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It was a time in the U.S. that young people were running away from home in record numbers to "find America" as described in the movie, Easy Rider. Every large city in the U.S. had runaways, as did Houston, Texas. But, in Houston, one neighborhood, the Houston Heights, had an unusually high number of runaways, but the Houston Police Department could find no way to call them anything else at that time. The reason for the high number of male runaways would not become known until August 8, 1973.

In the early morning hours of August 8, 1973, seventeen-year-old Elmer Wayne Henley invited nineteen-year-old Tim Kerley to attend a party at Dean Corll's house in Pasadena, Texas, a suburb of Houston. When Henley and Kerley arrived at Dean's house, they had fifteen-year-old Rhonda Williams, a friend of Henley, with them. Dean became furious at Henley for bringing a girl to his house! After awhile, Dean appeared to have calmed down and offered beer and marijuana to the three. The teenagers drank and smoked for a couple of hours before passing out.

Henley awoke to find Dean putting handcuffs on him; his ankles had already been bound. Kerley and Williams were on Corll's torture board. Kerley was on one side of the torture board, naked. Williams was bound to the opposite side of the board.

Dean then dragged Henley into the kitchen, holding a .22 caliber pistol against Henley's stomach, threatening to shoot him. He told Henley that he was furious that he had brought a girl into the house and that he was going to kill all three of them.

Henley finally managed to calm Dean down by offering to help torture and kill the two other teenagers. Dean then removed the cuffs from Henley and handed him a hunting knife, ordering Henley to cut off Rhonda Williams' clothes and rape her while he raped Kerley. At about this time, Williams and Kerley awoke.

Rhonda Williams asked, "Is this for real?"

To which, Henley answered, "Yes!"

Williams then asked, "Aren't you going to do something?"

As Henley was about to cut off Rhonda Williams' clothes and Corll was about to rape Kerley, Henley turned and asked Corll if he could take her in another room. Corll didn't respond. At that point, Henley grabbed Corll's pistol, leveled it at him and said, "You've gone far enough, Dean!"
Corll began to approach Henley, saying, "Kill me, Wayne! You won't do it!"

As Henley backed away from Corll, he fired one round that hit Corll in the forehead. Corll kept approaching him; he fired a second and third round that hit Corll in the left shoulder. Corll then left the room and fell against the wall outside the torture room. As Corll collapsed against the wall, Henley fired three more rounds, hitting him in the lower back and shoulder. He died there facing the wall.

At 8:24 a.m. on the morning of August 8, 1973, operator Velma Lines answered the phone at the Pasadena Police Department in Pasadena, Texas. The man on the other end of the line blurted out, "Ya'll better come here right now! I just killed a man!" The caller identified himself as Elmer Wayne Henley and the dead man was Dean Corll. The shooting had occurred at Corll's residence at 2020 Lamar Drive in Pasadena. It was with this one phone call that the three year reign of terror ended and the horrible truth began to emerge.

When the police arrived, they were met by Elmer Wayne Henley, Tim Kerley and Rhonda Williams. Henley began to tell the story of the deceased sexually assaulting, torturing and killing teenage boys in the area. At first it seemed that Henley was overdramatizing the murder of Corll, but inside the house was enough evidence to warrant further investigation. Henley went on to explain to police that he and another boy named David Brooks had been helping lure the victims to Corll. He also told police where many of the bodies of the missing boys could be found. At this point, his story became much more believable! On the next day, Henley accompanied police to a boat storage facility in southwest Houston, where many of the bodies were found.