that Henley had helped set free and Henley waited outside Corll's home for the police to arrive.
14:12
And then minutes later, a Pasadena Police Department patrol car arrived. And the three, Henley and these two victims that were just set free were sitting on the curb outside the house. The officer saw a .22 caliber pistol on the driveway.
14:29
The men were all weeping. The officer observed one of them rocking back and forth with his head in his hands and also weeping. Henley at that time told the officer that he was the one who made the call.
14:44
And he indicated that Corll's body was inside the house. And the officer confiscated the pistol, put them on the patrol car. and went into the bungalow and read them all their Miranda rights. The really weird thing is like Henley told them, you know, if you weren't my friend, I could have made 200 bucks off of you.
15:05
If you weren't my friend, I could have let him kill you. I could have let him torture, rape, murder you, and bury your body. Almost like he wanted them to give him $200 in return for saving their lives.
15:18
Now, Henley was initially questioned about the killing of Corll, and he did recount the events of the previous morning explaining he shot him in self-defense. The two victims who had also escaped with him corroborated Henley's account.
15:34
They did believe that Henley had acted in self-defense, so that's kind of how the police treated it. By May of 74, 21 of Corll's victims had been identified and all but four of the youth having either lived in or having close connections to Houston Heights.
15:52
Two more teenagers were identified in 1983 and 85. One of whom was Richard Kepner had originally lived in Humboldt, but then he relocated to Spring Branch shortly before his disappearance to train as a carpenter's helper.
16:07
The weird thing is like this is the area I used to live in. I know all these parts of town. Talk a little bit about the indictment. On August 13, the grand jury actually convened there in Harris County to hear evidence against Henley and Brooks and then the first witnesses to testify were the two victims that Henley turned loose the day he shot Corll.
16:30
They testified to the events that happened on that day and then another witness also testified to his experience at the hands of Corll, and he recounted his abuse before he was released. Now, also to testify at the hearing were the investigators who actually recounted the statements and confessions provided by Henley and Brooks in the days.
16:54
following Corll's death. Now after listing over six hours of testimony on August 14th, the grand jury indicted Henley on three counts of murder and then indicted Brooks on one count of murder. Bail for each of them and remember they were young they were considered youth was set at $100,000 doesn't seem like very much but this was a long time ago.
17:23
Henley was not that that murder was committed in self-defense, so he was not charged with Corll's death. Now by the time the grand jury completed the investigation Henley had been indicted for six murders and Brooks had been indicted for four.
17:39
Both would later reject pretrial offers presented to them by the assistant district attorney of life sentences in exchange for pleas of guilty. They did want Henley to undergo a psych evaluation to determine whether or not he was mentally competent to stand trial and this was also opposed by the attorney.
17:59
They felt like that that would actually violate Henley's constitutional rights. Henley is serving his life sentence at the Mark Stiles Unit in Jefferson County, Texas. Successive parole applications from way back in July of 1980 have all been denied, but guess what?
18:18
He's eligible for parole again in October of this year. Let's hope that he does not get out. Brooks served his life sentence at Terrell Unit near Rocher in Texas and he died of COVID-related complications at a Galveston hospital back in 2020.
18:35
He was 65 years old at the time. Now talking a little bit about the victims, Corll and his accomplices are known to have killed a minimum of 29 teenagers and young men between September of 70 and August of 73.
18:52
So that's a lot of people in a pretty short period of time. Now they do suspect that the numbers are quite a bit higher than that. Because Corll was killed prior to the murders being discovered, the true number will literally never be known.
19:10
I mean he's not around. He probably never told the truth to anybody about how many people he killed, so we will never know. But 27 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.
19:31
All of these victims were killed by, again, the way he killed them all, either shooting, strangulation, or a combination of both. Kind of a quick rundown, and there's so many, and it's so sad, y'all, to think about how he lured all these kids into his van.
19:52
In 1970, he killed an 18-year-old student from the University of Texas at Austin. He abducted him while he was hitchhiking. We talked about this last week and buried him at High Island Beach. December the 13th, again of that same year, he actually killed James Glass.
20:12
He was only 14, y'all. He also knew Brooks and he actually was last seen walking out of the church. He was strangled with a cord and buried inside the boat shed. And then on the same day, another 14-year-old who was friends with James Glass named Michael Yates was also lured to Corll's apartment and they were both strangled before they were buried.
20:41
Now on 71, there's a 15-year-old that he abducted while walking home from a friend's house. and it's so crazy because occasionally he would abduct two at the same time. He also abducted his brother so Jerry Lynn Waldrup and Donald Wayne Waldrup who were 15 and 13 were strangled the day after their abduction and buried in the common grave outside of the boat shed.
21:10
There's another 15 year old on my birthday March 9th. He was on his way to work. He was a gas station attendant and he was shot once in the head and also buried in the boat shed. In May there were two.
21:27
It looks like they were swimming together and they were actually abducted killed and buried in the boat shed. Actually they were strangled. July 1st of 71 there was a 17 year old August 17th there was another 17 year old who left us home to go to the movie theater and called his mother and told her that he was spending the night with brooks and then he was gagged strangled and buried.
21:54
This guy was like it's crazy that he targeted this age group and it's even crazier that he was able to get these two men to bring boys to him for 200 bucks. In March of 72 was when Agiri we talked about Agiri he was strangled.
22:15
He was actually engaged and his fiancé's presence in Corll’s house sparked the fatal confrontation that resulted in Corll dying. There was a 17 year old friend of Henley and brooks who was killed and forced to write a letter to his parents claiming that he had found a job in Austin and that's why he wasn't coming home.
22:44
His remains were never found I think we talked about him last week as well. May 21st, he abducted two friends who were 16 and 17. July 19th of 72, there was a 17 year old that was last seen leaving a party and was strangled with a nylon cord.
23:04
August 21st, a 19 year old who disappeared on his way to work at a shoe store and was shot twice in the head. October 3rd of 72, there was a 14 year old. October 3rd, also there was a 13 year old friends, 14 and 13.
23:21
November 1st, the son of an HPD officer who actually died of a heart attack in search for his son, but the son had been shot in the head and buried in the boat shed. And then a 19 year old who vanished on his way to call his fiancé from a pay phone was strangled and buried.
23:42
Now in 73, and this is crazy y'all, it just keeps going on. 17 year old. grabbed by Corley and abducted also in 73 June 4 there was a 15 year old, and look there's a 20 year old so for some reason he decided to abduct this guy who was hitchhiking to see his newborn child. July 7th, 15 year old who was shot in the chest and head and actually left to bleed in Corll’s bathtub before he was buried at Lake Sam Rayburn 17 year old and another 15 year old so it's just so sad there was a ton and then there was another 18 year old and a 17 year old and a 13 year old it's just so sad now at Henley's trial in 74 the medical examiner raised questions about whether one of the victims was actually a victim of Corll because all of Corll’s victims were shot with the same pistol that Henley used to kill Corll this particular victim in question was killed with a rifle so they really felt like he probably was not one of the victims just because he did always use either a pistol or he strangled them or both so I found it kind of interesting because I was looking through here and it was talking about how in June of 08 Dr.
25:15
Sharon Derek who is a forensic anthropologist with the ME's office in Houston released some digital images of Corll’s three unidentified victims two of them were found buried in the boat shed and they kind of guessed that they'd been killed around 71 and 72 and then one of them was buried at Lake Sam Rayburn just 10 feet from the body of another victim Ms.
25:41
Derek I knew well when I worked in Harris County and she's like the sweetest but super smart forensic anthropologist that I had the pleasure of working with there and it was always really interesting to watch them do their job but she did release those digital images just to find out who these people were and find family and find out who was missing.
26:03
I don't know, it's kind of a weird story and it's horrifying to think. I mean, I know they knew back in the day that there was a serial killer amongst them because all these kids were the same age and they were all killed the same way.
26:16
And so, you know, they knew. You know, I hate that story because I don't like telling stories about children that are victimized but I also do like to share like what's going on in the real world just to kind of help make people aware.
26:32
I don't like those cases. I did not like sexual assault cases when I was doing same nursing. A majority of my patients at that time were children and they weren't just girls. They were also young boys.
26:48
I just, you know, we all just to kind of bring awareness again to, you know, keeping on your kids. And it's just the world is just such a scary place. There's just a lot going on. There's a lot of people with psychiatric problems that can't afford meds and won't take their meds and won't admit to having mental issues and don't want help.
27:13
There's just, there's a lot going on, as we all know. So I am really, really hoping that tomorrow is not a repeat of today. When my phone rang at 501, I was like, are you kidding me? And then literally, as soon as I hang up, y'all, it's trying to bring again and then it rang again and then it rang again.
27:32
And then, you know, a lot of times when they say there's a hospital death, you know, we always kind of secretly hope it's an elderly person. I mean, we don't want anybody to die, but we secretly hope if somebody has to die, that it's an elderly person who lived a great life and had a pretty extensive medical history that we won't have to go, that we can call the doctor and that they're going to, you know,
27:54
end up with a medical problem that's going to be the reason they passed and the day goes on and we don't miss lunch and we get to sit in the office and chill and talk and visit and all the things. But reality is, you know, a simple call coming from the hospital that you think is going to be nothing can turn into a homicide, which is exactly what happened to me today.
28:18
And then again, I had a suicide later in the day and those, you know, are not uncommon, not uncommon around here. And then we are coming up in the summer months. It's going to start warming up. Right now, we're about to start getting a lot of rain.
28:31
I think it's supposed to storm. But in the summer months, we do get a lot of drownings, a lot of hold my beer and watch this events. And that's never good. And some of them are cardiac events that happen when someone just happens to be in the water and they're not actually.
28:48
actually drownings but they all end up medical examiner cases because we have to rule that out. I will say that last night I got the pleasure of visiting with the Citizens Academy at the Denton County Sheriff's Office on Monday night and I got to present for my good friend Hino and he is captain with the Sheriff's Office.
29:14
So I presented the same thing that I did with on patrol in Lewisville a couple weeks ago and it's always so much fun and I love how engaged everybody is and how interested they are in what I do and the questions that they have I love.
29:30
I love educating people about what I do so don't forget is you do have an event coming up and you do want to educate and that subject can be anything regarding death. I mean we used to go to meetings where kids had gotten DUIs and DWIs and we would show them pictures of car accidents and wrecks that people had died in so that they could really understand the effect that alcohol and driving could have on someone's life.
30:01
And so I am available for that and there is a place on my website for you when you log in to go up and request me as a speaker. Again, I love doing it. I do show photos. I do also, some of them are not exactly something everyone would want to see.
30:18
So we do warn everyone during those particular slide shows that, you know, they might be disturbing to some people and we like to give people the opportunity to step out. I did do a presentation at a high school one day.
30:33
The subject was rather sensitive. We briefly touched on a suicide that had occurred and one of the little girls in the class, bless her heart, her dad had just killed himself a couple of weeks prior.
30:44
So it was very sensitive to her. So we do like to warn people about that. Sometimes it's going to just strike that nerve. Something in some of our stories is going to sound similar to something that happened to someone and upset them, which is never our intention.
31:02
Again, we're there to educate and just kind of share our stories and what we do with people. Again, go online, y'all. The cereal boxes are ready to order. There's a link up at the top of my website, pushingupgoolies.com.
31:17
You can actually order it monthly, every three months, quarterly, or you can order the holiday boxes. Try to think of when the next holiday is, like the next major holiday. I know we got July 4th coming up.
31:30
Golly, not even sure. I haven't even looked ahead enough. School is kicking my butt still and I am in my last week of this course and then I think I have three before my next class starts because I'm going on a cruise in July with my high school girlfriends.
31:49
Woohoo! So excited. Shout out to my girls and so we are gonna go to Europe for 11 days and I think we'll be gone a total of 14 and so that'll be so nice and so relaxing and it will be amazing not to have a class and have to worry about homework while I'm gone because I was kind of worried about that.
32:08
So anyway, I hope you'll have an amazing rest of your week. I hope you stay dry. I don't know what it's supposed to do in Texas but I just heard we're supposed to get a lot of rain. Look forward to talking to y'all next week.
32:18
Have a great week. 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.
32:32
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.