It was August 8, 1973. A sticky, humid morning in Pasadena, Texas. Most people were waking up to another routine day, but at 2020 Lamar Drive, the world was about to tilt on its axis.
Six shots rang out.
When the smoke cleared, Dean Corll—the man local kids called the "Candy Man" because his family owned a sweets company—lay dead on his own floor. The shooter was 17-year-old Elmer Wayne Henley. He didn't run. He called the cops.
Honestly, the police thought it was just a domestic dispute or a drug deal gone sideways. Then Henley started talking. He told them about the bodies. He told them about the "torture board." He told them that the house they were standing in was just the tip of the iceberg.
That was the moment the dean corll crime scene expanded from a single house to a massive, multi-county forensic nightmare that would eventually uncover 28 victims. Maybe more.
The Boat Shed: A Nightmare Under the Floorboards
If you want to understand the sheer scale of this horror, you have to look at Southwest Boat Storage. Specifically, Stall No. 11.
Detectives followed Henley there on August 9th. It was a corrugated metal shed, hot as an oven in the Texas sun. When they cracked the door, the smell hit them first. It wasn't just old gasoline and salt air. It was the scent of a mass grave.
The floor was dirt.
👉 See also: Why Trump's West Point Speech Still Matters Years Later
Underneath that dirt, Corll and his accomplices had stacked bodies like cordwood. They were buried in layers. Some were wrapped in plastic sheeting, others covered in a thin, white dusting of lime to accelerate decomposition or hide the stench.
The first body they pulled out was James Dreymala. He had been missing since the previous month. As the night wore on, the count kept rising. Eight bodies by dusk. Nine more the next day.
- Victim 11 and 16: These two remained unidentified for decades.
- The Depth: Some graves were six feet deep, others were shallow, hurried afterthoughts.
- The Artifacts: Police found more than just remains. They found "mementos" of the lives stolen—a knotted rope bracelet, an orange pocket comb, a pair of striped Catalina swim trunks with a silver buckle.
Basically, the shed was a factory of death. Corll didn't just kill; he curated a space where he could hide his "possessions" indefinitely.
Beyond the Shed: High Island and Lake Sam Rayburn
The dean corll crime scene didn't stop at the Houston city limits. It stretched 150 miles northeast to the woods of Jasper County and 80 miles east to the Gulf Coast.
Henley and the second accomplice, David Brooks, led investigators to a wooded area near Lake Sam Rayburn. It was a beautiful, serene spot. But under the pines, they found four more boys. One of them, 15-year-old Billy Lawrence, was only identified because his father recognized Henley as a boy Billy had been hanging out with before he vanished.
Then came High Island.
They dug in the sand dunes and the marshy areas. They found six more victims there. In one particularly haunting detail, Henley mentioned that when they went to bury a second body at Sam Rayburn, they found a foot or a hand from a previous victim sticking out of the ground. They just threw some rock sheets over it and kept going.
✨ Don't miss: Johnny Somali AI Deepfake: What Really Happened in South Korea
The "Torture Board" and the Physical Evidence
Inside Corll’s various residences—he moved several times during his three-year spree—the evidence was clinical.
Detectives found a plywood board. It had holes drilled into it for handcuffs and leather restraints. This wasn't some "hidden" secret; it was a tool. He used it to keep victims alive for days, subjecting them to unimaginable sexual and physical abuse.
Police also recovered:
- A .22 caliber pistol (the one used for many of the killings).
- Large quantities of handcuffs and rope.
- Stacks of plastic sheeting used to keep the carpet clean during the murders.
It's sorta chilling how organized he was. He wasn't some chaotic slasher. He was an electrician. He was precise. He treated the lives of these boys like a project to be managed.
Why the Crime Scene Investigation Failed at First
You've got to remember that in the early 70s, the term "serial killer" didn't even exist yet. The FBI hadn't even started their profiling unit in earnest.
The Houston Police Department (HPD) took a lot of heat, and rightfully so. Dozens of boys vanished from the same neighborhood—The Heights. Parents went to the cops, but the response was almost always the same: "He's a runaway. He probably went to California or joined a commune."
One dad even tried to report his son missing and was told that unless he had proof of a crime, there was nothing they could do.
🔗 Read more: Sweden School Shooting 2025: What Really Happened at Campus Risbergska
Basically, the "crime scene" was the entire city of Houston, but nobody was looking at the map. The police chief at the time even defended the department later, saying that running away wasn't a crime. It wasn't until the bodies were literally piled up in Stall No. 11 that the negligence became impossible to ignore.
Modern Science and the "Lost Boys"
Even though the main investigation ended in 1973, the dean corll crime scene is actually still open in some ways.
For years, some of the victims were just numbers. "ML73-3349" was the tag for a boy found at Lake Sam Rayburn. Thanks to people like forensic anthropologist Dr. Sharon Derrick, these boys are finally getting their names back.
In 2011, a victim previously known only as "John Doe" was identified as 17-year-old William Ray Raynell. In 2024 and 2025, new DNA techniques and genealogical research have been used to close the remaining gaps.
There's still one boy from the boat shed—found with a "USA" peace symbol shirt—who hasn't been identified.
Actionable Insights for True Crime Researchers
If you're looking into this case or similar cold cases, there are actual steps being taken today that you can support or follow:
- Check the NamUs Database: The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System is the best place to see the current status of unidentified remains from the Corll era.
- Support Forensic Genealogy: Non-profits and labs are currently using private DNA databases (like GEDmatch) to identify the "Lost Boys."
- Verify the Locations: Many of the original sites, like the boat shed, have long since been demolished or paved over, but the geographical spread of the sites remains a key study for criminal justice students looking at "disposal patterns."
The horror of the dean corll crime scene wasn't just what happened in that boat shed. It was the fact that it was allowed to happen for three years in plain sight.
The legacy of this case isn't just a body count. It's the reason we have better missing persons laws today. It's the reason we don't just assume a 14-year-old with no money and no coat is "just a runaway." We learned the hardest way possible.
To stay updated on the identification of the final victims, you can follow the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences' public records or the work of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. They are still actively seeking DNA matches for the last remaining "Lost Boy."