Dean Corll

The possibility that closet homosexual Dean Corll had become a victim of unscrupulous young druggies or others who might have taken advantage of Corll's generosity was investigated. However, investigation showed that the only really close friends that Dean had were Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks, neither of whom, at least on the surface, seemed likely candidates for victimizing the older man.

Wayne Henley was a pimply-faced, young school dropout with a drinking problem. He was the product of a very broken home and undertook the financial support of his mother and three brothers. Working during the day and the evening, there was little or no time for education. He had tried to enlist in the army, but was prevented because he had dropped out of junior high school and lacked sufficient education to be inducted.

His friend David Brooks introduced Wayne to Dean Corll in 1970. It was, at least at the start and probably at the end of the relationship, a monetary relationship primarily. Corll offered Wayne money allegedly several hundred dollars to procure young men for him.

David Brooks was born in Beaumont, Texas in 1955. Like Wayne Henley and Dean Corll, he was the product of a broken home. His parents were divorced in the early 1960s when David was only five years old. He spent part of his time in Houston with his father and the rest of the time with his mother in Beaumont.

Wayne Henley (left), David Brooks (right)

Despite the divorce of his parents, David had a promising beginning as a student, making excellent grades in elementary school. Then in junior high, his grades plummeted. Around this time, he became associated with Dean Corll, who paid him for his sexual favors. Corll had such a grip on the young man that he dropped out of high school shortly after he started so that he could spend all of his free time with Corll.

David, Wayne and Dean were frequently together, staying at Dean's house, riding around in his van and meeting other teenage boys at the various places that they congregated.

Author Jack Olsen in his book The Man with the Candy, described the situation:

Corll and the two boys made an unlikely trio; by the early 1970's, he was in his thirties, the boys in their mid-teens. They seemed to have nothing in common... 

To most of the people in The Heights, the odd trio was seen only as a hawk is sometimes seen in the woods: in quick silhouette, or as a subliminal shadow, swiftly past. Individually, Corll, Henley and Brooks maintained low profiles; they were regarded as losers, ciphers in the teen-age society. As a threesome, the old mathematical precept applied: multiples of zero are zero.