Dr. Katherine Ramsland + Tracy Ullman: The Serial Killer’s Apprentice

true crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories. Acclaimed forensic psychologist Catherine Ramslin was one of my first guests on this show. That's when she detailed her time with serial killer Dennis Raider. Now she's back along with co author Tracy Ullman to tell me about their book, The serial Killer's Apprentice. It's the complicated story centered on the accomplice of the serial

killer known as the candy Man. Tell me the origin story of how you came across this story for listeners who don't know where did this come from?

had in mind that was a true story. I had written about it a few times, and then I saw an interview with Henley on a video called The Collectors, and he seemed very reflective and interesting. But I didn't do anything about it. I mean, I talked to other serial killers, but I didn't really follow up with him. And then when we finished production, I met Terracy and a production crew. When we finished a production, they asked

me if I wanted to do another person. They named some ideas that I didn't think would work, and immediately Henley came to mind, and they said, well, Tracy already has a relationship with him, so I'm going to hand that over to Tracy because it was through her that made this happen.

Gacy DUBN Disguise. And so as I was working on that, I called Wayne Henry. I was hooked up through a friend, and I said, I know now that John Wayne Gacy had accomplices, and I realized that you were an accomplice to Dean Coral. Can you tell me about the accomplice dynamic? And he started to talk to me and I said, wait, you don't sound quite like a traditional accomplice, and what you're telling me, it just seems like you cross a line between being a victim as well as somebody who's

assisting this serial killer. And so as I dove in with him and I started to record conversations with him, it occurred to me that not only was he someone that had been sucked in at the age of fourteen, he didn't start killing them, but he had been kind of seduced, but that I was discovering simultaneously that eleven of the victims had appeared in pornography, which changes Dincor from being kind of a lone wolf just an anomaly that happens to be in you know, Houston, Texas, to

somebody who needs a distribution network, somebody who's working with people who are publishing pornography. I realized that's kind of circumstantially connected. But at the same time, it meant to me that Omoy Henley was part of something much larger that he might not have realized, especially at the age

of fourteen. And so, you know, in the previous documentary, we started making the connection between John Wayne Gacy and a man named John David Norman who ran a huge sex trafficking room, and we knew that that case was connected to the ring, but then I wanted to look more thoroughly into how the ring affected being coral. And eventually, as Catherine started to talk to Elma Wayne Henley, we got a lot more information that he had never related

to anyone in fifty years. And so I'll turn it back to you, Catherine.

of all this. So little by little began to introduce into some psychological concepts and he began to listen and start thinking, because he would always give some latitude for other people who had been leveraged into things, but he would never give it to himself. And so it really took months, but he began to understand that he's not fully culpable since he was a kid, and this is a very clever and sophisticated adult predator who leveraged him and tricked him into it. And he did try getting

out four times. That was something the other true crime book never even addressed. It just made it look like Henley was in this, wanted to be in this, sacrificed his friends. In fact, he was trying to get out, and he is the only accomplice to a serial killer to have killed the killer to end it.

see with adults. You see that in romantic couples have become criminal teams. So I talked about a bit about that in the book, and then I talked about forced accomplices, like you know, a gun to your head, you will do this with me or else, and that's Nolson not

what we have here. And then I talked about the dominant and submissive and in some cases the submissive complying, not wanting to do this, never would have done this on their own, but within the dynamic of the relationship, the chemistry between them, they will comply and hope that somehow it will go away or you know, and often, and I coined a term temporary psychopath for this, because they get into it in like a pocketive reality, into

a situation where they'll do things that are psychopathic or horrible, and then when they're out of it, out from under the influence of the predator. They're horrified that this isn't me. I would have never done this. But you can see how they got leveraged into it, how they changed their behavior, their disposition, their morality even to be able to do what they're doing, and sometimes as a survival mechanisms, times

because they're in love with the partner. It's different for different types of teams, but we can see with Henley Brooks seemed to be more attuned to it. He was the first partner brought in that we know about, and he actually brought Henley as a victim, as an intended victim, but that didn't work out. So then Coral saw all

the benefits with Henley. He was plugged into a number of different communities with these boys that interested Coral, and so he then began using him and he kind of tricked him into it and then leveraged him like now you're in. Now you're involved, and there's nothing you can do about it, because if you turn me in, you'll go down with me and you'll get the death penalty.

So you have you have different dynamics with these different types of teams, and it's really the first time someone studied it.

of psychological counseling you give them. And there's hope for parents too whose child might end up in a situation like this and then you know, an arrest happens, the kid is brought into it, and parents and teachers as well. They can also see here for some kind of redemption, and we have seen it in some of these people who've gotten out of this situation, served the prison time, and were able to do something productive and beneficial and really had you know, fall remarks for what they had done.

religious family. His mother and grandmother were kind of the base of that, and so he thought in life he would grow up that he would be a minister, that he would be a husband and a father, and he was exploring that part of it. He also admitted to being something of a hippie, so he was enjoying that kind of culture. Nineteen seventy three in Houston, Texas. You've got a lot going on in terms of NASA. You've got a lot going on in terms of the oil industry.

You have a lot going on also in terms of minority communities being kind of moved around so that they can integrate schools, and so what you're seeing in Houston Heights, which is a two and a half mile square area of Houston, is kind of change. You've got a lot of people who are working in the oil industry, a lot of people who are supporting you know, NASA that are living in these kind of middle class to lower middle class communities. And then you've got Dean Coral. He's

running his own business. It's a family business that has to do with candy. They're making it on the premises. It's not a huge company, but at the same time, it's like a lot of other little candy companies, you know, cottage industries that were in this community. He works in, you know, as an electrician during the day to make money, and he has a girlfriend and he seems like a very nice person and he's glad handing whoever decides to come through. He tends to have a lot of boys

come through to you know, playpool with him. They're kind of introduced to kind of his lifestyle through his candy, which you know, if you are a young boy that you would think this is the ultimate. I'm playing with this adult. He's got this delicious candy. We're playing pool. You know, I'm validated as this young man. Now, so a lot of kids and this is across the street from a junior high school. A lot of kids are coming there, and nobody realized that dinkorl maybe not as

he appears. And so as children in the neighborhood start to disappear, nobody quite knows what's going on. The police are telling them these are runaways, but how could they be runaways? And in fact Elma Wayne Henley, along with his mother, goes looking for one of these boys, who's a member I believe, of his church and who's his same age. They go far and wide trying to look

for this boy. Nobody can find him, and one after the other, between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy three, six kids from this junior high school go missing, and their fellow students start to look into this and say, these aren't runaways. But the adults in their lives are saying, that's what the police told us. Where do you think the reverence for the police comes from? I was just talking.

He had been arrested for a theft. So he's just kind of this kid who was at odds with himself and with everybody else. And Coral saw him and showed him respect that he had never experienced before, treated him like an adult, gave him place to stay, gave him gifts, eventually had some sexual contact with them, and gave him five or ten dollars. He had money in his pumpet once when he discovered Coral. He came in and discovered

Coral with two kids tied to the bed naked. Coral said, if you don't tell anyone, I'll give you a car, which he did so. David Brooks, who had nowhere to turn in his own family and was basically dismissed as a loser, found solace with an adult male who gave him a place to stay to live, food, money, a car. He was an easy target and he fell right into it.

It's like it's like I talked about being like the quiet eye in sports, where they hone themselves so well they can see the ball so vividly as it's coming over the net. Or through the court. Same for the predators. They are always vigilant for who is vulnerable, and they know not just to groom the child, but to groom

the community to believe that they are good people. They're scout leaders or youth ministers or teachers or you know, somebody who can be trusted with their child and they are doing parents of favor by spending time with the child, and that they look for those situations and the reason the grooming is the same over and overs it's working.

I'm looking to be this man. And when you look at his mother, who had a variety of different marriages, a lot of different father figures that he really didn't get along with in his home life, and Dean Coral from the outside would look to be somebody who kind of survived all that, who definitely had his differences with his stepfather's. But I mean he went into the family business. He's a member of the community for sure, so I think that, you know, nobody was looking too deeply into him,

but he accepted him at face value. And in fact, his mother, once these crimes were discovered and her son is dead, she said, Elma, Wayne Henley and David Brooks set my son up. They were evil and she really couldn't accept that. All along, Dean Coral was on a one way trip to his demise.

state is no remorse whatsoever for what he did. We don't know enough about him to put a diagnosis on him, but we do know that his behavior has a lot of psychopathic overtones. For sure.

that he thought he could control. I mean, he believed he had full control over them through the kind of leveraging he used, and he talked about and this is where we could turn it back to Tracy. He talked about being part of a syndicate of these traffickers who would be well aware of any move these boys made, and if they did something and that would turn on him in some way, they would pay a price, and

so of their families. So he had them convinced that they were always being watched and potentially in danger if they didn't do what he said.

And so this is a man who kind of ingratiated himself, not only with Mary Henley, but with her mother, and so the two of them kind of saw him as, you know, this goofy geek. They did not see any form of danger. At one point, he was trying to get his van out of the driveway and she had to show him how to do it. So he had this kind of level of not entirely functioning, and she just saw that as like, oh, I'm going to take pity on this man who's my age, who doesn't seem

to be adulting. And so from there, you know, you've got the family, the Henleys, who are kind of falling apart. They're doing the best that they possibly can. Mary Henley's father dies not long before that. She divorces her husband, but there's still a lot of domestic violence issues in the background for them. On the other hand, with David Brooks, his father's actually quite a well known contractor in the area.

You know, he's not poor. And why it's acceptable for David Brooks to live with Dean Coral is a huge question mark. Who thought that this was an appropriate relationship. But Brooks doesn't come with a mother and a grandmother that kind of validates his relationship. He's kind of an odd one out living with Dean Coral when Henley brings this kind of familial relationship and so as he gets more involved and as he's made more of the man of the house in his own family, Dean Coral convinces him,

let's do this burglary. If you want to show me what you're made of, you're going to do this for me. So he goes and burglarizes a property. He brings the stuff to Dean Coral and he's thinking to himself, I'm going to make some money for my family. I've been working at a gas station, but this is going to net me more and it's going to be easier. And he's also ingratiating himself with this adult who has started by, you know, making kind of dirty jokes with him. He's

a cool cat. He seems like he's hanging and so, you know, Wayne wants that acceptance. He hasn't had his father validate him. And again, much like with David Brooks, Dean Coral sees his weakness and he fills that space. And so but after the burglary, Dean Coral starts to lean into that and say, now you're an accomplice. You're somebody who has committed a crime that I know about.

And this is how he leverages Elma, Wayne Henley, Who's if you think about when you were fourteen, like I really didn't have a clue about the whiter world, and if you think about where he doesn't quite understand anything. I mean, I don't think the entire nation was o fay with the idea of a large sex trafficking ring. So how is he ever going to understand these concepts that this is something much larger that's kind of hovering

around his existence? And so I'll turn it back to Catherine because I know, I know you're better at talking about this space.

So we can excuse her in some ways because Korl was an affable, good natured guy that just seemed like he really liked hanging out with these boys.

There was a bit of seduction ahead of time, and then start talking about the human trafficking and saying, you know, there are these people who do buy and sell, you know, others, and some of these boys, they would we could pick them up, sell them for a lot of money, and they'd be taking over to California to be someone's pool boy. Everybody wins, so you get some money, I get some money. They have a much better life that they stuck around

here in the Houston Heights. And he worked on Wayne, and worked on Wayne until Wayne thought well that actually does sound like it's okay. And he then helped to bring in a hitchhiker and that's really where he got leverage at that point. Now he's known Coral for I think I was a year before he actually gets involved

in that series of a crime. He had done some of the petty crimes earlier, but in this case, he brings in a hitchhiker thinking Quarrel's going to sell him to California, and then he finds out he killed him, and now Coral says, and you were part of it at and there's no getting out, Tracy.

him up, take him to Coral's apartment. They drive around because they don't want him to know exactly where carel lives and they're intending he's going to be one of these victims. So if they bring him to Quarrel's apartment and there's like a breakfast bar, kind of area where they're leaning over talking to David disappears. Quarrel then pulls out a large knife, like a hunting knife, and starts coming around the bar to Wayne and talking to him

about what would you do? Would would you be able to if somebody discovered you and you really had to do something about eliminating a witness? What are you up to this? Could you do this? And he's slowly, slowly making his way in the position he would always get in when he'd tackle a boy to the ground and

bind him. So he's about to do that. David comes out of the back room and says, you didn't tell anyone where you were, did you, And quick thinking Wayne says, I told my mother, and Coral backs off tells David to take him home and that was the end of that.

And he was probably lucky because and he actually had told his mother, and he wasn't going to reveal that to them because he didn't want them thinking he was a silly little boy. But he told his mother everything, so he had told her and it was just an easy thing to say. I told my mother, I'm here.

for that victim. So that's a lot of money. That kind of money during nineteen seventy one would buy a car, you know, a used car, but still a car. And so basically he's thinking to himself, Okay, I'm going to cut my friend Frank ggury in. Frank Geary arrives and Dean Coral turns the tables and he is coming after Franka Geary and Emily Henley has to participate in this in a way that he was absolutely not prepared to do.

And so at that point, not only does he realize that Dean Coral is going to be able to kill one of his friends, but that he is deeper and deeper into this and he's trying to make sense out of it because he is religious. He does believe in God, and this is a point at which he starts to think, wait, I'm not going to be able to get out of this, and I'm losing my faith that anybody will pull me

out of this. And this is when his mind his morals changed and I believe that he understood this is what I'm going to be given in life.

how can God allow this? Now he has to step to the plate and show that he can do it with a kid that Kor wants to get rid of because he's given him some trouble, and Wayne has to do it is to strangle him. He can't do it on his own because he's just a scronic kid. But once it's done, he sits in the front room and just says, if God doesn't strike me dead now, there just can't be a God who cares about this, And that was kind of the end of it for him.

And thereafter he falls into doing what kor wants him to do because he doesn't know what else to do. If he had gone to the police wanting about Franka Gary, he thinks the police probably went I listened to him. He's just a kid, and Korl as an adult. And then there's the syndicate, and even if Korl gets arrested, they're going to come after him too, and maybe his family. So he has no resources and now he's in this horrific position of I have actually murdered somebody.

He kept going back to Dean Coral. Well, he was under so much pressure and in terms of both you know, getting a monetary reward as well as the manipulation and threats he's getting from QORL, that he doesn't see much option for what's going on. The one thing he does start doing is he has these two men in his life who are like extended uncles. They're not blood relations, but they're people that he trusts. And he starts to say, look,

I'm in this terribly compromised position. This is what's been going on, and I can tell you that even police at this time didn't really have an imagination for what was possible. How were these uncles going to know? So they both refute him and say, you sound like you're insane, you sound like you're on drugs, and they do not try to help him, and eventually he does try to tell Mary Henley. He writes down everything that's been happening for him, and he gives her this note. This is

towards the very end. She looks at the note, she reads it and she thinks my son has gone insane. He definitely needs some type of psychological support. She rips up the note and she said, I'm going to get you help, therapeutic help, but doesn't validate the story, doesn't offer to help him in any other way.

He tried to move away to another town where his cousin lived, but then David told him, you know, Dean's eyeing your younger brother. So we thought I got to get back to Houston and make sure I keep an eye on this. Then he tries to join the Navy and he doesn't get in as well. He's trying any which way he can to get out of this. When he finds he can't, he just falls into it. I'm his henchman. I have to do this. And there's the

summer of nineteen seventy three before he killed Kral. That entire summer is just one after another, and not just with using David and Wayne. Sometimes Coral what acts own and go get a victim. I mean, when we hear the figure twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, these two accomplices weren't involved in all of those. Coral would often have done his own two and We don't really even know the final number because one victim was found on the beach unrelated to any of the burial sites, so

we don't know if there might have been more. He talked to David Brooks about having killed in California. We haven't tied him to a victim there or more victims, so we actually don't know his complete victim toll. And David was involved with more than Wayne, but Wayne during the summer the year nineteen seventy three was really very active and just felt like I've tried to get out and I don't see a way.

I see that being different from Wayne. I did it since when David finally came in and confessed the place and basically threw Wayne under the bus, I didn't see any sense that he thought what Chorl did was wrong. In fact, he said, well, he said to me, these are boys that nobody cares about. They're just like hitchhikers and runaways, and you can't dropouts that they're like losers.

Why does anybody care what happened to them? I mean, these are the kinds of statements he would make, so it shows that he really had no sense of concern about what he was doing. He would not give interviews to the media afterward, and he had a wife and child, so it could be that he was shielding them. But there was never a time in any of the statements of police that he really expressed a sense of remorse.

And he certainly had opportunities when he was with Quorl to do something before Wayne ever even came into it. He could have told Wayne before he brought him in, So there is a difference between them, and I see David Brooks as being more of a youth at risk for adult psychopathy in a way that I don't think Henley was.

a pizza, I mean that was that. Was there anything else I could do for him? At least I was nice to him. So that's the kind of memo set he had of you know, whatever, this is Coral's thing, Nobody's going to do anything about it. And so it's not really anger so much as just I don't really see beyond what's going to happen with my life? Even though he had a wife and child, he had just gotten married Tracy.

you know, there's more upheaval than necessary. Dean Coral is always receiving correspondence at a post office box, so neither Wayne Henley nor David Brooks knows exactly what he's getting in the mail. He keeps a lot secret from them, and both of them get very paranoid about that. And it's really when things come to a header where Wayne's thinking he's going to So, first of all, Dean Coral says, bring your friend Tim Curlely. I really like him. I

want to have sex with him. And Wayne brings Tim Curley, but he also brings Rand to Williams. They've been partying together at Tim's house. They're going over to Dean Coral's and Dean immediately says to Wayne, why would you bring a girl here? And Wayne, who's been raised by women who have always been on his side, thinks, I need to protect this girl. So, as Dean Coral is setting this up so that both Tim Curley and Rand of Williams are going to be abused, they're going to be restrained. Wayne,

who's kind of high and out of it. It's it's you know, late in the morning, you know, initially says he's going to assist. You know, I think that he's restrained Wayne as well. He unrestrains Wayne. Wayne picks up a gun and Dean says, you're not gonna You're not gonna shoot that at me and Dean it always told Wayne, if you're going to shoot a gun, make sure the person you're shooting dies. Make sure they're dead. Before you

stop shooting, and Wayne just starts shooting. And you can see in the evidentiary photographs of Dean Coral he's backed up against a wall. He's obviously fallen against the wall. There are bullet holes, you know, in his skin, He's naked, and this is how police find him. And so this is what Almayne Henley is up against, a man who keeps coming at him while he's shooting him, saying you

won't kill me. And Catherine and I have actually wondered if this was a way that Dean Coral saw for him to almost commit suicide and that he really was at the end of his rope. Obviously, Amiwayn Henley was at the end of his rope and was no longer going to continue participating. And so once he you know, unbinds Tim Curley and Randa Williams, they go out of the house, they call police, they wait for police, and from what Elma, Wayne Henley says, he's relieved. He's going

to tell them everything. And the thing that you know, when we started digging into the hundreds of pages of police reports, the first thing you see from both Wayne and David Brooks is that there is a syndicate at large. They had both been informed about this syndicate. At one point, Almoyn Henley had told his friend that it almost felt like being in The Godfather, which was a big film at that time. You know that he was part of

something much larger, much like the Mafia. So he had some understanding, but it also seemed to have this era of mystery for him. It's only four days later that in Dallas, which is where both David Brooks and elm Wayne Henley felt that syndicate was based, that a man named John David Norman is arrested because there is a young man working with him that says he thought he was supposed to be sent to Dean Coral and he raises the alarm. So this is four days later police

in Dallas raid John David Norman's apartment in Dallas. They find just tons of pornography, evidence of trafficking, tons of marijuana. The way that the Elmowyn Henley and David Brooks described this was that it was kind of a gambling and prostitution ring. You know that there were a lot of different facets to it, but the overall notion is that there's a lot of money being made by this individual,

and this individual isn't working alone. So then you start to see, Wait, John David Norman's arrested, but almost immediately bonds out. He's got plenty of money, and he almost immediately goes to Chicago, the Chicago area, where he not only starts to abuse again, but you start seeing him crosspads with John Wayne Gacy.

he's going to continue to abuse and kill people. But it's very difficult to dismiss that these people are in the same line of business, and they're ultimately connected by an individual named Phil Pasky that's an employee of John Wayne Gacy's, but it's also named as John David Norman's right hand man. So when you think about a young boy like Elma Wayne Henley entering into somebody who's we

already have discussed, is sadistic, he's a killer. But then when you look at the larger ring where this individual John David Norman, you know, is going to Chicago to meet with John wayn gaycay See, who we know is one of our other, like the largest serial murderers. To see that those two things are connected then makes you realize what he was up against.

into this. We started looking at the ring during the John Wyng Gaycy research we did, and we saw that there were, you know, summer camps established in North Fox Island, Michigan, where predators that are associated with this ring were having young boys come from the city so they could have the refreshing air of the countryside during the summertime, camps that are supported by state and federal grants, and it's proven that all these boys that went there are being abused and trafficked.

But he immediately says he talked about having burying some kids in this boat shed in South Houston, and they kind of dismissed him, similar to the way they dismissed the whole they're all runaways, until he started naming names that they found to be on missing person's list, and then they thought, all right, let us take him down there and see, still not really quite believing it. Then get to the boat stall and it's just this small it's not even outside stall, it's the it's in the middle.

They opened it. There's just some junk in there or an old car, but there's a kid's bike and they know the bike has recently been stolen, with a kid missing the week before, and it turns out the bike is that kid's bike, and the car is stolen, and there's a rake with white rosin on the tongs, and there's a shovel and there's so they start digging. It was didn't take long for them to find the thirteen

year old boy wrapped in plastic, buried there. So now they know they've built a long night ahead, and they end up unearthing multiple bodies. And at that point David comes in because he's hearing this on the news and he wants to say, well, you know, I lived with Coral and nothing like this happened in front of me.

And his father was allowed to be in there with him because his father had given these moonlighting jobs to some of the cops, so they bent the rules for him, and because his father was in there, Brooks was not going to really say much. He sort of threw Wayne under the bus, then gave a second statement when they basically said, we know you're much more a part of this. They put him in Wayne together into a room and Wayne said, if you don't start talking, I'm talking. So

you should start telling the truth. You'll feel better. So then David gives second statement, admits he's seen some kids who ended up being murdered and that all he was was the driver to the burial sites. And eventually the third statement he gives just about one victim, and that's what nails him essentially. But he's not willing to take any responsibility whatsoever for this. But he does go to

one of the burial locations, High Island Beach. At this point, Wayne's already taken with a boat stall to a lake where four are buried, and they're on their way to High Island Beach where six are buried, and so the two of them. But the odd thing is for me, Brooks never says. And here they are together, face to base on the beach. There are photos of them sitting together Brooks never says, so you did it. You finally

did it. And I found that so odd because supposedly they had discussed killing Corel, but instead all Brooks seases, you ruined my life. Had a wife, I've got a kid coming. You basically ruined my life. Wow.

that he was implicated in. So they had a grand jury hearing for both of them together, and then they were both going to trial.

that they did. Even further, even though John David Norman is somebody that's afoot, police deny that out of hand. There's absolutely no connection between John David Norman and this case. Even though you have a young man saying I was supposed to be sent to Dane Coral and I think that we know, you know, birds of a feather flock together. So this was something that just doesn't make sense to us in the modern day. So you see the victims

being almost made responsible for their own demise. These are kids that are associated with a perverted psychopath who's homosexual. And instead of making this an issue whereby you know, Dean Coral is you know, he's a completely different animal altogether.

He has nothing to do with homosexuality. He has everything to do with predation, sadism, murder, And so you have this huge upheople in the United States while are all gay men murderers, killers, defilers, and so you have this blowback where the gay community is trying to say, look, we're just living our lives. Even though you might see this as perversion, it's a very normal sexual disposition, and so trying to kind of cut that in half is

something where again the victims are seen as somehow tainted. So, you know, you don't have a ton of parents, especially given you know, kind of the amount of religion in Texas at the time. You have people wanting to turn away from this, people who aren't going to be aggressive about trying to find answers. It's kind of made to be elmawayn Henley's problem. He's the one who propagated this. Dean Coral's mother says as much, Dean Coral is dead

nobody can help you hold him accountable. He ultimately as somebody who served in the army, is given a proper burial in an army cemetery, while Elmawayn Henley is created into public enemy number one. And so this kid who's still not even eighteen is being paraded around as somebody who is willing to talk, somebody who's boasting about his

crimes somebody, and so he's kind of created. No matter what he says, he's deemed to be evil beyond you know, compare and so, and we found this in the John Wayne Gacy case two, where police started looking or at least the media started looking at victims as somehow responsible for their own demise because of their drug use, because

of their sexual predilictions. And so you're able to both dismiss these accomplices who are not full accomplices and yet are being blamed for all I mean people have, you know, very casually said Elmo Weyn Henley murdered twenty eight kids. He did not, and he wasn't the driving force for these murders. And so once that gets crafted as a narrative,

the pornography is ignored. Any larger sex trafficking ring isn't discovered, then Almo Weayn Henley has to bear the brunt of all of this, so he gets, you know, five hundred and eighty plus years in prison. He's discredited. There's nothing that he can say that would make him look less than wicked. And so the people that are in power that may have benefited from a sex trafficking ring, the people who find this kind of messy and it's tough

to prosecute that might not know exactly what happened. Everybody goes with as much simpler narrative and walks away, and history for fifty years ignores this. But it's important for us to know that this was one of the largest sex trafficking rings were unaware of. It's important to know, as doctor Ramsland states in the back of the book, there are ways of getting kids out of these situations, helping them that adults can do to intervening. Today, this

is not a subject that's lost in history. This is something that is even more prevalent than it was during this time because of the Internet.

blah blah. You know, this is in a place you think would be more enlightened, but no. So I think it really depends on who's handling it, what mental health resources are available for explanation, and you know, trying to really just trying to deal with all that we do know about them, and whether someone's willing to apploy that to a given situation, Because as soon as something happens, there's a lot of reaction, and social media just echoes that and magnifies it and distorts it and does all

kinds of stuff with it and inspire under rage. I mean, really, you'll see if people on social media this true crime culture where they're ready to lynch somebody without giving any thought to some of the factors involved, that might mitigate. So I just think it really depends on the situation and where it happens.

circumstances who have been paroled, but not him. He likes the fact that we've approached him to do this book because it feels like he might be remembered for something more than just that bad stretch of time in his past. He doesn't want to be reduced to that. It's a way for him to have given a message out there for kids to be aware, for caretakers to be aware, for people to listen when kids try to say they're in trouble and don't just dismiss them, try to help

them in some way. And I think that he appreciates having something in print out there for people to see his situation and to set the story right because prior to this book, it was that older book from nineteen seventy four, before even the trial, before even the grand jury, is that older book that sets the tone for this case, but it was based on largely on a few interviews with families and the police reports, and the police reports we have found are flawed, so that means that story

is flawed for a number of reasons. Kudos to him getting that book out quickly, but unfortunately it's how many people think about the case, and we're hoping to change some minds. And I think way To appreciates that.

That the fact that we didn't know a lot about this sex trafa King ring and that we're only learning more about it in the past couple of years, it can only lead to history repeating itself, and we don't want that to happen. We want our children to be safe and healthy.

by John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer, artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff, and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More Wicked and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod.