I have not given much thought as to whether the bodies found on the bayou are people being killed and dumped in the bayou, or if, like Mayor Whitmire claims, there is no connection to the bodies, thus no serial killer.
I am no expert on serial killers, but I have my share of movies like The Silence of the Lambs, and have read about serial killers, including the most famous one here in Houston. If I recall, the police at the time did not realize that there was a serial killer.
Police did not know about the serial Killer:
Police were unaware that Dean Corll, the “Candy Man,” was a serial killer and dismissed multiple reports of missing boys in the Houston area before his killing spree was uncovered in 1973. Authorities only discovered the extent of his crimes after one of his teenage accomplices shot and killed Corll and confessed to the police.
Failures in the police response included:
- Missing person reports dismissed: Over several years, dozens of teenage boys and young men disappeared in Houston and Pasadena, but police typically classified them as runaways and ignored pleas from frantic families.
- Early tip ignored: The parents of two victims, brothers Donald and Jerry Waldrop, told police in 1971 that an acquaintance saw Corll burying what looked like bodies at his boat shed. The police conducted a cursory search, found nothing, and dismissed the report as a hoax. A police chief even told the boys’ father, “Why are you down here? You know your boys are runaways”.
Dean Arnold Corll (December 24, 1939 – August 8, 1973) was an American serial killer and sex offender who abducted, raped, tortured and murdered a minimum of twenty-nine teenage boys and young men between 1970 and 1973 in Houston and Pasadena, Texas. He was aided by two teenaged accomplices, David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley. The crimes, which became known as the Houston Mass Murders, came to light after Henley fatally shot Corll. Upon discovery, the case was considered the worst example of serial murder in United States history.[4]
Corll’s victims were typically lured with an offer of a party or a lift to one of the various addresses at which he resided between 1970 and 1973. They would then be restrained either by force or deception, and each was killed either by strangulation or shooting with a .22 caliber pistol. Corll and his accomplices buried eighteen of their victims in a rented boat shed; four other victims were buried in woodland near Lake Sam Rayburn, one victim was buried on a beach in Jefferson County, and at least six victims were buried on a beach on the Bolivar Peninsula. Brooks and Henley confessed to assisting Corll in several abductions and murders; both were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Corll was also known as the Candy Man and the Pied Piper, because he and his family had previously owned and operated a candy factory in Houston Heights, and he had been known to give free candy to local children.[5]
Like the Candy Man, it could be that the killer or killers are targeting people who are not likely to be reported missing to the police. Or it could be that, since dumping bodies in Houston’s bayous has made the news, people are now just jumping off a bridge into bayous.
Or it could be that the HPD department suspects that there is a serial killer on the loose, and they just don’t want to alarm the public.
The main reason I believe is that people no longer trust the government or the police to be honest with them.
But until the police can tell the public more about the alleged victims, one of the criteria of a serial killer is that victims are also frequently selected from vulnerable or marginalized populations, such as the homeless, prostitutes, or the elderly, who are seen as easy targets. If they are homeless, as the mayor suggested, then that criterion must be investigated.
I also believe that HPD may not want to classify them as murder, as they want to have a lower murder rate.
