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The Houston mass murderer — born in Fort Wayne, raised in Texas
On the record
Dean Arnold Corll was born in Fort Wayne on December 24, 1939. That birth is the whole of his Fort Wayne tie: the family left Indiana during his childhood, and he was raised in Texas. Between 1970 and 1973, in Houston, Corll abducted and murdered at least twenty-eight boys and young men, working through two teenage accomplices, David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. The crimes — the Houston Mass Murders — surfaced on August 8, 1973, when Henley shot and killed Corll and then led police to the graves; at the time, the case was the largest known serial-murder case in United States history. No victim is named here and no detail of the crimes is retailed; the entry exists because a Fort Wayne history that names the city's famous cannot pretend this name is not in the record.
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- § 06 — people of the record · famous-people supplement
Sources: Houston Chronicle (retrospective reporting on the case); ThoughtCo (case history).