Episode 333: The Candy Man, Part 1

The First Degree

Alexis Linkletter and Jac Vanek

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.5 • 10K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On the morning of August 8, 1973, 17-year-old Elmer Wayne Henley Junior shoots and kills former candy company owner, 33-year-old Dean Arnold Corll, in Pasadena, Texas. Wayne was acting in self-defense, saving himself and two friends. After a night of partying, Dean had bound the three young adults with the intent of raping and murdering them. Wayne convinced Dean to free him with false promises, which allowed him to grab Dean’s gun. When the authorities arrive, Wayne explains to the Texas police that Dean has killed many boys and young men. Wayne directs the officers to the location of four bodies, but the investigators don’t find four bodies. They find 17. Within hours, Wayne confesses his own involvement and provides the locations of 10 additional bodies. In episode 333, Jac and Alexis unpack how Dean, known locally as the Candy Man, manipulated Wayne and another young man, 18-year-old David Owen Brooks, into participating in one of the nation’s most horrific crimes. This is part one of a two-part series.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The first degree.
0:02.0	First degree.
0:04.0	First degree.
0:05.0	First degree.
0:06.0	First degree.
0:07.0	The first degree.
0:09.0	You see it on the news.
0:10.0	You see it on the paper.
0:11.0	You see it on Facebook.
0:13.0	These things are supposed to happen in movies, not in real life.
0:20.0	So he worked the community into trusting and accepting his presence.
0:27.6	Even though he's like a 30-year-old adult with these 14 and 15- and 16-year-olds,
0:33.6	he managed to make them believe he was a trustworthy person.
0:38.2	What we're talking about is predators not looking for victims so much as partners.
0:44.0	They're testing the waters to see is this person offended or have they committed any low-level crime like shoplifting or smoking dope or something and that means they're pliable.
0:56.5	At one point he said it was fun and I was trying to wrap my head around. Did he literally
1:04.0	just say fun? And I think that we have seen it in other people's writing historically. So he did. And I think that
1:16.2	what he was doing was being incredibly honest with me. Here is a teenager who is being empowered
1:23.8	by an adult to take the lives of other people. He's completely free to do drugs,
1:31.6	to drink, to exercise whatever he'd like to do. Welcome to the first degree, the true crime
1:38.4	podcast that you might end up on. My name is Jack Vanek. I'm sitting here with the Alexis
1:42.2	Link Letter. Today we have part one of a two-parter about the Candy Man. So you can number one listen to all this at once right now if you join our Patreon. We love our Patreon. You get all of our multi-parters to binge right as they come out over there. And obviously, you want to listen to these in order.
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