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Title: The Man with Candy by Jack Olsen ISBN: 0-7432-1283-5 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 06 October, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The most sadistic serial killer in American history
Comment: At a time when serial murder has become a pop culture phenomenon, when you can walk into your local Blockbuster and rent any number of cheesy movies on notorious serial killers (Ed Gein, Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Gacy, Speck, Nightstalker, etc.), many Americans have never heard of Dean Arnold Corll (aka: the Candy Man), a homosexual rapist and serial killer capable of monstrous savagery. This is surprising considering it became a media circus when news of the torture-slayings first broke in August of 1973. Even the Vatican and Izvestia, voice of the Soviet government, spoke out about the unbelievable case.
Dean Corll raped, tortured, mutilated and murdered 27 young men and boys from 1970-73 around the Houston, Texas area. Some victims were kept alive for days of torture and abuse. The method of killing was usually strangulation or shooting, although a few corpses were found with their chests caved in, indicating they were probably kicked to death. Most of the butchered boys were buried in a boat shed Corll had rented (sometimes he buried their severed genitals, which were preserved in a ziplock bag, next to them). Corll held the serial killing record at the time, only to be broken by the far more infamous John Wayne Gacy in the late 1970's, who slaughtered 33 young males. Olsen speculates that other unknown victims might be buried around Corll's candy shop, but authorities showed no interest in pursuing the case any further.
The book is well written, but the thick Southern dialect tends to get a bit annoying. And the other reviewers were right about the book needing pictures. Olsen also fails to go into much detail about the atrocities committed by Corll. Not that I revel in such things, but people should know just how vicious and depraved this psycho really was. There are two other books about this case, but both are hard to find as they've been out of print for some time (Mass Murder in Houston by John K. Gurwell and Harvest of Horror by David Hanna).
Rating: 4
Summary: Good book, but.....................
Comment: This is probably the most accurate version of the Dean Corll story I've ever read, only I think the author made a mistake by not including pictures. If there were some crime-scene photos and pictures of the killers and victims, the book would have been 100% better. The Dean Corll case is one of the scariest, most horrible cases of serial murder ever purpetrated and I find it amazing that, with all the forensic/murder shows on TV these days, NOBODY has ever devoted one program covering the Dean Corll/Wayne Henly case.
Rating: 5
Summary: Texas 1973
Comment: Its always amazed me that this murder case has only inspired 2 books (Olsen's and a quickie paperback that came out in 1974 called "mass murder in Houston" Its every bit as good as this one.)Dean Corll has got to rank as one of the most horrific serial killers of the 20th century in body count and the sheer horror and suffering he submited his victims to.
My Only real objection to this book is that Olsen though a talented writer doesnt do a very good job of making the sheer evil and horror of Corll's crimes felt by the reader on any visceral level.Indeed he tends to make them seem almost mundane by his detached and at times glib tone.
At times he does seem to find the social and political history of Houston far more facinating then the crime and its aftermath itself.(far more facinating then the reader is likely to)such an exaustive treatice is a bit much just to put forth the simple proposition that there may have been something about Houston in 1973 that was conducive to social,economic and moral deadzones in which a Dean Corll could flourish.
To be fair Houston at that time was not exactly courting journalists that wanted to cover the murders.
I have seen Jack Olsen give far more penetrating and insightful effort to far less interesting true crime stories then this one.
This book raises far more questions than it answers about Dean Corll,Wayne Henley and David Brooks,Corll's victims and the time and place that created them.
I still feel that a wonderful and long piece of writing could be done about this case and I hope it will someday,but for now its either this book or nothing.
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Title: I : The Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen ISBN: 0312241984 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 20 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: PREDATOR by Jack Olsen ISBN: 0440211921 Publisher: Dell Publishing Pub. Date: 03 February, 1992 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: No, Daddy, Don'T!: A Father's Murderous Act of Revenge by Irene Pence ISBN: 0786015543 Publisher: Pinnacle Books Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Hastened to the Grave : The Gypsy Murder Investigation by Jack Olsen ISBN: 0312966997 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 15 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Salt of the Earth by Jack Olsen ISBN: 0312959982 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: March, 1997 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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