Inside the mind of the 'Candy Man's' apprentice: Serial killer expert's chilling interview with a murderer's accomplice

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. seemed to be the hero of the story when officers responded to a shooting at a home in Pasadena, Texas, on the morning of August 8, 1973.
Inside the house lay the bullet-riddled, naked body of 33-year-old Dean Corll - a man known locally as the 'Candy Man' as he gave out free candy from his mom's store to local children.
Police also found a trove of disturbing torture tools including restraints, sex toys and plastic sheeting laid out on the ground.
Outside, were three shaken teens.
The teens told police they had passed out inside the home after spending the night drinking and huffing acrylic paint to get high. When they woke, they found themselves bound and Corll standing over them, telling them he was going to sexually assault and kill them.
Corll had then untied Henley and ordered him to participate in his plot.
At that moment, the 17-year-old grabbed Corll's gun and shot him dead.
The teen had saved himself and his two friends from a horrific murder at the hands of a sick predator.
But this was only the beginning of the story.
Within hours, Henley revealed that Corll was a serial killer responsible for the murders of dozens of boys who had vanished from the Houston Heights neighborhood over the past few years.
And, in an even more explosive twist, Henley confessed that he had been his accomplice.
Between 1970 and 1973, Corll lured, sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered boys, with the help of his two teenage accomplices Henley and David Brooks.
With Corll dead, Henley and Brooks led police to three mass graves where the victims' bodies were buried.
The remains of 28 boys aged 13 to 20 were found.
Five decades later, there are fears that more victims are still out there.
The case, known as the Houston Mass Murders or the 'Candy Man' killings, shocked the community and the nation long before the term serial killer had even been coined.
Both Henley and Brooks were sentenced to life in prison for their part in the murders. Brooks died in May 2020, leaving Henley the sole survivor of the team of killers.
Now, Henley is speaking out for the first time in 50 years in conversations with top serial killer expert and criminologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland in the new ID documentary 'The Serial Killer's Apprentice'.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Dr. Ramsland - who famously co-authored a book with the BTK killer Dennis Rader and was Idaho killer Bryan Kohberger's professor - said the case is different to the countless serial killer and mass murder cases she has studied.
'This case was unusual because it was a team killer case, but involving three people,' she said.
'So you had an adult predatory serial killer using two teenage boys as accomplices.'
Despite participating in the murders, Dr. Ramsland explained that the power dynamic was not equal between the three killers.
'The two teenagers were compliant accomplices. They were not co-equals. They did not want to be killers, but they wanted to please Dean Corll and also they were afraid of him,' she said.
'So that dynamic for them was that they were doing things they didn't really want to do, even though they were doing it for a long period of time. Corll, who was the adult predator, is the one with the fantasy that led the way, and he dominated the other two.
'They were submissive to him. And so whatever he said is what they had to do.'
In other team killer cases she has studied, the individuals are typically 'the same in their depravity'.
'They both want to do this. They come up with the most horrible things together. That's very different from a predator and a compliant accomplice,' she said.
'The predator leads the way. The compliant accomplices go with them.'
But there was something else unique about the Houston Mass Murders too: the way the killings stopped.
'Henley is the only accomplice to a serial killer who killed the killer to end it,' she said.
In their conversations, Dr. Ramsland said she wanted to delve into what led Henley to cross the line to become a killer.
Henley was 14 when he was recruited through Brooks to join the murderous team.
Corll drew his teen accomplices in by telling them there was a so-called 'Syndicate' - a powerful trafficking ring where teenage boys were sold as houseboys to wealthy clients across the US.
He claimed he was part of the Syndicate and that, if Brooks and Henley brought him boys, he would sell them for money.
Initially, Dr. Ramsland explained that this financial reward was appealing to Henley.
Henley has said he didn't know Corll planned to kill the victims at first.
When he brought a boy to Corll, who then sexually assaulted and killed him in front of him, Henley was implicated in the murders.
Plastic sheeting was found laid down on the ground inside the Pasadena home of the Candy Man killer
'If I go down, you go down. So there was that mutually assured destruction,' Dr. Ramsland said.
After some time, Henley also committed some of the murders himself.
The first time he killed was a 'pivotal moment'.
'It was a very pivotal moment, in part because he had this firm belief in God. He read the Bible every day and carried a little pocket Bible with them. And, for him, it was really the end of his faith because nothing happened to him,' Dr. Ramsland said.
'He really expected to be struck dead by God because that's what he was taught. And it didn't happen. Nothing happened… for him, it was a hugely pivotal moment in his whole belief system, his sense of himself.'
Fear was a major factor in Henley's role, she said, with the threat of the Syndicate coming after him if he didn't do what they wanted.
'So Wayne had to decide: "If I went to the police would they believe me? A 15-year-old kid against an adult? And if they let Corll go, I'm in danger. Or if they don't let Corll go, the Syndicate is going to come after me." So he's in this no-win situation.'
She added: 'Corll played a long game. He had decided that Henley was going to become this accomplice so little-by-little, he pursued him.'
Dr. Ramsland learned there were times when Henley did try to get away from Corll.
At one point, he confided in his uncles about the murders but they didn't believe him.
He then gave his mom a confession letter but she tore it up and booked him an appointment with a psychiatrist. Before he could make it to the appointment, Corll was dead.
Based on her expertise, Henley is both a victim and a perpetrator.
'Wayne is a victim. He was also sexually assaulted by Corll. He was also leveraged. He was made to do things he didn't want to do,' Dr. Ramsland said.
'But then he also did things he did want to do.'
While she said Henley's 'status as a victim is in no way anything like the victims who were tortured and killed', she described him as a 'complicated individual'.
'I think everybody who's human knows the feeling of being compromised and doing things that are out of character for them and they wonder how they were able to do that,' she said.
Having spent years talking to Henley and studying his case, Dr. Ramsland believes he might never have become a killer if he hadn't met Corll.
'Henley wanted to be a minister or a cop. He was a very protective kind of guy, and he was kind of like a hang-back hippie type,' she said.
'There's nothing in his background that would suggest he, on his own, would have ever become a killer… to even think about killing somebody was just not in his DNA.'