What Was Left Out

Tag: corll

  • “The Serial Killer’s Apprentice”

    by Katherine Ramsland and Tracy Ullman

    A Review: WHAT WAS LEFT OUT

    General Observations: [I can’t tell which author was responsible for what content, so I’m just going to say; “the authors” throughout]

    • There are no source citations, other than an occasional reference within the text, and no chapter notes. The authors haven’t bothered to provide documentation for what they’ve said, am I reading conjecture and opinion throughout?
    • This book is supposed to explain why the authors changed their opinions of, and perspective on, Elmer Wayne Henley and presumably why we should also. Their reasoning is comprehensible, but nothing changed for me. Reading the accounts of how they lured the victims and what was subsequently done to them, while Henley and Brooks observed or even participated, still evokes the same sense of horror and outrage in me. They will forever be “the face of true evil” for me, just as much as the Nazi Deathcamp guards.
    • I appreciated the debunking of Vargas’ ‘new victim’, polaroid photo boy, with the truth about that photo.
    • The recounting of how the victim’s remains were recovered, and Brooks and Henley’s accounts of what they knew about their demise, was handled well – respectfully and minimally explicit. The same goes for the mistaken and revised identifications.

    False/ misleading statements, and what the authors left out:

    The infamous Sgt. Ronald Kelly lie, (Head of Area 6 youth division, Chicago PD), pg. 138; “Dallas police told Sgt. Ronald Kelly, Head of Area 6 youth division, that they have information associating [John] Norman with the ring that helped transport to Texas the 27 boys murdered in Houston in 1973 in a widely publicized sex and sadism case. That case involved Dean Corll”.

    NONE of the 27 victims were “transported to Texas”. With the exception of one victim originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ALL of the identified Corll victims were long-time residents of Texas. No one, not John Norman nor anyone else, “trafficked” them into Texas. They already lived there. Furthermore, none of Corll’s victims had been an Odyssey Foundation male prostitute, pimped out by Norman. This story is a blatant lie, an early attempt to falsely link John Norman to Corrl and his victims.

    Here are some examples, of something annoying the authors do several times; pg. 57; “In fact, there was a widespread network of pedophiles from Houston to Dallas, with boys paid or forced into being photographed for pornography”, no source cited, so, a rumor apparently.

    They have gratuitously added “or forced”, thus – boys paid or forced into pornography. There isn’t documentation that, for example, pornographer Roy Ames ever “forced” boys to participate in nude photo-shoots or sex acts on camera. The lack of documentation doesn’t stop them from assuming some boys MUST have been forced, and someone must be “hiding the truth”, so they will just proclaim that to be a fact anyway, I guess.

    The claim by Houston Youth officers, that they identified 11 Corll victims in CSA images found in Ames warehouse, is understandably uncomfortable for some people, particularly family members and friends. They remember a person whom they couldn’t imagine would pose for nude photos or sex acts, for a few dollars. Certainly not voluntarily, if they were involved in pornography or prostitution they must have been coerced, extorted, forced…This was, in the 1970s, and still is, a popular opinion about any & all teen boys. Yet, there is documentation that teen boys of that era who were involved, had a lot more autonomy and self-agency than we want to credit them with, as Det. Williams (OCCK case) found, when he tracked down men who had been teen boy hustlers in the Cass area of Detroit. “Ralph” was one such, described by pedophile Richard Lawson as; “the most beautiful boy in the world, every man wanted him”. This is from Det. Williams’ investigator notes, 3-21-07; “I asked Ralph if there was someone who controlled the money or set-up the meets with the adult men. To which he stated no, he just did it on his own for the money, like every other boy in his neighborhood”

    “The Syndicate in Dallas“:

    • from the “Author’s Note”, pg. i, “Henley killed Corll and turned himself in. At this point, he mentioned his fear of Corll’s association with a sex trafficking ring in Dallas. Brooks, once in custody, also described the ring. The Houston police made a tepid effort to investigate the alleged connection before ultimately dismissing it. However, such a ring did exist”.
    • from pg. 9; “Henley had said it: there was an organization that Corll had talked about that bought and sold boys”
    • from page 12; “Dean told me he belonged to an organization out of Dallas that bought and sold boys, ran dope and stuff like that”
    • and finally on pgs. 59-63, a full discussion of John Norman’s Odyssey male prostitute pimping racket, which he ran out of his apartment in Dallas. But only from May-Aug. of 1973, as Dallas PD are quoted saying; “Criminal record of alleged homosexual ring leader revealed”, Dallas Morning News, 1973; “The procurement ring has apparently been operating since May, when Norman rented the Cole Avenue apartment”

    While careful not to explicitly state, that the “sex trafficking ring” Corll claimed to belong to in Dallas was John Norman’s operation, the authors nevertheless clearly want their readers to “get that”. But Norman was only ‘in operation’ in Dallas from May-Aug of 1973, and Corll started talking to his henchmen about it in 1971-72. No matter how anyone tries to weasel it, Corll coudn’t have been and wasn’t talking about John Norman. Corll never did “belong” to Norman’s ring, Dallas did not find Corll listed on any Norman client card, nor did they find any Corll victim listed as a Norman boy for hire. And yes they did investigate that; Press=Telegram, Long Beach, Ca, Aug.13, 1973, “He [Dallas PD Chief Steele] said each teenager listed would be contacted…”

    Addendum: on pages 10-11, the authors say: “Too late, it’s become clear that there was a sex trafficking ring whose principal operators were based near Dean Corll. Two of these men lived and worked extensively in Houston and Dallas, with associations in California. Their network was documented as having tens of thousands of predators participating, with just as many boys being exploited…It’s improbable that Corll would have had no awareness of this ring, as pedophiles tend to share resources to indemnify each other”

    I’m sorry, but whomever wrote that has neither knowledge nor understanding of the things they presume to pontificate about. Probably did see Gerald Richards’ flowchart but didn’t comprehend it at all. The genuine network, the one documented to have existed circa 1970-76 in North America, (with friends and business partners in Europe), as opposed to Corll’s personal fantasy network, wasn’t a generic “pedophiles” – “if you like kids we like you” network. Although “homosexual pedophiles” isn’t wrong, it was even more subculture specific – it was the network of the boy-lover pederasts. Just being homosexually oriented, didn’t make Corll a boy-lover. He wasn’t. He was a homosexual boy-destroyer!

    I’m not even sure that “pedophile” was an accurate categorization for Corll. His orientation was Sexual Sadism and Murder! Corll didn’t fit the Gay community, he wouldn’t fit the Pederasts…there was no subculture and no network for him. Which is probably why he invented a fantasy subculture for himself, something his teen flunkies would be too naïve to immediately call bs on. But I will. There was NO “Brotherhood of Men Who Butcher Boys”!

    You’re free to imagine “you don’t know that for a fact!’, if you wish, but yes – I do know that for a fact. This is MY area of expertise, I’ve been researching sex offender subcultures for 35+ years.

    pg. 18; “Brooks estimated that Corll had killed twenty-five to thirty boys and young men over three years (plausible, tragically). He added that Corll had “mentioned there was a group of people in Dallas which had similar activities to his” – but that, is a steaming pile of bull dung! They would all represent such an extreme danger to each other, that they’d have to either rat all the others out in hope of being spared, or start picking each other off as clandestinely as possible. This is the murderous satanic cult fantasy, without the horns.

    It’s actually very improbable, that Corll would have any knowledge of the real network. I realize, the authors fantasize that it was really a network of boy-destroyers like Corll, everyone, but I guarantee that if Corll went around proclaiming to anyone but his henchmen, that he tortures and murders boys, he’d be toast by next morning. If Corll wrote to John Norman, saying: “I’ve enjoyed torturing young teen boys to death in the past – can you set me up with some hetero virgin 15 years old boys, for me to rape and torture over a few days before strangling them? p.s. I’m not kidding, there’s a dozen dead boys in my boathouse right now”, there would be surveillance on his PO box, house, business, within the week. And no reply from Norman. But you could prove me wrong, if there were copies of Norman’s newsletters found in Corll’s home, or Hermes journal, or Better Life Monthly…

  • It’s About Winning

    Cases: John Wayne Gacy, Dean Corll, John Norman

    Promotion of revised and false sub-narratives. Summary; that John Wayne Gacy (JWG) and Dean Corll “belonged to” “a larger network of pornographers and sex traffickers” and “were associated with” a large nationwide sex trafficking ring run by John Norman.

    What are people saying about this, what specific claims are being made? I chose a short video on Youtube for a random sampling, because it has multiple people expressing a range of ideas; “John Wayne Gacy’s connection to sex trafficker John Norman”. You needn’t watch it if you don’t wish to, I’ll quote from the speakers, here.

    Karen Conti : (repeating things she claims JWG said to her) – there may have been a snuff film operation, that some of these young men and boys were being killed and videotaped, and the videos being sold on “the black market”. JWG didn’t say who was involved. In her own words; “there was probably a black market for that kind of stuff…back then”.

    JWG speaking; (previously recorded interview) “Philip Paske was involved with John Norman, and Norman was running ‘boys for hire’. They were making snuff films with young boys” (from another segment not in this video) “They ought to look through Norman’s confiscated films to see if they identify any [of JWG] victims”.

    What is being left out?

    1) JWG was in police custody, December of 1978.

    2) the first video cameras compatible with video cassette recorders came on the American market in 1979* prior to that, video cameras came paired with reel to reel recorders (portapaks). During the time when Gacy’s victims were being raped, tortured, murdered and slaughtered, there were no video cassette cameras. Young men and boys were NOT being killed and videotaped, by Paske-Norman or by anyone else, during the years that Gacy was killing boys and young men – because the technological means to do this did not exist at that time.

    3) similarly, there were technological obstacles to making pornographic movies with the popular Super 8mm home movie cameras. These cameras recorded frame images onto a film strip encased in a cassette. Developing that film strip was not something that anyone could do “at home”, it required a proper film lab and expertise. Sending your Super 8 cassettes to Kodak labs for developing and hoping their lab technicians wouldn’t notice criminal images on it, was so obviously stupid that no one would risk it. Not even John Norman. That may be why there’s no evidence of any “confiscated John Norman” films. He just didn’t make his own pornographic films. Norman was quite adept as a photographer, he could develop photo film in a closet if necessary, like thousands of other American amateur photographers of all ages were doing. That’s the way he created nude or pornographic images of boys, as photos, not films. The fact that JWG apparently didn’t know this, suggests that he didn’t really know much about Norman. Gacy’s attempt to shift blame for murdered boys and men buried under his floorboards; “those boys were making snuff films and burying the bodies in my house!”, has practical realities problems.

    4) “I’m going out to make a snuff film! See you, with the video/film, in a couple hours”, if it was really that simple, Gacy surely would have done it himself! It sounds like JWG was the one lusting to make snuff porn. His sister says she found packets of pornographic pictures taped to the underneath of a dresser drawer. In her brief look through, she saw they depicted JWG in a threesome with other men. “In talking with Marty Zelinski, who was an employee and family photographer for John Gacy, he was asked to photograph pornography by Gacy and turned it down. In Terry Sullivan’s hand-written case notes, they show that Gacy asked several living victims if they’d like to appear in male pornography”**

    But why would Paske, and/or Norman, WANT to make snuff porn? They weren’t like Gacy. Gacy murdered young men and boys. Paske’s criminal record for assaults shows he could be violent, but he never murdered anyone, he was only the lookout in the robbery where someone was stabbed to death, he wasn’t the killer. Norman never murdered anyone. Gacy abducted people and held them captive with restraints; “Gacy chloroformed him [Jeff Rignall] and drove him to his house, where his arms and head were restrained in a pillory device affixed to the ceiling and his feet locked into another device”, there’s no evidence that any of Norman’s male hustlers were abduction victims, nor that he ever held them captive. Gacy sexually tortured his victims, he delighted in causing pain and seeing them suffer. John Norman’s extensive criminal convictions record doesn’t include acts of rape or sadism.

    If John Wayne Gacy “belonged to a nationwide sex trafficking ring run by John Norman”, what would that mean?

    1. It can’t just mean meeting Phil Paske, giving him some work, and having a beer with him a few times in Gacy’s house. Norman’s passion at that time was his Delta Project. Wouldn’t belonging to Norman’s ring mean joining Delta? Becoming a Delta Dorm Don? Taking in a cadet or two? No evidence for any of that, though. Norman liked to give his sponsors frequent ‘updates’ on Delta. There’s a video where you can see his folksy-newsy style. He crows about Phil Paske and how pleased he is to have him as an “executive assistant”. No mention of John, no “John WG has come on board, I’m sure he will prove an asset”, or anything. Tracy Ullman observed that pedophiles had ways of communicating even if they never met face to face. That’s true, and the newsletters perhaps most important of all. Were any copies of “The John Norman Newsletter” found in Gacy’s home? Copies of Hermes Journal? Better Life Monthly? Broadstreet Journal? No? I don’t see much belonging going on.

    What is the false narrative underlying all of this, this and the rewrites of the Corll case going on in tandem?

    It’s a false narrative in which the Serial Killers and butchers of boys, ala JWG and Dean Corll, are fully and openly accepted and embraced by the entire boy-lover/pederast underground, as their Brothers. Because all of them are really clones of Corrl, or Gacy. Perpetually lusting to torture and murder boys, and especially, to generate and view torture photos and snuff films. So they are all too happy, the pornographers and the boy hustler pimps, the BL newsletter and journal publishers and all their subscribers, to help a Brother out. To sell the serial slayers, boy sex slaves, knowing they will be tortured and murdered. To keep their secrets, and help hide the evidence when necessary.

    Thankfully, however, it is a false narrative, it was never the reality. Dean Corll could never have been buddies with Roy Ames, not if Ames knew the truth about him. And JWG could never have been buddies with John Norman, not if Norman knew what Gacy had done.

    If there had ever been a Congress of the self-professed boy-lover pederasts, all the subscribers to all the BL newsletters, and John Norman got up on stage and declared; “My friends! Welcome our new Brother Dean from Houston. He likes to torture and murder boys!” There would be a riot. If they didn’t lynch him right there, many were surely drop the dime on him to police as fast as they could.

    Because, boy-lover pederasts develop deep-seated delusional rationalizations about their relationship with the boys in their lives. They need to genuinely believe that their relationships with boys are beneficial to the boys, that they are making their lives better, giving them everything they want and need, at the least making them happy. These rationalizations protect them from full conscious awareness, that they are in reality harming the boys. Not physically, not many open boy-beaters in their ranks. But the sexual exploitation is harming them, the adult “boyfriends” are betraying their innocent trust, and the love they profess for the boys is ultimately a manipulation that will turn to poison as they mature. And when the wheels eventually come off the delusional perception of themselves, and they can no longer lie to themselves, it’s not uncommon for them to self-destruct. “OMG! I’m really a monster!”

    Having someone openly confess their desire to harm boys, while professing to be one of them, would be too confronting for them. They would never stand for it. “That’s not who we are! You’re not one of us, you’re a monster”. There’s not a smidgen of understanding about boy-lover psychology evident, in the false narrative rewrite of historic cases currently being evangelized in multiple formats; podcasts, books, documentaries, etc., despite involvement by the illustrious Dr. Ramsland. And I think I may know why.

    Tracy Ullman said; “When myself, Alison True and Bill Dorsch started working to unearth details behind the John Wayne Gacy case, I had recently been widowed and was working two jobs while raising three kids”, “For years, all three of us were called “conspiracy nuts”. Our ideas were refuted. We were sworn at and had phones hung up on us. We were roundly and publicly criticized by people who had a PR advantage..”

    It’s not about uncovering and documenting the facts about historic crime cases. It’s about “winning”, and the way you win is by developing a PR advantage over the people who had ‘oppressed’ you in the past, and flooding public perception about those cases with your personal narrative about them – the story that you want to be true, about them. It’s about kicking sand in their faces, shouting; “I told you that I had as much right to play in this sandbox as you, and now that I’m 10 feet tall, I’m going to push you out and make sure that no one will ever plays with you again”