During the early 1970s, Houston beamed with the vibrant energy of progress, with NASA anchoring its futuristic persona. However, the shadows of the city hid a sinister reality, one that many remain oblivious to even today. Over two dozen teenage boys mysteriously disappeared, their plight barely acknowledged by the authorities. The horrifying truth unveiled itself only when their assassin, Dean Corll, fell victim to his accessory’s wrath, revealing the mass graves that concealed many of the missing boys.
This part of history remains unkown to many. The criminal mastermind of these occurrences, Dean Corll, operated inconspicuously and efficiently. He executed kidnappings right off the street, often unidentified and unnoticed.
Corll cleverly enlisted other teenagers, promising them merriment and alcohol, to entice these unsuspecting boys to his residence. Some of the victims were last seen leisurely heading towards the local swimming pool. Corll maintained a benign facade in public, known as the local candy man in The Heights.
The decade of the 70s still did not see a flicker of concern among the Houston police regarding the persistently rising number of disappeared children, many of whom were from the exact neighborhoods and even attended the same middle school. These cases were grossly oversimplified as runaways, met with woefully inadequate investigation from the authorities.
The horrifying network of kidnapping and murder operating under their noses remained unperceived till Corll’s own violent death. The fatal lack of connective thinking – of associating these missing children cases with each other – is shocking in retrospect. Despite parents causing immense uproar, approaching the authorities, broadcasting their children as missing via pamphlets, and some even recruiting private investigators, the police remained largely ignorant.
The Houston police department of that era was under the reign of a segregationist. A man whose lineage was tainted with affiliations to the KKK and harboured a strong bias against teenagers and hippies. He placed his officers on the frontline of anti-war protests, caring little for the plight of the slightly rebellious, long-haired youngsters that formed a significant proportion of the victims.
Our narrative moves forth across decades, introducing a new character – a forensic anthropologist. She stumbles upon remnants of the case left untouched in the cold cases division of Harris County. Over 400 unidentified human bodies and scattered bones housed in boxes awaited her.
Her attention is taken up by boxes labelled ‘1973 Mass Murders,’ atop a shelf in the cold storage. Having a memory of the crime due to the international news it received at the time of the discovery, she is intrigued by the cold case.
The case had been prematurely closed, with Corll’s teenage accessories sentenced to prison, concealing the deeper depths of the crimes. The case wasn’t limited to the individuals caught, more accomplices and sinister secrets were shrouded and forgotten. The Anthropologist’s identifications began to shed light on these obscured truths.
The primary focus of the ensuing investigation was to reclaim identities for those victims who had been nameless for so long – the ones whose parents remained clueless for decades about what happened to their lost children. The anthropologist conducted research on two fronts. She performed a scientific investigation, revisiting the ancient remains for possible fresh leads.
Leveraging her position in the 21st century, she made ample use of the advancements of DNA technology and research lab data collected over the years. In her quest for truth, she scanned through historical records, seeking names of missing children who were never found or identified.
She stumbled upon Randy Harvey, a boy whose name stood out to her. His younger sister had been persistent in her belief in the 70s, stating that Randy would not have just left them without any information. The girl had regularly called the morgue, leaving poignant and insistent messages.
The outcome of her investigation revealed that the first set of bones she examined from the storage area belonged to a younger and taller boy than was initially identified in the 1973 investigation. Calculations pointed towards Randy Harvey as a potential match.
The details and the findings from this case study are undoubtedly grim and gruesome. It shifts focus from ‘who did it’ to ‘who was it,’ attempting to give identities back to the unidentified. It also draws attention to a significant civil rights issue that plagues our society.
The sobering fact is that countless such cases don’t receive the attention they deserve or benefit from modern technologies that could potentially solve missing person cases and bring closure to unidentified victims and their anxieties.