Notorious Houston serial killer requests compassionate release

Elmer Wayne Henley Jr, a gray-haired 66-year-old serving six life sentences for his role in Houston’s most notorious serial killings, is requesting compassionate release from Texas prison, according to letters some victims’ families recently received. In August 1973, Henley, then 17, shirtless and jittery from a night of partying, was arrested and confessed to participating in a murder, rape, and torture ring led by Dean Corll, a Houston electrician and former candy maker with no criminal history. For years, Corll had used Henley and another teen as procurers to lure victims. Most of those missing boys and young men had been branded as runaways by police—and their murders had gone undetected—until Henley killed Corll. Within a week he led authorities to 27 clandestine graves. At the time, the so-called “Houston Mass Murders” were described as the most lethal in modern U.S. history—the Pope sent his condolences and Truman Capote considered writing about the case as a sequel to his book In Cold Blood. The term serial killer had not yet been invented.

Most capital murderers are ineligible for compassionate release in Texas: That path is not available to those sentenced to death or life without parole. But in Henley’s case, Harris County prosecutors did not seek a death sentence, which the U.S. Supreme Court had declared to be cruel and unusual punishment on June 29, 1972. Texas did not adopt life without parole sentences until 2005. Texas officials rarely grant compassionate release, though people who are terminally ill, permanently disabled or elderly are potentially eligible for what’s called medically recommended intensive supervision. Texas has the nation’s largest prison population, with more than 140,000 people incarcerated in 2022. In all, 49 states provide some type of compassionate release. Even with a COVID-19 epidemic that rendered prison conditions infinitely more hazardous, Texas officials reported granting compassionate release to very few. The state Board of Pardons and Paroles approved 76 persons for release in 2019—59 terminally ill and 17 already assigned to long-term care. Even after the pandemic began, that did not change. In 2020, they released 60, including 40 terminally ill and 20 in long-term care. However, Henley is not a typical aging and ailing Texas prisoner. The death toll associated with the ring he joined as a junior high school dropout made international news in 1973 and continues to rise.