What the Police Files Show

What the police files show was never followed up: a documented list

Compiled October 2026 by an independent documentary researcher from the public records of the Dean Corll investigation. Everything below is taken from public records, cited by document and page, and the pages are linked below. If you find an error, email info@elmerwaynehenleyjr.com; it will be corrected and the correction noted.

What this is. The Houston Police Department has released its case file on the Dean Corll murders: 43 files, 225 pages, now on the Internet Archive. The Pasadena Police Department file and the Dallas Police Department’s August 1973 arrest report on John David Norman are there too. We have read every page. This list is what those files say the police had in hand and never acted on, and what the files say was attached to them and is now missing. It is not a theory. Each item is a question the file does not answer. This page is about the records; it takes no position on Wayne’s case.

What this list does not do. It does not accuse anyone named in these records of a crime. Private individuals who appear in the files are not named here, and we ask that they not be named in comments. The police officers and prosecutors are named as the authors of their own reports.

1. Houston police had Roy Ames’s name and record three times before anyone wrote to them about him

• 1964. Houston Vice arrested Roy Clifton Ames on a search warrant for a large mail-order business in obscene photographs, mostly of males, made in Houston. That arrest gave him HPD identification record #134752. (FBI airtel, Aug. 31, 1964, Criminal Intelligence Program, Houston Division; FOIA release.)

• February 1971. When Donald (15) and Jerry (13) Waldrop went missing, their parents told HPD on Feb. 8 that the boys were “at Roy Aimes,” gave his phone number, and said he “gathers kids & takes movies.” On Feb. 18 the Juvenile Division wrote that Ames “had been handled in simular cases,” attached his rap sheet, HPD #134752, and noted the Warrant Division was holding a traffic warrant on him. No entry records anyone contacting him. The case went inactive March 5, 1971. (HPD missing-person bundle D-6890~1, pp. 9–10.) Both boys were found in Corll’s boat shed in August 1973.

• August 9, 1973. Everett Waldrop called Homicide from Atlanta and said the names his sons had been “chumming with were a [name omitted] and a ROY AMES.” No follow-up is recorded. (HPD D-68904, Report 2, p. 4.)

• August 31, 1973. HPD wrote up a letter and phone interview from a man in California: Ames had photographed him in Houston in 1971; “ROY AMES KNEW DEAN CORLL and used him to exploit young boys”; Ames and Corll had invited him to a party at Corll’s apartment. The detectives called Los Angeles and recorded that LAPD “knows of this [man] … and some of the information he comes up with is good.” Criminal Intelligence “found a record on AMES HPD # 134752,” the same number sitting in the Waldrop file. The report closes: “THIS PHASE OF THE INVESTIGATION HAS NOT LINKED CORLL TO THIS GROUP … but investigation will continue.” No later entry continues it. (HPD D-68904, Report 6, pp. 1–4.)

• 2006. HPD’s own list of persons of interest still carried “Ames, Roy (Possible)” with the note “OLDER MALE w/ Hx of Sex Crimes.” (HPD D-68904, Aerial Photos file, p. 5.)

 The question: why was a man with an HPD record, named by a victim’s parents in 1971 and again in 1973, and tied to Corll by a witness in 1973, never interviewed?

2. The August 1973 letter and the Criminal Intelligence report are missing from the release

Report 6 says the letter is “attached to this report,” that the eight magazines bought by Vice “will be attached,” and that “CRIMINAL INTELLIGENCE HAS MORE DETAILED REPORT ON THESE SUBJECTS.” None of the three is in the 225 released pages. The same report records that detectives believed one of the magazines contained a photograph of one of the victims; the boy’s father, shown it, said it was not his son, and the officers wrote that they “still feel that there is a good possibility.” Nothing in the file records that the question was ever resolved. (Report 6, pp. 1–2.)

The question: where are the letter, the magazines and the Criminal Intelligence report, and what did they say?

3. A property the officers drove past

The magazines in Report 6 carried a post office box outside Houston. Detectives traced it to a business name and a rural property bought in 1968, described by neighbors as secluded, dog-guarded, and off-limits. The officers drove past, interviewed no one, searched nothing. No later entry returns to it. (Report 6, pp. 3–4.)

The question: who owned the property, what was the business, and why was it never searched?

4. A police form in a grave

On Aug. 9, 1973, among the clothing in the grave holding bodies #9 and #10, officers found a “HOUSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT OFFENSE REPORT FORM, partial.” Det. James placed it “in the lab lock box in ID … to be processed to try to determine if any writing was on it.” No later entry in the file says what it was or what was on it. (Report 1, pp. 12 and 14.)

The question: what was a police form doing in a grave dug in 1971, and what did the lab find?

5. Dallas, the same week

On Aug. 15, 1973, a week after Corll’s death, Dallas police arrested John David Norman on an informant’s tip and seized index cards listing boys by name and description. The Dallas report records “several young white males” at the scene. Two days later a wire story reported that the informant “got scared when his services were requested by a man in Houston.” (Dallas Police Department arrest report, Aug. 15, 1973; UPI, Aug. 17, 1973.) The Houston file does not record what, if anything, Houston and Dallas exchanged that month.

The question: what did Houston and Dallas exchange, and when?

6. A grand jury transcript that is not in the record

In January 1974 the prosecutor told the court that “the grand jury did on its own contact several witnesses. The State was not privy to those conversations or that testimony,” and confirmed that the two surviving eyewitnesses to Aug. 8, 1973 and two other boys had testified before it. The transcript was refused three times. It is not in the trial record or in any filing we have found. (Houston pretrial record, January 1974.)

7. Nine cases “cleared” in one paragraph

Nine HPD victim files carry an identical supplement dated Feb. 18, 1974: “CASE CLEARED. ARRESTED: #1 ELMER WAYNE HENLEY … #2 DAVID OWEN BROOKS.” None says which charge was filed for which boy. The Rayburn and High Island files carry no disposition at all. (D-68905, -06, -09, -10, -11, -15, -16, -18, -19.)

8. A private detective’s 1971 lead

The Hilligiest family hired a private investigator in June 1971. He reported that the boys were “connected with drug pushers and a man called ‘Chicken Joe’ who reportedly provided male prostitutes to homosexual clients,” and that they were last seen in June 1971 at a beach house on Crystal Beach. (Houston Chronicle, Aug. 9, 1973; HPD missing-person bundle D-6890~1, pp. 14–15.) In the autumn of 1973, when a jail informant named the same “Chicken Joe,” the detectives wrote that the name “did come up in the investigation of the mass murders … it may be that one of the Fathers of one of the dead boys was the reportee on this.” That earlier report is not in the release. (Report 6, p. 14.)

9. Documents the file says exist and the release does not contain

• The California man’s letter, postmarked Aug. 24, 1973 (“attached to this report”).• The eight magazines bought by Vice (“will be attached”).

• The Criminal Intelligence Division report on Ames and his associates.

• Roy Ames’s rap sheet, HPD #134752 (“SEE ATTACHED RAP SHEET”).

• David Brooks’s written statement in one victim’s file, D-68924 (“attached”).

• The father’s report that first named “Chicken Joe.”

• The grand jury transcript.

 

Documents

• Houston Police Department release (all files): https://archive.org/details/DeanCorll_HoustonPD

• Report 6 (the August 1973 letter, magazines): https://archive.org/download/DeanCorll_HoustonPD/D-68904%20-%20Report%20-%206.pdf

• Report 1 (the scene; the form in the grave, pp. 12, 14): https://archive.org/download/DeanCorll_HoustonPD/D-68904%20-%20Report%20-%201.pdf

• Report 2 (Waldrop father’s call, p. 4): https://archive.org/download/DeanCorll_HoustonPD/D-68904%20-%20Report%20-%202.pdf

• Missing-person bundle 1 (Waldrop, pp. 8–11; Hilligiest, pp. 14–15): https://archive.org/download/DeanCorll_HoustonPD/D-6890~1.pdf

• Pasadena Police Department release: https://archive.org/details/DeanCorll_PasadenaPD

• Dallas Police Department, Norman arrest report, Aug. 15, 1973: https://archive.org/details/norman-arrest-report-dallas

• Houston Post, Aug. 16, 1973, on the Norman arrest: https://archive.org/details/houston-post-1973-08-16-9

• State’s appellate briefs, 1974 trial: https://archive.org/details/state-appellate-brief-pt-1-part-2-1 and https://archive.org/details/states-appellate-brief-pt-2-1

• 1974 trial record, Vol. I: https://archive.org/details/vol-ioriginal-pt-1-watermark-2

• Selected HPD pages for items 1, 2 and 4, with an index: HPD_dropped_leads_document_packet.pdf

 

What we are looking for

• Any copy of the August 1973 letter described in Report 6, or anyone who knew the man who wrote it.

• The files of the private investigator who worked for the Hilligiest family in 1971.

• Recordings of August 1973 television coverage, local or network.

• Anyone who worked in HPD Homicide, Juvenile or Criminal Intelligence in 1971–1973.

 

Contact: info@elmerwaynehenleyjr.com. Please do not post names of private individuals in comments; they will be removed.