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58 – JB Beasley & Tracie Hawlett and The Candyman
33 Plays3 days ago
This week, Jeff tells the tragic story of the 1999 murders of JB Beasley and Tracie Hawlett in Ozark, Alabama—an unsolved case for decades that finally led to a conviction in 2023. Sam dives into the deeply disturbing case of Dean Corll, the infamous serial killer known as The Candyman, whose crimes haunted Houston in the early 1970s.
Visit us on Linktree for the collection of links, Instagram, or email us at jeffandsamshow@gmail.com.
Jeff’s sources:
- Coley McCraney Gets Life Without Parole – AL.com
- Autopsy Reports Breakdown – WDHN
- Murders of J.B. Beasley and Tracie Hawlett – Wikipedia
- ABC 20/20 – Forever 17
Sam’s sources:
- Dean Corll Case Overview – ABC13
- The Lost Boys – Texas Monthly
- Documentary: Texas True Crime – Season 1, Episode 4
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Listener Engagement
00:00:00
Speaker
hello Sam? hello geoffrey
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello, hello. ae Welcome to the Jeff and Sam show. I'm Jeff. And I'm Sam. You did it right that time. Never again. It'll be wrong the next time. Welcome to this hot mess of a show.
00:00:38
Speaker
ah you can find us on or you can recommend us on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio. Can you also rate us and review us on that? That's the most important part.
00:00:48
Speaker
So you can. Rate us. You can rate us. Rate us. And review us anywhere you listen to us. Indeed. And we would love that. We would.
00:00:59
Speaker
We'd appreciate five stars because we are fabulous. But give us what you want. Give us what you want. For sure. What else? In fact, um you can reach out to us on Instagram at the Jeff and Sam show.
00:01:11
Speaker
And then we have our own website. It's still in the process of being made and doing its thing. the It's just jeffandsamshow.com.
Podcast Format and Unique Storytelling
00:01:22
Speaker
And then you can email us at the jeffandsamshow at gmail.com.
00:01:25
Speaker
That a lot of words. So many. I said Jeff and Sam so many times. You did. You did. And you know what? We like to meet you here on Thursdays and tell you A couple of stories.
00:01:36
Speaker
Sometimes it's one story. Most of the time it's two stories. And we don't know the other story. Like, I don't know what Sam's going to tell me today. She doesn't know what I'm going to tell her today.
00:01:47
Speaker
That's part of the fun of it, right? And only one time in a year plus of recording did we somehow magically find out that we were both working on the same story.
British Crime Show 'Happy Valley' Discussion
00:01:57
Speaker
And we...
00:01:59
Speaker
you know curved that so we didn't tell the same curved that while we were recording week before indeed that was alan touring it was it's very it did a very good story thank you better than i could have done nah nah what's new well i finally started watching happy valley you were right um i was I was going to ask you that, just out of the blue. You're right. I love it, and I can't believe I asked you for other shows for recommendations before actually watched it.
Movie Recommendation: 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer'
00:02:33
Speaker
That show is top tier.
00:02:35
Speaker
It's good. Top You're right. It falls in line with the fall. It falls in line with the fall. um Sarah Lancashire, the woman who plays the mom, the grandmother, the badass cop, yeah Copper. Copper.
00:02:49
Speaker
ah but She is just... Strong woman. Strong woman on this show. She's badass. So if you guys like British crime shows, it's probably one of the best ones I've seen. Where are you in the show?
00:03:05
Speaker
Only a few episodes in because... And like each season has four shows or something like that? Yeah, so i'm only I'm still in season one. Okay. But... um Tis good.
00:03:17
Speaker
Tis very good. Tis very good. so glad you're watching it. I'm so glad you recommended it.
Oregon Trip Plans and Podcast Technology
00:03:21
Speaker
I think this was like a year ago. I mean, I recommended that to you 48 months ago. You know, as soon as we became friends, you're going to love this show.
00:03:30
Speaker
hey but I finally got around to it. Okay. I just take a little bit longer to get there. Yes. ah There's something else that I would recommend to you and I already have, but I'm going to do it again so we can put it on the record right here The killing of a sacred deer.
00:03:45
Speaker
Yes. You told me about that one It is not one my sister would like. She and I have very different tastes as far as movies go. Never watch it again.
00:03:56
Speaker
It is um psychological thriller. are i think I read that it was like a psychological horror. What's the difference between a psychological thriller and a psychological horror? I don't know.
00:04:08
Speaker
It's psychological for sure. okay And it is about like the love of a family and um guilt, all those kind of
Storytelling Tradition with Coin-Flipping
00:04:20
Speaker
emotions.
00:04:20
Speaker
Speaking of my Catholic side. Yes. um
00:04:25
Speaker
It's so tense and cringe, cringey. You just cringe the whole time you're watching it. You freaking cringe. Like Saltburn kind of g cringe? Saltburn?
00:04:37
Speaker
um' No. No, she said... Worse, worse. Whoa. Like Keegan. What's his first name? Barry? the Keegan, the guy that played in Saltburn. He plays in this movie. Oh, God bless.
00:04:49
Speaker
Nicole Kidman. Ooh. Colin Farrell. Oh. Stellar cast. That's kind of amazing. You don't love them. They're this family who is...
00:05:01
Speaker
You just they're just awkward. Okay. And they ah kind of the show boils the movie boils down to mommy don't tell me there's decisions to be made and they're all really bad decisions. Okay. Yeah, that's it.
00:05:17
Speaker
Okay. So I just would love to hear your take on it.
True Crime Story: JB Beasley and Tracy Hallett
00:05:19
Speaker
I met somebody else the other day that was like, what the fuck was that? Agree. Agreed. ah Okay, I will watch it.
00:05:28
Speaker
Maybe while you're on your next adventure. Yes. Where are going? Oregon. What are you doing? Well. Well. Well, here we go. We have got a plan.
00:05:39
Speaker
I'm going to go. Okay, first of all, Wednesday of that week is National Hot Dog Day. Woo! So I will be going with my aunt and uncle to get a hot dog in Portland.
00:05:52
Speaker
There's this place. You're going to send me a picture, right? Of course. Please. Then ah we do the whitewater rafting thing on Thursday. Friday night. So it's like in the 90s right now in Portland.
00:06:05
Speaker
Super warm. Pacific Northwest. I mean, it's raining most of the time, right? Except the summer. They have beautiful summers. So it's like 90 degrees. It's going to be 90 when I'm there. So that Friday we're going go to the coast to watch the sunset.
00:06:21
Speaker
And it is going to be 62 degrees. that like It's an hour and maybe 15, 30 minutes away from Portland, but the temp drops 30 degrees. That's sea air.
00:06:32
Speaker
It's going to be great. My cousin Jason booked us the whitewater rafting trip. It's on his bucket list of stuff he wants to do, so I said, let's do it, and he booked us a pretty hard one.
00:06:47
Speaker
He did, didn't he? Yes, he did. It's going to be fun. um are there like Is there someone that's going to be recording and taking pictures of this while you're doing it? There will be Yeah, there's they take pictures like as you're going down the river in different spots. People are there with cameras, right? And I always know they're going to be there watching me with a camera.
00:07:09
Speaker
They're going to be watch like taking pictures of the people on the rafts. i know this. Mm-hmm. And i I see them on the rock. The moment they take a picture of me, it will be the most fucking crazy looking, craziest looking picture of me. I'm like, fortunes.
00:07:25
Speaker
What's happening? So is Sam's picture. It's going to be great. Yeah. I cannot wait. It is going to be good. You're go to have a blast. Yes. but you're You're doing something too, though. Yours is way bigger than mine.
00:07:40
Speaker
ah we not? I don't know what you're talking about. I thought you were going on a vacation.
00:07:48
Speaker
Next week? I don't know when we're recording this, when it's coming out. This comes out tomorrow. oh yeah. No, I don't go anywhere until August, right? Yeah, but I'm confused. Ignore me. We'll talk about that later. Okay.
00:08:00
Speaker
I was like, crap, do I have something coming up? You were so confused. I thought maybe I had the whole thing wrong. Never mind. Okay. Dismiss that. Let it go. Let it go. We'll revisit that. We will revisit in a couple weeks. Yes.
00:08:13
Speaker
Um, what else, what else, what else? feel like I had some stuff to tell you, but I can't remember. we're going to do this again real soon. Indeed. You want to flip a coin?
00:08:23
Speaker
I do. Actually, no, I don't. We, um, I made you, um I gave you a coin earlier to use as a, uh, tool, tool. Didn't work. But then I decided that that's the coin that we were going to use for our show today. And it is the Sierra Leone five cent piece.
00:08:42
Speaker
All right. um There is a man who looks very happy on one side. Okay. And then a cup, maybe. I'll be the cup.
00:08:53
Speaker
Okay. And I'll be the happy man. Yeah. We're also getting a coin from Ghana.
00:08:59
Speaker
Soon. From who? A co-worker. She's going home. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'm going to do this. Wait. Last time it worked really well when I stood up. Hold on.
00:09:11
Speaker
it was meo She shot me a bird. Flipped you a bird. Flipped me a bird.
00:09:22
Speaker
Okay. That means we get to tell each other story. And because we flipped the coin, i got the side up. What are you drinking?
00:09:34
Speaker
San Pellegrino. Peach and Clementine. oh it's so peachy looking again. I'm so peachy. I'm drinking an Olipop Ridge Rush. Seems very Oregon.
00:09:49
Speaker
Bitch, what are you doing? Nothing? Yeah.
00:09:56
Speaker
and Okay, so here we go. Cheers, Squirt. Cheers, Squirt.
00:10:03
Speaker
Okay. Now I'm drinking. oh Oh, so peachy. That's really good. I can't figure out what's going on in my mouth, though.
00:10:17
Speaker
Huh.
00:10:21
Speaker
So this thing is that anytime we take a pause for two seconds or longer, this contraption that I'm looking at edits out the pause. So we can pause for five seconds.
00:10:33
Speaker
And when it's produced it takes and published, it removes the pauses. So if we just stop talking and making noise. Yeah. Then it will take it out. God, technology is magical. Right?
00:10:45
Speaker
I'll never get it, but whatever. Are you ready for a story?
00:10:51
Speaker
Okay, this is, man, this is a story. I mean, it's like, I'm telling you this for entertainment per purposes, right? This is not for fact. I'm not trying to convince anybody to believe anything. Everybody is innocent until they are proven guilty.
00:11:10
Speaker
What I'm going to tell you is what I've read on any website that reported on it, okay? um How many websites did you go on? Oh, my God. That rabbit hole went down it, okay?
00:11:22
Speaker
I went down it. Spiraled. I spiraled. So today I'm going to take you to the wiregrass. And the wiregrass is a part of Alabama that is close to the ocean. It's down in southeastern Alabama.
00:11:38
Speaker
So it's Dothan and Ozark are the two towns, okay? And it's called the wiregrass because that's the type of grass that grows down there. Sounds scratchy. Never heard of that until I talked to Kim about it, because Kim down in Dothan one time. They were stationed down there.
00:11:52
Speaker
So she knew what it was. She told me what it was. And she knew of this case, too. And oh yeah she knew of this case because of TikTok.
00:12:04
Speaker
And then when she sent me what she sent me, that kind of sent me down. now like this. This. And that sent me down the rabbit hole. Okay, so I'm going to tell you about J.B. Beasley and Tracy Hallett.
00:12:19
Speaker
J.B.? J.B. is her name. Oh, J.B. It's short for Jennifer. Okay. J.B. Beasley and Tracy Hallett, both 17 years old, and they lived in Dothan, Alabama.
00:12:32
Speaker
Okay, by their junior year, they were best of friends. So it's Saturday night, July 31st, 1998. ninety ninety eight Tracy was working at JCPenney at the mall, and it's JB's birthday. yeah Now, because they're best of friends, JB wants Tracy to go out with her for her birthday, right?
00:12:51
Speaker
it was going to be a fun time. So after Tracy finished her shift at 9 p.m., she went back home to change and then head out to a field party in Headland, Alabama. I do love a good field party.
00:13:02
Speaker
Don't we? And if you grew up in the country, remotely, you know what a field party is. You're going to go park your car in a field, have a bonfire, headlights on. It's going to be a good time. So they were going to go to Headland, Alabama, to have this field party. And it was kind of in honor of JB's birthday, right?
00:13:20
Speaker
and So they went home after 9 p.m. after Tracy's shift ended. They went home after that to change clothes, and then they headed out. At 10.05 p.m. on that night, the two girls left their hometown of Dothan in Beasley's 1993 black Mazda 929.
00:13:39
Speaker
But they got a little lost on the way to the field party. They actually never even made it to the field party. People that were there said they never even saw them. And at one point, they kind of took the wrong turn, went down the wrong road.
00:13:53
Speaker
So just after 1130, the pair, they were in Ozark instead of Hedland. So they have gone a little too far, right? But this is about 20, 25 miles from Dothan. So they're like 30 minutes away from home at this point.
00:14:08
Speaker
And they're supposed to be home by 1130. is now 1138. They pull over to store called the Little Store. they pull over to a store called the big little store and that's at 763 East Broad Street. The store had been closed at 11 o'clock. It closed at 11.
00:14:23
Speaker
But the two girls encountered a woman. Her name was Marilyn and Marilyn's daughter. who They had stopped to buy a soda. But the two girls asked which way was US Highway 231. Which way was it back to Dothan?
00:14:37
Speaker
Because this is before GPS and before There was MapQuest. In 98? In 99. Yeah. This is July of 99. July 31st, 1999. So there was MapQuest. But they it was probably new. They didn't use it. yeah Instead, they found this nice woman, her daughter.
00:14:54
Speaker
They were like, sure, you go this way and you will head back to Dothan on US Highway 231. It was going to take them about 20-25 minutes to get home. So at 11.38 that night, Tracy calls her mom and said, Mom, we're fine.
00:15:10
Speaker
i know I was supposed to be home by 11.30. It is now 11.38. I know that. We're on our way home. We got directions. We got a little bit lost. Tracy's last words to her mom were, nothing was, ah I love you, I'll be home soon.
00:15:25
Speaker
That was Tracy's last words. According to Carol, Tracy's mom, Tracy seemed fine, nothing out of the ordinary. There was no distress in her voice. She seemed like every other day they spoke.
00:15:35
Speaker
Nothing different. And a mom would know, right? So when Carol woke up the next morning, she immediately noticed that the girls weren't there. She immediately called the police. She also called JB's mom.
00:15:47
Speaker
Carol said she knew something was wrong. like she could tell. intuition Absolutely. She could tell something was wrong. At 8 o'clock the following morning, JB and Tracy were reported missing, and at almost the same time, the Ozark police found the black Mazda parked on Herring Avenue, less than a mile from the pay phone Tracy had used to call her mom the night before.
00:16:11
Speaker
oh no. According to police, when the car was initially discovered on Herring Avenue in Ozark, there were no signs of foul play. Police said that why the girls stopped there remained a mystery.
00:16:25
Speaker
It didn't appear that they had been forced off the road because there was no damage to the car. Though undamaged, the car was muddy and it was almost out of gas despite being filled up the day before.
00:16:37
Speaker
The driver's side window was rolled down and a few inches, the the window was rolled down a few inches on the driver's side and the doors were unlocked. JB's driver's license was on the dash and the girl's purses were inside the car.
00:16:51
Speaker
The only thing that was missing from the car was JB's keys. That was the only item missing. Hours passed after they found the car and Alton Miller, who was close friends with Tracy's dad, Tracy's dad had passed away earlier,
00:17:07
Speaker
Alton was close friends with him. He was also an investigator for the Dothan Police Department. He said, I'm going to go up there and help him. I mean, it's relatively small towns, right? town? these girls, like... So he heads to Ozark to help.
00:17:20
Speaker
And when Alton arrives at the scene where the car is, suddenly Alton, who's from the Dothan Police Department, has this idea to pop the trunk. The trunk release button was on the side of the door.
00:17:33
Speaker
What's in the trunk? Well, I'll tell you, but like, so they found the car at 9 a.m. Finally, at 2 p.m., that's when they thought to pop the trunk.
00:17:46
Speaker
I'm sorry. What? Exactly. Right? So they find it's abandoned. Never mind. Yeah. So there's a button. You push it. The trunk pops open. I mean, the car was unlocked. like It's not like it didn't have access to it. Right. Right.
00:18:00
Speaker
So when they popped the trunk, JB Beasley and Tracy Hallett were inside, each dead from a single 9mm gunshot wound to the head. Both had their hands over their face like they were trying to block something.
00:18:14
Speaker
Both were face up. JB's head was on one side of the trunk. Tracy's head was on the other side of the trunk. They had been murdered execution style. The girls were clothed and there was no obvious signs of a struggle.
00:18:27
Speaker
However, Tracy had that single shot to the temple, a scratch to her arm, and there were thorns on her pants, like briars on her pants. Okay. I think I would call that a sign of a struggle, maybe. don't know. Maybe they were walking through the woods.
00:18:41
Speaker
And her New Balance shoes she had just purchased a week before were covered in the mud. JB had been shot in the cheek and she was noticeably dirty with mud on her shoes. Both girls' pants were wet below the knees.
00:18:55
Speaker
And when I say wet below the knees, it was described as like they were soaking wet, like they had been standing in water. That's how wet they were. Or they had been kneeling.
00:19:07
Speaker
Or they had been kneeling, right. But the thing about it is the car, where the car was, was dry, completely dry. So nowhere around the car was there mud, right? No mud, no water.
00:19:18
Speaker
One of the detectives looked under the car and he said he could see where blood was leaking onto the ground from the car. He also said that the blood had been blown back onto the bottom of the car, meaning that after the girls had been shot, put in the car, or shot in the car, the car had been in motion, creating a blowback effect.
00:19:38
Speaker
Do understand what I'm saying? So it hit the ground? it was hitting the ground, but when somebody drove the car forward, instead of it hitting the ground, it was being blown back onto the bottom bottom of the car. Does that make sense?
00:19:52
Speaker
However, the murder weapon was never found, but we know it's a 9mm gun. like Robbery was quickly ruled out as the motive was confirmed. It wasn't robbery because the purses were there, the money was there, the jewelry was there, the credit cards were there. Everything was inside the car.
00:20:08
Speaker
The only missing item, like I said, was JB's keychain. Autopsies confirmed neither girl had been raped, nor were there traces of alcohol or drugs. Rape kits were obtained for both girls, although no sign of recent injury was seen in their genitalia.
00:20:25
Speaker
Additionally, an unknown palm print was recovered from the lid of the trunk. So somebody else had their palm on the trunk to close it, right? Authorities were also able to determine determined that the girls were not killed where the car was parked on Herring Avenue.
00:20:42
Speaker
I guess that might be because of the blood blowing back, right? They were killed, driven somewhere else. The woman named Marilyn came forward and said her and her daughter stopped at the Big Little Store around 1130 at night.
00:20:54
Speaker
And while they were there, that's when Tracy and JB asked them for directions back to Highway 231 to Dothan.
Gruesome Tale of Dean Corll, the 'Candyman'
00:21:01
Speaker
Marilyn gave them directions. And now Marilyn is the only one that saw them at the Big Little Store to this point.
00:21:09
Speaker
Marilyn said that they didn't seem distressed at all. They looked like a couple of lost teenagers. That's it. Her and her daughter, neither one of them recall the teens being wet from the knees down.
00:21:21
Speaker
Which if they were saturated... It would be something you would remember, right? Cops begin receiving a lot of phone calls. They begin chasing down leads. And at this point, they didn't have anything.
00:21:32
Speaker
There was a lot of, I heard this, I heard that, small town, right? lot of rumors. The family reached out to the media. Flyers were posted everywhere in the wiregrass. Weeks pass. Investigators are chasing down all these leads.
00:21:46
Speaker
A video surveillance camera inside the big little store caught a grainy, poor quality image. It wasn't even a video. It was like three second images.
00:21:56
Speaker
Okay. Because it wasn't video. It was new at the time, I guess. ah There were images of what appeared to be a white pickup truck at the gas pump at the same time JB and Tracy were standing at the payphone talking to Tracy's mom.
00:22:09
Speaker
The store had closed, so there was no record of a gas purchase at the pump by credit card or debit card. The video, which is more of, like I said, still shots, didn't show anyone getting out of the truck and never clearly shows the driver.
00:22:23
Speaker
Eventually, the investigators tracked down the owner of the white truck. He said he was stopping there to get gas, but instead he left. So I can't ah can't remember, obviously, if the store was closed at the at this time in 99...
00:22:37
Speaker
Could you still buy at the pump or was it like you could? Okay. But they're so they see the white truck. And so they go through all the records of people buying gas from the pump. And there's nothing. This person never bought any gas from the pump.
00:22:50
Speaker
Maybe the person in the truck thought the store was open. He had cash, but, oh, the store is not open. So he can't buy gas. Maybe he didn't have a debit card or credit card. Right. Okay. They chased that lead down. It was nothing.
00:23:02
Speaker
Like I said, at this point, they're going on just anything they can get their hands on, right? And people are now donating money for the reward. So the reward for anything, any information is growing and growing on this case.
00:23:15
Speaker
Another witness comes forward, and his name is Johnny Barentine. Barentine was a mechanic in the area. He claimed to have seen something, so they bring Barentine in for questioning. He claimed that he his car was hit by a black truck, and then it changed. His story changed to he picked somebody up.
00:23:36
Speaker
Then he's saying he sees somebody get in the backseat of J.B.' 's car, and then Barentine said he witnessed a violent confrontation. Over the course of four hours, Barentine's story changed about six times, but he claimed that he witnessed the murder.
00:23:55
Speaker
So between the fact that he confessed that he was there at the crime scene and he witnessed a confrontation, possibly even the murder,
00:24:06
Speaker
Investigators are suspicious of him, right? mean, he's... Something's You his story's changing. He's lying. They can tell he's lying, but they don't know if he's the one that did this, but they have to trace down the leads that he's saying. Like, they have to try to find the black truck.
00:24:20
Speaker
They can't find the black truck. So, Barentine looks really suspicious, and they arrest him, and they charge him for the murder. That seems dramatic. It seems dramatic, but he's the only person that's come forward. He's saying he actually saw the murder...
00:24:37
Speaker
It is dramatic, you're right. But they arrest him, they charge him. Now Barentine's behind bars, and he's about to go in front of the grand jury, but there's a new development. A new clue. JB and Tracy's clothes had been sent to the Alabama Department of Forensic Investigations for further testing.
00:24:53
Speaker
Semen was found on JB's underwear and bra, but no semen was found on Tracy's clothes. So now they could test the DNA from the semen against Barentine's DNA.
00:25:05
Speaker
He was not a match. and Barentine was released. Turns out he was just doing this for the reward money. Yeah. That was it. Makes sense. So he's released. Now the investigators believe that there was a rape and murder. Okay.
00:25:20
Speaker
Which I'm a little confused about, too, because the autopsy report said there was no signs of trauma. Okay. So it could have just been that the attacker ejaculated yeah on her. Yeah.
00:25:38
Speaker
Maybe there was no penetrative assault. True. So now they're calling it rape and murder. Okay. They had the murder, and now they have the DNA from the semen on the clothes, but nothing else. So they're combing over pictures. They're combing over the crime scene.
00:25:53
Speaker
And then they're also combing over notes from the crime scene. But the crime scene was really, like, fucked up. They did not wear gloves. They didn't log anybody that came into the crime scene and left the crime scene.
00:26:05
Speaker
and like i said, for the first five hours, the truck remained closed. How was anyone ever caught and convicted back in the day? Right. Detective work, right?
00:26:16
Speaker
So the years go by, many, many years go by, and in 2015, there's a blogger named Rena Crum. And Rena came forward, and she said that she was at a party one night, and she heard one of the former cops say that he murdered those girls, meaning JB and Tracy.
00:26:33
Speaker
According to Rina, the cop said he screwed up and he was going to lose his baby. Apparently, this alleged confession had been years earlier. She said that JB was dating this former cop and JB pissed the former cop off. The cop adamantly denied this, though.
00:26:50
Speaker
Investigators say there was zero evidence that anybody from the Ozark Police Department was involved. It appeared to be rumors. Maybe Rena was making this up. Maybe she was afraid. Can't tell.
00:27:01
Speaker
um The officers that were named in Rena's blog, they denied everything. They denied any wrongdoing. But these rumors that Rena's story... was about, they sparked a conversation in the town that cops were in on it.
00:27:16
Speaker
Dirty cops covering up a crime scene. But the rumors also forced the cops to, like, go back in and try to solve this murder. It was like a renewed focus on this case, right?
00:27:28
Speaker
They've been dead since 99. There needs to be some kind of... Like solve the case. You got the DNA. I don't know. But I think it was that they were being accused and they were looking bad. So they were forced to something. Find the person that really did it.
00:27:44
Speaker
ah So they they another task force was set up. By this point, investigators conducted more than 500 interviews. Forensic experts tested DNA of more than 70 potential suspects.
00:27:57
Speaker
And they would run the DNA in CODIS, which is the national DNA database maintained by the FBI. Law enforcement uses it to compare DNA from crime scenes, convicted offenders, and arrestees.
00:28:09
Speaker
So if someone has never committed a crime or been arrested, chances are their DNA is not in CODAs, right?
00:28:17
Speaker
They had the DNA, so they were trying to figure out how science could help them solve this case. Then one of the detectives is watching TV one night, and he saw that the Golden State Killer had been solved using genetic DNA testing.
00:28:33
Speaker
So he is like, oh yeah, he has this epiphany, right? As part of the procedure, the DNA evidence found at the crime scene is uploaded into a genealogy database called the GED Match.
00:28:46
Speaker
And this is at Parabon Nano Labs, which is yeah in Reston, Virginia. They could not develop a list of possible suspects. However, they managed to come up with possible surnames of the suspect based on a family tree.
00:29:00
Speaker
Amazing, isn't it? Listen, we've had this conversation before. I think that it is an extraordinary, am and extraordinary feat. About five months later, Police Chief Walker gets a report back with a list of names that matched the DNA.
00:29:15
Speaker
Five months. Chief Walker knew one of the men on the list, Coley McCraney. McCraney grew up in Ozark, but later moved with his wife to Dothan.
00:29:27
Speaker
He has a good life, beautiful wife, two amazing kids. On the outside, his life looks really, really good. He's a truck driver, has a good job. He's also a minister. He's like heavily involved in the community. This doesn't seem like it's going to go well. play sport He doesn't play sports, but his kids play sports, so he's always at the you know event.
00:29:49
Speaker
And he's even trying to open his own church. Perfect man. Right. In 1999, McCraney was 25 years old. The investigators asked Coley McCraney to come in and give a sample of DNA to test against the DNA from 1999. It was a match.
00:30:07
Speaker
March 15th, 2019, 20 years after the death of JB and Tracy, McCraney is arrested and he's charged with murder. Lieutenant Michael Bryan interrogated McCraney and McCraney said that when he offered his DNA, he was really just trying to help the investigation.
00:30:26
Speaker
McCraney stayed in the room for a very long time. he even slept on the interrogation room floor. McCraney said in the interrogation that he did not know the young woman woman or women. He didn't know them. He had never met them.
00:30:40
Speaker
Lieutenant Brian said the DNA did not lie. i mean, how does your semen get on someone if you don't know them and have never met them? Also, this is a little suspicious, like nowhere to this point.
00:30:53
Speaker
One of the key pieces of DNA evidence mentioned in the forensic report that Matt McCraney's DNA is missing from the autopsy's account of the girl's closing clothing. So in March of 2019, a forensic report detailing the DNA recovered from JV's body, McCraney's DNA is said to match sperm fragments on the girl's underwear and stains found on a sweater.
00:31:16
Speaker
At the time of her death, JB was said to have worn white, black, and blue striped blouse, blue jeans, with a black belt, and other items, but nowhere on the autopsy report was any mention of a sweater.
00:31:30
Speaker
So this, it's not clear from the exhibit exhibit index how the sweater came into play, but JB was not wearing it when she died, according to her autopsy. The community was really divided on this. McCraney is a black man.
Trial and Legacy of Henley and Brooks
00:31:43
Speaker
So a lot of people thought that the cops were dirty, Okay, this is Alabama we're talking about. yeah People think that the cops are dirty. There's one half of the population saying this is a black man and he is now being charged for murder these two white girls of these two white women.
00:32:00
Speaker
And then the other side is simply saying the DNA does not lie. Which it doesn't. Right. It does not lie. Period. can't be planted. It can be planted, but it does not lie.
00:32:12
Speaker
To a lot of people, this was given to kill a mockingbird. i mean, this is mentioned on the 2020 thing that I watched. At the time, this is one of the biggest cases in Alabama. um Of the hundreds of leads given to the police department, not one of them mentioned Coley McCraney.
00:32:30
Speaker
Not one single lead. And suddenly, 20 years later, there's now a sweater with his DNA on it. McCraney was charged with capital murder.
00:32:43
Speaker
So April 19th, 2023, after four years of sitting in jail, the trial starts. And the vicious murder of the beautiful young women was 24 years before this.
00:32:55
Speaker
That's crazy to me. It's now 24 years later. Somebody's finally being tried for the murder. The only thing that connected McCraney to the crime scene at this point was the DNA.
00:33:06
Speaker
That is it. What about the palm prints? I don't know anything about the palm print. I couldn't find anything else about that. She's like, let's, we don't that. That's all the defense had to go on. The DNA was McCraney's.
00:33:18
Speaker
That's it. So the defense had to try to convince the jury that someone else killed the girls. So they called Renee Crumb. She's the blogger. They called her to testify.
00:33:29
Speaker
On the stand, Rena said, i lied. She said she had some sort of memory issue. What she said about the cops admitting to the murder was not true. She flat out said she had made that stuff up.
00:33:42
Speaker
Some people believe that she lied on the stand to protect herself and to protect her family. Because if she's accusing cops. Right. Some people believe she's just the liar. She was doing it for his attention.
00:33:54
Speaker
What do you think?
00:33:56
Speaker
I don't know. It's impossible. i don't know her. She is on video. You hear her telling this story on the 2020 episode. It's impossible to say. and i don't know.
00:34:09
Speaker
um Then the prosecution was allowed to tell about McCraney's criminal record. And this is not, it's hard to find his criminal record is. This is one of those rabbit holes that I went down.
00:34:22
Speaker
McCraney enlisted in the Air Force at one point. It was revealed by the prosecution that McCraney had been charged with assault of a mind ah the minor the age of 16 years under the age of sixteen years old um according to his military records brian said that one of the weapons recovered in the investigation that was one of the investigators was a nine millimeter pistol that belonged to mccraney while he was in the military the weapon matches the make and the model used to murder the teenage girls in 1999 but it's worth mentioning that there was no murder weapon found for the two teenage girls all they know
00:34:56
Speaker
like right The military report also states that McCraney's first wife showed up at the Air Force Base at 3.37 in the morning in 1994 told the personnel that her husband had assaulted her.
00:35:10
Speaker
She had bruises on her face. There were some spar parts where her hair was pulled out. So this was part of the record. And the defense asked the judge to strike this, and he immediately said, no, this is in.
00:35:23
Speaker
This is the part that I found. I was looking everywhere for this information. Jeanette McCarthy, or McCraney, who is McCraney's current wife, she's been his wife for a very long time, she took the stand.
00:35:35
Speaker
She actually did not do him any favors because she said that night she
Episode Conclusion and Thanks
00:35:41
Speaker
took McCraney to the big little store. She said that his car battery had died and she had had to go with him to jump his car off.
00:35:51
Speaker
So, okay, she, his wife, placed him at the scene of the murder or the scene of the crime on the night of. Did she realize what she had done? and i don't know.
00:36:02
Speaker
Some people say there's no way she could have remembered that. Some people say she was trying to help him out. There's so many he said, she said's in this case. Then Coley McCraney testified, and the defense really had no options, right?
00:36:15
Speaker
They had to get him to tell his story. McCraney revealed that he actually knew jb but he knew her as jennifer not jb and that he had met her in 1999 at the wiregrass mall which is in direct it's in dothan yeah but he had previously said that he never knew the girls but now he's saying he didn't know them as jb he knew her as jennifer yeah but did the police not show him any pictures right good question He said that, he like I said, he met her at the Wiregrass Mall two months before they were murdered. He planned to meet and at the Ozark gas station at 10 p.m. on July 31st, 1999.
00:36:55
Speaker
nineteen ninety They've made a plan to meet? They had made a plan to meet at 10 p.m. July 31st, 1999.
00:37:03
Speaker
When JB was late, he went to his mother's house to wait on a phone call from JB, but he never received one. He's saying all this? Yes. Okay. McCraney said that after he left his mother's house around 1130 p.m. to head home, his battery died and his car broke down at the same gas station where he finally saw JB and Tracy at the payphone.
00:37:29
Speaker
After talking to JB for a few minutes, he got in the car, gave the girls directions to Highway 231, and then he like offered to kind of take them because his rig was parked down the road at another gas station.
00:37:41
Speaker
So maybe he was going to get them to take him down the road to his rig. When they were at his rig, he said that he and JB had sex in the back of the rig.
00:37:55
Speaker
in the back of his truck. McCraney testified that after he and JB had consensual sex, the girls drove him to his house around 12.45 a.m., and then they went separate ways.
00:38:08
Speaker
McCraney said that he and his wife headed to the big little store around 1 a.m. to get his car. That's why they were there at the scene.
00:38:18
Speaker
So, at this point, it is a matter of what the jurors believe, right? It's But, I mean, his story just doesn't make sense. To me, the part that got me.
00:38:31
Speaker
The part that got me on his story, it sounds like he's creating this to fit the narrative. Like my pizza crust murders. the The defendant sat there and listened to all of the said evidence that was piling up against him. And then he created this story that hit every single point.
00:38:51
Speaker
To me, that sounds exactly like what is happening with Coley. It kind of sounds like that. He is. He's hitting all the points. Well, I can explain that. The so initially sex was consensual.
00:39:04
Speaker
And I said I didn't know them, but you know I actually did. I just didn't know her by a different name. By Jennifer, not JB. We had a plan to meet. That's why I was there. And then she didn't show up.
00:39:15
Speaker
Also, the other thing that got me was that in the interrogation, he said he never had a gun. He never owned a gun. When they brought out the military records, suddenly he owned a 9mm that you didn't mention to anybody, right? A lot of this isn't adding up.
00:39:30
Speaker
Yeah. um they've now they've got to decide on who they believe basically and and on april 26 2023 the jury found coley mccraney guilty of capital murder and rape uh in alabama it's really easy to get the death penalty instead he was sentenced to life without parole Okay.
00:39:51
Speaker
And when you look up this case, I'm telling you, people think that the police planted stuff because of their own personal experience with the Ozark Police Department and Dothan Police Department.
00:40:03
Speaker
There's this one woman in particular that Kim showed me the videos of where she shared her story. Her dad was a cop in one of these departments. And people didn't even believe her when bad stuff happened to her. The cops didn't take her seriously. but And also the fact that the trunk was never open for five hours. The fact that there was a sweater that just appeared 20 years later mixed with other things. People feel like he is innocent. He was charged for the murder of the white women.
00:40:33
Speaker
but but, okay. Okay. Fine. But no, because if you were innocent, why would you create a narrative to fit the bits?
00:40:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. you you wouldn't do that because that puts you at the scene of the crime that gives them fuel in their fire you would stick with this this was not me like when i said i didn't know them i meant it like but then suddenly they have your dna and the semen on the clothes so now you've got to create a story you don't no i'm saying in my mind this is what he did right Suddenly he created, see he knew they had to see him.
00:41:14
Speaker
But also in the interrogation, he was showing pictures of them and he said he didn't know them. And that's the thing. Yeah. It's like a woman that you knew well enough to have sex with and plan a If you see a picture of her, you're going know her. You're going to know. Well, you may not know. necessarily. Well, you may not know.
00:41:34
Speaker
Back then it sounded like he would have. He knew her name, Jennifer, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the story. And I went down rabbit hole after rabbit There's a lot of people.
00:41:45
Speaker
It is very heavily divided. And the crazy thing to me about this story is he was convicted in 2023. Yeah. twenty twenty three 24 years after the murders. And also for me, it's really a story about JB and Tracy.
00:42:01
Speaker
They were 17 years old. They had their whole fucking future ahead of them. And suddenly, poof, it's gone. And their poor moms, my God, their moms have been through it.
00:42:13
Speaker
And the mom even, Carol, one of their moms even said, people will say that there's closure now because somebody was convicted of it. But there is no closure. never gives you to get back. Right. Yeah. Yeah. interesting story though interesting i don't like it yeah i mean i liked it you did well i don't like it though i don't like the story yeah um on that note you're gonna like my story even less oh great for all of you sensitive people out there this story is hard and there is a lot of violence um
00:42:51
Speaker
torture, murder, um sexual assault, um all involving children. Yeah, so stop listening now.
00:43:03
Speaker
So going to take you to Texas, the years between 1970 and 1973. Okay. okay Peace, love, and the good life vibes reigned.
00:43:15
Speaker
Families lived in friendly areas and they knew their neighbors. Kids played freely and spent most of their time outside. people waved and said hi on the sidewalks. But it was a time that also saw the breaking of horrific records.
00:43:29
Speaker
Records that are sick to even keep or count, but we do. The terrors of the 13 women killed by the Boston Strangler, the 16 people shot by Charles Whitman, and the 25 itinerant workers who were killed by Juan Corona were dwarfed by what was about to be uncovered.
00:43:48
Speaker
though Yeah. On April 20th, 1972, 17-year-old Mark Scott left home and was never seen again.
00:44:00
Speaker
His parents and younger brother drove through the streets, called friends and neighbors, called hospitals. They searched high and low. His father drove into Houston, and he tried to report him missing.
00:44:12
Speaker
Keyword is tried. A few days later, the family received a very vague and scribbled postcard from Mark that said, quote, how are you doing? I'm in Austin for a couple of days.
00:44:23
Speaker
I found a good job. I'm making $3 an hour. That was it. The family couldn't believe it. He wasn't the type to leave without saying goodbye. was from a good family, raised well, very respectful.
00:44:37
Speaker
He was only a junior in high school. And he didn't take his beloved motorcycle with him. That's a no-go. Although his mother waited every day, every single day, for the mail to come in hopes of hearing something more from him, he never wrote again.
00:44:53
Speaker
13-year-old James Stanton Dramala left home on his bike on a Friday night in early August 1973. He was searching for returnable bottles that could be turned in for money to take his girlfriend to ah movie.
00:45:10
Speaker
His mother recalled telling him not to go because it was already getting dark out. He was tall for a 13-year-old, so he dwarfed her. He patted her on the head and said, Don't worry, Mom.
00:45:21
Speaker
I won't be gone, but just a little bit. He never came home. His parents and sister searched all over. For days, they drove around looking, checking his normal hangout spots, talking to friends, and all that.
00:45:35
Speaker
When they went to the police, they were told to remain calm. They said that he couldn't be reported missing until he'd been gone for 48 hours. This was before the requirements changed in the 80s to demand immediate reporting and a filing of a missing persons report for any child or adolescent.
00:45:54
Speaker
The Dramala family and pretty much everybody else in Houston and the surrounding areas was unaware that within the 20-mile radius from their home, dozens of other boys had already gone missing.
00:46:07
Speaker
Dozens. There was an evil lurking in the suburbs of Houston. As it spread, teen boys and young men disappeared. All the boys were residents of the Heights neighborhood or the adjoining neighborhoods, or they had recently visited the Heights shortly before they disappeared.
00:46:25
Speaker
The area where they all vanished was just two by three miles, super small. With so many boys and young men suddenly going missing in such a small area, all between December 1970 and 1973,
00:46:37
Speaker
and july nineteen seventy three Somehow nobody put the pieces together or raised any kind of alarm. Initially thought to be 28 murders, all between the ages of 13 and 20, the boys were frequently dismissed by the police as runaways, even if it was considered wildly out of character for them, or they didn't take change of clothes at all, or any of their most cherished possessions.
00:47:01
Speaker
Their absence was chalked up to the quote, hippie culture and the freedom to wander. And also, this was in the early 70s, right? So there wasn't the BAU. There wasn't the... Nothing.
00:47:12
Speaker
This is a serial killer. This is what that consists of. Fun fact. Serial killer did not exist at the time. exactly So, that i mean, it would be kind of unusual for them to say... But they couldn't call it a serial killer.
00:47:27
Speaker
There were no bodies. The boys were just gone. Right.
00:47:32
Speaker
There were some isolated searches and some cases were opened, but nothing that allowed for a public connection. Recent developments, and this is as of 2025, showed that there were likely far more than 30 boys taken that had become a part of the horrible club called the Lost Boys.
00:47:53
Speaker
The families grieved in isolation and prayed for their sons to come home for 50 years now. There weren't cell phones. There was no cable or internet. There were no links to draw any connections between the disappearances.
00:48:07
Speaker
The towns didn't know that there was anything to fear or be concerned about until August 8, 1973. nineteen seventy three The Pasadena police responded to a call for help from a young man who claimed that he had just shot and killed his friend.
00:48:21
Speaker
They arrived at a home to find so a 17-year-old man and a dead body of 33-year-old Dean Arnold Corral. He was naked and appeared to have bled out from gunshot wounds to his chest and back.
00:48:36
Speaker
When the authorities showed up to the home, they had no idea what they had just walked into and how the case would explode into something much more sinister and highly disturbing. That name sounds familiar.
00:48:49
Speaker
Dean Corral.
00:48:53
Speaker
Dean Corll was born on December 24th, 1939 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was the elder of two sons born into a semi-tumultuous relationship between Mary Emma Robeson and Arnold Edwin Corll.
00:49:08
Speaker
The couple divorced in 1946, but Mary moved the boys to a trailer home in Tennessee to be close to where Arnold was stationed after he got drafted into the army. She wanted the boys to still have a relationship with him.
00:49:21
Speaker
Although his parents divorced, it was amicable, and he and his brother maintained a good relationship with both parents. His childhood was not marred with the hints or the warning signs or the upbringing that we've come to expect from men who turn out to be what he is.
00:49:36
Speaker
Dean was known as a shy boy who didn't socialize much, but displayed great concern for the well-being of others. Shy, but caring. Right. It turns out that he had lived through an undiagnosed case of rheumatic fever that they only found out about in 1950 when they realized he had a heart murmur.
00:49:56
Speaker
um That kind of isolated him a little bit more. He wasn't really able to do physical activity as much. When his parents remarried, the family moved to Pasadena, Texas.
00:50:08
Speaker
The couple again divorced amicably just a few years later. His mother remarried again and moved. Together with Coral's new stepfather, the family opened a small candy company.
00:50:22
Speaker
Dean worked hard for the company, even when it was very small and running out of their garage. Throughout his school years, he was known again as shy, but well-behaved. He took interest in the brass band and occasionally dated pretty girls.
00:50:36
Speaker
there's no There's no warning signs here, right? After high school, at the request of his mother, he went to live very briefly with his widowed grandmother back in Indiana.
00:50:48
Speaker
Sweet kid. Mom says, hey, can you go live with my mom? My dad just died. And he says, yeah. So while living there, he had ah he had a steady relationship with a local girl.
00:50:59
Speaker
Although he ended up rejecting a marriage proposal from her, they had a good relationship. Betty, his girlfriend, who had children from a previous relationship, even allowed and encouraged her kids to call him Dabby.
00:51:12
Speaker
a Yeah, just skeeve. In 1962, he returned to the Houston outskirts. His mother had divorced his stepfather, this girl loves divorces, and started a new candy company.
00:51:28
Speaker
Dean and his brother both worked for her. In 1963, when a teenage boy who worked for the candy shop complained to Mary, his mother, that Dean had made sexual advances towards him, she fired the teen.
00:51:45
Speaker
From August 1964 to June 1965, Dean served the U.S. Although admittedly hated the it was during this almost he acknowledged and having encounters while serving. from august nineteen sixty four to june nineteen sixty five dean served in the u s army although he admittedly hated the service it was during this almost year that he acknowledged his sexuality and reported having his first homosexual encounters while serving After an honorable discharge from the army, he returned home and resumed working as the vice president of Coral Candy Company.
00:52:17
Speaker
The shop had relocated that same year to across the street from an elementary school. Oh, shit. He was affectionately called the Candyman or the Pied Piper by those who knew him because he was known for handing out candy to the neighborhood boys.
00:52:32
Speaker
He was, quote, a quiet, well-mannered, well-groomed, considerate person. This is the person who, when they say do not take candy from a fucking stranger. This is it.
00:52:43
Speaker
This is the one. Mm-hmm.
00:52:46
Speaker
Damn. Yeah. In the back of that candy shop, Coral also got like, a pool table set up, and he made it a hangout for the young for the young teens, okay? Mm-hmm. And it was, at the time, completely fine. he was friendly. He was just being caring.
00:53:03
Speaker
In 1967, Coral befriended 12-year-old David Brooks. He had been one of the teens that frequented the hangout spot in back of the shop. two regularly took to the beaches South Texas with other groups teens. in nineteen sixty seven coral befriended twelve-year-old david brooks he had been one of the teens that frinco frequented the hangout spot in the back of the shop the two regularly took trips to the beaches in south texas with other groups obtains David was later quoted saying that Dean was the first adult male who did not mock his appearance, so he felt comfortable.
00:53:35
Speaker
Coral frequently helped him out whenever he needed money, and David began thinking of him as a father figure. Until two years later, when the two developed a sexual relationship. It started as Coral paying Brooks with gifts or cash to allow him to perform sexual acts on him.
00:53:56
Speaker
By 1970, Brooks' his parents had been divorced. His father remained in Houston, but his mother took him and moved 85 miles away. Brooks frequently returned to Houston to visit his father, but he stayed with Dean.
00:54:11
Speaker
In late September 1970, 18-year-old Jeffrey Conan suddenly disappeared while hitchhiking home from college. Shortly after Conan's disappearance, David Brooks walked in on Coral in the act of sexually assaulting two teenage boys who had been restrained down to a four-poster bed.
00:54:33
Speaker
In return for his silence about what he had seen, Coral offered him a car. He accepted the offer and was gifted a Chevy Corvette. Damn. Damn.
00:54:48
Speaker
Coral later ended up admitting to Brooks that he had killed those two boys and asked for his help luring more boys to him. He offered to pay him $200 per boy. And again, Brooks accepted.
00:55:02
Speaker
On December 13, 1970, 14-year-old boys Danny Yates and James Glass attended a church event and then disappeared. They were picked up walking home from the event.
00:55:13
Speaker
Brooks was friends with Glass and had previously invited him over to Coral's to hang out. Upon arriving at the house, the boys were tied to the four-poster bed with robes and handcuffs. They were raped and strangled, then buried in a boat shed rented out by Coral.
00:55:28
Speaker
Next to their bodies in the graves, authorities found electrical cords with attached alligator clamps and signs of torture. oh my god. This guy's a monster. On January 30, 1971, brothers, Donald and Jerry Waldrop, both disappeared while walking home from a friend's house.
00:55:47
Speaker
Brooks and Coral had spotted them on their walk and invited the boys back to Coral's apartment, where they met the same fate as Danny Yates and James Glass. March 1971, Randall Harvey was seen riding his bike to work but never arrived.
00:56:00
Speaker
He was never seen again. May 1971, 13-year-old David Hillegeist and 16-year-old Gregory Winkle vanished. Both boys' parents lodgeed launched a frantic search.
00:56:12
Speaker
They printed posters, and they offered rewards for any information.
00:56:18
Speaker
On July 1st, 1971, a team named named Donald Falcone disappeared. A few weeks later, on August 17th, Brooks lured Reuben Haney to a supposed party at Coral's new home.
00:56:31
Speaker
When Cora was done with him, Brooks buried the body. According to his confession, years later, Brooks assisted in the abduction and murder of two boys during September 1971. These two victims still have not been identified.
00:56:47
Speaker
Sometime around October 1971, Brooks met Elmer Wayne Henley. Henley had been an active participant in the search for Hillegeist and Winkle. He had distributed posters and reassured the parents that the boys were probably fine.
00:57:02
Speaker
Brooks took Henley to Coral's home, likely trying to lure him as another victim. While there, Coral decided he would make a good accomplice. Instead of killing him, he told him he was part of a, quote, white slavery ring, and he needed Henley's help.
00:57:18
Speaker
So he offered to pay him $200 for each boy that he could lure to his apartment. Again, years later, Henley claimed that he ignored the offer and the topic for many months, but remained friends with Coral and eventually began to view him as a brother.
00:57:32
Speaker
By early 1972, he had accepted Coral's offer. He abducted a boy by luring him with the promise of sharing marijuana. They arrived at Coral's home and Henley started with a ah ruse that he and Coral had come up with.
00:57:46
Speaker
He cuffed himself behind his back and freed himself using a key that he had hidden in his back pocket. He then convinced the boy to do the same. Once the boy was cuffed, Coral bound and gagged him.
00:57:58
Speaker
Henley claimed that he left the two alone and expected that the boy would be sold into slavery. The identity of this boy remains unknown as well. On March 24, 1972, the terrible trio, Brooks, Henley, and Coral,
00:58:12
Speaker
went out together, and they came across a friend of Henley's, 18-year-old Frank Aguiar. He was leaving work when the group invited him over to Coral's for beer and pot.
00:58:23
Speaker
Reportedly, once they got to the house, Coral attacked him unexpectedly. Henley claims that he begged Coral not to harm him, but Coral then shouted that he had raped, tortured, and killed the other boy Henley had brought to him and said that he planned to do the same with Frank.
00:58:37
Speaker
After Frank was dead, Henley assisted in burying him. Henley, despite his later claims about any reservations or fear he had, quickly became a very active part in the abductions and murders of the other victims.
00:58:50
Speaker
Neighbors and the parents of David Hillegeist had thought of Henley as a polite, nice, and compassionate boy. Brooks later referred to Henley as especially sadistic, and Henley admitted that he developed a fascination for the torture and murder.
00:59:05
Speaker
There was even an occasion when Henley attacked Brooks, knocking him unconscious. Then he helped Coral tie him down and watched as Coral sexually assaulted him over and over again.
00:59:16
Speaker
Despite this assault, Brooks continued to participate in the horrors the Candyman unleashed around Houston.
00:59:25
Speaker
19-year-old William Ridinger was lured to Coral's home by the trio and was tortured and abused for three days until he was simply released at the request of David Brooks.
00:59:39
Speaker
Right? Right? Between February and June 1973, the disappearances and the killings completely halted. At this time, there were medical records that indicated that Coral was suffering from a hydrocele, a testicular problem.
00:59:55
Speaker
During this time, Henley also took a spontaneous trip to Florida in what he claims was an effort to put some distance between himself and Coral.
01:00:05
Speaker
He returned after June and apparently Coral was feeling better. So after June 73, the rate of killings and the level of brutality significantly increased.
01:00:16
Speaker
According to statements made by both Brooks and Henley, Coral became unhinged, not that he wasn't at first, and began to spiral into a quote bloodlust. They could always predict when he was going to demand another boy because he would become restless and twitchy and would start smoking cigarettes.
01:00:33
Speaker
In July 1973, Brooks married his pregnant fiance, and Henley became the sole accomplice to Coral's crimes. There were multiple abductions and murders in a short period of time that July.
01:00:48
Speaker
So Henley leaves, says he needs to put space between them, comes back at the end of June, and then July is just murder mayhem. Rampage, yeah. On August 3rd, 1973, Quarrel abducted and killed his final victim, James Stanton Dramala, who was lured to Quarrel's home with the promise of receiving empty bottles for him to sell.
01:01:12
Speaker
A few days later on August 7th, Henley invited 20-year-old Timothy Curley to Quarrel's new Pasadena home. The two stayed at Quarrel's for a few hours, drinking and huffing paint until about midnight. They left, having to return to Houston for a little bit, with the intention to return shoot soon after.
01:01:28
Speaker
When they arrived back at Henley's home, there was a commotion. Henley looked across the street and saw 15-year-old Rhonda Williams, one of his friends, sitting outside. She had apparently been beaten by her father and had intended to run away.
01:01:41
Speaker
She said that she didn't want to go home, so Henley said, come on with me. she invites williams to He invited Williams to join him and Curly back at Coral's house. When the three of them arrived back at Coral's home at approximately 3 o'clock in the morning, Coral became furious with Henley.
01:01:58
Speaker
Why did he bring a girl home? This is not a place for girls. Fucked it up. Henley believed he was able to calm Coral down as they smoked weed and continued drinking. Eventually, Coral trotted off to bed and the three visitors passed out.
01:02:14
Speaker
Henley woke up suddenly, laying on his stomach, with Coral cuffing his hands behind his back. His mouth was taped shut, and his ankles were bound together. Beside him were Curly and Williams.
01:02:25
Speaker
Both had been bound tightly with nylon rope, gagged and taped. Curly was naked.
01:02:31
Speaker
He seemed even more insane than usual, referring to Coral. He threatened to kill all three of them, started yelling at Henley about how he had ruined it. But Henley somehow managed to calm him,
01:02:44
Speaker
had him remove his tape so he was no longer gagged, and then offered to help torture and kill both Curly and Williams. Crazy little man. Quirrell is like, this sounds like a great idea. So he unties him.
01:02:56
Speaker
And then he straps them both down to what he calls his torture boards, which were like eight foot long marine grade plywood that had holes cut in them for ropes and handcuffs to be hooked onto. to
01:03:12
Speaker
He strapped Curly down on his front and he strapped Williams down on her back. Curly was already naked and then he instructed Henley to cut off Rhonda's clothes.
01:03:24
Speaker
As he was cutting off Rhonda's clothes, he was edgy. He paced the room, he started huffing more paint and then Rhonda made eye contact with him and asked him, is this really happening?
01:03:38
Speaker
Henley says in interviews later that at that point something just snapped in him and he realized he couldn't do it.
01:03:46
Speaker
So he started yelling at Coral. He grabbed Coral's gun from the table. They argued and then Henley shot Coral repeatedly even as he fled until he was lying naked on the floor in the hallway and not moving.
01:03:59
Speaker
Henley called the police and then sat out on the curb with Williams and Curly and waited. While speaking to the police about Dean's death by self-defense, which was accepted because Williams and Curly both saw it happen, it was almost as if he couldn't stop himself. He couldn't help but brag about what he had been a part of for these past few years.
01:04:19
Speaker
His confessions kept tumbling out. He admitted his part and then pointed a really big finger at David Brooks as the other accomplice. The police were skeptical.
01:04:30
Speaker
They believed he was just high and s spewing nonsense. He caught their attention, though, when he mentioned the names Cobble, Hillegeist, and Jones. All three of those boys had active missing persons cases cases open in Houston.
01:04:44
Speaker
As they searched Dean's home and van, they found horrible torture devices, sexual enhancement objects, plastic sheeting, weapons of all sorts, rope, countless pairs of handcuffs,
01:04:57
Speaker
Soil and the torture tables with restraints and then wooden crates inside and outside with holes drilled into them for air. oh my god These boxes contained what appeared to be human hair.
01:05:10
Speaker
The horrors and brutality that the boys endured was described by many as sadistic, demented, depraved, unimaginable, demonic, and haunting. The names we know are Frank Aguiar, Mark Scott, Ruben Haney, Johnny Ray DeLome, Billy Bulch, Steven Sickman, Roy Bunton, Wally Simino, Willard Branch, Richard Hembree, Jeffrey Lyles, Richard Kepner, William Lawrence, Homer Garcia, Raymond Blackburn, Michael Bulch, whose younger brother had disappeared a year earlier.
01:05:47
Speaker
How sad is that? Poor mom and dad. John Sellers, Marty Ray Jones, Charles Cobble, and Donnie Falcone. Dear God. And that doesn't include the unknown, unidentified victims.
01:06:02
Speaker
Many of the boys were held for a few days before being killed. They experienced sexual mutilation, and including... Getting it chopped off.
01:06:13
Speaker
Really? Assault, forced sodomy, and torture with electricity, blunt objects, or sharp instruments. Many, like Mark Scott, were forced to write letters to their families to alleviate their fears and prevent them from looking for them.
01:06:26
Speaker
Some of the victims were or had been friends to these killers. Some had been known through jobs, others were just simply chosen at random.
01:06:37
Speaker
Dean Corll became known as the Houston Mass Murderer because at the time, the term serial killer didn't exist. David Brooks turned himself in the day after Henley was taken in by the police.
01:06:50
Speaker
He initially denied involvement in the torture and murders, but admitted that he was present for some of them. There were multiple grave sites. Seventeen bodies were uncovered at the boat shed.
01:07:02
Speaker
Six were found at the High Island Beach. Four bodies were found in the woods near Lake Sam Rayburn, three hours away. Jesus Henley accompanied the police to the sites to unearth the victims.
01:07:15
Speaker
Some of the bodies had been covered in lime powder and were wrapped in clear plastic. They were all in different stages of decomp. Some were full bodies. Others were just bits and pieces. Some still had tape across their mouths.
01:07:27
Speaker
Some had bullet holes in their heads. Some were tied with nylon ropes around their necks, hands, or feet. After the bodies were discovered, police took fire from the public and the media.
01:07:38
Speaker
They were attacked, understandably, for their apparent disinterest that they took and all of the reports reports of the missing boys over the years. The police made plenty of mistakes. However, there was one really horrible time that they let the ball completely drop on the case.
01:07:53
Speaker
They were informed at one point by a witness who saw a coral digging at the boat shed and moving what appeared to be human bodies. The police went by to check it out, but they didn't look into it from more than a cursory glance.
01:08:09
Speaker
They dismissed the concern and never followed up. oh come on. As of March of this year, forensic anthropologist Dr. Sharon Derrick has been working for more than 20 years to identify the remains found in the mass graves.
01:08:24
Speaker
One of these boys was 16-year-old Donnie Falcone, who had been identified after 45 years. So some kids were immediately identified. Some of them, over the past 50 years, have been slowly identified. Yeah.
01:08:39
Speaker
yeah Many rumors had spread about his disappearance over the years. Some claimed that he had run away, just as others believed he had up and joined the mob. His family never gave up on finding him, and his mother lived just long enough to have her version of closure, when they finally identified him and returned his body home.
01:09:00
Speaker
Recently, a new search has begun for additional victims of Dean Corll and his accomplices. There's a whole new group out in Texas that is dedicated to just finding more bodies.
01:09:11
Speaker
So they're using Henley as a source to try and find more areas and that kind of thing. Henley and Brooks were tried separately. The juries were allowed to see the torture boards and other evidence during the trials.
01:09:24
Speaker
They were horrified. The evidence was graphic and haunting. ah Police testimony regarding some horrible and incriminating state incriminating statements that Henley had kind of bragged about.
01:09:37
Speaker
um The jury was able to use that and quickly found him guilty on all of the six charges that he had. He was convicted um for six murders and torture. He received six consecutive life sentences.
01:09:52
Speaker
He appealed four years into the sentence and was again found guilty on all charges. His sentence was changed, though, from six consecutive to six concurrent life sentences to be served. Brooks was found guilty for only one murder and received life in prison.
01:10:07
Speaker
He was denied parole multiple times. He died of COVID complications in 2020.
01:10:14
Speaker
Seven years after the death of Stanton Dramala, his parents had to fight like hell to prevent Henley from getting paroled. 41 times they repeated this cycle of having to fight for him and Brooks. That's horrible.
01:10:28
Speaker
Yeah. Horrible. Every 18 months until 2015 when the law was changed that said that the cycle had to be changed 10 years. His next scheduled parole hearing is October 2025. The only parents of the victims that are still alive are the Dramalas.
01:10:45
Speaker
They have fought for all of the families who have passed away in the intervening years and the boys who were lost. The macabre record in a single murder case was surpassed in 1978 by John Wayne Gacy, who murdered 33 boys and young men and admitted that he was inspired by the Houston mass murderers. Oh my God.
01:11:07
Speaker
Houston, Texas, between 1970 and 1973, seemed to most to be a carefree and loving place. To many, it was instead a place of horror, despair, and loss.
01:11:18
Speaker
Fifty years after the incidents of the Candyman, Dean Corll, investigators continued to seek answers. Oh, that was horrible. Good job. yeah Good job.
01:11:30
Speaker
You know, I read about him one time. It was a small article that I read. Nothing. Henley, so Henley remains incarcerated, obviously. And the interviews of him, he is a remorseless fuck.
01:11:45
Speaker
He is cocky and he is, and you know what? he He, he says he makes statements. There's one specific interview in 2008 that he gave, um, where he says like, people need to just let go the past. Like continuing to relive it is just like keeping yourself stuck in there. And you know, like,
01:12:07
Speaker
sucks for those families but like move on damn and you look at him he's just heartless and then the family of the one victim had to go back over and over and over for the appeal process 41 times that's insane that reminds me of brian koburger in idaho who was charged with killing the four university students I think his um attorney gave him some sound advice and said, take the plea. So he pleaded guilty.
01:12:42
Speaker
and i don't know if it's probably, it's probably not what the family wants or the families want, but from this point on, they do not have to go back and relive the trauma over and over again. Yeah. Damn, that's horrible.
01:12:56
Speaker
So when Gacy quote broke the record, Henley was enraged. Oh my God. From behind bars, he was like, well, that's bullshit because you guys say that I only have 28 bodies, but there's so many more. Like I'm far past 33, but he won't tell anyone anything else.
01:13:20
Speaker
How old is he now? I'm under 65. I think really 70, maybe when he was 17 and seventy three Horrible humans.
01:13:33
Speaker
Depraved. Disgusting. Yeah. Good job. Oh, thanks. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Mine was tame this week yearss compared to yours. Yeah.
01:13:45
Speaker
Next week's not going be any better.
01:13:48
Speaker
On that note, let's close this one out. Let's do it. You good with that? We'll end this vortex of fuckery. Alan, our overqualified and unpaid master publisher extraordinaire. Ashley, the unmatched, epically ultimate hype queen.
01:14:06
Speaker
Kelsey, our incomparable swag and merch creator. Daniel. Daniel. Daniel. daniel Our friendly neighborhood supporter. Did you make it to the end of us with dan in to the end of the show with us, Daniel? Did you make it to this point? He'd probably listen to that. He would be mortified.
01:14:24
Speaker
Yeah. Saying his hell. Children. Yeah. um But together, you guys are our first. And forever. Fans. And we hope you enjoyed it. Rate us.
01:14:34
Speaker
Review us. Leave a comment. And that's it. Have a good one. Bye.