Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language, along with references
Speaker 1: to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: One after the other. Between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: six kids from miss Junior High School going missing. Their
Speaker 2: fellow students start to look into this and say, these
Speaker 2: aren't runaways, but the adults in their lives are saying
Speaker 2: that's what the police told us.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcast pastors who have investigated and reported on notorious
Speaker 1: true crime cases. This is about the choices writers make,
Speaker 1: both good and bad, and it's a deep dive into
Speaker 1: the unpublished details behind their stories. Acclaimed forensic psychologist Catherine
Speaker 1: Ramslin was one of my first guests on this show.
Speaker 1: That's when she detailed her time with serial killer Dennis Raider.
Speaker 1: Now she's back along with co author Tracy Ullman to
Speaker 1: tell me about their book, The serial Killer's Apprentice. It's
Speaker 1: the complicated story centered on the accomplice of the serial
Speaker 1: killer known as the candy Man. Tell me the origin
Speaker 1: story of how you came across this story for listeners
Speaker 1: who don't know where did this come from?
Speaker 3: Well, I can talk about first what I thought about
Speaker 3: the story, and then I want to hand it to Tracy,
Speaker 3: because to her is how I got the opportunity. My
Speaker 3: original sense of the story was from a classic true
Speaker 3: crime book from nineteen seventy four that supposedly told the
Speaker 3: real story of the candy Man, Dean Coral and his
Speaker 3: accomplices Elma, Wayne Henley Junior, and David Brooks. And I
Speaker 3: had in mind that was a true story. I had
Speaker 3: written about it a few times, and then I saw
Speaker 3: an interview with Henley on a video called The Collectors,
Speaker 3: and he seemed very reflective and interesting. But I didn't
Speaker 3: do anything about it. I mean, I talked to other
Speaker 3: serial killers, but I didn't really follow up with him.
Speaker 3: And then when we finished production, I met Terracy and
Speaker 3: a production crew. When we finished a production, they asked
Speaker 3: me if I wanted to do another person. They named
Speaker 3: some ideas that I didn't think would work, and immediately
Speaker 3: Henley came to mind, and they said, well, Tracy already
Speaker 3: has a relationship with him, so I'm going to hand
Speaker 3: that over to Tracy because it was through her that
Speaker 3: made this happen.
Speaker 2: And so basically Catherine and I were working on a
Speaker 2: documentary for any about BTK and the book Confessions of
Speaker 2: a Serial Killer that she had written, which was the
Speaker 2: pretext for that limited series documentary. I always try to
Speaker 2: have a little something that I'm working on independently. I
Speaker 2: do a lot of gun for hire work, but this
Speaker 2: was one that actually came off of a much larger project,
Speaker 2: a tenure investigation I had done into John Wayne Gacy
Speaker 2: that became a series for Peacocks Streaming called John Wayne
Speaker 2: Gacy DUBN Disguise. And so as I was working on that,
Speaker 2: I called Wayne Henry. I was hooked up through a friend,
Speaker 2: and I said, I know now that John Wayne Gacy
Speaker 2: had accomplices, and I realized that you were an accomplice
Speaker 2: to Dean Coral. Can you tell me about the accomplice dynamic?
Speaker 2: And he started to talk to me and I said, wait,
Speaker 2: you don't sound quite like a traditional accomplice, and what
Speaker 2: you're telling me, it just seems like you cross a
Speaker 2: line between being a victim as well as somebody who's
Speaker 2: assisting this serial killer. And so as I dove in
Speaker 2: with him and I started to record conversations with him,
Speaker 2: it occurred to me that not only was he someone
Speaker 2: that had been sucked in at the age of fourteen,
Speaker 2: he didn't start killing them, but he had been kind
Speaker 2: of seduced, but that I was discovering simultaneously that eleven
Speaker 2: of the victims had appeared in pornography, which changes Dincor
Speaker 2: from being kind of a lone wolf just an anomaly
Speaker 2: that happens to be in you know, Houston, Texas, to
Speaker 2: somebody who needs a distribution network, somebody who's working with
Speaker 2: people who are publishing pornography. I realized that's kind of
Speaker 2: circumstantially connected. But at the same time, it meant to
Speaker 2: me that Omoy Henley was part of something much larger
Speaker 2: that he might not have realized, especially at the age
Speaker 2: of fourteen. And so, you know, in the previous documentary,
Speaker 2: we started making the connection between John Wayne Gacy and
Speaker 2: a man named John David Norman who ran a huge
Speaker 2: sex trafficking room, and we knew that that case was
Speaker 2: connected to the ring, but then I wanted to look
Speaker 2: more thoroughly into how the ring affected being coral. And eventually,
Speaker 2: as Catherine started to talk to Elma Wayne Henley, we
Speaker 2: got a lot more information that he had never related
Speaker 2: to anyone in fifty years. And so I'll turn it
Speaker 2: back to you, Catherine.
Speaker 3: Well, when I first talked with him, he immediately said,
Speaker 3: I don't want anybody talking me out of my responsibility,
Speaker 3: and I'm one hundred percent culpable. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not here to talk you into or
Speaker 3: out of anything. But it came clear fairly quickly that
Speaker 3: he had never had any therapy. He didn't really know
Speaker 3: anything about our research into the teenage brain and its
Speaker 3: vulnerability to adult predators. He didn't really know the dynamics
Speaker 3: of all this. So little by little began to introduce
Speaker 3: into some psychological concepts and he began to listen and
Speaker 3: start thinking, because he would always give some latitude for
Speaker 3: other people who had been leveraged into things, but he
Speaker 3: would never give it to himself. And so it really
Speaker 3: took months, but he began to understand that he's not
Speaker 3: fully culpable since he was a kid, and this is
Speaker 3: a very clever and sophisticated adult predator who leveraged him
Speaker 3: and tricked him into it. And he did try getting
Speaker 3: out four times. That was something the other true crime
Speaker 3: book never even addressed. It just made it look like
Speaker 3: Henley was in this, wanted to be in this, sacrificed
Speaker 3: his friends. In fact, he was trying to get out,
Speaker 3: and he is the only accomplice to a serial killer
Speaker 3: to have killed the killer to end it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you, doctor Ramsland, what is your
Speaker 1: experience with accomplices who are adults. I have not dealt
Speaker 1: much with the complices and what that dynamic is the
Speaker 1: Only thing that I feel like I've heard is that
Speaker 1: there's usually a dominant and then an not dominant person.
Speaker 1: And I know you're you're talking about the nuances with
Speaker 1: a teenager as an accomplice, but what's your overall experience
Speaker 1: with the accomplice.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, we haven't studied accomplices very much,
Speaker 3: so this book served as an opportunity and I was
Speaker 3: able to categorize them in a variety of ways. The
Speaker 3: adults tend to be co creators of the crimes that
Speaker 3: they're committing their partners, their equal partners. Even if one
Speaker 3: is dominant the other submissive, they still both want to
Speaker 3: do this, So there's no it's not really about being
Speaker 3: compliant or you know, reluctant in any way. So that's
Speaker 3: one type of team, and that's typically what we can
Speaker 3: see with adults. You see that in romantic couples have
Speaker 3: become criminal teams. So I talked about a bit about
Speaker 3: that in the book, and then I talked about forced accomplices,
Speaker 3: like you know, a gun to your head, you will
Speaker 3: do this with me or else, and that's Nolson not
Speaker 3: what we have here. And then I talked about the
Speaker 3: dominant and submissive and in some cases the submissive complying,
Speaker 3: not wanting to do this, never would have done this
Speaker 3: on their own, but within the dynamic of the relationship,
Speaker 3: the chemistry between them, they will comply and hope that
Speaker 3: somehow it will go away or you know, and often,
Speaker 3: and I coined a term temporary psychopath for this, because
Speaker 3: they get into it in like a pocketive reality, into
Speaker 3: a situation where they'll do things that are psychopathic or horrible,
Speaker 3: and then when they're out of it, out from under
Speaker 3: the influence of the predator. They're horrified that this isn't me.
Speaker 3: I would have never done this. But you can see
Speaker 3: how they got leveraged into it, how they changed their behavior,
Speaker 3: their disposition, their morality even to be able to do
Speaker 3: what they're doing, and sometimes as a survival mechanisms, times
Speaker 3: because they're in love with the partner. It's different for
Speaker 3: different types of teams, but we can see with Henley
Speaker 3: Brooks seemed to be more attuned to it. He was
Speaker 3: the first partner brought in that we know about, and
Speaker 3: he actually brought Henley as a victim, as an intended victim,
Speaker 3: but that didn't work out. So then Coral saw all
Speaker 3: the benefits with Henley. He was plugged into a number
Speaker 3: of different communities with these boys that interested Coral, and
Speaker 3: so he then began using him and he kind of
Speaker 3: tricked him into it and then leveraged him like now
Speaker 3: you're in. Now you're involved, and there's nothing you can
Speaker 3: do about it, because if you turn me in, you'll
Speaker 3: go down with me and you'll get the death penalty.
Speaker 3: So you have you have different dynamics with these different
Speaker 3: types of teams, and it's really the first time someone
Speaker 3: studied it.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, what is the importance of drawing
Speaker 1: these distinctions? Killers or killers? Is what a lot of
Speaker 1: people would say. Why do we care what hendling whether
Speaker 1: he was drawn into something, you know, he really participated
Speaker 1: willingly or not. I'm just thinking, from somebody else's point
Speaker 1: of view, why is it important do you all think
Speaker 1: that there isn't that distinction?
Speaker 3: Because if you are a psychologists or counselor clergy whatever,
Speaker 3: working with someone who's coming out of a relationship like this,
Speaker 3: you see that they actually can be changed back. They
Speaker 3: had a base, a moral base from which they were
Speaker 3: pulled and brought into this relationship, and they can return
Speaker 3: to that. So there's hope in terms of the kind
Speaker 3: of psychological counseling you give them. And there's hope for
Speaker 3: parents too whose child might end up in a situation
Speaker 3: like this and then you know, an arrest happens, the
Speaker 3: kid is brought into it, and parents and teachers as well.
Speaker 3: They can also see here for some kind of redemption,
Speaker 3: and we have seen it in some of these people
Speaker 3: who've gotten out of this situation, served the prison time,
Speaker 3: and were able to do something productive and beneficial and
Speaker 3: really had you know, fall remarks for what they had done.
Speaker 1: And I certainly think there's a lot of black and
Speaker 1: white thinking in true crime and people not wanting to
Speaker 1: see that there are nuances. So I'm glad that we're
Speaker 1: talking about this, Tracy. Where do we start with this story?
Speaker 1: Is it when you know these men meet or what
Speaker 1: do you think?
Speaker 2: I think that the story does start when Elmawayne Henley
Speaker 2: is approached by David Brooks and he's thinking that this
Speaker 2: is somebody that's kind of cool. He's not having the
Speaker 2: easiest time in his life. His father is violent, his
Speaker 2: parents are splitting up. He finds himself being the head
Speaker 2: of the household. Elmiween Henley was brought up in a
Speaker 2: religious family. His mother and grandmother were kind of the
Speaker 2: base of that, and so he thought in life he
Speaker 2: would grow up that he would be a minister, that
Speaker 2: he would be a husband and a father, and he
Speaker 2: was exploring that part of it. He also admitted to
Speaker 2: being something of a hippie, so he was enjoying that
Speaker 2: kind of culture. Nineteen seventy three in Houston, Texas. You've
Speaker 2: got a lot going on in terms of NASA. You've
Speaker 2: got a lot going on in terms of the oil industry.
Speaker 2: You have a lot going on also in terms of
Speaker 2: minority communities being kind of moved around so that they
Speaker 2: can integrate schools, and so what you're seeing in Houston Heights,
Speaker 2: which is a two and a half mile square area
Speaker 2: of Houston, is kind of change. You've got a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are working in the oil industry, a
Speaker 2: lot of people who are supporting you know, NASA that
Speaker 2: are living in these kind of middle class to lower
Speaker 2: middle class communities. And then you've got Dean Coral. He's
Speaker 2: running his own business. It's a family business that has
Speaker 2: to do with candy. They're making it on the premises.
Speaker 2: It's not a huge company, but at the same time,
Speaker 2: it's like a lot of other little candy companies, you know,
Speaker 2: cottage industries that were in this community. He works in,
Speaker 2: you know, as an electrician during the day to make money,
Speaker 2: and he has a girlfriend and he seems like a
Speaker 2: very nice person and he's glad handing whoever decides to
Speaker 2: come through. He tends to have a lot of boys
Speaker 2: come through to you know, playpool with him. They're kind
Speaker 2: of introduced to kind of his lifestyle through his candy,
Speaker 2: which you know, if you are a young boy that
Speaker 2: you would think this is the ultimate. I'm playing with
Speaker 2: this adult. He's got this delicious candy. We're playing pool.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm validated as this young man. Now, so
Speaker 2: a lot of kids and this is across the street
Speaker 2: from a junior high school. A lot of kids are
Speaker 2: coming there, and nobody realized that dinkorl maybe not as
Speaker 2: he appears. And so as children in the neighborhood start
Speaker 2: to disappear, nobody quite knows what's going on. The police
Speaker 2: are telling them these are runaways, but how could they
Speaker 2: be runaways? And in fact Elma Wayne Henley, along with
Speaker 2: his mother, goes looking for one of these boys, who's
Speaker 2: a member I believe, of his church and who's his
Speaker 2: same age. They go far and wide trying to look
Speaker 2: for this boy. Nobody can find him, and one after
Speaker 2: the other, between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy three, six
Speaker 2: kids from this junior high school go missing, and their
Speaker 2: fellow students start to look into this and say, these
Speaker 2: aren't runaways. But the adults in their lives are saying,
Speaker 2: that's what the police told us. Where do you think
Speaker 2: the reverence for the police comes from? I was just talking.
Speaker 1: I was reading an article about a woman who wrote
Speaker 1: her book and it didn't even because of the culture
Speaker 1: she came from, it, it didn't even occur to her
Speaker 1: to talk to the police. Her family just never thought
Speaker 1: that the police were worth kind of, you know, even
Speaker 1: going to for safety. But where do you think in
Speaker 1: this community the reverence for the police comes from.
Speaker 3: I didn't think there was reverence. They were pretty frustrated
Speaker 3: with them, and especially one family actually hired a private
Speaker 3: detective and he was run uptown by the police. Wow,
Speaker 3: And they were told, don't you do this? So I
Speaker 3: don't think it was reverence. It was just more what
Speaker 3: else can we do? Who can we talk to beyond them?
Speaker 3: And there was quite the accounting after it all was
Speaker 3: said and done, that you were wrong, and one after
Speaker 3: another our sons were murdered.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about David Brooks. These young men.
Speaker 1: So you've got Henley and David Brooks. They're both teenagers
Speaker 1: when this is happening, right, Henley is fourteen when this starts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, David Brooks was twelve actually when he met Coral
Speaker 3: and met him though Candy give me out hunks of
Speaker 3: chocolate and whatnot. But David Brooks came also from a
Speaker 3: broken family, but he had the misfortune of both parents
Speaker 3: thinking he would come to no good, neither wanting to
Speaker 3: have much to do with him. He's kind of at
Speaker 3: loose ends. He was geeky. He had this long, stringy
Speaker 3: blonde hair and these big eyeglasses and a very introverted
Speaker 3: type of person. He was smoking dope and getting into trouble.
Speaker 3: He had been arrested for a theft. So he's just
Speaker 3: kind of this kid who was at odds with himself
Speaker 3: and with everybody else. And Coral saw him and showed
Speaker 3: him respect that he had never experienced before, treated him
Speaker 3: like an adult, gave him place to stay, gave him gifts,
Speaker 3: eventually had some sexual contact with them, and gave him
Speaker 3: five or ten dollars. He had money in his pumpet
Speaker 3: once when he discovered Coral. He came in and discovered
Speaker 3: Coral with two kids tied to the bed naked. Coral said,
Speaker 3: if you don't tell anyone, I'll give you a car,
Speaker 3: which he did so. David Brooks, who had nowhere to
Speaker 3: turn in his own family and was basically dismissed as
Speaker 3: a loser, found solace with an adult male who gave
Speaker 3: him a place to stay to live, food, money, a car.
Speaker 3: He was an easy target and he fell right into it.
Speaker 1: And I'm assuming doctor Ramsel, and this is a story
Speaker 1: that you've heard over and over again. I mean, just
Speaker 1: throughout the decades, it doesn't seem to change. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: more offerings from someone who's grooming, you know, through Internet
Speaker 1: or pornography or whatever it is, that the offerings might change,
Speaker 1: But the grooming methods seem so consistent.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Because they work. I have one study in my book
Speaker 3: of these predators who agreed to talk and talked about
Speaker 3: the kind of person they would look for. The kid
Speaker 3: who seems vulnerable, who seems introverted. It seems like their
Speaker 3: home life is so great, or they're not doing so
Speaker 3: well in school, and they're in they yield to gift
Speaker 3: giving and joke telling and you know, such things just
Speaker 3: to have a friend. Just you can see their neediness
Speaker 3: and their vulnerability, and these predators develop an eye for it.
Speaker 3: It's like it's like I talked about being like the
Speaker 3: quiet eye in sports, where they hone themselves so well
Speaker 3: they can see the ball so vividly as it's coming
Speaker 3: over the net. Or through the court. Same for the predators.
Speaker 3: They are always vigilant for who is vulnerable, and they
Speaker 3: know not just to groom the child, but to groom
Speaker 3: the community to believe that they are good people. They're
Speaker 3: scout leaders or youth ministers or teachers or you know,
Speaker 3: somebody who can be trusted with their child and they
Speaker 3: are doing parents of favor by spending time with the child,
Speaker 3: and that they look for those situations and the reason
Speaker 3: the grooming is the same over and overs it's working.
Speaker 1: Is there anything in Dean Coral's background that would have indicated,
Speaker 1: you know, that any of this was even possible. He's married,
Speaker 1: How is this even logistically possible for him?
Speaker 2: He wasn't married. He had a girlfriend, Betty Hawkins, and
Speaker 2: Betty Hawkins was a divorced woman with a child. So
Speaker 2: you can see how he would want to kind of
Speaker 2: validate his life by saying, but I have a woman
Speaker 2: I'm looking to engage, I have a woman with a child.
Speaker 2: I'm looking to be this man. And when you look
Speaker 2: at his mother, who had a variety of different marriages,
Speaker 2: a lot of different father figures that he really didn't
Speaker 2: get along with in his home life, and Dean Coral
Speaker 2: from the outside would look to be somebody who kind
Speaker 2: of survived all that, who definitely had his differences with
Speaker 2: his stepfather's. But I mean he went into the family business.
Speaker 2: He's a member of the community for sure, so I
Speaker 2: think that, you know, nobody was looking too deeply into him,
Speaker 2: but he accepted him at face value. And in fact,
Speaker 2: his mother, once these crimes were discovered and her son
Speaker 2: is dead, she said, Elma, Wayne Henley and David Brooks
Speaker 2: set my son up. They were evil and she really
Speaker 2: couldn't accept that. All along, Dean Coral was on a
Speaker 2: one way trip to his demise.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ramslin, would you categorize from what you know about
Speaker 1: Dean Coral as somebody with psychopathy?
Speaker 3: Well, he certainly say this, There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 3: The kinds of torture instruments he invented and engaged with.
Speaker 3: I had a torture board. Sometimes he would tie two
Speaker 3: boys to it, and in one case he told two friends,
Speaker 3: if you fight each other, the survivor I will free.
Speaker 3: That's psychological torture. But he also raped them. He also
Speaker 3: stuck things into them, he electrocuted them. He did all
Speaker 3: kinds of horrific things. To them too, sometimes for days
Speaker 3: at a time, hold them there. So he's certainly a
Speaker 3: state is no remorse whatsoever for what he did. We
Speaker 3: don't know enough about him to put a diagnosis on him,
Speaker 3: but we do know that his behavior has a lot
Speaker 3: of psychopathic overtones. For sure.
Speaker 1: The idea behind an accomplice seems so risky. What would
Speaker 1: motivate Dean Coral. It seems like he has a steady
Speaker 1: kind of way of getting kids in, drawing kids in
Speaker 1: with the candy. Why bring in an accomplice and take
Speaker 1: that kind of risk.
Speaker 3: It wasn't the candy was really for little kids. Later
Speaker 3: that he'd pick out boys and bring them to his
Speaker 3: place where a pool table and motorcycle. He'd take them
Speaker 3: to the beach and whatnot. However, an adult hanging out with
Speaker 3: kids is exposed, and so if he could send out
Speaker 3: accomplices to go pick them up, that actually lessens his exposures.
Speaker 3: So in the way, it's a risk, but apparently in
Speaker 3: his mind it was a lesser risk to have accomplices
Speaker 3: that he thought he could control. I mean, he believed
Speaker 3: he had full control over them through the kind of
Speaker 3: leveraging he used, and he talked about and this is
Speaker 3: where we could turn it back to Tracy. He talked
Speaker 3: about being part of a syndicate of these traffickers who
Speaker 3: would be well aware of any move these boys made,
Speaker 3: and if they did something and that would turn on
Speaker 3: him in some way, they would pay a price, and
Speaker 3: so of their families. So he had them convinced that
Speaker 3: they were always being watched and potentially in danger if
Speaker 3: they didn't do what he said.
Speaker 1: Why don't we talk a little bit about how Henley
Speaker 1: is brought in by Brooks and introduced to Chorrel and
Speaker 1: then the evolution of the relationship, which I hate to
Speaker 1: even use that word, but that's what it was. So
Speaker 1: where do we pick up there? Henley is fourteen.
Speaker 2: We were very blessed to have the attention of Wayne's mom,
Speaker 2: Mary Henley, and Mary Henley is the same age as
Speaker 2: Dean Coral and so when she meets Dean Coral, she
Speaker 2: thinks that he's slightly immature, he's kind of goofy. He
Speaker 2: pulls up and he lays on the horn on his
Speaker 2: you know van that he's driven to her house and
Speaker 2: she walks out and she says, you don't haunk the
Speaker 2: horn at my house. You you come and talk to
Speaker 2: me if you want to hang out with my young son.
Speaker 2: And so this is a man who kind of ingratiated himself,
Speaker 2: not only with Mary Henley, but with her mother, and
Speaker 2: so the two of them kind of saw him as,
Speaker 2: you know, this goofy geek. They did not see any
Speaker 2: form of danger. At one point, he was trying to
Speaker 2: get his van out of the driveway and she had
Speaker 2: to show him how to do it. So he had
Speaker 2: this kind of level of not entirely functioning, and she
Speaker 2: just saw that as like, oh, I'm going to take
Speaker 2: pity on this man who's my age, who doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to be adulting. And so from there, you know, you've
Speaker 2: got the family, the Henleys, who are kind of falling apart.
Speaker 2: They're doing the best that they possibly can. Mary Henley's
Speaker 2: father dies not long before that. She divorces her husband,
Speaker 2: but there's still a lot of domestic violence issues in
Speaker 2: the background for them. On the other hand, with David Brooks,
Speaker 2: his father's actually quite a well known contractor in the area.
Speaker 2: You know, he's not poor. And why it's acceptable for
Speaker 2: David Brooks to live with Dean Coral is a huge
Speaker 2: question mark. Who thought that this was an appropriate relationship.
Speaker 2: But Brooks doesn't come with a mother and a grandmother
Speaker 2: that kind of validates his relationship. He's kind of an
Speaker 2: odd one out living with Dean Coral when Henley brings
Speaker 2: this kind of familial relationship and so as he gets
Speaker 2: more involved and as he's made more of the man
Speaker 2: of the house in his own family, Dean Coral convinces him,
Speaker 2: let's do this burglary. If you want to show me
Speaker 2: what you're made of, you're going to do this for me.
Speaker 2: So he goes and burglarizes a property. He brings the
Speaker 2: stuff to Dean Coral and he's thinking to himself, I'm
Speaker 2: going to make some money for my family. I've been
Speaker 2: working at a gas station, but this is going to
Speaker 2: net me more and it's going to be easier. And
Speaker 2: he's also ingratiating himself with this adult who has started by,
Speaker 2: you know, making kind of dirty jokes with him. He's
Speaker 2: a cool cat. He seems like he's hanging and so,
Speaker 2: you know, Wayne wants that acceptance. He hasn't had his
Speaker 2: father validate him. And again, much like with David Brooks,
Speaker 2: Dean Coral sees his weakness and he fills that space.
Speaker 2: And so but after the burglary, Dean Coral starts to
Speaker 2: lean into that and say, now you're an accomplice. You're
Speaker 2: somebody who has committed a crime that I know about.
Speaker 2: And this is how he leverages Elma, Wayne Henley, Who's
Speaker 2: if you think about when you were fourteen, like I
Speaker 2: really didn't have a clue about the whiter world, and
Speaker 2: if you think about where he doesn't quite understand anything.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think the entire nation was o
Speaker 2: fay with the idea of a large sex trafficking ring.
Speaker 2: So how is he ever going to understand these concepts
Speaker 2: that this is something much larger that's kind of hovering
Speaker 2: around his existence? And so I'll turn it back to
Speaker 2: Catherine because I know, I know you're better at talking
Speaker 2: about this space.
Speaker 3: Well, the one thing I wanted to add to that
Speaker 3: is not only had Wayne's father left with them, an
Speaker 3: abusive alcoholic left the family and not paid any child support,
Speaker 3: he also had shot at Wayne twice to kill him.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And so this is a kid who you know, is
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what to do, and Mary Henley
Speaker 3: sees a big brother coming along in the form of
Speaker 3: Dean Coral. Like, you know, that's helpful because she's got
Speaker 3: three other boys she's got to be taken care of
Speaker 3: who are younger than Wayne, and to her mind, at
Speaker 3: least he's got, you know, a male, adult, male figure
Speaker 3: in his life who replaces this violent male who might
Speaker 3: come around at any time and commit some kind of violence.
Speaker 3: So we can excuse her in some ways because Korl
Speaker 3: was an affable, good natured guy that just seemed like
Speaker 3: he really liked hanging out with these boys.
Speaker 1: I have to say I'm a little surprised that after
Speaker 1: this burglary, Korl went to a threat rather than like
Speaker 1: deepening the seduction or do I have that completely wrong.
Speaker 1: It just seems like it was like, no, you're staying
Speaker 1: and here's why, and rather than like really really grooming.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It took a while. He first talked with Wayne when
Speaker 3: Wayne was fourteen and kind of sized him up and
Speaker 3: as a victim first of all, and told David to
Speaker 3: bring him on in. That didn't go well. Wayne was
Speaker 3: able to foil that attempt, and then Coral began to
Speaker 3: bring him in, like take him for rise in his car.
Speaker 3: There was a bit of seduction ahead of time, and
Speaker 3: then start talking about the human trafficking and saying, you know,
Speaker 3: there are these people who do buy and sell, you know, others,
Speaker 3: and some of these boys, they would we could pick
Speaker 3: them up, sell them for a lot of money, and
Speaker 3: they'd be taking over to California to be someone's pool boy.
Speaker 3: Everybody wins, so you get some money, I get some money.
Speaker 3: They have a much better life that they stuck around
Speaker 3: here in the Houston Heights. And he worked on Wayne,
Speaker 3: and worked on Wayne until Wayne thought well that actually
Speaker 3: does sound like it's okay. And he then helped to
Speaker 3: bring in a hitchhiker and that's really where he got
Speaker 3: leverage at that point. Now he's known Coral for I
Speaker 3: think I was a year before he actually gets involved
Speaker 3: in that series of a crime. He had done some
Speaker 3: of the petty crimes earlier, but in this case, he
Speaker 3: brings in a hitchhiker thinking Quarrel's going to sell him
Speaker 3: to California, and then he finds out he killed him,
Speaker 3: and now Coral says, and you were part of it
Speaker 3: at and there's no getting out, Tracy.
Speaker 1: Can we go back to the first time that Henley
Speaker 1: encounters Quarrel, when Brooks brings him in and doctor Ramselin
Speaker 1: just said, you know that the encounter doesn't go well,
Speaker 1: and the intention is at first for him to be victim.
Speaker 1: I don't know how graphic it is, but you can
Speaker 1: you kind of tell me what what ends up happening
Speaker 1: with that scene.
Speaker 2: Actually, Catherine, I might need to refer back to you,
Speaker 2: because is this the time where King Coral lifts up
Speaker 2: a knife. Yes, and he tries to see what the
Speaker 2: reaction will be. You're better at describing that story.
Speaker 3: David tells him, tells Wayne he's kind of passed the
Speaker 3: test and we're going to meet behind the church. Don't
Speaker 3: tell anyone where you're going because there's a big, big,
Speaker 3: top secret meeting and the syndicate is is kind of
Speaker 3: checking you out as a potential person who could who
Speaker 3: could go up in the ranks. And so he he says,
Speaker 3: meete us fan the church. So Wayne goes. They pick
Speaker 3: him up, take him to Coral's apartment. They drive around
Speaker 3: because they don't want him to know exactly where carel
Speaker 3: lives and they're intending he's going to be one of
Speaker 3: these victims. So if they bring him to Quarrel's apartment
Speaker 3: and there's like a breakfast bar, kind of area where
Speaker 3: they're leaning over talking to David disappears. Quarrel then pulls
Speaker 3: out a large knife, like a hunting knife, and starts
Speaker 3: coming around the bar to Wayne and talking to him
Speaker 3: about what would you do? Would would you be able
Speaker 3: to if somebody discovered you and you really had to
Speaker 3: do something about eliminating a witness? What are you up
Speaker 3: to this? Could you do this? And he's slowly, slowly
Speaker 3: making his way in the position he would always get
Speaker 3: in when he'd tackle a boy to the ground and
Speaker 3: bind him. So he's about to do that. David comes
Speaker 3: out of the back room and says, you didn't tell
Speaker 3: anyone where you were, did you, And quick thinking Wayne says,
Speaker 3: I told my mother, and Coral backs off tells David
Speaker 3: to take him home and that was the end of that.
Speaker 1: For a church kid, he has some street smarts on
Speaker 1: him a little bit.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 3: Well, he said, he's a pretty smart guy. He was
Speaker 3: probably he was a very engaging person to interview because
Speaker 3: he reads a lot. He's very self educated. So yeah,
Speaker 3: he was thinking like it just felt wrong to him,
Speaker 3: like and he doesn't like to be touched, and he
Speaker 3: felt like Korl was about to come behind him, and
Speaker 3: it was just giving him the creeps with his knife,
Speaker 3: and he just realized here's his way out really quickly.
Speaker 3: And he was probably lucky because and he actually had
Speaker 3: told his mother, and he wasn't going to reveal that
Speaker 3: to them because he didn't want them thinking he was
Speaker 3: a silly little boy. But he told his mother everything,
Speaker 3: so he had told her and it was just an
Speaker 3: easy thing to say. I told my mother, I'm here.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, Tracy, let's go back to you know, there's the
Speaker 1: burglary that's happening when he's fifteen, I guess. And then
Speaker 1: we move forward to you know, he's bringing these these
Speaker 1: boys in to what he thinks is going to be
Speaker 1: sold to California and becoming you know, pool boys on
Speaker 1: a lavish estate. I assume what is that's the moment
Speaker 1: where he figures out that this is not what's happening
Speaker 1: to these boys?
Speaker 3: Does he see something.
Speaker 2: Which friend of his Catherine did he bring in David A.
Speaker 3: Gary? It wasn't a string of boys. Is the hitchhiker?
Speaker 3: Then he came over with a friend named Franka Gary,
Speaker 3: and that's that's when he was told, you don't have
Speaker 3: any control over.
Speaker 2: This and so basically this is a good friend of his,
Speaker 2: Franka Geary, and he's thinking he's bringing Frank over for
Speaker 2: the same opportunities that he has and that he's kind
Speaker 2: of cutting him in. And I believe with a hitchhiker
Speaker 2: and Catherine, if you could verify this is when Dean
Speaker 2: Coral starts to propose, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 2: give you a cut of the money. And so we
Speaker 2: from what we understood, he was getting two hundred dollars
Speaker 2: for that victim. So that's a lot of money. That
Speaker 2: kind of money during nineteen seventy one would buy a car,
Speaker 2: you know, a used car, but still a car. And
Speaker 2: so basically he's thinking to himself, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 2: cut my friend Frank ggury in. Frank Geary arrives and
Speaker 2: Dean Coral turns the tables and he is coming after
Speaker 2: Franka Geary and Emily Henley has to participate in this
Speaker 2: in a way that he was absolutely not prepared to do.
Speaker 2: And so at that point, not only does he realize
Speaker 2: that Dean Coral is going to be able to kill
Speaker 2: one of his friends, but that he is deeper and
Speaker 2: deeper into this and he's trying to make sense out
Speaker 2: of it because he is religious. He does believe in God,
Speaker 2: and this is a point at which he starts to think, wait,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be able to get out of this,
Speaker 2: and I'm losing my faith that anybody will pull me
Speaker 2: out of this. And this is when his mind his
Speaker 2: morals changed and I believe that he understood this is
Speaker 2: what I'm going to be given in life.
Speaker 3: Well it was actually I'm just intervening a little bit
Speaker 3: because he was David was told to take him home
Speaker 3: so he wouldn't witness the murder of Frank Gar. But
Speaker 3: he was told that's what happened to the hitchhiker, that's
Speaker 3: just going to happen to this guy. And then not
Speaker 3: much happened for about a month, and Wayne was then
Speaker 3: brought in to kill that he had to do this
Speaker 3: and that you know, his faith is he wrote in
Speaker 3: how can God allow this? Now he has to step
Speaker 3: to the plate and show that he can do it
Speaker 3: with a kid that Kor wants to get rid of
Speaker 3: because he's given him some trouble, and Wayne has to
Speaker 3: do it is to strangle him. He can't do it
Speaker 3: on his own because he's just a scronic kid. But
Speaker 3: once it's done, he sits in the front room and
Speaker 3: just says, if God doesn't strike me dead now, there
Speaker 3: just can't be a God who cares about this, And
Speaker 3: that was kind of the end of it for him.
Speaker 3: And thereafter he falls into doing what kor wants him
Speaker 3: to do because he doesn't know what else to do.
Speaker 3: If he had gone to the police wanting about Franka Gary,
Speaker 3: he thinks the police probably went I listened to him.
Speaker 3: He's just a kid, and Korl as an adult. And
Speaker 3: then there's the syndicate, and even if Korl gets arrested,
Speaker 3: they're going to come after him too, and maybe his family.
Speaker 3: So he has no resources and now he's in this
Speaker 3: horrific position of I have actually murdered somebody.
Speaker 1: Do we have a sense for whether Mary Henley had
Speaker 1: a sense for anything going wrong in this time period,
Speaker 1: since she knows her son so well.
Speaker 2: You know, by day I think that Elmer Wayne Henley
Speaker 2: compartmentalized these things and he felt very responsible to his
Speaker 2: mother and to his youngest brothers, and so he would
Speaker 2: go about being the family man that he knew he
Speaker 2: wanted or needed to be. And then as night came around,
Speaker 2: he would make excuses, he would go back to Dean
Speaker 2: Coral and this is what a lot of people talk about.
Speaker 2: He kept going back to Dean Coral. Well, he was
Speaker 2: under so much pressure and in terms of both you know,
Speaker 2: getting a monetary reward as well as the manipulation and
Speaker 2: threats he's getting from QORL, that he doesn't see much
Speaker 2: option for what's going on. The one thing he does
Speaker 2: start doing is he has these two men in his
Speaker 2: life who are like extended uncles. They're not blood relations,
Speaker 2: but they're people that he trusts. And he starts to say, look,
Speaker 2: I'm in this terribly compromised position. This is what's been
Speaker 2: going on, and I can tell you that even police
Speaker 2: at this time didn't really have an imagination for what
Speaker 2: was possible. How were these uncles going to know? So
Speaker 2: they both refute him and say, you sound like you're insane,
Speaker 2: you sound like you're on drugs, and they do not
Speaker 2: try to help him, and eventually he does try to
Speaker 2: tell Mary Henley. He writes down everything that's been happening
Speaker 2: for him, and he gives her this note. This is
Speaker 2: towards the very end. She looks at the note, she
Speaker 2: reads it and she thinks my son has gone insane.
Speaker 2: He definitely needs some type of psychological support. She rips
Speaker 2: up the note and she said, I'm going to get
Speaker 2: you help, therapeutic help, but doesn't validate the story, doesn't
Speaker 2: offer to help him in any other way.
Speaker 1: When Henley draws in Franka Gary and this terrible thing happens,
Speaker 1: does his family, you know, rattle the cages and say
Speaker 1: we need this. You know, this is not a kid
Speaker 1: who would have run away. We need to know what happened.
Speaker 1: And the police ignore it. This is seems like a
Speaker 1: neighborhood kid who would have been missed.
Speaker 3: He's one of those that they dismissed is to run away.
Speaker 3: He was engaged to a girl, he had a job,
Speaker 3: he was you know, still in school, and the police
Speaker 3: didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: What happens next? What's kind of the big incident? Do
Speaker 1: we go on for another year or two years?
Speaker 3: What happens?
Speaker 1: This just keeps happening.
Speaker 3: What happened when Wayne killed his first victim, Mark Scott?
Speaker 3: He was still fifteen, just about to turn sixteen, and
Speaker 3: he thought, okay, I've proven myself. This is awful bath
Speaker 3: that's got to be the word. And then the next month,
Speaker 3: there's two together. Two boys are brought in together, and
Speaker 3: he's faced with now you're going to help us with
Speaker 3: two of them, And that's the point at which I
Speaker 3: think he realized I'm not getting out of this. This
Speaker 3: is not easy. There were a few more that year.
Speaker 3: He tried to move away to another town where his
Speaker 3: cousin lived, but then David told him, you know, Dean's
Speaker 3: eyeing your younger brother. So we thought I got to
Speaker 3: get back to Houston and make sure I keep an
Speaker 3: eye on this. Then he tries to join the Navy
Speaker 3: and he doesn't get in as well. He's trying any
Speaker 3: which way he can to get out of this. When
Speaker 3: he finds he can't, he just falls into it. I'm
Speaker 3: his henchman. I have to do this. And there's the
Speaker 3: summer of nineteen seventy three before he killed Kral. That
Speaker 3: entire summer is just one after another, and not just
Speaker 3: with using David and Wayne. Sometimes Coral what acts own
Speaker 3: and go get a victim. I mean, when we hear
Speaker 3: the figure twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, these two
Speaker 3: accomplices weren't involved in all of those. Coral would often
Speaker 3: have done his own two and We don't really even
Speaker 3: know the final number because one victim was found on
Speaker 3: the beach unrelated to any of the burial sites, so
Speaker 3: we don't know if there might have been more. He
Speaker 3: talked to David Brooks about having killed in California. We
Speaker 3: haven't tied him to a victim there or more victims,
Speaker 3: so we actually don't know his complete victim toll. And
Speaker 3: David was involved with more than Wayne, but Wayne during
Speaker 3: the summer the year nineteen seventy three was really very
Speaker 3: active and just felt like I've tried to get out
Speaker 3: and I don't see a way.
Speaker 1: I know you all probably know more about Henley than
Speaker 1: you know about Brooks. Can you tell me the difference,
Speaker 1: But I don't know if it's the psychological difference between
Speaker 1: these two teenagers who are working for this terrible man.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I when I look at David Brooks, I think
Speaker 3: he was really because he had no parental support, nothing
Speaker 3: from his family. He was made to feel like a
Speaker 3: total loser. He was a dropout. He sold drugs in
Speaker 3: the park to other kids, and he did nothing to
Speaker 3: stop coral. He overlooked, he saw murders, he brought kids
Speaker 3: to him. He saw young like thirteen year olds in
Speaker 3: Coral's room, and he would do nothing. He helped him,
Speaker 3: He moved with him and moved around with them. So
Speaker 3: I see that being different from Wayne. I did it
Speaker 3: since when David finally came in and confessed the place
Speaker 3: and basically threw Wayne under the bus, I didn't see
Speaker 3: any sense that he thought what Chorl did was wrong.
Speaker 3: In fact, he said, well, he said to me, these
Speaker 3: are boys that nobody cares about. They're just like hitchhikers
Speaker 3: and runaways, and you can't dropouts that they're like losers.
Speaker 3: Why does anybody care what happened to them? I mean,
Speaker 3: these are the kinds of statements he would make, so
Speaker 3: it shows that he really had no sense of concern
Speaker 3: about what he was doing. He would not give interviews
Speaker 3: to the media afterward, and he had a wife and child,
Speaker 3: so it could be that he was shielding them. But
Speaker 3: there was never a time in any of the statements
Speaker 3: of police that he really expressed a sense of remorse.
Speaker 3: And he certainly had opportunities when he was with Quorl
Speaker 3: to do something before Wayne ever even came into it.
Speaker 3: He could have told Wayne before he brought him in,
Speaker 3: So there is a difference between them, and I see
Speaker 3: David Brooks as being more of a youth at risk
Speaker 3: for adult psychopathy in a way that I don't think
Speaker 3: Henley was.
Speaker 1: He sounds angry, maybe just by being discorded by his
Speaker 1: own family, and now he's happy to take it out
Speaker 1: on these kids or watch somebody else do it.
Speaker 3: I think he just had a real lackadaisical attitude. He
Speaker 3: was also a doper. I mean, he just didn't care
Speaker 3: about much to Coral, you know, was killed and they
Speaker 3: got together. Wayne says that they had talked about killing
Speaker 3: Coral because they were worried he was really getting out
Speaker 3: of control. And David was with Coral with his last victim,
Speaker 3: which is a thirteen year old boy that he basically
Speaker 3: snapped from the street out riding his bike, and David
Speaker 3: brings him a pizza and things. Well, I gave him
Speaker 3: a pizza, I mean that was that. Was there anything
Speaker 3: else I could do for him? At least I was
Speaker 3: nice to him. So that's the kind of memo set
Speaker 3: he had of you know, whatever, this is Coral's thing,
Speaker 3: Nobody's going to do anything about it. And so it's
Speaker 3: not really anger so much as just I don't really
Speaker 3: see beyond what's going to happen with my life? Even
Speaker 3: though he had a wife and child, he had just
Speaker 3: gotten married Tracy.
Speaker 1: This seems like this has gone on for three years, right?
Speaker 1: Is it two years or three years?
Speaker 3: At this point, it's three years three years starting with Coral,
Speaker 3: three years because he acted on his own first.
Speaker 1: So what is the next big incident? Does anything happen
Speaker 1: before the murder takes place.
Speaker 2: So really, you know, it's almost spiraling out of control.
Speaker 2: Dean Coral's telling his mother that he thinks something bad
Speaker 2: is going to happen. He wants to move to Colorado
Speaker 2: where she is. He's telling Wayne that he should come
Speaker 2: with him, and Wayne is thinking maybe he's going to
Speaker 2: take his friend to Ronda Williams because she's having a
Speaker 2: bad home life. So there's just a lot of indication that,
Speaker 2: you know, there's more upheaval than necessary. Dean Coral is
Speaker 2: always receiving correspondence at a post office box, so neither
Speaker 2: Wayne Henley nor David Brooks knows exactly what he's getting
Speaker 2: in the mail. He keeps a lot secret from them,
Speaker 2: and both of them get very paranoid about that. And
Speaker 2: it's really when things come to a header where Wayne's
Speaker 2: thinking he's going to So, first of all, Dean Coral says,
Speaker 2: bring your friend Tim Curlely. I really like him. I
Speaker 2: want to have sex with him. And Wayne brings Tim Curley,
Speaker 2: but he also brings Rand to Williams. They've been partying
Speaker 2: together at Tim's house. They're going over to Dean Coral's
Speaker 2: and Dean immediately says to Wayne, why would you bring
Speaker 2: a girl here? And Wayne, who's been raised by women
Speaker 2: who have always been on his side, thinks, I need
Speaker 2: to protect this girl. So, as Dean Coral is setting
Speaker 2: this up so that both Tim Curley and Rand of
Speaker 2: Williams are going to be abused, they're going to be restrained. Wayne,
Speaker 2: who's kind of high and out of it. It's it's
Speaker 2: you know, late in the morning, you know, initially says
Speaker 2: he's going to assist. You know, I think that he's
Speaker 2: restrained Wayne as well. He unrestrains Wayne. Wayne picks up
Speaker 2: a gun and Dean says, you're not gonna You're not
Speaker 2: gonna shoot that at me and Dean it always told Wayne,
Speaker 2: if you're going to shoot a gun, make sure the
Speaker 2: person you're shooting dies. Make sure they're dead. Before you
Speaker 2: stop shooting, and Wayne just starts shooting. And you can
Speaker 2: see in the evidentiary photographs of Dean Coral he's backed
Speaker 2: up against a wall. He's obviously fallen against the wall.
Speaker 2: There are bullet holes, you know, in his skin, He's naked,
Speaker 2: and this is how police find him. And so this
Speaker 2: is what Almayne Henley is up against, a man who
Speaker 2: keeps coming at him while he's shooting him, saying you
Speaker 2: won't kill me. And Catherine and I have actually wondered
Speaker 2: if this was a way that Dean Coral saw for
Speaker 2: him to almost commit suicide and that he really was
Speaker 2: at the end of his rope. Obviously, Amiwayn Henley was
Speaker 2: at the end of his rope and was no longer
Speaker 2: going to continue participating. And so once he you know,
Speaker 2: unbinds Tim Curley and Randa Williams, they go out of
Speaker 2: the house, they call police, they wait for police, and
Speaker 2: from what Elma, Wayne Henley says, he's relieved. He's going
Speaker 2: to tell them everything. And the thing that you know,
Speaker 2: when we started digging into the hundreds of pages of
Speaker 2: police reports, the first thing you see from both Wayne
Speaker 2: and David Brooks is that there is a syndicate at large.
Speaker 2: They had both been informed about this syndicate. At one point,
Speaker 2: Almoyn Henley had told his friend that it almost felt
Speaker 2: like being in The Godfather, which was a big film
Speaker 2: at that time. You know that he was part of
Speaker 2: something much larger, much like the Mafia. So he had
Speaker 2: some understanding, but it also seemed to have this era
Speaker 2: of mystery for him. It's only four days later that
Speaker 2: in Dallas, which is where both David Brooks and elm
Speaker 2: Wayne Henley felt that syndicate was based, that a man
Speaker 2: named John David Norman is arrested because there is a
Speaker 2: young man working with him that says he thought he
Speaker 2: was supposed to be sent to Dean Coral and he
Speaker 2: raises the alarm. So this is four days later police
Speaker 2: in Dallas raid John David Norman's apartment in Dallas. They
Speaker 2: find just tons of pornography, evidence of trafficking, tons of marijuana.
Speaker 2: The way that the Elmowyn Henley and David Brooks described
Speaker 2: this was that it was kind of a gambling and
Speaker 2: prostitution ring. You know that there were a lot of
Speaker 2: different facets to it, but the overall notion is that
Speaker 2: there's a lot of money being made by this individual,
Speaker 2: and this individual isn't working alone. So then you start
Speaker 2: to see, Wait, John David Norman's arrested, but almost immediately
Speaker 2: bonds out. He's got plenty of money, and he almost
Speaker 2: immediately goes to Chicago, the Chicago area, where he not
Speaker 2: only starts to abuse again, but you start seeing him
Speaker 2: crosspads with John Wayne Gacy.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable, I mean, what a tie in. Give me the
Speaker 1: timeline of John Wayne Gacy. How long after this happens
Speaker 1: with Quarrel is the discovery of John Wayne Gacy and
Speaker 1: everything that he did. When did that happen?
Speaker 2: So this happens in August of nineteen seventy three. By
Speaker 2: October of nineteen seventy three, John David Norman is in Chicago.
Speaker 2: John Wayne Gacy is not discovered until December of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight. Wow, so he has five more years that
Speaker 2: he's going to continue to abuse and kill people. But
Speaker 2: it's very difficult to dismiss that these people are in
Speaker 2: the same line of business, and they're ultimately connected by
Speaker 2: an individual named Phil Pasky that's an employee of John
Speaker 2: Wayne Gacy's, but it's also named as John David Norman's
Speaker 2: right hand man. So when you think about a young
Speaker 2: boy like Elma Wayne Henley entering into somebody who's we
Speaker 2: already have discussed, is sadistic, he's a killer. But then
Speaker 2: when you look at the larger ring where this individual
Speaker 2: John David Norman, you know, is going to Chicago to
Speaker 2: meet with John wayn gaycay See, who we know is
Speaker 2: one of our other, like the largest serial murderers. To
Speaker 2: see that those two things are connected then makes you
Speaker 2: realize what he was up against.
Speaker 1: Have we heard of these kinds of circumstances before with
Speaker 1: any other serial killers when they're connected to a much
Speaker 1: larger syndicate with pornography and sex work and everything else.
Speaker 2: I think that you know, we were talking, you and
Speaker 2: I Catherine were talking yesterday about the trash bag killer,
Speaker 2: and so when you think about that potentially being strung
Speaker 2: into this. We started looking at the ring during the
Speaker 2: John Wyng Gaycy research we did, and we saw that
Speaker 2: there were, you know, summer camps established in North Fox Island, Michigan,
Speaker 2: where predators that are associated with this ring were having
Speaker 2: young boys come from the city so they could have
Speaker 2: the refreshing air of the countryside during the summertime, camps
Speaker 2: that are supported by state and federal grants, and it's
Speaker 2: proven that all these boys that went there are being
Speaker 2: abused and trafficked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's recently a documentary, I think Children of the
Speaker 3: Snow where the babysitter serial killer in Michigan is related
Speaker 3: to this island retreat that Tracey's talking about, and they
Speaker 3: had a lot of documentation that the killers of these
Speaker 3: kids were associated with this group.
Speaker 1: Well, back to the story, I remember you saying that
Speaker 1: David Brooks came in and confessed at some point. Is
Speaker 1: that right.
Speaker 3: He didn't confess so much as back up to where
Speaker 3: Wayne calls in that he's killed porl And as soon
Speaker 3: as they put him in the police car. So what
Speaker 3: he looks like is he's a hero. He has saved
Speaker 3: these other two kids. He's killed, you know, Dean Coral,
Speaker 3: it's all self defense. He looks he's looking pretty good.
Speaker 3: But he immediately says he talked about having burying some
Speaker 3: kids in this boat shed in South Houston, and they
Speaker 3: kind of dismissed him, similar to the way they dismissed
Speaker 3: the whole they're all runaways, until he started naming names
Speaker 3: that they found to be on missing person's list, and
Speaker 3: then they thought, all right, let us take him down
Speaker 3: there and see, still not really quite believing it. Then
Speaker 3: get to the boat stall and it's just this small
Speaker 3: it's not even outside stall, it's the it's in the middle.
Speaker 3: They opened it. There's just some junk in there or
Speaker 3: an old car, but there's a kid's bike and they
Speaker 3: know the bike has recently been stolen, with a kid
Speaker 3: missing the week before, and it turns out the bike
Speaker 3: is that kid's bike, and the car is stolen, and
Speaker 3: there's a rake with white rosin on the tongs, and
Speaker 3: there's a shovel and there's so they start digging. It
Speaker 3: was didn't take long for them to find the thirteen
Speaker 3: year old boy wrapped in plastic, buried there. So now
Speaker 3: they know they've built a long night ahead, and they
Speaker 3: end up unearthing multiple bodies. And at that point David
Speaker 3: comes in because he's hearing this on the news and
Speaker 3: he wants to say, well, you know, I lived with
Speaker 3: Coral and nothing like this happened in front of me.
Speaker 3: And his father was allowed to be in there with
Speaker 3: him because his father had given these moonlighting jobs to
Speaker 3: some of the cops, so they bent the rules for him,
Speaker 3: and because his father was in there, Brooks was not
Speaker 3: going to really say much. He sort of threw Wayne
Speaker 3: under the bus, then gave a second statement when they
Speaker 3: basically said, we know you're much more a part of this.
Speaker 3: They put him in Wayne together into a room and
Speaker 3: Wayne said, if you don't start talking, I'm talking. So
Speaker 3: you should start telling the truth. You'll feel better. So
Speaker 3: then David gives second statement, admits he's seen some kids
Speaker 3: who ended up being murdered and that all he was
Speaker 3: was the driver to the burial sites. And eventually the
Speaker 3: third statement he gives just about one victim, and that's
Speaker 3: what nails him essentially. But he's not willing to take
Speaker 3: any responsibility whatsoever for this. But he does go to
Speaker 3: one of the burial locations, High Island Beach. At this point,
Speaker 3: Wayne's already taken with a boat stall to a lake
Speaker 3: where four are buried, and they're on their way to
Speaker 3: High Island Beach where six are buried, and so the
Speaker 3: two of them. But the odd thing is for me,
Speaker 3: Brooks never says. And here they are together, face to
Speaker 3: base on the beach. There are photos of them sitting
Speaker 3: together Brooks never says, so you did it. You finally
Speaker 3: did it. And I found that so odd because supposedly
Speaker 3: they had discussed killing Corel, but instead all Brooks seases,
Speaker 3: you ruined my life. Had a wife, I've got a
Speaker 3: kid coming. You basically ruined my life. Wow.
Speaker 1: So what happens next? In the legal wheels are grinding here?
Speaker 1: Is there a plea deal? Do they go to trial?
Speaker 3: They went to trial. There was a grand jury hearing
Speaker 3: and Wayne gave a very detailed statement and took responsibility
Speaker 3: for the murders of a number of boys. And they
Speaker 3: made a determination to try him for six because they
Speaker 3: had the bodies one of the ones he confessed to
Speaker 3: they didn't have the body for because they closed down
Speaker 3: the beach operation too soon before they found this particular one.
Speaker 3: But so he had confessed and he had named names
Speaker 3: that he was implicated in. So they had a grand
Speaker 3: jury hearing for both of them together, and then they
Speaker 3: were both going to trial.
Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit more about that. How
Speaker 1: did the media frame Tracy all of this? What was
Speaker 1: the optics of these two teenagers, these you know, neighborhood
Speaker 1: boys who had become involved with this older man who was,
Speaker 1: you know, highly involved in the community and just seemed
Speaker 1: like somebody who was totally normal, and this just must
Speaker 1: have been a can of worms all over the place
Speaker 1: that the community couldn't believe.
Speaker 2: And I want to start creating a parallel which is
Speaker 2: why I started to dig into this case. After I
Speaker 2: had researched the Gacy case. What you have are people
Speaker 2: within one enforcement and prosecution starting to really craft a narrative.
Speaker 2: It's ignored in police reports that an individual comes forward
Speaker 2: and says there is pornography of these young men that
Speaker 2: would widen out the case. We look in the police
Speaker 2: records and after this is told to them, they do
Speaker 2: nothing to research that we can see. There's no evidence
Speaker 2: that they did. Even further, even though John David Norman
Speaker 2: is somebody that's afoot, police deny that out of hand.
Speaker 2: There's absolutely no connection between John David Norman and this case.
Speaker 2: Even though you have a young man saying I was
Speaker 2: supposed to be sent to Dane Coral and I think
Speaker 2: that we know, you know, birds of a feather flock together.
Speaker 2: So this was something that just doesn't make sense to
Speaker 2: us in the modern day. So you see the victims
Speaker 2: being almost made responsible for their own demise. These are
Speaker 2: kids that are associated with a perverted psychopath who's homosexual.
Speaker 2: And instead of making this an issue whereby you know,
Speaker 2: Dean Coral is you know, he's a completely different animal altogether.
Speaker 2: He has nothing to do with homosexuality. He has everything
Speaker 2: to do with predation, sadism, murder, And so you have
Speaker 2: this huge upheople in the United States while are all
Speaker 2: gay men murderers, killers, defilers, and so you have this
Speaker 2: blowback where the gay community is trying to say, look,
Speaker 2: we're just living our lives. Even though you might see
Speaker 2: this as perversion, it's a very normal sexual disposition, and
Speaker 2: so trying to kind of cut that in half is
Speaker 2: something where again the victims are seen as somehow tainted. So,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't have a ton of parents, especially
Speaker 2: given you know, kind of the amount of religion in
Speaker 2: Texas at the time. You have people wanting to turn
Speaker 2: away from this, people who aren't going to be aggressive
Speaker 2: about trying to find answers. It's kind of made to
Speaker 2: be elmawayn Henley's problem. He's the one who propagated this.
Speaker 2: Dean Coral's mother says as much, Dean Coral is dead
Speaker 2: nobody can help you hold him accountable. He ultimately as
Speaker 2: somebody who served in the army, is given a proper
Speaker 2: burial in an army cemetery, while Elmawayn Henley is created
Speaker 2: into public enemy number one. And so this kid who's
Speaker 2: still not even eighteen is being paraded around as somebody
Speaker 2: who is willing to talk, somebody who's boasting about his
Speaker 2: crimes somebody, and so he's kind of created. No matter
Speaker 2: what he says, he's deemed to be evil beyond you know,
Speaker 2: compare and so, and we found this in the John
Speaker 2: Wayne Gacy case two, where police started looking or at
Speaker 2: least the media started looking at victims as somehow responsible
Speaker 2: for their own demise because of their drug use, because
Speaker 2: of their sexual predilictions. And so you're able to both
Speaker 2: dismiss these accomplices who are not full accomplices and yet
Speaker 2: are being blamed for all I mean people have, you know,
Speaker 2: very casually said Elmo Weyn Henley murdered twenty eight kids.
Speaker 2: He did not, and he wasn't the driving force for
Speaker 2: these murders. And so once that gets crafted as a narrative,
Speaker 2: the pornography is ignored. Any larger sex trafficking ring isn't discovered,
Speaker 2: then Almo Weayn Henley has to bear the brunt of
Speaker 2: all of this, so he gets, you know, five hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty plus years in prison. He's discredited. There's nothing
Speaker 2: that he can say that would make him look less
Speaker 2: than wicked. And so the people that are in power
Speaker 2: that may have benefited from a sex trafficking ring, the
Speaker 2: people who find this kind of messy and it's tough
Speaker 2: to prosecute that might not know exactly what happened. Everybody
Speaker 2: goes with as much simpler narrative and walks away, and
Speaker 2: history for fifty years ignores this. But it's important for
Speaker 2: us to know that this was one of the largest
Speaker 2: sex trafficking rings were unaware of. It's important to know,
Speaker 2: as doctor Ramsland states in the back of the book,
Speaker 2: there are ways of getting kids out of these situations,
Speaker 2: helping them that adults can do to intervening. Today, this
Speaker 2: is not a subject that's lost in history. This is
Speaker 2: something that is even more prevalent than it was during
Speaker 2: this time because of the Internet.
Speaker 1: Do you think doctor Ramsland, that the nuances of these
Speaker 1: relationships between these three people with Brooks and Henley and coral.
Speaker 1: Would those nuances be brought out today? Knowing what we
Speaker 1: know about you know, we're much more of course enlightened
Speaker 1: about the difference between predators and people who are gay,
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. It seems like some of that
Speaker 1: mess might be cut away from a story that happened today.
Speaker 3: I think it depends in the jury diction, frankly, because
Speaker 3: you certainly still see those same black and white attitudes,
Speaker 3: unwillingness to look at nuances, unwillingness to give any ground
Speaker 3: to something like that, you know, the teenage brain research.
Speaker 3: So I even I mean, I've recently had some encounters
Speaker 3: with a prosecutor who stated exactly what I just said,
Speaker 3: not giving any ground on this. These kids killed blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. You know, this is in a place you
Speaker 3: think would be more enlightened, but no. So I think
Speaker 3: it really depends on who's handling it, what mental health
Speaker 3: resources are available for explanation, and you know, trying to
Speaker 3: really just trying to deal with all that we do
Speaker 3: know about them, and whether someone's willing to apploy that
Speaker 3: to a given situation, Because as soon as something happens,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of reaction, and social media just echoes
Speaker 3: that and magnifies it and distorts it and does all
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff with it and inspire under rage. I mean, really,
Speaker 3: you'll see if people on social media this true crime
Speaker 3: culture where they're ready to lynch somebody without giving any
Speaker 3: thought to some of the factors involved, that might mitigate.
Speaker 3: So I just think it really depends on the situation
Speaker 3: and where it happens.
Speaker 1: Kind Of as we wrap up here, Wayne Henley, what
Speaker 1: is his general outlook on life? Because he has life
Speaker 1: in prison. Life does not stop once you're in prison.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that he's created some kind of a community,
Speaker 1: some kind of family or something there what is happening
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 3: He tends to create his family with people who write
Speaker 3: to him more than inside the prison. He's been in
Speaker 3: prison fifty one years, but he's been moved around a lot,
Speaker 3: and a number of people that he was friends with
Speaker 3: them gotten out, and I think under most circumstances he
Speaker 3: would have been at this point, because fifty one years
Speaker 3: is a long time, and there are people in similar
Speaker 3: circumstances who have been paroled, but not him. He likes
Speaker 3: the fact that we've approached him to do this book
Speaker 3: because it feels like he might be remembered for something
Speaker 3: more than just that bad stretch of time in his past.
Speaker 3: He doesn't want to be reduced to that. It's a
Speaker 3: way for him to have given a message out there
Speaker 3: for kids to be aware, for caretakers to be aware,
Speaker 3: for people to listen when kids try to say they're
Speaker 3: in trouble and don't just dismiss them, try to help
Speaker 3: them in some way. And I think that he appreciates
Speaker 3: having something in print out there for people to see
Speaker 3: his situation and to set the story right because prior
Speaker 3: to this book, it was that older book from nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy four, before even the trial, before even the grand jury,
Speaker 3: is that older book that sets the tone for this case,
Speaker 3: but it was based on largely on a few interviews
Speaker 3: with families and the police reports, and the police reports
Speaker 3: we have found are flawed, so that means that story
Speaker 3: is flawed for a number of reasons. Kudos to him
Speaker 3: getting that book out quickly, but unfortunately it's how many
Speaker 3: people think about the case, and we're hoping to change
Speaker 3: some minds. And I think way To appreciates that.
Speaker 1: Tray see any other closing thoughts.
Speaker 2: I just think that elmioing Henley is looking to help,
Speaker 2: and he's given us insight to things, especially this case,
Speaker 2: that we never would have had had we not asked.
Speaker 2: He's willing to answer every question that we have and
Speaker 2: to help law enforcement understand the nuances of this, and
Speaker 2: so I really appreciate that he's willing to do that.
Speaker 2: And I think that as a society, it's just so
Speaker 2: important for us to not look away from these things.
Speaker 2: That the fact that we didn't know a lot about
Speaker 2: this sex trafa King ring and that we're only learning
Speaker 2: more about it in the past couple of years, it
Speaker 2: can only lead to history repeating itself, and we don't
Speaker 2: want that to happen. We want our children to be
Speaker 2: safe and healthy.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and Don't Forget There are
Speaker 1: twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast Tenfold More
Speaker 1: Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
Speaker 1: give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
Speaker 1: been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis Mrosi.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
Speaker 1: by John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer, artwork by
Speaker 1: Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff, and
Speaker 1: Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More
Speaker 1: Wicked and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod.