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[Music] [Applause] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:45
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always as a man that refuses to pay for barbecue sauce he is the
00:01:52
captain thank you thank you thank you it's good to be seen and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for
00:01:58
telling a friend [Music] today we are drinking lunch pale ale by the good people at Breaker Brewing
00:02:09
Company in Pennsylvania garage grade 4 and 1 12 bottle caps out of five this is a traditional American pale ale brood
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with nugget and Cascade hops with an ABV of 5.5% it's hoppy but smooth and clean and
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today's beer was brought to us by first up thanks to Shan from Hawkeye country and a big shout out to Allison from
00:02:32
Kingswood Texas next up it shears to Jake and Jenny and Lehi Utah and big we like your JB to Caitlyn in Washington DC
00:02:40
next up a huge thank you and cheers to Chris and Christa in bismar North Dakota and last but not least we have Zoe right
00:02:48
here in Columbus Ohio so thank you to everybody that went to True Crim garage.com and helped us out with this
00:02:54
week's beer fun while you're on the website make sure you sign up on the mailing list and that's enough of the
00:02:59
the beers na all right Captain everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:07
crime candy candy candy [Music] Cy well obviously Captain we cannot tell the story of each and every individual
00:03:36
victim in this case because as we will learn there will just be too many of them now a list of all of the names of
00:03:44
the known victims of Dean Coral is available on his Wikipedia page but here are some of the stories of known victims
00:03:53
the first victim may have been Jeffrey Allen Conan age 18 a student from Houston
00:04:00
Jeffrey hitchhiked from Austin to Houston with the friend who last saw him getting out of a car at Voss Road around
00:04:08
6:00 p.m. this is on September 1st 1970 his body was later found at High Island according to record neither
00:04:18
Brooks nor Henley participated in this murder and then there's this report from Wayne Henley that states one day he and
00:04:27
coral were out in the parked in front of a grocery store when a boy came along on
00:04:33
his bike and coral called the kid over and told him he found some empty Coke bottles while cleaning out his van he
00:04:43
would give them to the kid just to get rid of them and the boy could take them into the grocery store and get the
00:04:49
deposit and keep it do you want to explain to the listeners what this means cuz there's some listeners that are out
00:04:55
there scratching their heads right now going why would this boy want empty soda bottles from this strange man well
00:05:03
because when you turn them back in you there's a deposit amount so you get I think a nickel for each bottle that
00:05:11
you'd return yeah and it might have been more back then or or or at least the nickel was at least worth more back then
00:05:17
and the idea being that the the soda companies had to reuse these bottles so it was an enticing way to get the people
00:05:24
to return the bottles to be reused and probably get you to buy something some more soda because you go to the grocery
00:05:31
store and then they're handing you money right so after the Boy comes out of the
00:05:36
store Coral calls him back over and he says hey look not only did I give you those bottles for free and you just got
00:05:44
money for them but come to think of it I found a lot of bottles in my garage when
00:05:49
I was cleaning it out and hey you could put your bike in the back of the van and
00:05:54
you could ride home with me and get these empty bottles and sell them and keep the money well that kid got into
00:06:01
the van with coral and Henley and coral took him home the boy's name was James drema he's age 14 later that evening
00:06:10
James called his father Douglas drema yeah he calls his father cuz he's going to ask him hey is it okay if I spend the
00:06:17
night at this party that's happening across on the other side of town his father says no and he wanted the boy to
00:06:25
be home in 20 minutes well he never saw James alive Again David Brooks later said that he bought James a pizza and
00:06:34
hung out with him for about 45 minutes before quote Dean went to work on him Dean Coral tortured raped and strangled
00:06:43
the boy well we should also talk about Frank aguire he's a he was a local teen Frank finished his shift at the Long
00:06:51
John Silvers restaurant and told his mother that he would be home by 10: p.m. that night now he never showed and he
00:06:58
was never seen again this is because Brooks and Henley who were acquainted with Frank called him over to their van
00:07:06
asking if he wanted to go smoke a joint with them at their friend Dean Coral's Place mhm so he followed them there in
00:07:14
his vehicle and once in the apartment was bound gagged raped and murdered well just think about how sick and twisted
00:07:22
the minds of Brooks and Henley are right right because they've seen what Dean can do
00:07:31
and to invite your friend over that you know to be like hey come smoke some pot with us you are you're the bait one
00:07:41
thing that I wondered about too regarding this story specifically because so many of these stories people
00:07:47
end up getting into the van or somehow arriving over at Dean's Coral's apartment to go to a quote unquote party
00:07:56
mhm but this story specifically mentions that this boy Frank aguire drove his vehicle to the apartment now we can
00:08:06
assume or you know at least at least think that maybe Frank aguar is one of the bodies
00:08:13
that would be found in that boat shed right my question is this vehicle we've discussed this on this show many times
00:08:21
that a lot of times a vehicle can be more of a nuisance for a killer to dispose of than a body right and I
00:08:28
couldn't find any reports of stating hey this kid's still missing but we found his car here or found it there uh no
00:08:36
mention of this vehicle now obviously what we do know so far in this story Captain is that some of the
00:08:44
motivations for the murders of these teenage boys conducted by Dean coral and now what we believe one or two
00:08:53
accomplices especially for Dean these motivations would be sadism torture mutilation amongst other things and we
00:09:02
should discuss some of this but I do want to be clear here we really wanted to minimize this portion of the
00:09:09
discussion of the the physical torture that Dean Coral actually inflicted on his victims not only because the details
00:09:17
are stomach turning but because the families of these poor boys have suffered enough hearing the fates of
00:09:22
their loved ones and in fact most of the families could not manage to sit through
00:09:27
the court proceedings that would come later because they were just too horrific right and this information is
00:09:34
widely known on the internet if you really want to dive into it yes and in order to convey just how monstrous and
00:09:41
evil Dean Coral was we do unfortunately need to get to some of the facts what would happen is coral would get the boys
00:09:48
into his apartment and somehow incapacitate them we mentioned some different things here it seems to me
00:09:55
Captain that he had two different emos and I think what we have here is before he had his little accompli Dean you know
00:10:05
David Brooks and Wayne Henley right who would later help him I think his original emo was you know what I'm going
00:10:12
to get some teenage boys back here I'm going to let them party maybe it's one boy maybe it's two I'm going to get him
00:10:18
drunk let him smoke some stuff let him Huff some stuff and the way that it was described later by Wayne and David
00:10:25
Brooks is that during these Party Times Dean would kind of sit back and and let the teenagers really go at it let them
00:10:35
really party down while he was just kind of waiting and these are also let's just
00:10:40
assume that these teenagers are not they're they're probably not drinking often they're probably not smoking this
00:10:46
much pot that often probably definitely not huffing this paint so we're talking about really getting these guys
00:10:54
incoherent yeah and I think for at least before he had Wayne and David Brooks helping him I think the whole Mo was to
00:11:03
let these kids kind of party and wait till they pass out and once they pass out well I can tie him up put handcuffs
00:11:10
on them strap them to the torture board whatever you know I'm he's in control at
00:11:14
that point and then I think Theo changed a little bit once he had the accomplices
00:11:19
and I think that was for a couple of reasons like you talked about earlier Brooks talked about how Dean moved
00:11:24
around a lot mhm and so you'd think that Dean would want to be out like in the middle of nowhere so just in case they
00:11:31
did wake up and scream or whatever cuz there's actually no reports of people hearing things that I could find right
00:11:39
actually the the things that I found according to Brooks and Henley were that often Dean Coral would tape duct tape
00:11:48
the mouths closed of the victims right and he would leave the duct tape on I guess on a couple of occasions he took
00:11:56
it off because he was sick enough he wanted to hear the screams but he would when he would do that he would turn up
00:12:02
his stereo system all the way so that you know Neighbors on the outside all they ever heard was was the stereo music
00:12:09
yeah I think what's what's what's shocking and I think what's changing too when we talk about his Mo I think once
00:12:16
he had the help of these two teenage boys I think Dean was kind of spiraling out of control in the sense that he was
00:12:26
he would get a little sloppy because now he has the these kids bringing so many kids over to his apartment right where I
00:12:33
think at I think before it was more difficult for this grown man to talk a teenager or two or three to come back to
00:12:40
his apartment now once you have somebody that they know you know somebody that they've talked to they're the ones doing
00:12:47
the inviting not this not this 20s something 30-some man right and so I think it was easier for a lot of
00:12:55
potential victims to enter his home his residence and I I think that made him lose a bit of control in a sense that I
00:13:04
I think he wanted to kill a lot more than he actually did again this is years before technology of cell phones and and
00:13:10
things like that so once you had them in your house there's no way that they could connect with the outside world mhm
00:13:17
and I think the Handcuff trick um was something that they started doing because he could get the boys his
00:13:25
accomplishes to talk the other boys into doing this handcuff thing with them right and I think it was a way of Dean
00:13:34
look this is his drug unfortunately sexually assaulting torturing and killing these teenage boys is what he is
00:13:40
addicted to that's why he ended up doing it so many times right and I think what
00:13:45
we see here is in the old days he had to sit back and wait and let the kids party
00:13:50
until they would pass out and I think once he had the help of these two teenagers he no longer could wait he
00:13:57
couldn't just sit back andit wait he couldn't stand to wait an hour or two or three for the kids to pass out instead
00:14:04
he had to incorporate this handcuff game so we could get to this this Terror as soon as possible but it all escalates
00:14:12
anyways because you're you're paying these teenager boys to perform sexual acts on you and that's not enough okay
00:14:21
so now we have to escalate it to uh tying them up now we have to escalate that to well we don't want them to be as
00:14:30
drugged you know what I mean like that's the escalation and I think especially with the Handcuff trick it was once once
00:14:39
they realized I think he kind of got off on the idea of once the the victim realized
00:14:46
I I'm stuck this was a bad mistake this was a trick to get me into this position
00:14:52
right I think he got off on on seeing that fear right well regardless of how he incapacitated the victim once they
00:15:01
were incapacitated it was all over for the victim Coral would then strip and strip and strap them to that torture
00:15:11
board where he would then rape and torture the victim he would on occasion keep these boys alive for extended
00:15:18
periods some of the tortures included castration large object penetration chewing on the genitals or using a dull
00:15:26
knife on them electric shock with exposed wire inserting tiny glass rods into the penis and then breaking
00:15:34
them with his fist or a hammer the boys died from either gunshot or strangulation another torture device
00:15:43
that was used were the wooden boxes that were found remember they had air holes in them it was reported that these boxes
00:15:52
were used to imprison the kids and torture them uh when asked why Coral killed the boys heny told police it was
00:15:59
because Coral wanted to have sex with them but then they resisted of course you and I know that that's probably
00:16:06
there's probably much much more to that story right and of course the boys were often forced to write letters or to call
00:16:14
home telling their parents that they had left or that they were in another city now I said that we were going
00:16:22
to not go through all this stuff in detail and minimize the torture and the discussion of it I want to be clear as
00:16:29
gruesome as all that stuff sounded we did minimize what is actually reported in this right now we should talk about the
00:16:39
bodies because there were more bodies and Henley and Brooks were asked to make list uh when they were being questioned
00:16:47
by police of every boy that they could recall that ended up being a victim Henley at this point volunteered some
00:16:55
more crucial information and he stated that more than just the boat shed there were
00:17:01
other burial sites apparently Dean Coral's father owned or rented a cabin up at Lake Sam Rayburn and some of the
00:17:09
bodies were buried nearby Henley accompanied investigators to the lake Sam Raburn area after getting his
00:17:18
bearings he showed them a spot in a heavily wooded area near a dirt road and to another area about half a mile away
00:17:26
down the dirt road each of these sites contain bodies one of which he recalled was Billy Lawrence the next day Henley
00:17:35
LED them to the same wooded area and showed them another grave site which he said contained two bodies all four of
00:17:43
these bodies showed signs of extreme violence investigators searched the cabin that Henley and Brooks said Coral
00:17:50
used on occasion there they found several items of Interest including another torture board shovels a sheath
00:17:57
of plastic wrap a rubber gloves and a sack of lime more intriguingly was a handdrawn map which according to the
00:18:07
local sheriff appeared to be of quote possible new grave sites end quote pinpointing several areas in the San
00:18:15
Kinto National Forest in Southwest Texas what's interesting here though Captain is there is no indication in the sources
00:18:26
available that any kind of inves ation was done pursuant to the map that was found uh meaning meaning do like d they
00:18:36
didn't go look for anything that was on that map even though we have the local sheriff publicly stating that they are
00:18:44
quote possible new grave sites and quote then there was finally uh one last burial area Henley directed
00:18:52
investigators to an area on High Island near galvaston and told them that six bodies uh that he knew of were scattered
00:18:59
up and down the beach now this took a massive effort but eventually a total of six bodies were in fact found curiously
00:19:07
accompanying the two bodies were an extra arm bone and an extra pelvis bone indicating the likelihood of at least
00:19:15
one other unknown victim right all in all police recovered 27 bodies of young males from three burial sites the top
00:19:24
forensic pathologist in Harris County emphasized that identifying all of the victims would be very difficult they had
00:19:32
no definitive list of names to work with here Captain so the big question here with 27 bodies of young males buried in
00:19:42
three different sites is how did he get away with it how did Dean Coral operate right underneath Authority's noses
00:19:50
plucking boys right out from their own neighborhoods often in broad daylight how did this go unnoticed for years
00:19:58
years well on top of that it's like there are missing kids right that it seems like they're not following any of
00:20:06
those leads but then you also have this individual that nobody even suspected really no and they thought he was a nice
00:20:14
guy they thought he was an upstanding citizen he was a he was a guy that was always employed always seemed to have
00:20:20
money the only thing that would seem weird on the outside is that you know a lot of neighbors that he had over the
00:20:27
years said the man did hang out with a lot of young quote hippie types mhm referring to the
00:20:35
teenage boys that he was hanging out with one thing that I found very strange amongst all the other strange things is
00:20:42
all in all 20 of the victims were associated with the heights with that neighborhood right uh being either from
00:20:50
there or from an adjacent neighborhood now the heights itself is only about 2 mil by 3 miles so a tiny area right and
00:21:00
so and get this eight boys were killed between June 1st and August 4th of 1973 alone and five of them were from the
00:21:10
heights what I'm getting at is that nobody seemed to observe a pattern of teenage boys disappearing from this very
00:21:17
specific area at an alarming rate right you would think at some point there would be curfews and don't go anywhere
00:21:23
without your buddies and the fact that Brooks is involved and Henley is involved
00:21:29
these are high school aged kids yeah so you again that's now June so we could assume they're out of school at that
00:21:36
point but well they were both dropouts so they didn't really care about school too much well but what I mean by that is
00:21:42
they're still at the age where you think there would be rumors started oh yeah about one of the one of the two guys I
00:21:48
think ultimately he was able to get away with so much because not only was Coral
00:21:56
outgoing friendly funny considered neat and even witty right it it really helped
00:22:03
that Coral was in the company of Henley and Brooks I think that the the kids the
00:22:07
boys in the Heights uh area they knew both Henley and Brooks and they felt comfortable hanging out with this man
00:22:16
that was a longtime friend of these two teenage boys mhm now the other thing though too is and this is reflective of
00:22:26
the time okay okay and I don't want to get into this long argument or debate about
00:22:32
homosexuality versus pedophilia they're two Nick understands they're two completely different separate things
00:22:41
okay homosexuals good pedophiles bad Nick gets that so when I when I State these things Nick also talks in third
00:22:51
person well I don't want anybody to think that I'm that I'm down you know that I'm being rude to any Community
00:22:58
other than the pedophiles right right because I'm no at no time in my life did I ever believe that the two were
00:23:06
connected right you know there are heterosexual pedophiles and homosexual pedophiles and by most
00:23:13
accounts Dean Coral was both homosexual and a pedophile okay so what I'm getting
00:23:20
at here though is in the early 70s and in Texas that would have raised red flags on its own just him being
00:23:26
homosexual right another thing that I think helped him get away with so much stuff was it wasn't known that he was
00:23:33
homosexual right not to the adults Betty Watkins was his girlfriend by from what most people thought right
00:23:41
that helped him as well and you made that noise earlier when I described her two sons who knows what evil plans he
00:23:48
actually had in mind for her sons who knows maybe he sought her out or sought somebody out that had boys that would
00:23:54
eventually mature into an age that he was attracted which happens often but but but also it in a way since she is
00:24:04
Technically she's just a coverup they're not intimate so one could argue that's not even a real relationship so she's a
00:24:12
cover up but the fact that she has boys of a little bit older of age that's a cover up too you know it's like oh well
00:24:21
well yeah he's he he hasn't done anything to them right so therefore you know uh he doesn't do anything bad to
00:24:29
anybody and the thing here though is while the adults in the neighborhood and the adults the parents of a lot of the
00:24:37
teenagers that Dean Coral hung out with didn't know that Dean was homosexual M the kids did the teenagers that hung out
00:24:45
with him it was later reported that it was quote an Open Secret amongst the area youths that Coral would pay for
00:24:53
oral sex and in fact many of the kids engaged in what they called gay for pay with Dean coral and what I'm getting at
00:25:02
is when we're talking about how did some man so evil get away with such horrible
00:25:07
stuff for so long that's when you you sit there and you read these stories and you piece them together and you're going
00:25:14
man if somebody somewhere there was people that had thousands of red flags right there was so many red flags if
00:25:21
somebody just would have said something to the right person at the right time maybe some of this could have been
00:25:27
avoided maybe they did though I mean this is also I mean we live in an age right now where everybody's kid is
00:25:34
freaking special and they have to have a name that was made up you know moonflower you know nobody has common
00:25:41
names this is back in the 70s where there was a million Steves and a million you know Nicks and and and parents just
00:25:50
didn't listen to their kids as much so there could have been these rumors happening there could have been
00:25:55
conversations that they had with their parents that they just uh brushed aside and any one of these
00:26:01
rumors or allegations could have stopped a lot of this well and one thing that I
00:26:06
would point to that was so disturbing and so just mindboggling is that we had Dorothy hillig the the the mother she
00:26:20
tells police that hey I heard a rumor that that my son may have got into a GTX vehicle and there's GTX vehicle driving
00:26:29
around my neighborhood and here's the license plate and that was never never looked up nobody bothered to look that
00:26:35
up to see or they did look it up or they did insult the name and didn't care right and they go oh he's he's
00:26:41
upstanding citizen and he his family owns a candy factory well obviously Captain the public outcry about the
00:26:48
Houston mass murders brought to light many of the missing boys parents' frustrations with the fact that police
00:26:55
mostly ignored their pleas for help now granted in that time period there were no computers at the police department
00:27:02
that would have alerted officers to the number of missing boys there were no Amber Alerts being broadcast that would
00:27:10
have set off alarms with the public no Internet connecting missing kids parents with other parents in the same boat well
00:27:17
and also when you have a missing 15year old or 16y old or 17-year-old this is a different time this is a time that
00:27:25
people got done with high school and they either went to college or they started a life they got a career they
00:27:31
were married by 18 19 so you're talking about not that far away from being an adults so there was probably a lot of
00:27:40
runaway situations as well there was though a complete lack of recognition that there was a problem here I mean
00:27:48
this is this simply indicates an extreme police incompetence or at the very least
00:27:55
disinterest in these missing reports yeah I agree but I also kind of disagree because I like you said with the
00:28:03
technology they don't know they don't know that there's Mass kids missing that that's all I'm saying I I don't want to
00:28:10
throw them under the bus and say they they just just didn't do [ __ ] well parent after parent came forward and
00:28:17
blasted the Houston Police for their tunnel vision that the boys were simply runaways and the rebuttal police chief
00:28:24
Herman short met with the Press after the bodies were found he said his Department was underfunded and could not
00:28:32
possibly look into the over sorry the over 5,000 annual cases of missing kids that were reported in Houston and stated
00:28:42
uncategorically that any claims that Houston PD had dropped the ball on looking for missing kids was UN untrue
00:28:50
now of course in some of the cases a portion of the blame does lie with the parents and according to to Chief short
00:28:58
some of the boys who Coral's would end up being Coral's victims they were never even reported missing at all right in
00:29:05
some other cases one could probably make an argument that the parents were not paying much attention to what their sons
00:29:12
were doing and they should probably know the whereabouts of their children and the company that they kept or maybe just
00:29:18
report them missing well and the sheriff concluded by saying that he planned a department Crackdown on hitchhiking this
00:29:26
likely because when Henley in an interview right after the discovery of the bodies told the media you've got to
00:29:32
warn these kids against hitchhiking that's how we picked up most of [Music] them this show is sponsored by better
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[Music] today cheers mates Che is one of my favorite movies and I think well I don't
00:32:02
know if it's one of your favorite movies Teen Wolf oh yeah yeah I love calling people dick noses it's my favorite movie
00:32:09
no favorite movie of all time no I was actually thinking uh for like non-scary Halloween movies I was thinking about
00:32:16
that the other day MH and Teen Wolf would fall into that category for me of like top 10 movies that just aren't
00:32:24
scary they're not meant to be scary but would be good Halloween theme movies definitely a Halloween movie I feel you
00:32:30
on that one yeah but one of the scenes is Styles and Michael J fox and styles is looking for his weed and he has a
00:32:39
shirt that says what are you looking at dick Nos and I just think that's hilarious so I made them and they are
00:32:47
going to be available for pre-order in the store for the next week and a half or so now nobody ever do this they say
00:32:55
don't try this at home I say don't try this anywhere okay um but my favorite scene when I was a kid that I thought
00:33:02
was the coolest thing I had ever seen when I first watch Teen Wolf for the first time there's a scene where they're
00:33:07
car surfing and I somebody is it Styles is he Standing On Top of the car and they're driving and he's pretending to
00:33:14
be surfing on the car as it drives don't try that anywhere wait wait my fa my favorite scene is at the end of the
00:33:23
movie when they win the game or whatever spoiler or oh W is in the background uh
00:33:30
a gentleman stands up from the bleachers and it's in the background and you can see him zip zip up his pants I don't
00:33:39
know why that cracks me up every time the center on the basketball team is my favorite guy on the team all right a
00:33:46
Harris County grand jury was convened regarding these cases principal Witnesses included Tim Curley and Ronda
00:33:54
Williams who presumably testified to the events of the night of Dean Coral's death in
00:34:00
August mhm another witness came in with a grocery bag over his head to hide his identity squares cut out so he could see
00:34:10
this was Billy ridinger whose life Brooks claimed to have saved now we don't know what ridinger testified about
00:34:19
we can only imagine that he suffered terrible and traumatic sexual abuse at the hands of Dean Coral before being
00:34:27
released but if ringer would have gone to the authorities at that time again another situation of who knows how many
00:34:35
boys could have been saved but he didn't and perhaps Dean Coral had some kind of
00:34:40
hold over him or perhaps he was so deeply ashamed that he couldn't bring himself to tell anyone B now the grand
00:34:48
jury wasted little time indicting Henley and Brooks after 6 hours of deliberation
00:34:54
it returned true bills against both boys all in all they both received multiple indictments efforts by defense attorneys
00:35:04
to get the young men freed on bail failed thank God and a psychiatric evaluations were ordered Henley was not
00:35:12
charged in the murder of Dean Coral but he was charged in the murder of others right then 12 Grand jurs who indicted
00:35:21
Henley and Brooks for M murder went off the grid and issued an explosive report that criticized the police and the
00:35:29
district attorney saying their investigation left unexplored the possible involvement of others and
00:35:36
related criminal activities in the course of pre-trial hearings some very interesting new
00:35:43
information emerged Dean Coral kept keys he collected from boys whom he entertained at his home police found 75
00:35:54
to 100 keys I couldn't get an exact number because it varied lowest number I found
00:35:59
75 highest number 100 but they found somewhere between 75 and 100 keys in a box at the Lamar Street home where he
00:36:08
last lived before being shot Henley stated to investigators that one of Dean Coral's motivations for retaining the
00:36:16
keys of his victims had been that he would subsequently burglarize their homes so this is where my mind jumps to did he
00:36:27
did Dean label each key so he would know which key would match up to which house
00:36:34
right right yeah cuz you can't just go up to a door and then fumble through 75 Keys looking for the right one mhm well
00:36:41
Henley and Brooks they were tried separately at the trial Tim Curley testified to what happened on the night
00:36:49
Henley shot Dean Coral he said his life was saved when Henley killed Coral of course his life would have never been in
00:36:56
danger in the first place if Henley hadn't delivered him right to that apartment now Rhonda testified as well
00:37:03
but she did so behind closed doors because keep in mind she was still a juvenile at this time Billy ridinger
00:37:10
testified as to what was done to him after being lured by Henley and Brooks the prosecution called dozens of
00:37:18
witnesses and introduced 82 pieces of evidence including Coral's torture board and one of the boxes used to transport
00:37:25
the victims a Houston Police chemist testified that Henley's hair was found on a discarded clothing of one of the
00:37:34
victims and in one of the plywood boxes used by the trio to transport bodies his
00:37:40
hair was also found on a device used to torture the victims before they were killed mhm Henley's attorneys did not
00:37:47
put up much of a defense and Henley did not testify his confession was accepted as solid evidence against him it was
00:37:55
read in full fool to the jury the jury found Henley guilty on six counts he received six consecutive 99-year
00:38:04
sentences his accomplice David Brooks received one 9year sentence did he say so so you're saying there's a chance
00:38:13
there's a chance if he can live a 100 additional years in Henley's case the prosecutor said in his closing arguments
00:38:21
that he apologized for not being able to seek the death penalty because the case
00:38:26
was the most extreme example of human of man's inhumanity to man that he had ever
00:38:32
seen yeah Henley's request for parole have been denied there is no question that Wayne Henley and David Brooks
00:38:40
deserve to be punished severely for their roles in the abduction torture and deaths of 27 28 boys but one has to
00:38:49
question whether the two would have received the same sentences if Dean Coral was still alive
00:38:57
right he would have assumably taken the brunt of the legal justice and perhaps Henry Henley and Brooks would have then
00:39:05
been seen less culpable in mere boys who fell under the influence of the dominance of this monster well they're
00:39:13
definitely victims they're right they're victims but again this is this is also the weird terminology as far as sex
00:39:23
trafficking that some people just view it as that you um you you kidnap somebody that that you sell them to a
00:39:32
different place they go into hiding no part of sex trafficking is is having control over an individual in their
00:39:41
Community yeah so essentially this would fall under those terms you know yes they
00:39:49
helped with those crimes but they helped those crimes under basically being held
00:39:54
hostage on some level level but but at what point do you you you have to understand that they're victims and you
00:40:03
have to you know you have to sympathize with that part and they probably never would have done what they did if it
00:40:10
wasn't for Dean but they at what point how many victims at some point you have to say you are responsible for these
00:40:20
actions and and and face the charges this is one of those rare cases where the where one person two people are both
00:40:30
victim and monster it's very rare that you see that but this is a prime example of a case where somebody is both the
00:40:38
victim and the monster just like you said how many times until you stop being the victim and you become the monster
00:40:45
right and and again there there might have been something in Dean's past where maybe he was tortured by a older
00:40:54
gentleman that's possible but again you can't um you can't have some kind of trauma that happened to you when you're
00:41:02
younger and then go and murder people and then it's okay because you were a victim first and I actually you know I
00:41:10
throw that question out there of would their sentences have been less I think we have a situation here where there was
00:41:16
no death penalty at the time and so I don't know that how much more severe Dean Coral sentence could have been now
00:41:23
there would have been a chance that they may have needed both both boys to testify against Dean coral and maybe
00:41:30
that would have helped create a shorter sentence for either boy however I think if I think without Dean Coral being dead
00:41:40
I don't think any of this comes to light meaning I think in some weird way both boys feared and felt protected by Dean
00:41:48
Coral at the same time and I think this confession that started with Henley only
00:41:54
really came about because he shot and killed Dean coral and he was forced to talk to police about that specific
00:42:01
incident of course and and the the it's very odd here because if that girl doesn't get her
00:42:09
mouth free if if she is not able to talk Henley into helping her you know so therefore she is you know a hero on some
00:42:19
level but on some level Henley's a hero because he he did put an end this and there was enough Humanity left in his
00:42:29
brain to to stop this at some point one thing we haven't talked about but we did
00:42:37
mention that it was going to be extremely difficult was identifying all of these dead bodies of course
00:42:42
identification of all of the bodies found would be extremely difficult most of these kids had never been
00:42:49
fingerprinted and they were decayed by the time that they were found right many of them had no dental records there was
00:42:56
of course no DNA testing at the time either now the number of deaths Coral was blamed for would fluctuate as
00:43:03
authorities tried to determine who all these bodies were mhm one of these complicated identification situations
00:43:11
arose just a month after Coral was shot the wardrop family identified and buried
00:43:18
their two sons both victims of coral they buried their sons in a graveyard in Atlanta on Friday SE September 7th 1973
00:43:28
the walr received a shocking telephone call that there had been a mistake the two boys that the Waldrop took back from
00:43:35
Houston and buried in Atlanta were not their children there had been a mixup in the identification and the wrong bodies
00:43:42
were sent to Atlanta an official in the district attorney's office said that the
00:43:47
bodies buried in Atlanta were those of mol Winkle I'm sorry Mali Winkle and David hillig nearly 2 weeks after the
00:43:57
discovery of the terrible mixup the body exchange was accomplished now by the time of Henley's trial in 1974 21 of the
00:44:06
bodies were positively identified but the body of John Manning sers was controversial his body was one of the
00:44:14
six found on High Island but it didn't fit the pattern of the other bodies attributed to Dean Coral MH first of all
00:44:23
the corpse was clothed the others were found naked and is was found several miles down the beach from the other five
00:44:31
victims and sers was killed with a high power powered rifle whereas the other 26
00:44:37
were either shot or strangled shot with a 22 M sellers was reported missing on July 12
00:44:45
1973 his burned out car was found in Starks Louisiana a week later the medical examiner testified that he did
00:44:53
not believe that sellers was one of Dean Coral's victims so this could possibly take the number of people killed by
00:45:01
Coral to 26 and not 27 but sellers is listed as one of Coral's victims on most list on Wikipedia they have Deen Coral's
00:45:12
list at 28 plus so meaning that he might have more than 28 victims well then Captain there is an individual named
00:45:21
Mark Scott in 1994 more than two decades after after the murders the medical examiner office presented the Scots with
00:45:30
remains that they said they believed were marks based on early versions of DNA identification the family had the
00:45:39
remains cremated and placed in a family crypt at Brookside Memorial but were not
00:45:46
still convinced that they were given the right boy the medical examiner's office
00:45:51
kept a single bone from The Remains Sharon Derek visited the Scots and took a DNA sample from Mark's brother Jeff
00:46:01
and what she would later describe as one of the saddest moments of her career she
00:46:06
returned to the Scots home and told them the DNA from Jess swab did not match the
00:46:12
DNA that came from the bone the conclusion was inescapable Mark was somewhere else and was not the body
00:46:21
lying in the family crypt do we know where FY Malik was at around 74 during 74 I mean was he in Texas
00:46:30
because that's a good question this has FY ridden all over it yeah cuz boys on the tracks was what
00:46:37
80 86 87 yeah well it's thought that Mark's remains are probably still at High Island on the beach remember um we
00:46:47
talked about how difficult the search was for the bodies there and we also need to point out too that eventually
00:46:53
later um this whole area was submerged partially underwater during Hurricane Ike so because of that and because
00:47:02
because of the original difficulty Factor I've got to believe that unfortunately I don't think Mark will
00:47:08
ever be found right the boy whose remains were buried in the Scott family crypt turned out to be stepen sikman a
00:47:16
17-year-old last seen walking down West 34th Street shortly before midnight on July 19th 1972 sik men's mother reported
00:47:26
her son missing shortly after his disappearance but police were unwilling to conduct a search for him telling the
00:47:32
mother that the youth was 17 years old and that unless they found a body there was nothing they could do to assist her
00:47:39
siik men of course was murdered by coral and his henchmen right by the late 2000s
00:47:46
amazingly three sets of remains still remained unidentified Sharon Derek a forensic anthropologist has made it her
00:47:54
mission to identify the last of Coral's victims good for her well go ahead last of what was dug up because we do have
00:48:03
this map where they didn't do digging yeah and and look if if we have we have this guy that carries out the mo
00:48:11
constantly pretty much the same you know maybe he'll teeter totter on well I'll shoot him this time and not strangle him
00:48:19
this time but the mo is most often the same so then we have evidence that this guy has 75 to 100 keys of possible
00:48:29
victims so on Wikipedia you put 28 plus well that's there's a lot more than that and I'd say the number is probably
00:48:39
between 75 and 100 I I bet you regarding that map that they found at the cabin you're probably talking
00:48:47
anywhere from three to half a dozen more victims just on that map alone right that are never going to get any justice
00:48:53
and there could be as simple as was there a missing person you know reported in this family and was their house at
00:49:03
some point was something stolen from their house there wouldn't be any Breakin but just right there would be
00:49:09
enough evidence for your family to go this missing person that we never saw again possibly was a victim of Dean well
00:49:19
more regarding Sharon Derek who I think is one of the few heroes in this sad story um eventually she was and has been
00:49:27
in contact with all of the families and you know these are people that believe that their child may have been a victim
00:49:36
but whose body has not been found so she has pursued all of the missing person's
00:49:41
reports filed in the area between 1970 and 1973 one thing not done by the police as well as others sent to her by
00:49:51
parents of missing Boys in 2008 3 7 years after the murders one family finally got closure Sharon Derek showed
00:50:00
a photo of a facial reconstruction of an anonymous victim to David Brooks who was
00:50:07
sitting in prison Brooks stared at the photo and said he didn't know who the boy was but he knew how he had died he
00:50:15
drew a map of an intersection in the Heights shepher in 13th Street and he pointed to a particular corner where the
00:50:23
boy had lived Sharon and Derek realized that that was the home of a boy who disappeared in 1971 and whose frantic
00:50:31
mother filed a missing person's report 2 days later this was Randall Harvey he was only 15 when he left to ride his
00:50:39
bike to a gas station his body was found in the boat shed his mother had died but
00:50:45
his sisters were overcome with the news that they had finally identified his body in 2010 two writers who were
00:50:55
working on a book about the case raised a question about the date of death of the boy who was buried as Michael Bulch
00:51:03
they noted from the police and autopsy reports that the boy buried as Michael was found largely skeletonized
00:51:10
suggesting that he had died in early 1972 but Michael didn't go missing until July of
00:51:17
1973 the medical examiner obtained a DNA sample from another Bulch sibling and ran it against the DNA
00:51:25
profiles belonging to the two unidentified bodies in the unmarked grave the test revealed that one of them
00:51:33
was in fact Michael Balch the problem was of course Michael had been buried alongside his brother Billy in Woodlong
00:51:41
Garden Of Memories Cemetery years earlier so who was the body buried in the grave labeled Michael Balch the
00:51:50
medical examiner had a list of names possible victims called from missing persons reports in the area at the time
00:51:58
M it wasn't until 2011 that the boy buried as Michael Bulch was finally identified after exhuming the remains
00:52:06
and conducting DNA testing he was identified as Roy Bunton Roy left work in a shoe store in the Northwest Mall
00:52:16
and never was seen again bunton's family feared that he was one of Dean Coral's victims and they provided a description
00:52:23
of him to the medical examp ster but they were never able to identify or find him because he was buried with incorrect
00:52:31
identification now this only leaves one victim remaining unidentified and he remains so to this day this is a victim
00:52:41
who has been called the swimsuit boy because he was wearing a brightly colored swimming trunks when his body
00:52:47
was found okay he was also wearing an unusual T-shirt with a piece symbol on the back and what appears to be some
00:52:55
kind kind of military lettering on the front and cowboy boots he was 5' 5 in or maybe 5' 6 in tall and he had brown hair
00:53:06
there is a reconstruction of his face it has been made available online Sharon Derek says she believes swimsuit boy
00:53:15
likely came from the Houston area now we have our thoughts Captain we've been talking off mic about this
00:53:24
case a little a little bit um would we like to throw some of our thoughts on here
00:53:29
because the first thing that I think about when I think of the story of Dean Coral the the
00:53:35
Candyman was and that's why I included some of those more well-known names in the trailer gasy dmer and so on is that
00:53:44
Dean Coral he's not as well known as some of these other monsters but he's simply equal to all of them he's he
00:53:53
should be feared and hated as much as as all of these others and in fact one thing you and I kept kind of coming back
00:54:00
to is that he and gayy shared very similar MOS yeah on many different levels it's almost like the same Mo and
00:54:10
and and really you just wonder because this happened early in 70 was gasy reading about this going hey that that
00:54:19
makes some sense let me do that yeah and even just the fact that they would both
00:54:24
let's take the killing out of it completely let's take the Handcuff trick out of it completely just the fact that
00:54:31
both of them were attracted to teenage boys and had the idea of well let's how about I just party with them how about I
00:54:40
invite him over to my house and let's feed them some beers and and drink and smoke pot and stuff like that on both of
00:54:46
them there's some evidence that shows that both of them could have been involved in sex trafficking of these
00:54:53
young boys and did Dean get these ideas or gasy get these ideas cuz they're from
00:54:59
different areas now Dean was was actually born in Indiana which would have been close to gasy yeah so is there
00:55:10
some connection as far as sex trafficking where they got these ideas from people they possibly were selling
00:55:16
victims to well and unfortunately and I've said it here before and I'll say it again unfortunately these serial killers
00:55:22
they learn from one another they do study one another and specifically there was a killer that
00:55:28
was interviewed by John Douglas and John Douglas says hey I brought up the idea of did you read about serial killers and
00:55:35
the he said the killer looked at him like he was a [ __ ] right he said look man you growing up you read the backs of
00:55:41
baseball cards studying stats right he goes same thing I did but I didn't care about baseball I I cared about killing
00:55:48
even at a young age I was reading about these killers and learning what to do and learning what not to do so that I
00:55:55
could get away with it for longer MH well let's get to some of the aftermath of this whole thing so Dean Arnold Coral
00:56:04
was laid to rest in August of 1973 in a quiet 15minute service at Pasadena's Grand View Memorial Park this is going
00:56:14
to sicken all of us remember he did serve in the military for a very brief stint so the American flag was removed
00:56:24
removed from his casket and given to his father before the casket was lowered into the grave he did receive a military
00:56:33
burial a sunset United Methodist Church Reverend conducted the services among the small group of relatives and friends
00:56:41
at the quiet burial were half a dozen members of Coral's immediate family including his mother and his grandmother
00:56:48
the coral story isn't talked about much in Houston today now we have Mary West Dean Coral's mother she continued to
00:56:57
exhibit denial even 20 years after the fact telling the Houston Chronicle that she believed that Wayne Henley and David
00:57:05
Brooks actually did the killings and she thinks that Henley should have stood trial for murdering her son Tim Curley
00:57:13
who survived Dean's torture board after being delivered by Wayne Henley as fresh
00:57:18
meat gave his only his one and only interview to a Houston television station in
00:57:25
2008 saying quote I have two choices either accept it and move on or kill myself according to a close relative
00:57:34
curly SP spiraled downward after the interview drinking heavily and suffering from his own form of post-traumatic
00:57:42
shock in March of 2009 Curley died reportedly of a heart attack he was 55 years old now as we've pointed out us
00:57:52
plus some in law enforcement do think that there are more bodies out there but law enforcement have resigned themselves
00:58:00
to the likelihood that they will never be found so remember all of those missing persons reports that came into
00:58:07
the juvenile division of Houston PD you have to wonder did some of these individuals run into Dean
00:58:14
Coral that's when you ask yourself how many more could possibly be out there now whenever Henley and Brooks applied
00:58:23
for parole the parents of all of their victims were forced to relive the horrific murders as they wrote letters
00:58:31
to the state parole board objecting to the release of the men who killed their sons finally in 2015 a law was passed
00:58:41
allowing the parole board to limit parole request to every 10 years Brooks will be up again in
00:58:48
20128 Henley in 2025 what a sick bastard I'm never eating candy again yeah everybody be safe on
00:59:08
your trick treat night everybody be safe make sure there's no razor blades in your candy make sure you take out all
00:59:15
the razor blades the we do want to thank everybody Captain all of our social media friends for their Instagram
00:59:23
stories all the people that go to the website and join in the discussion on the blog yeah people on Facebook that
00:59:30
repost uh about the show and same with Twitter as well and that's why every week the captain says thanks for
00:59:38
listening thanks for telling your friends and until next week friends be good be kind and don't
00:59:53
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