﻿I’m sure many of you are familiar with the film The Candyman, but what you may be unaware of
is that there was a real life Candyman serial killer. While the two really only share their
name in common, the real life Candyman’s story and crimes are so appalling and heartbreaking
you’ll wish they were only a movie. Today we’ll be examining the life, legacy, and
downfall of Dean Corll: Texas’s own Candyman. Born in Fort Wayne Indiana on December 24th, 1939,
Dean Corll was the oldest of two boys. His parents were Mary and Arnold Corll, and while his parents
were never abusive or violent, the house certainly wass tense and filled with arguing. While Arnold
was strict with the children and valued hard discipline, Mary was very over-protective of
her two sons. This difference led to many, many fights and arguments until 1946, four years
after the birth of their second son Stanley, Mary and Arnold decided to get a divorce. Not
long after the divorce, Arnold was drafted into the Air Force and sent to a base in Tennessee,
and Mary followed him there, selling their house and moving in an effort to keep the children ner
their father regardless of her feelings towards them. By 1950, Mary and Arnold had made up and
decided to get remarried, once again uprooting the kids and moving them to Pasadena Texas.
Unfortunately, once again in 1953 the two of them decided to get divorced again, with Mary having
custody over the children again. Dean and Stanley had no stability in their young childhoods, with
their parent’s marriage constantly fluctuating and being forced to move every few years
prevented them from making lasting friends. In 1955, Mary eventually remarried to a man named
Jake West who was a traveling clock salesman, and the two of them had a daughter while living
in Texas. They eventually decided to start a candy company together which they called “Pecan Prince”.
Dean and his younger brother Stanley both worked in their family’s company constantly when they
were younger, being mainly in charge of operating the candy making machinery,
which also kept them from being able to appreciate and experience their childhoods.
Dean was a shy and quiet kid who mostly kept to himself, and he unfortunately spent most of his
younger years being incredibly sick. At age 7 he contracted Rheumatic Fever, but it somehow
went undetected and untreated until he was 11 years old when Doctor’s discovered he had a heart
murmur. When he was older and in highschool Dean was still considered solitary, and was overall an
average student in terms of grades and behaviour. His only real passion in highschool seemed to be
the brass band for which he played trombone, but after graduating in 1958 Dean dropped that
passion. By the time Dean graduated the Pecan Prince Candy Company was beginning to expand, and
he moved with the rest of his family to Houston Texas. However, two years later in 1962 Dean would
move back to his birthplace of Indiana to live for a while with his widowed Grandmother. While
in Indiana Dean actually entered a relationship with a woman who would eventually propose to him,
however he rejected her and moved back to Texas to help with the Family business.
In 1963 Jake and Mary got divorced, and Mary made her own rival candy company to
“Pecan Prince'' simply called the “Corll Candy Company”, with Dean actually becoming the vice
president. It was during this time period that Mary chose to fire a teenage boy that
had been making complaints over Dean making sexual advances towards him. Unfortunately,
this would become a running theme for the teen boys that worked for the candy company.
In August of the following year Dean would get drafted into the military and sent out of texas
for basic training before eventually coming back to Texas to be permanently stationed at Fort Hood.
It was in the military that Dean would realize he was homosexual and have his first gay encounters,
however of the few close acquaintences he told, most of them had already suspected he was gay
due to the way he acted around teenage boys which was alarming to say the least. Despite
the self-discovery he experienced in the military, Dean reportedly hated serving and got honourably
discharged on June 11th, 1965, and went back home to help out with the candy company.
Later on in 1965 the company moved to Houston Heights across from an elementary school,
and Dean was known to give out free candy to the local kids, especially teen boys, earning himself
the nicknames ``The Candyman '' and “The Pied Piper ''. Dean was als a lot less subtle with
the way he would come on to any of the teenage male employees, and even set up a pool table in
the back of the factory where teen employees and local kids would gather and hang out. Two years
passed, and in 1967 Dean became friends with a twelve year old boy known as David Brooks.
David came from a broken home with divorced parents, and as he travelled to visit with his
two parents he also made sure to stop and stay at Dean’s apartment which he had begun to consider
his second home. Whenever Brooks was also in need of cash Dean always provided, which led David to
viewing Dean as a real father figure. Trqagically, Dean had been grooming the young boy, and by 1969,
after Dean urging for awhile, he convinced David to let Dean perform oral sex on him in exchange
for cash or gifts. By this point the Corll Candy Company had shut down and both Mary and
Dean’s step sister moved to Colorado, and while they would still talk with Dean on the phone,
neither of them would ever see Dean alive again. A year after their relationship turned sexual,
Davi walked into Dean’s apartment only to see him assaulting two teenage boys, but Dean was
able to buy David’s silence by offering him a car. Then Dean made a terrible deal with David.
Dean convinced David to help him lure victims to the apartment by promising to pay David
for his “work”, and David agreed. Their first victim was an 18 year old named Jeffery Konen,
who disappeared while hitchhiking home where he was believed to be picked up by Dean and David
and taken back to the apartment. While trapped in the apartment Konen was brutally assaulted,
tortured, and eventually strangled to death. This same year David also helped Dean lure two
other boys, 14 year olds James Glass and Danny Yates, away from a religious rally and to Dean’s
apartment where they fell to the same fate as Jeffery Konen. On January 30th, 1971 Dean and Davi
kidnapped 13 and 15 year old brothers Donald and Jerry Waldrop while they were on their way home.
Then from March to May of that same year Dean also used David’s help to kill
15 year old Randall Harvey, 13 year old David Hilligeist, and 16 year old Gregory Winkle.
David was also even willing to lure his own friends to their demise at the hands of Dean,
and his buddy, a 17 year old Reuben Watson Haney, who had been lured back to Dean’s apartments under
the guise of attending a party. In the fall of 1971, David lured bto unknown young boys to
the apartment where they were kept trapped and alive for four whole days before being killed.
At the end of this same year, David brought over a friend named Elmer Wayne Henley,
likely so he too could be killed by Dean. However Dean ended up taking a liking to
Wayne and offered him the same deal he handmade with David well over a year earlier at this point.
Dean somewhat hid his true intentions from Wayne however, and instead of telling him
outright about the murders instead told Wayne that he was involved in a “white slavery ring”.
Wayne later claimed that he rejected Dean’s offer for months until the early months of 1972 when his
family came on hard times and were in desperate need of money. On february 9, 1972 a 17 year old
Willard Branch Jr. went missing and is believed to be Wayne’s first lure back to the apartment.
A month later Wayne brings one of his friends, an 18 year old boy named Frank Aguirre, over to
Dean’s apartment to smoke some weed. Before either of the boys could react however, Dean accosted
Frank and handcuffed both of his hands behind his back before David helped gag Frank. Wayne claimed
that he asked Dean to let Frank go, but Dean refused and told Wayne about what he had done
to the previous victim Wayne had brought, and how he intended to do the same thing to Frank.
At this, Wayne let Dean continue and later helped Dean and David bury the body at High Island Beach.
From 1972 to 1973, Dean, David, and Wayne sexually assaulted, tortured, and strangled
17 other boys. This murder spree would finally come to a close in the later half of 1973, three
years after the killings initially began. On the night of August 7th, 1973, Wayne, who was
17 years old by this point, brought a 19 year old boy named Timothy Kerleyl to Dean’s apartment,
as well as another friend, a 15 year old girl named Ronda Williams. Corll was infuriated that
Wayne would bring a girl into his apartment, telling Wayne that he had apparently “ruined
everything” Wayne explained that she had an issue with her family and didn’t want to go back home,
and Dean appeared to calm down, and even offered the kids alcohol and weed,
and around two hours later all three of the teens had passed out. Wayne then got a rude
start when he awoke to find that Dean had gagged, and handcuffed all three of the teenagers. Dean
reiterated to Wayne how furious he was over Wayne bringing a girl into the apartment, but Wayne
was able to convince Dean to free him so that he could also participate in the torture and murder.
Dean instructs Wayne to sexual assault and kill Ronda while he dealt with Timothy. Wayne walks
over to Ronda who asks him “is this for real?”, to which Wayne responded “yes” before Ronda asked
him “Are you going to do anything about it?”. Something about this struck a nerve with Wayne
and he grabbed Dean’s pistol and threatened to shoot him, saying that this had all gone too far.
Dean egged him on saying that Wayne wouldn’t shoot him right before he got shot six times,
ultimately killing him and ending one of the worst cases of serial murder in American History.
The three teens contacted the police shortly thereafter and Wayne was placed under arrest,
with David Brooks' arrest following soon after. Wayne gave a full indepth confession to the
police, and even led them to the body dumping sites where the police would end up recovering
28 bodies. Wayne and David were tried seperately from each other, with Wayne getting charged
with 6 counts of murder and David only getting actually charged with the murder of one person,
a teenager named William Lawrence. While Wayne is still alive and serving his sentence at a
Texas prison, David recently died in 2020 due to complications with Covid-19.
Dean Corll is responsible for one of the most heinous and disturbing killing sprees in American
history, and serves as the blueprint for the warnings to children to not accept free candy
from strangers in vans. Thankfully though, his murderous reign has ended and the case can be
closed. Tell us your thoughts about the case in the comment section below and let us know any
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