New hunt for forgotten victims of serial killer Dean Candy Man Corll

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Dean “Candy Man” Corll was one of the most terrifying serial killers in American history.

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But now, decades after his death, investigators are looking for more bodies.

Crews from Texas Equusearch believe there could be as many as 20 more victims of the monster who terrorized Houston in the early 1970s.

Last week, they began digging up a backyard in suburban Pasadena â€" once the home of twisted Corll whose family owned a candy store, thus the dark nickname, the Candy Man.

“It’s my understanding there’s some really good information there as to why we’re concentrating on this particular plot of land,” victims’ advocate Andy Kahan told KHOU-TV.

During a three-year period â€" from 1970 to 1973 â€" Corll’s teen accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks, would lure victims to his home where they were raped, tortured and killed. Many of the boys were hunted near the candy shop that was across the street from a school.

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“You have accomplices knowingly marching young men to a very sadistic and insidious death,” Kahan said.

The investigation into Corll’s homicidal rampage was blown off by local cops because they assumed the boys who were vanishing were runaways like a lot of others during the early 1970’s.

And before the boys were murdered, they were forced to write their parents postcards claiming they had left town looking for work. So no one was looking for them.

The rampage only ended when Henley, who remains in a Texas prison and is unlikely ever to get out, turned on his twisted benefactor and murdered him at the property now being searched.

After Henley began singing to homicide detectives, cops found 28 bodies buried across the whole city of Houston.

“This is one of the largest serial killings in this country’s history,” Kahan said, adding investigators have always feared there were more bodies. “We’re cautiously optimistic something is going to come from this one way or another.”

“There are other areas that will be looked at if this one doesn’t pan out,” he said. “There are families out there that don’t have answers that deserve answers.”

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun

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