Some youthful offenders have been lured onto criminal teams and carefully groomed to participate in murder. Their experience of killing is different from that of a primary predator, as is their post-murder response. For over a year, I’ve worked with Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr., one of the two accomplices to “Candy Man” Dean Corll, who killed at least 27 boys during the 1970s in Houston, Texas.
Henley reveals the mechanism of manipulation and describes where it went wrong as he resisted, then killed his murder mentor. Henley does not excuse his crimes, but he does wonder how he could ever have been involved. Through him, we learn how predators like Corll bait their potential partners and control their behavior.