Contacting police
At 8:24 a.m. on August 8, 1973, Henley placed a call to the PPD. His call was answered by an operator named Velma Lines. In his call, Henley blurted to the operator: "Y'all better come here right now! I just killed a man!" Henley gave the address to the operator as 2020 Lamar Drive, Pasadena. As Kerley, Williams and Henley waited upon Corll's porch for the police to arrive, Henley mentioned to Kerley that he had "done that (killed by shooting) four or five times."
Minutes later, a PPD patrol car arrived at 2020 Lamar Drive. The three teenagers were sitting on the porch outside the house, and the officer noted the .22 caliber pistol on the driveway near the trio. Henley told the officer that he was the individual who had made the call and indicated that Corll's body was inside the house. After confiscating the pistol and placing Henley, Williams, and Kerley inside the patrol car, the officer entered the bungalow and discovered Corll's body inside the hallway. The officer returned to the car and read Henley his Miranda rights. In response, Henley shouted: "I don't care who knows about it! I have to get it off my chest!"
Kerley later told detectives that before the police officer had arrived at Lamar Drive, Henley had informed him, "If you wasn't my friend, I could have gotten $200 for you."
Accomplices' confessions
In PPD custody, Henley was initially questioned about the killing of Corll. He recounted the events of the previous evening and that morning; explaining that he had shot Corll in self-defense. The statements given by Kerley and Williams corroborated Henley's account, and the detective questioning Henley believed he had indeed acted in self-defense.
When questioned regarding his claim that as Corll had threatened him that morning he had shouted that he had killed several boys, Henley explained that for almost three years, Brooks and he had helped procure teenage boys, some of whom had been their own friends, for Corll, who had raped and murdered them. Henley gave a verbal statement; stating he initially had believed the boys he had abducted were to be sold into a Dallas-based organization for "homosexual acts, sodomy, maybe later killing," but soon learned Corll was himself killing the victims procured. Henley admitted he had assisted Corll in several abductions and murders, and that he had actively participated in the torture and mutilation of "six or eight" victims prior to their murder. Most victims had been buried in a Southwest Houston boat shed; with others buried at Lake Sam Rayburn and High Island Beach. Corll had paid up to $200 for each victim Brooks or he were able to lure to his apartment.
Police initially were skeptical of Henley's claims, assuming the sole homicide of the case was that of Corll, which they had ascribed as being the result of drug-fueled fisticuffs that had turned deadly. Henley was quite insistent, however, and upon his recalling the names of three boys—Cobble, Hilligiest, and Jones—whom he stated he and Brooks had procured for Corll, the police accepted that there was something to his claims, as all three teenagers were listed as missing at Houston Police Department (HPD) headquarters. Hilligiest had been reported missing in the summer of 1971; the other two boys had been missing for just two weeks. Moreover, the floor of the room where the three teenagers had been tied was covered in thick plastic sheeting. Police also found a plywood torture board measuring 8 by 3 feet (2.44 by 0.91 m) with handcuffs attached to nylon rope at two corners, and nylon ropes to the other two. Also found at Corll's address were a large hunting knife, rolls of clear plastic of the same type used to cover the floor, a portable radio rigged to a pair of dry cells to give increased volume, an electric motor with loose wires attached, eight pairs of handcuffs, a number of dildos, thin glass tubes, and lengths of rope.
Corll's Ford Econoline van parked in the driveway conveyed a similar impression. The rear windows of the van were sealed by opaque blue curtains. In the rear of the vehicle, police found a coil of rope, a swatch of beige rug covered in soil stains, and a wooden crate with air holes drilled in the sides. The pegboard walls inside the rear of the van were rigged with several rings and hooks. Another wooden crate with air holes drilled in the sides was found in Corll's backyard. Inside this crate were several strands of human hair:
He (Henley) started to take a step inside (the boat shed), but then his face just turned ashen, pale, grim ... he staggered around outside the door. Right then's when I knew there were going to be bodies in that shed.
Houston Police officer Karl Siebeneicher describing Henley's actions upon leading police to Corll's boat shed on August 8.
Search for victims
Henley agreed to accompany police to Corll's boat shed in Southwest Houston, where he claimed the bodies of most of the victims could be found. Inside the boat shed, police found a half-stripped stolen car, a child's bike, a large iron drum, water containers, two sacks of lime, and a large plastic bag full of teenage boys' clothing.
Two prison trusties began digging through the soft, crushed-shell earth of the boat shed and soon uncovered the body of a blond-haired teenaged boy, lying on his side, encased in clear plastic and buried beneath a layer of lime. Police continued excavating through the earth of the shed, unearthing the remains of more victims in varying stages of decomposition. Most of the bodies found were wrapped in thick, clear plastic sheeting. Some victims had been shot, others strangled, the ligatures still wrapped tightly around their necks.
All of the victims found had been sodomized and most victims found bore evidence of sexual torture: pubic hairs had been plucked out, genitals had been chewed, objects had been inserted into their rectums, and glass rods had been inserted into their urethrae and smashed. Cloth rags had also been inserted into the victims' mouths and adhesive tape wound around their faces to muffle their screams. The tongue of the first victim uncovered protruded over one inch beyond the tooth margin; the mouth of the third victim unearthed on August 8 was so agape that all upper and lower teeth were visible, leading investigators to theorize the youth had died screaming. After the recovery of the eighth body from the boat shed was completed at 11:55 p.m., the investigation was discontinued until the next day.
Accompanied by his father, Brooks presented himself at HPD headquarters on the evening of August 8 and gave a statement in which he denied any participation in the murders, but admitted to having known that Corll had raped and killed two youths in 1970.
On the morning of August 9, Henley gave a full written statement detailing his and Brooks's involvement with Corll in the abduction and murder of numerous youths. In this confession, Henley readily admitted to having personally killed approximately nine youths and to have assisted Corll in the strangulation of others. He stated the "only three" abductions and murders Brooks had not assisted him and Corll with were committed in the summer of 1973. That afternoon, Henley accompanied police to Lake Sam Rayburn, where he, Brooks, and Corll had buried four victims killed that year. Two additional bodies were found in shallow, lime-soaked graves located close to a dirt road. Inside the lakeside log cabin owned by Corll's family, police found a second plywood torture board, rolls of plastic sheeting, shovels, and a sack of lime.
Police found nine additional bodies in the boat shed on August 9. These bodies were recovered between 12:05 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., and all were in an advanced state of decomposition. The twelfth body unearthed bore evidence of sexual mutilation (the severed genitals of the victim were found inside a sealed plastic bag placed beside the body); another victim unearthed had several fractured ribs. The thirteenth and fourteenth bodies unearthed bore identification cards naming the victims as Donald and Jerry Waldrop.
Brooks gave a full confession on the evening of August 9, admitting to being present at several killings and assisting in several burials, although he continued to deny any direct participation in the murders. In reference to the torture board upon which Corll had restrained and tortured his victims, Brooks stated: "Once they were on the board, they were as good as dead; it was all over but the shouting and the crying." He agreed to accompany police to High Island Beach to assist in the search for the bodies of the victims.
On August 10, 1973, Henley again accompanied police to Lake Sam Rayburn, where two more bodies were found buried just 10 feet (3 m) apart. As with the two bodies found the previous day, both victims had been tortured and severely beaten, particularly around the head. That afternoon, both Henley and Brooks accompanied police to High Island Beach, leading police to the shallow graves of two victims. On August 13, both Henley and Brooks again accompanied the police to High Island Beach, where four more bodies were found, making a total of 27 known victims – the worst killing spree in American history at the time. Henley initially insisted that there were two more bodies to be found inside the boat shed and that the bodies of two more boys had been buried at High Island Beach in 1972.
At the time, the killing spree was the worst case of serial murder, in terms of the number of victims, in the United States, exceeding the 25 murders attributed to Juan Corona, who had been arrested in California in 1971 for killing 25 men. The macabre record number of known victims attributed to a single murder case set by Corll and his accomplices was surpassed only in 1978 by John Wayne Gacy, who murdered 33 boys and young men and who admitted to being influenced by press coverage of the Houston Mass Murders to manacle his victims prior to their abuse and murder.
Families of Corll's victims were highly critical of the HPD, which had been quick to list the missing boys as runaways who had not been considered worthy of any major investigation. The families of the murdered youths asserted that the police should have noted an insidious trend in the pattern of disappearances of teenage boys from the Heights neighborhood; other family members complained the HPD had been dismissive of their adamant insistence that their sons had no reasons to run away from home. Everett Waldrop, the father of Donald and Jerry Waldrop, complained that shortly after his sons had disappeared in 1971, he had informed police an acquaintance had observed Corll burying what appeared to be bodies at his boat shed. In response, the police performed a perfunctory search around the boat shed, before dismissing the reports as a hoax. Waldrop stated that on one of the many occasions when he visited the HPD, the police chief had simply told him, "Why are you down here? You know your boys are runaways." The mother of Gregory Malley Winkle stated: "You don't run away (from home) with nothing but a bathing suit and 80 cents."
By May 1974, 21 of Corll's victims had been identified, with all but four of the youths having either lived in or had close connections to Houston Heights. Two more teenagers were identified in 1983 and 1985; one of whom, Richard Kepner, also lived in Houston Heights. The other youth, Willard Branch, lived in the Oak Forest district of Houston.
Indictment
On August 13, a grand jury convened in Harris County to hear evidence against Henley and Brooks: the first witnesses to testify were Williams and Kerley, who testified to the events of August 7 and 8 leading to the death of Corll. Another witness who testified to his experience at the hands of Corll was William Ridinger. After listening to over six hours of testimony from various people, on August 14, the jury initially indicted Henley on three counts of murder and Brooks on one count. Bail for each youth was set at $100,000.
The District Attorney requested that Henley undergo a psychiatric examination to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial, but his attorney, Charles Melder, opposed the decision, stating the move would violate Henley's constitutional rights.
By the time the grand jury had completed its investigation, Henley had been indicted for six murders, and Brooks for four. Henley was not charged with the death of Corll, which prosecutors ruled on September 18 had been committed in self-defense.
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