Sky Crime look at the shocking world of ‘The Clown & The Candyman’
“The horrific crimes of Dean Corll and John Wayne Gacy shocked America in the 1970s – but how closely they were linked has only recently been discovered. Corll tortured, raped and murdered at least 28 victims in Texas after luring them to his home with the help of two teenagers.” – Sky News reporter David Mercier
When Dean Corll is shot dead by one of his teen accomplices, a dark secret world began to unravel which led Houston police to uncover the bodies of 28 boys in three mass graves. The gory details of rape and torture shocked America, as does the chilling backstory of the Candyman’s two teenage henchmen who actively participated in an orgy of murder.
Sky News Feature: The horrific crimes of Killer Clown and the Candy Man
“The 33-year-old was dubbed the Candy Man because he gave children free sweets from his family’s confectionary business. His brutal killings – known as the Houston Mass Murders – were only uncovered when he was shot dead by his accomplice Elmer Wayne Henley in 1973. A year earlier, more than 1,000 miles away, Gacy had murdered his first known victim.” – Sky News reporter David Mercier
Then, as investigators scrambled to find the identities of their last few victims, details emerged about serial killers John Wayne Gacy and Dean Corll and their shocking reign of terror on a seventies Texas. Gacy was eventually convicted of killing 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978 and was executed in 1994.
Now the story is told on Sky Crime in a four-part series The Clown & The Candyman. The first edition airs later this evening.
“The interesting thing looking back from our perspective today is nobody cared about boys then. In one high school in one little area, 11 boys were missing and nobody noticed. Remember in the early 70s, it was just after Easy Rider; doing your own thing; marijuana – the counter-culture was there. Boys were doing that. And some of them were going to the Vietnam War and not coming back.
“So when the seats were empty in the classroom, nobody noticed. If they had been girls, as one cop said to me, this would have been different. If a girl had gone missing, they would have put a lot of time into it.” – documentary maker Jacqueline Bynon speaking to Sky
The Clown & The Candyman, Sky Crime, tonight (Sunday 15 August), 9 pm
