Elmer Wayne Henley Jr, a gray-haired 66-year-old serving six life sentences for his role in Houston’s most notorious serial killings, is requesting compassionate release from Texas prison, according to letters some victims’ families recently received.
In August 1973, Henley, then 17, shirtless and jittery from a night of partying, was arrested and confessed to participating in a murder, rape, and torture ring led by Dean Corll, a Houston electrician and former candy maker with no criminal history. For years, Corll had used Henley and another teen as procurers to lure victims. Most of those missing boys and young men had been branded as runaways by police—and their murders had gone undetected—until Henley killed Corll. Within a week he led authorities to 27 clandestine graves.
At the time, the so-called “Houston Mass Murders” were described as the most lethal in modern U.S. history—the Pope sent his condolences and Truman Capote considered writing about the case as a sequel to his book In Cold Blood. The term serial killer had not yet been invented.
