The Most Sadistic Serial Killer You've Never Heard Of

He was known as the Candyman, the friendly local man working at his family's candy shop, giving out free chocolates to all the neighborhood kids. Everyone liked him, especially the children. No one would have ever expected that the Candyman was a monster. A Houston tragedy is only a title for what you are about to see defies any brief verbal description. It is a look at what regrettably may become the most sorted story in the annals of American crime. Perhaps as many as 30 teenage boys brutally tortured, murdered, and buried in and around the Houston area. Dean Coral once held the record for the most amount of confirmed victims out of any other serial killer in all America. And his true number of victims is likely over double what we know, but still somehow you have likely never even heard of him. This is the life, crimes, and death of Dean Coral, the Candyman. My name is Brianna, and I'm hot on the case. Dean Coral, the truly evil man at the center of this case, came into the world on Christmas Eve, 1939. He was the eldest born to his parents Mary and Arnold and a younger brother would quickly follow him. Unlike the majority of other serial killers that we have talked about, Dean Coral lived a seemingly happy and normal childhood. No deep-rooted trauma like we typically see. His parents were pretty typical normal parents for the time, and the way that they handled their parenting style could not have been more different. Dean's father was really stoic, the kind of guy that never smiles or laughs. He was also a very strict disciplinarian, and the punishments that he handed out to his very young children were a bit harsh and extreme, in my opinion. In contrast, Dean's mother Mary coddled her sons. They could do absolutely no wrong in her eyes, a feeling that would continue throughout Dean's entire life and beyond. The family lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but it was around this time that they would move to Houston, Texas, and it's in and around this area that the rest of this case takes place. And it was when Dean was six years old that his parents would divorce, remarry, and then quickly get divorced again. So Dean, his mother and his younger brother would spend some time living in Vidora, Texas, a very small conservative and racist town before moving back to Houston. Dean, as a young child, had really no interest in hanging out with kids his own age. He liked being an outcast, he liked being alone, and as a child, Dean really didn't show any emotion. Dean was honestly like unbelievably average. His grades were average. Really, the only interesting thing about Dean in his adolescence is that he played the trombone in the school's band. When Dean was 10 years old, he spent a summer with his grandparents on their farm in Indiana. His mother Mary was infamously quoted saying that her son got all of these sexual education that a boy needed on his grandparents' farm because she assumed that during that summer, her son would have witnessed animals procreating. Mary would then enter her third marriage with her second husband and in 1995 with her second husband, Mary gave birth to Dean's younger half-sister. Dean's stepfather seemed like a fine enough guy. Sometimes Dean and him really didn't get along, but it wasn't because of anything extreme as far as I can tell. Like I said, it seemed like Dean Coral lived a normal, nice, average childhood. But to be fair, everything that we know about Dean Coral's childhood comes solely from his mother Mary. So it is extremely possible that maybe there are some things that she sugarcoding or leaving out, or maybe things that she just didn't know about. It's the mid-1950s were about to enter into the early 60s and Dean's mother Mary does something that was practically unheard of for a woman in this time period. She becomes an entrepreneur. There was an abundance of wild pecans growing in the area Mary and her two sons would go and pick them and then make pre-leens out of them a little sweet treat that they would sell to all of their neighbors. And what started as a fun little hobby with family quickly became a booming business. Under the name Peacam Prince, Mary and her sons were running an entire candy shop out of their house. And by the time that Dean turned 18 years old, he was working full time at his family's candy company as his mother opened her very own candy shop and candy factory. But as business was starting to take off, Mary's father died. So she asked her oldest son, Dean, if he would go back to Indiana and spend some time with his grandmother, keeper company, and help out on the farm. Dean is in his early adult years, but he's still pretty strange. He wants really nothing to do with other people as age, but for the first time in his entire life, Dean Coral is interested in making friends. He was interested in becoming friends with all of the neighborhood children. Dean even took up photography as a hobby. Nice, normal, no. Dean would use his camera to take photos and videos of all of the children in the neighborhood. Once Dean is back in Houston, he's back working at his mother's candy shop. It was around the time that Mary's marriage with her second husband was just completely falling apart. And because it was like the 50s, 60s, he was a man and he just could. He stole the Peacam Prince business from Mary as he was about to divorce her. And as the two were getting a divorce, Mary decided that she was just going to start a second candy business. The Coral Candy Company, which was so successful that she nearly put the Peacam Prince and her ex-husband out of business. Mary opens up a candy factory with a candy shop in the front directly across the street from the local elementary school. This made sense from a business standpoint, put a candy shop right in front of a bunch of children, but this also put a bunch of children right in front of Dean Coral. It is now the early 60s. Dean is in his early 20s. He's working full-time at his mother's candy shop. He's also living in like an apartment above the candy shop and he buys a motorcycle and a windalous white van, a white van. He really can't get more obvious who Dean Coral is. In a round town, Dean Coral is affectionately known as the Candy Man. Because whenever classes led out at the elementary school that was directly across the street, Dean would come out with a bunch of free candy to give out to all of the children. And through doing this, Dean Coral quickly became on a first-name basis with all of the young kids in town. And these kids were really Dean Coral's only friends. He would give some of the older boys free rides around town on his motorcycle. He decked out the back of his white van with a couch and a portable TV. And again, he would let all of the young teenage boys in the back of his van and drive them around sometimes take them surfing. He even put a pool table in the back of his family's candy factory to make it like a cool hangout spot for all of the young teenage boys in town. And for a good handful of years, that we know of, Dean Coral isn't doing anything explicitly illegal. But this was textbook grooming. But no one around town really saw it that way. People around town never really ever had anything bad to say about Dean Coral, even though he was only ever hanging out with kids and young teenage boys. They just thought that Dean was a nice friendly guy that just so happened to really like kids. One of the people that lived in town was actually quoted saying that they never met anyone that liked kids as much as Dean Coral. It is very likely that Dean Coral was a psychopath. As a child, he wasn't capable of showing or mirroring human emotion by as an adult he could. For the first time ever, people, specifically adults liked Dean Coral and wanted to be around him. The people that he worked with at the candy company really liked him and thought he was fun and charming. A lot of the women that worked there wanted to date him even. One of these women actually had a date planned with Dean, but when he came to pick her up, his white van was completely filled with kids that he planned to take on their date. So weird. There were even quite a few young teenage boys that worked part-time at the Coral Candy Company and one day one of these young boys accused Dean Coral of offering him money in exchange for sexual favors. But Dean's mother did not believe this boy. She could never believe that her precious Dean was capable of something like this. So she responded to the accusations by firing the boy. It is now 1964 and Dean Coral is drafted into the army and it was in the army that Dean would later tell some friends that he had his first sexual encounters with men and realized his same sex attraction. Something that Back in Texas during the 1960s and 70s, Dean Coral would pretty much keep quiet. Dean Coral was honorably discharged from the army only 11 months after he was drafted. This was after his mother Mary wrote a letter to the army saying that she needed her son to come home so he could work at her candy shop. That is not something that I knew you could do when your kid got drafted into the military. Instead of continuing to live above the candy shop, Dean moved into a mobile home and parked it next to the candy shop so he still directly across the street from the local elementary school. We're now in the mid 1960s and there's a lot of people witnessing Dean Coral doing something really really strange all of the time. In the middle of the night, Dean Coral is witnessed by multiple people multiple different times burying something, either behind the factory or in another area. When asked what he was burying, Dean would just tell them that it was defective candy? He was burying it to keep it away from bugs. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Dean Coral was probably not burying candy. It was very likely bodies that he was burying. We actually have no idea when Dean Coral started to abduct, abuse, and murder children and teenage boys, but it's like pretty much 99.99% proven that it's before we actually have concrete proof of him starting. It's actually really scary because Dean Coral has a lot of victims, but based on what we know, it's very likely that his true number of victims is over double. The large amount that we already know about. Dean's mother would marry for a fourth time to her third husband and everything I've read about this guy, he just seems like the worse. Abusive, controlling, jealous, maybe possibly killed his first wife. So Mary would annul this marriage, but then they would quickly get back together. She marries her third husband for a second time, so now it's her fifth marriage, but of course this time it's no better and they would get divorced again. Mary looking for some direction in life, start speaking to different psychics. And one of these psychics tell Mary that she's meant to go move to Boulder, Colorado. So she picks up her daughter and she moves to Colorado to get away from her creepy, weirdo ex-husband. And when she moves to Colorado, she shuts down the Coral Candy Company for good. Dean is now looking for work. He gets a job working at a local lighting company, and this is where he works for the rest of this case. He would then move into a little shed, tiny home situation, again, directly across a street from the elementary school. And everywhere that Dean would move and Dean would move around a lot, he would completely deck out his new spot to be like the ideal place for a teenage boy, like a teenage boy's heaven. And Dean would often throw parties for all of the young boys in town. These were boys that he met when they were just elementary school students and he was giving them free samples of chocolate, you know, like I said, textbook grooming, because now they are really young teenagers. And they're coming over to his place every single weekend and he's supplying them with drugs and alcohol. Over the course of just a few years, Dean Coral would move five to seven times a year. It was pretty much just whenever his neighbors were complaining too much or asking too many questions about all of the loud noises over at Dean Coral's house and why so many intoxicated teenagers seemed to always be coming in and out of his house. And sometimes when Dean Coral would move out of his places, the landlords would come in and find bullet holes in the walls. It's not weird at all. Since 1967, and Dean Coral is still super popular with all of the local children, you gotta hate it. The thing about Dean Coral and a lot of other predators, they specifically seek out children that don't come from the best home lives. Predators do this for a lot of different reasons, but one of them is because they don't think that the child they are grooming or abusing has anyone at home that would care enough to report it or even really note it. And this is what Dean Coral does in this case. And at this time, he specifically fixates on one sixth grade boy, 12-year-old David Brooks. David is going to be in this case a lot, so because there is David and Dean, so I don't get confused and you don't get confused, I'm just going to call David by his last name, Brooks, throughout this case. Brooks was an outcast, an extremely troubled child from a less than desirable home and family. He first met Dean when he was just a little elementary school boy, running over to get free candies from Dean every single day after school. But now he's in middle school, and Dean is giving Brooks a lot of attention. And this actually meant so much to Brooks because up until this point, Noah Dalton ever showed any interest or care for Brooks. Which is just so, so sad. Brooks doesn't know it, but he's being groomed by Dean, and the grooming goes on for about two years. And during those two years, Dean is providing everything for Brooks. He's giving him food, he's giving him a place to crash sometimes, he's giving him drugs, he's giving him alcohol. And even later on, on his 16th birthday, Dean gave Brooks his first ever car, a Corvette. Brooks and his family really did not come from a lot of money. So one day when Brooks was 14 years old, Dean started to give him a few dollars here and there if Brooks would let Dean perform sexual acts on him. And this is how things are going on for a while before Brooks is practically just living at Dean's place. He's just there, like all of the time. And then one day in September of 1970, when Brooks was around 15 years old, Brooks walks into Dean's place unannounced like he always did. And when he does, he walks in on Dean Coral, completely naked, and resulting two young boys that are chained to plywood boards that are suspended from the ceiling. Brooks just walks out, he just leaves. And Dean doesn't do anything to stop him. As far as I know, those two boys have never been identified, but we do know that after that they were never seen alive ever again. Because the next time that Dean saw Brooks, he confessed to him that he abducted those two boys. He held them captive, he chained them to those plywood boards that were his torture boards, and then he held them there for hours while he tortured them and assaulted them before killing them and burying their bodies. And just when you think this can't get any more unbelievable, Dean makes 15 year old Brooks an offer. He promises to give Brooks $200 cash, which is over $1,700 in today's money for every single boy that Brooks lured over to his apartment for Dean to torture, abuse, and murder. And shockingly, Brooks accepts this offer. Around this time, Dean rents a storage unit boat shed, it's pretty big, and it has a dirt floor. And this is one of the many places that Dean Coral would bury his victims over the next three years. The first victims that Brooks helps Dean with are 14 year old James Glass and 14 year old Danny Yates. These two boys were friends, and this day they were just hanging out at a church event with their families. Brooks was friends with James, and James was familiar with Dean because he was one of the boys that would frequent Dean's crazy teenage boy parties. So when Brooks asked the two boys if they wanted to ditch this church event and come back to Dean's apartment with him to smoke and drink the two boys except the offer. Dean's MO, whenever a victim was lured back to his place, was to provide these young teenage boys with so much alcohol and drugs that they would just pass out. And if that didn't work, he would also trick them into letting Dean handcuff them by telling them he would show them a trick on how to break out of handcuffs without a key. And that is actually something that infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy would actually steal from Dean Coral when he became a serial killer just a few years later. Dean Coral would then torture his victims, and he would torture them in a lot of different ways. Some of the ways that I saw the most were that Dean would electrocute them. After assaulting these boys for hours with his own body, Dean would shove large objects into their rectums. were found with these objects still inside of them when their bodies were later uncovered. Dean would steal these really thin glass rods from the lighting company that he worked at and he would actually put these glass rods inside the boys members and then once the glass rods were in there, he would either snap them so they would be stuck inside or he would smash the glass rods while they were still inside of them. Dean would also often bite partially chew off or completely cut off the members of these boys while they were still alive. Truly disgusting and horrifying painful methods of torture and that's really going to be the last they go into detail about the torture that these boys suffered in their last final moments of life. I think it's important to at least go over at once so you know just how sick and evil Dean Coral was. He is without a doubt a sexual sadist but I think actually repeating the details over and over and over again when I go through some of the different victims in this case really just isn't beneficial to anyone. After torturing and assaulting these boys for hours and hours sometimes through the night into the next morning. Dean would then kill them either by strangling them or shooting them or sometimes both and then Brooks would help Dean dispose and bury their bodies. They were always wrapped in really thick plastic and they were also buried under a layer of lime. This would help with the smell and also speed up the decomposition process. Some of these boys came from homes that really didn't care if they just went missing one day so some of these boys were never reported missing. But a lot of these boys were reported missing but it really didn't make a difference either way because investigations were never done into their disappearances and they were always just written off as runaways. The next two boys that Brooks learned to their deaths were brothers. 15-year-old Donald and 13-year-old Jerry Waldrup who were just walking to the local bowling alley together. After being abused and assaulted for hours Dean and Brooks went to bed for the night leaving the two brothers chained to the torture boards overnight. And then next morning Dean told the brothers that he was going to let one of them go but first he would come over and unchain one of both of their hands and then told the brothers that they were going to have the fight to the death and whoever killed their own brother he would then let that one go free. Brooks and Dean then watched for hours as the 15 and 13-year-old brothers who just wanted to go to the bowling alley together tried to kill each other with just one hand. After several hours of this going on unsuccessfully Dean would torture and assault both of the boys one more time before strangling them both to death. When their father was told that his two sons likely just ran away he spent months begging investigators to just do any sort of investigation until one of the police officers finally reached back out to him to tell him to stop wasting their time. The next boy that we know of was 15-year-old Randall Harvey. Brooks chose Randall specifically because very recently they actually gone to a pretty big disagreement that ended in Brooks threatening to kill Randall. When Randall disappeared one day his mother tried to report him missing she even told the police that right before her son went missing he gone to a really big fight with a boy in town named David Brooks and David Brooks even threatened to kill her son but police never even bothered to question Brooks and once again just assumed that Randall ran away. A lot of the missing boys families that were just being dismissed by police would try and put on like their own investigations. It actually wasn't long until the city of Houston was just covered in missing person's posters of dozens of missing boys so to try and counteract this Dean began forcing his victims to either call home or write home letters and just tell their families that they were just going out of town. On May 29 1971 13-year-old David Hill guys was walking to the local community pool with his two younger brothers but on the way to the pool David told his two brothers to just go ahead of him because he was going to stop at his friends 16-year-old Gregory Winkle's house to see if he wanted to go swim too. Both of these boys actually knew Dean Coral really really well. Gregory used the work at the Coral Candy Company part time and David was one of the boys I would hang out in the back of the shop when the pool table was put back there. So when the two boys were walking to the community pool and Dean and Brooks pulled up next to them and Dean's white van and offered them a ride to the pool the boys said yes neither boy ever showed up to the swimming pool they were reported missing and they were just written off as runaways. David's family would go into an insane amount of debt trying to find out what happened to their son. They hired private investigators multiple different psychics they were running all kinds of ads in the local newspaper and with the help of a bunch of different volunteers from the neighborhood they put up hundreds of missing person posters of the two boys and one of these boys helping put up missing person's posters was actually David's really close childhood friend 15-year-old Elmer Henley who went by his middle name Wayne. Wayne is about to come up in this case very very shortly but before I go into Wayne Henley there's one more victim I want to discuss because it really just further highlights the incompetence of the police department at this time. On August 17th 1971 17-year-old Rubin Hayley was walking home when he ran into Brooks who invited him back to Dean's place to party. Rubin also knew Dean very well back when he was younger he was one of the boys that Dean would give candy to and also would ride on his motorcycle with. Before going back to Dean's place for the night Rubin wanted to call his mom to let her know where he was going to be and he told her that he was going to be at David Brooks house. So when Rubin never came home and his mom reported him missing his mother specifically told the police Brooks's name. This is now the second time in like a year that a boy has gone missing around the same age in the same exact area and David Brooks's name has been given to the police. But do they investigate? Do they even bother to question Brooks? No, they don't. They just ride off Rubin as a runaway. In November of 1971 that boy that I just told you about 15-year-old Wayne was lured back to Dean's place by Brooks. He was intended to be one of Dean's victims but while talking to Wayne Dean decided that he liked Wayne and he didn't want to kill him. And after this interaction Dean started inviting Wayne over more and more. It would be Dean, Wayne and Brooks hanging out together all of the time drinking, smoking and huffing paint to get high. And then one day Dean told Wayne that he was involved in child trafficking and offered him kind of like he did Brooks $200 for every single boy he brought to him so he could sell the boy into human trafficking. Wayne initially declines this offer but he still keeps hanging out with Dean and Brooks. But his mother was really struggling financially so eventually Wayne accepted this offer. This is different than the offer that Brooks was given because Brooks knew the true states of the boys that he was luring over to Dean's apartment. But I really don't think that it makes it any better that initially Wayne believed that these boys were being sold in human trafficking instead of being murdered. And Wayne did lure several young boys over to Dean's apartment collected his money and left before Dean told him the truth that he was not a human trafficker but a serial killer. And even after learning this Wayne continued to help lure boys over to Dean's apartment and he would then assist Brooks in helping Dean bury the victim's bodies after they were killed. Wayne was very different from Dean's first accomplice Brooks. Brooks was an outcast, a weirdo. He really wasn't the kind of guy that a lot of people wanted to spend time with or trusted. And Wayne was like the exact opposite. Wayne was extremely popular. He was the kind of guy that girls wanted to be with and guys wanted to be. Wayne was actually really really smart. He got straight A's in school until he started to really struggle with something at home, possibly his parents divorced and his dad moving over 250 miles away. His grades really started to slip and then he dropped out of school all together. Even as a 50. 15 year old boy Wayne had a pretty serious drinking problem and he would also have several run-ins with the law like an assault with a deadly weapon charge. Also unlike Brooks who claimed to never actually have a physical hand in torturing and killing the boys he would lure over to Dean's apartment, Wayne eventually would partake physically in torturing these boys and also would help kill these boys. There were several boys that Wayne was the one that killed, not Dean. I believe he eventually confessed to nine murders. The escalation is just unbelievable. Just a few months ago Wayne was just a young boy putting up missing person flyers of one of his childhood friends who disappeared and now he's helping kill more boys for the man that murdered one of his closest friends. In late 1972 there's a switch in the group. I'm not sure exactly what happens but around this time Dean decides that he wants to victimize Brooks. While Wayne knocks Brooks unconscious for Dean, Dean ties Brooks to his bed and then satamized him multiple times over the span of multiple hours. During the entire time Brooks was begging Dean not to kill him and eventually Dean does let Brooks go. After this, Brooks still hangs out with Dean and he still helps Dean but it's happening less and less until it pretty much stops altogether. He would later admit that at this time he was really really scared of Dean obviously and on a few occasions him and Wayne actually considered killing Dean to just get out of the situation that they got themselves in. On October 3rd, 1972, 14-year-old Wally Semino and his 13-year-old friend Richard Hembery were walking to Richard's house to have a sleepover when they were learned into Brooks Corvette with Dean inside. They were brought back to Dean's place where they forced Wally to call his mother but on the call Wally kind of screamed out in fear "mama." His mother could then hear a lot of commotion on the phone like shuffling before the phone hung up completely so that is when Wally's mother called Richard's mother who told her that the boys never ended up coming over for that sleepover they were supposed to have. So that is when Wally's mother called the police. But still somehow when the boys reported missing they were still labeled as runaways. Wayne eventually came over and assisted in torturing Richard and Wayne eventually Dean and Brooks both fell asleep but Wayne stayed up torturing the 13 and 14-year-old boys all by himself. At one point he takes Dean's pistol, puts it in Richard's mouth to scare him but the gun accidentally goes off and this 14-year-old boy has now been shot in the mouth. The bullet goes out of his neck and even though he has been shot in the mouth and the bullet goes out of his neck he's still alive but he's kept like that for several hours until he strangled to death with his friend Wally. Also sometime in 1972 a teen-year-old Willard Branch Jr who went by Rusty was out hitchhiking when he was picked up by Wayne and brought back to Dean's apartment and then Rusty was never seen alive ever again. Unlike the other victims that came before him, Rusty's disappearance was actually investigated because his father was a police officer but sadly his father would die only 13 weeks after his son disappeared from a heart attack due to the stress. And after this the investigation into Rusty's disappearance just stops altogether. After this Dean moves again this is his final move. He moves into a home that his father used to live in before his father remarried and moved in with his new bride and this was a home in Pasadena at 2020 Lamar Drive. It's early 1973 and it seems like all of the manner kind of trying to distance themselves from each other, Wayne and Brooks are definitely trying to distance themselves from Dean and Dean even has plans in September of that year to visit his mom in Colorado. At this point Brooks gets a girlfriend and he actually gets his girlfriend pregnant, he marries her and then he really stops hanging out with Dean and stops helping Dean with all of his murders. Dean leaves Houston leaves his mother and moves in with his father who like I said earlier lived over 250 miles away just so he could get away from Dean. But then he gets so scared that Dean might target his younger brothers who Wayne always felt Dean liked a little bit too much so Wayne would come back to Houston and moved back in with his mother so he felt like he could protect his younger brothers. In early June 1973 and early August 1973 so just three months Wayne and Dean would kill eight boys that we know of. Before this they were killing a boy about every single month but now they are killing every few days like every week or so. Amongst these victims during this spring were 15 year old Billy Lawrence who was actually really really good friends with Wayne. He was tortured and assaulted for three days before he was murdered. There was also Michael Bouch who disappeared on July 19th 1973 just one year after his older brother Billy was also abducted and murdered by Dean. On August 3rd 1973 13 year old James Dremala left his home on his bike to ride to the convenience store down the street. This should have only taken him a few minutes round trip but him and his yellow bicycle disappeared. Only four days after killing 13 year old James Dean was on the hunt for another victim. So Wayne lured his friend 19 year old Timothy Curly to Dean's place at 2020 Lamar Drive. The three were all drinking and huffing paint before Timothy said he wanted to head out to grab something to eat really quick. At this point Timothy was sober enough that it would be really really hard to restrain him so Dean has to let him go. Wayne left with Timothy to go get some food and they told Dean that they would be back soon but while they were out they run into 15 year old Rhonda Williams. Rhonda had been really struggling at this time. Just a year earlier her boyfriend Frank Aguerr vanished without a trace. Frank and Rhonda were both really really good friends with Wayne and after her boyfriend went missing Wayne was really there for Rhonda. Little did she know it was Wayne that had lured her boyfriend Frank to be tortured, assaulted and killed by Dean Coral. Wayne would claim that it was the guilt and remorse that would make him want to be there for Rhonda following Frank's murder and I even saw reports that he dated Rhonda after giving her boyfriend over to a serial killer. On this night Rhonda was in a lot of distress after getting into a really big fight with her dad and she was really really upset. So Wayne and Timothy ask her if she wants to come hang out and party with them and she agrees. By the time they get back to Dean's place it's past 3 a.m. on August 8th and Dean is angry, he's impatient, he's frustrated that Wayne was gone for so long with his intended victim for the night but when he saw that Wayne brought a girl back to his place all that anger it was like 100 times more. Rhonda, Timothy and Wayne are all hanging out in Dean's place they're drinking and huffing paint together until they all pass out. Wayne who had a much higher tolerance than the other two wakes up before them and when he does he sees that there's plastic all down on the floor and in the bedroom him and his two friends are also tied up, they are gagged and they have duct tape over their mouths. When he sees that Wayne is awake Dean ungags Wayne who starts begging Dean not to kill him trying to remind him of their 3 years of friendship and all the times that he learned victims to his place for him so he could do whatever he wanted with them. Dean told him that he ruined his night so he was going to kill him and his friends but as he's trying to remind Dean of all of their good times together killing innocent young boys he also promises Dean that if he lets him go he will help him kill Rhonda and Timothy. This entire time Dean has his pistol pointed directly at Wayne's forehead but he I guess does believe Wayne so Dean lets Wayne go he unties him. At this point Rhonda and Timothy are still asleep Dean drags Timothy into his bedroom and he chains Timothy to his torture board and he instructs Wayne to do the same with Rhonda and Wayne does. Dean removes all of his clothes and he puts his pistol behind him and then at this point Timothy and Rhonda are going to kill him. sort of kind of starting to wake up and Dean cuts Timothy's clothes off and then hands the knife over to Wayne so Wayne can do the same thing to Ronda and now at this point Dean is viciously assaulting Timothy. Wayne starts cutting off Ronda's clothes when he just stops. He then picks up Dean's pistol and he points it at Dean. He tells him that it's over. It has to be over and he doesn't want Dean killing anymore of his friends. Dean who like I said this point is completely naked starts rushing towards Wayne telling him to just kill him trying to call his bluff and that's when Wayne 17 years old pulls the trigger shooting 33 year old Dean coral six times and kills him. Wayne had decided that it was over and after killing Dean he calls the police and he tells them everything and I mean everything every single victim every single burial spot that he could remember and after confirming that dozens of these names that Wayne is just listing off off the top of his head are matching up with dozens of missing persons cases going back three years. Wayne is allowed to make a phone call and he calls his mom using one of the police car phones and on this call he tearfully confesses to his mother everything that he helped Dean kill boys and that he had killed Dean and this entire confession was actually filmed by local media David Brooks was also brought in and he also made a full confession and the first place that the boys instruct police to go search for some of Dean's victims bodies was Dean's storage unit boat shed detectives show up at the boat shed with two inmates from the local present to use as free labor to dig up dead bodies of children that they were told were buried there in the boat shed they found bags of lime they also found 13 year old James Tremolas yellow bike just up against the interior wall of the shed his body was also one of the first discovered when they started to dig very quickly after finding body after body and detective went back to the local prison and brought even more inmates to the boat shed because they realized they needed a lot more people in total they found 17 bodies buried in the boat shed even though Wayne and Brooks both told them that there were more bodies buried there that they just did not find within two days of searching various different locations in total they found 27 bodies which at the time was the highest confirmed amount of victims of any serial killer in United States history eventually two more bodies would be fine making Dean corals confirmed victim count to 29 that's 29 boys murdered in just a three-year period from 1970 to 1973 although we know that there are more victims out there both David Brooks and Wayne Henley both confirmed that there are more victims they either can't remember their names they can't remember where they are buried but like I mentioned way earlier in this case it is highly speculated that even 10 years before Dean's first confirmed victim he was burying all of that defective candy in multiple different places in downtown in one of these places that he was burying candy in the 60s he would pour a bunch of concrete over top of that and in the second place they actually ended up putting a parking lot on top of that area and to this day neither of those areas have been searched if he started killing a decade prior in the 1960s how many victims those Dean coral actually have until the day she died Dean's mother Mary believed that her son was innocent she actually believed that it was Wayne and Brooks recommended all the murders and her perfect precious son Dean actually discovered what the boys were doing and they had to murder her son to keep him quiet Wayne and Brooks were both arrested for their hand in what Dean coral had done and they were put on trial they were both found guilty Wayne was sentenced to 594 years he did appeal and he was given a second trial where his sentence was upheld Brooks was sentenced to 99 years in prison his daughter had just been born at the year earlier she actually didn't discover the truth about her father until she was 17 years old and after discovering the truth she went and visited her father in prison but that would be the last time that she ever visited him because shortly after this his daughter died in a car accident leaving her prom I swear this entire case just feels cursed David Brooks then died behind bars in May of 2020 at 65 years old from COVID to this day Elmer Wayne Hengley sits behind bars and he is currently 70 years old there is a lot of discussion about whether or not Wayne and Brooks should have been sentenced to life in prison and how much they should be blamed for their actions and how much like criminal responsibility they should actually have a lot people argue that these were two very troubled children that met Dean when they were just little kids outside their elementary school being given free candy that this is a case of textbook grooming that they were literally groomed from the point that they were 12 and 15 years old possibly brainwashed and manipulated and becoming these evil killers and brainwashed into committing these truly terrible terrible crimes I'm absolutely interested to hear all of your thoughts and opinions on that I think a very interesting debate could stem from this topic in the comment sections as we wrap up this week's investigation I just want to take a moment to remember the 29 confirmed victims of Dean corals and the possible other dozens of victims of Dean corals that are still unidentified or missing Dean Coral is easily one of the most gruesome and horrific horrifying serial killers that I have never heard of before sitting down to research for this week's episode I'm actually shocked that seems a majority of people have never even heard of him before I do think that he is one of the more insane serial killer cases that I've ever personally covered really interested to hear if you've ever heard of Dean Coral before please let me know all of your thoughts and opinions in the comments but while you're there like always please remember to just be respectful there are so many victims in this case more than we probably know and that also means that there are likely hundreds if not thousands of loved ones of these victims that were affected by this case so just please always remember to be respectful why in the comments please let me know a case you want to see covered in a future hot in the case episode but until then there's all I have for this week's investigation and I will see you guys all next Friday when we are hot in the case once again