Update on the new novel. Fired off another Chapter this morning. The new book is coming along. At the same time I have been listening to my latest audio book, Acadia Event. Listening to a book I conceived and wrote so many years ago, yields some fun surprises, especially when read by someone else. The humor that is created by character interaction was something I completely forgot about. I remember my friend, Jake Anfinson mention how characters, Merv White and Spence Hughes cracking him up as they traded barbs. I am again reminded of the time and the music that influenced the writing at that time.
In the conception of ACADIA EVENT, I heard the Sam Roberts Band playing a new song on the radio called, WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, from their latest album. LO FANTASY.
I'm not sure if I liked the song when I first heard it, but the words were sort of intriguing, and it had a good beat. The chorus in particular.
Excerpt from:
We're All in this Together by the Sam Roberts Band
We're all in this together
So keep moving don't stop
Keep moving don't stop
We're all in this together
So keep moving don't stop
Keep moving don't stop
We may never be the same again
We may never be the same again
Keep moving don't stop
Keep moving don't stop
We may never be the same again
We may never be the same again
Keep moving don't stop
Keep moving just go, go, go
---
Now, the truth of the matter is this song is very upbeat, about abandoning greed and embracing each other. But in my twisted mind, I envisioned people controlled by alien intelligence, using them for tasks to a single collective.
The aliens are blind, and therefore spit bio-mechanical worms into a hosts eyes, which then plugs straight into the cerebral cortex giving them sight and total control. Did I mention that during this process the eyeballs of the host literally cook off inside the eye socket? I did now. These aliens, also bio-mechanical, are called Skentophyte and they belong to a network.
Sam Roberts Band had a few songs that ended up in my writers playlist when I wrote Acadia Event. There along with Pink Floyd's SHEEP from the album, ANIMALS. Music plays such an essential part in mood and bringing a scene to life and the sound need not be related to the piece, just the lubrication of the senses to get it there.
In the second verse of, SHEEP I found real inspiration as the intent of the Skentophyte invasion can mean only one thing. Harvest!
Excerpt from:
Sheep by Pink Floyd
What do you get for pretending the danger's not real
Meek and obedient, you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes
Now things are really what they seem
No, this is no bad dream
---
And so was for the man now a contestant on George Orwell's Animal farm is finding out that mankind is no longer at the top of the food chain.
Excerpt from Acadia Event :
The name of the unloader at Station #1 was Lance. He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered to tell the driver to put his paperwork into the pump house. It wasn’t like he was going to need it.
In fact, the days of filling out forms and logging fuel tickets had long since gone by. That poor driver wouldn’t be going back for another load. If he were lucky, the Skent would do away with him right here and now. This was a better fate than the 360 Acadia employees who had been marched through the portal and into a Skentophyte version of a slaughterhouse in whatever remote part of the universe these things came from.
He’d seen it all through their collective eye, heard the screams as they were marched through an elaborate grid that wasn’t all that different from the beef slaughterhouse he had worked at in Porcupine Plains, Saskatchewan. The stench of blood was higher than in that place, though, but the mechanics were basically the same.
They were funneled begging and screaming into a structure that looked much like a salt dome and then, one by one, they were killed and processed with precision. The only difference really was that the bones jacketed inside the human bodies were harvested while the tissue and organs were discarded. It was horrific.
When I decided I wanted to write novels about serial killers, research was going to be an essential part of that process. But prior to that, prior to publication of the four books I have written, I came across a case that has continually drawn me back.
It would become the dark inspiration for my first novel. THE EQUINOX. The case was the Houston Mass Murders and a crime which would leave law enforcement reeling, families devastated, and unveil gruesome secrets shared by a monster and his two teenage accomplices. It was a news headline that caught my eye and brought me back to this serial killer case which still leaves me in awe. One of the killers was dead from Covid-19.
Introduction
Between
1970 to 1973, serial killer, Dean Corll along with accomplices David Brooks and
Elmer Wayne Henley, killed at least 28 young boys ranging in ages 12 to 17
years.The murders, which took place in an
impoverished suburb in Houston, Texas, known as Houston Heights, were considered
the most sadistic of their time. The victims were assaulted and tortured sexually,
sometimes for days, before being killed.
The
Grooming of an Accomplice
David
Owen Brooks, then 12, met and was befriended by Dean Corll in 1967, who then
worked at a family-run candy company. Corll was known to give free candy to the
local children, and Brooks began to look at him as a father figure as Corll
gave him money and gifts. This relationship would grow to a sexual by 1969 in which Corll paid Brooks for sexual favors.
In
1970, Corll abducted two teenagers and was in the process of torturing and
molesting them when he was interrupted in his home by Brooks. Corll promised Brooks a car for his silence,
and the youth agreed. Brooks kept his silence, while Corll kept his
promise and bought the teen a corvette. Corll would later confess to Brooks that the two abducted teens were killed after he (Brooks) had left them. Their bodies were buried
near 18-year-old college freshman, Jeffrey Konen, who was Corll's first known
victim.
Contract
with the Devil
Dean
Corll made Brooks an offer then. He would pay $200.00 for every victim he
brought him. Brooks agreed, bringing local kids to the Corll's murderous lair. Brooks
delivered one potential victim, Elmer Wayne Henley, to Corll's house, but
rather than kill the young man, Corll took a liking to Henley and groomed him as
a second accomplice.Then Henley was on the hunt for victims.
Children
were missing, but authorities had no idea of the magnitude of their problem or
the sheer number of children. Many victims forced to call or write their
parents saying that they had run away. The torture of these children was beyond
insidious. Corll had a box of torture devices he kept next to a 4X8 sheet of
plywood fashioned with handcuffs and rope coined, "the murder board."
The Corll house was a torture chamber beyond all belief, paralleling the
torturous deeds of the Spanish inquisition, but worse, they were doing this to innocent
children.
With
Henley and Brooks recruiting young victims, the disappearance of young boys in
the Houston Heights rose substantially. Still, police wrote most of them off as
runaway kids, due in part to the false messages of leaving home forced by Corll
and his accomplices. The level of depravity in the torture killings was so
grotesque, going beyond the worst humanity can dish out and into the bowels of
hell itself. Corll delighted in torturing his victims with such things as dildos,
biting and mutilation, and even inserting glass rods into the urethra of his
victims then breaking them off. Many victims were kept inside Corll's home for
days until they either succumbed to the brutality or were executed with a gun
and left to bleed out.
A
Call to Police – August 8, 1973
The
Pasadena Police Department received a call The call from Elmer Wayne Henley on
that fateful morning. Henley claimed to have shot and killed 34-year-old Dean
Corll in self-defense after Corll attempted to rape and kill him and two
teenage friends. Pasadena police detective David Mullican responded to the
call. Inside the house, shot multiple times, a naked dead Dean Corll lay sprawled in
the hallway.
"It started out as
any other homicide, Mullican remarked. But in the hours that would follow, Henley's
admissions would lead to the arrest of himself and accomplice David Brooks,
three mass graves, and the eventual uncovering of 28 victims.
First, Henley led them to a boathouse
on Silver Bell Street in Houston. There, authorities unearthed the bodies of eight
children on the first day. All were
naked, wrapped in plastic, covered with lye, and in various states of
decomposition. The scene inside the boathouse was a gruesome spectacle in which men
shoveled separated body parts in wheelbarrows and puledl the plastic cocoons of horror
from their secret graves. The second day they removed nine more bodies.
Warning! This video is of a very graphic nature, showing Elmer Wayne Henley at the infamous boathouse. Click to watch.
Henley also led them to Lake Sam
Rayburn, where four more bodies were
uncovered.
David Brooks joined them after turning
himself in for his involvement in the murders, and the two would lead them to
High Island, where six more bodies would be discovered.
Dubbed: THE HOUSTON MASS MURDER
In
1973, the term serial killer did not exist, and killers who had multiple
victims were referred to as mass murderers. Law enforcement still had little
understanding of the phenomena surrounding such killings. In 1973, the Houston
Mass Murders were the worst the country had ever seen.
Evidence
and accusations would paint both Brooks and Corll as willing participants in
the killings, and Brooks would go on to allege that Henley took pleasure in not
only the killing but the torture as well. Both boys would be found guilty and sentenced
for their crimes,
In
total, authorities unearthed 28 known victims; in one case, two brothers, Donald
and Jerry Waldrop were taken and killed on January 30, 1971. There is speculation that other victims may
exist. Victims abducted and killed before Corll's association with Brooks and
Henley.
An
Unknown Victim - 2012
Filmmaker,
Josh Vargas, was producing and directing an independent film based on the life
of Elmer Wayne Henley titled: IN A MADMAN'S WORLD. In doing so, Vargas
not only interviewed Henley but gained access to clothing and artifacts owned
by Henley and kept by his mother in an abandoned school bus on their property.
What Vargas would stumble across would be a Polaroid from hell and leading to
the investigation being reopened. The photograph is of a young boy attached to
the murder board. Beside him, Corll's toolbox contains instruments of torture. Henley
was interviewed about the photo and claimed no knowledge of who it was while acknowledging
Dean may have had other victims. One would conclude that Henley either doesn't
remember or is lying as the photograph was among his belongings.
Vargas
asserts that the kid is probably deceased. Having read the case files, and
given that he was attached to the instrument of torture, I would say Vargas is
right. Authorities have ruled out the picture as being one of Corll's known
victims. To date, there is no evidence beyond the photo, and the victim's
identity remains a mystery.
David
Brooks dies of Covid-19
After
20 denied parole applications, David Brooks contracted COVID-19 in prison and
succumbed to the virus onMay 28, 2020, leaving Henley as the
only living member of the trio. Brooks is an enigma in all of this. He
cooperated with authorities in the initial investigation. Yet, unlike the
talkative Henley, Brooks kept to himself and stayed out of the media spotlight
for the entirety of his life. The only time his name would appear in the media
was during the many attempts at parole.
Elmer Wayne Henley – Artist?
Henley remains in prison,
supported by his mother, painting, and selling artwork without alleged profit
from those sales. His art is substandard, most pieces looking like a novice trying
watercolors for the first time.But what
draws people to the art of Elmer Wayne Henley is not the art itself, but the
artist. There is a growing community of collectors drawn to the works of such
monsters. In interviews, Henley places
the blame squarely on the shoulders of Dean Corll, presenting himself as just
another victim of Dean Corll, but Henley is the stereotypical sociopath. He has
relived his crimes through interviews, exploiting them through media notoriety and
interest, and now enjoying some rekindled celebrity due to Netflix's MINDHUNTER Series.
Conclusion - References.
There are so many details not listed in this short blog. If it interests you to find out more, there is plenty of information available. From books like THE MAN WITH THE CANDY by Jack Olsen and THE TRUE STORY OF THE HOUSTON MASS MURDERS by Jack Rosewood. To date, Josh Vargas film, IN A MADMAN'S WORLD is not available to this authors knowledge.
In my headphones, a piano runs, whisked along by
violins, and it lifts my spirit and weeping eyes to the ghost of Ennio Morricone.
He was a film composer who left this earth a little better, his gift is a body of
work that leaves most modern-day composers envious. His music was
diverse, from Western to Gangland, to the use of electric guitar and harmonicas.
His work has been covered by the metal band Metallica and reintroduced by
directors like Quentin Tarantino. Morricone changed the feel of the modern-day
western by the music he scored. It was urgent and uplifting; it came in long
sweeps or in short hard telegraphs that ushered in villains and heroes alike.
It was some of the most beautiful music ever composed, at least for this long-time
listener.
As a writer, I mourn the passing of Ennio Morricone,
because this man and his music have been with me since I was a kid. It might seem
a thousand years ago, but it was 1975 when I decided to be a writer, and it was
also when I started listening to Ennio Morricone. We had an RCA cabinet stereo
back in 1975, with a turntable, headphone jack, cassette player recorder and
speakers that were about 30 watts each. The AM/FM radio even ran on tubes. Today this thing
would be an antique. I spent a lot of time beside that RCA, on my belly, feet
crossing and uncrossing, listening to an inspirational ballad called The Ecstasy
of Gold.
My connection with music and writing is something I
have talked about before, but what I am telling you here is a little more personal,
because this was where it started. The soundtrack at the beginning of my writing
journey started with Ennio Morricone's The Good the Bad and the Ugly. When I
listened to his music, mental movies would unfold in my mind. Purposely, in
front of me, a binder filled with loose leaf paper whose lines were etched with
the stories that came, only to be interrupted by a rough sketch.
In that old binder I wrote a horror story, in which a
young man named David fights to get back to civilization after his best friend,
John, is killed by a demonic creature they have awakened. Thew story’s title
was: David vs. The Zombie, and it was a stupid story filled with the usual
tropes, but the music of Ennio Morricone inspired it. And for the record, while
David vs. The Zombie wouldn’t wholly pass the plagiarism sniff test; it was still
a beautiful thing. First, because of the music that still calls to me 45 years
later. Secondly, because back then, the well overflowed with ideas, and these
were the purest muses in this writer’s life.
I wore a groove into that soundtrack, and it led me to
more Morricone, to soundtracks like, Once Upon a Time in America and John
Carpenter’s The Thing. Man, I got some mileage out of that last one, what a
foreboding lonely soundtrack. Understandably, I loved the movie too.
As I write this, revisiting that first soundtrack, I
am reminded of other artists that would join the score and change the rhythm
and the beat of my writing—pushing me to get it out. Sometimes even demanding.
So, I bid thee a goodnight and raise my glass to Ennio
Morricone, who played a significant part in the soundtrack in my writing life.
Your musical spirit lives on as long as the earth exists.
