The scientist and the serial killer

Avoiding facile sensationalism, investigative journalist Olsen (Code of Silence, 2021) focuses on the forensic techniques used to help identify victims of Dean Corll ("The Candyman") and his associates. In a murder spree that horrified Houston during the early 1970s, the case involved 27 male victims aged 13 to 20, with many more unidentified or undiscovered. In 2006, aspiring forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick inherited an overwhelming cache of intermixed, improperly processed remains. Especially moved by the "Lost Boys," victims of Corll, she resolved to confirm their identities and notify living relatives. Olsen contrasts the egregious errors of the original investigation with the painstaking efforts of Derrick and her team. Despite major advances, Olsen explains, the full extent of the tragedy still remains unknown. Olsen hopes to reignite interest in the case, presenting humanizing details about all involved, even the perpetrators. Obviously extensively researched, Olsen's effort contains many digressions that somewhat detract from its cogent narrative and analysis. Those drawn to true crime presented in a style reminiscent of Ann Rule will relish Olsen's meticulous attention to detail.

A forensic anthropologist's quest to identify long-lost victims of a sadistic sex killer known as the Candyman. Between 1970 and August 1973, before a young accomplice emptied a .22-caliber revolver into him, ending his life and career, Dean Corll buried more than two dozen bodies in eastern Texas. It has taken local officials decades to reconstruct a timeline and map of the spree and identify the remains of many young men found in various sites around the state; their work is not complete and may never be. Investigative reporter Olsen interweaves details of Corll's life, his crimes, and the original investigation with the story of her main source, Dr. Sharon Derrick of the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office, who was only a teen when the murders occurred. It's a big, messy, complicated story that has taken officials like Derrick decades to tell. Derrick has had to correct errors of previous investigators and fill in details left out of the incomplete confessions of Wayne Henley and David Brooks, two neighborhood teens whom Corll enticed into his service: He gave them gifts of stolen cars and plenty of drugs, and they reciprocated, plying him with victims and occasionally helping him kill them and dispose of the bodies. Olsen's narrative jumps haphazardly back and forth in time between the original crimes and Derrick's and other investigators' breakthroughs, pausing along the way to add historic and local color. It can be daunting to keep the details straight, which makes the textbook-like sidebars, maps, and tables welcome. Corll actually did drive around the working-class Houston Heights neighborhood where most of his victims lived, handing out candy to schoolchildren from his family's business. He remains mostly a mysterious blank in these pages. A satisfying read for true-crime aficionados. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.