Work Text:
Candy Man
by Fannie Feazell (aka Scribe)
poet77665@yahoo.com
In 1973 the police were called to the home of Dean Corll. Corll had been shot six times by his young companion, Elmer Wayne Henley, who claimed it was in self-defense--but Henley was no innocent victim. He related a tale of gradually increasing sexual abuse, torture, and horror which he had participated in--one that led to the deaths of more than 27 teenage boys. According to him Corll had coaxed Henley and David Brooks into supplying him with victims for his sadistic impulses, eventually joining him in the rapes and murders.
These were known for some time as The Boatshed Murders, due to the seventeen bodies unearthed from a rented boatshed. Four more were unearthed at Lake Sam Rayburn, and another six in the beach area of High Island. Later they were called the Candy Man Murders, because that was Corll's nickname, earned for the years he spent working in his mother's candy factory, and his habit of passing out free samples to the neighborhood kids.
I was fifteen when this atrocity came to light. I had a newborn baby brother, and the horror of the deaths of all these young men penetrated my teenage oblivion as nothing else ever had.
In the summer of '76 I worked in a state youth conservation camp in Zavalla, Texas, right on Lake Sam Rayburn. One day while hiking through the woods, the Ranger with us pointed out a sunken area, and informed us that two of the bodies had been buried there. I didn't sleep that night, and I didn't feel comfortable till I went home. I still dream about it.
Now I find myself living only seventeen miles from where the other bodies were interred on High Island. I can't tell you how unutterably creepy I felt when I realized this.
Candy Man
In the sticky Southeast Texas heat
the young boys found a poison sweet--
three who dealt in death and pain,
Dean and David and Elmer Wayne.
Elmer Wayne and David said
they were coaxed, yes, they were led
into murder, sex and sin.
Tell the story, tell again.
"Mom and Daddy, don't you fret now."
Officers believed they ran.
Twenty-seven dead in Texas,
playmates of the Candy Man.
Dean had what the young men sought
he knew that they could be bought.
Booze and glue and good time smoke,
a ten or twenty if you're broke.
Sometimes maybe he's too rough,
but what's it matter, if you're tough?
Mom and Dad don't understand,
so hang out with the Candy Man.
All the boys are disappearing,
melting into sultry nights
Houston's losing all it's youths.
Someone's hunting in the Heights.
Six shots ended just one horror,
Corll dead, by Henley's hand.
Was it self-defense or murder?
Just don't try to understand.
Body bags laid row on row,
Record set, but not for long,
Tale to frighten innocents,
Nightmares made into this song.
"Mom and Daddy, don't you fret now."
Officers believed they ran.
Twenty-seven dead in Texas,
playmates of the Candy Man.