What Was Left Out

Tag: serial killer’s apprentice

  • “CRIME HUNTER: How ‘pedophile’s pedophile’ linked two serial killers”, 2022

    REVIEWED

    (This is a review of a 2022 article by Brad Hunter, published in Toronto Sun, March 12, 2022)

    Shockingly trashy! Even by Sun publishing standards

    A swamp of false and misleading statements

    Did Tracy Ullman pay Brad Hunter to write this? Is she a friend?

    Brad Hunter wrote; “As the clock ticked towards his date with death — May 10, 1994 — Gacy insisted he was innocent (he wasn’t) but also that he had accomplices”

    “Detectives had eyed two employees of Gacy’s contracting firm. They were Michael Rossi and David Cram. Cops found nothing but there was a third former employee that needed a closer look”

    “His name was Phillip Paske, a cross-dressing young man who had a penchant for violence and sex with boys. Paske was also the top lieutenant of a man named John David Norman, who Gacy suggested also played a role”

    Gacy specifically stated that none of his victims were John Norman-Paske male prostitutes, that he had no need for nor interest in them; “David Cram said Paske could get guys for me to blow me, and I told him no way, as I don’t want that kind coming around, so I would have had no need for Norman or Paske’s services”.
    —Gacy prison letter, March 28, 1992

    Brad Hunter wrote: “In the early 1970s, Norman was busted for running a nationwide sex-trafficking operation called the Delta Ring based in Chicago and Dallas that supplied underage boys to pedophiles. At the same time, he ran a bustling child pornography business”

    WOW! People shouldn’t presume to pontificate on historic crime cases, if they are completely ignorant of the facts, and Hunter was apparently totally clueless about John Norman. Norman was NEVER “busted for running a nationwide sex-trafficking operation called the Delta Ring”. In 1973, while living in Dallas, Norman ran a male prostitution service called “Odyssey Foundation” from his apartment there, between May and August of that year. He was raided on a tip from a young prospect named Brisindine, and charged with possession of marijuana and “conspiracy to commit sodomy”. A Grand Jury declined to indict him on either charge and they were dismissed. The only “pornography” Norman produced in Dallas was promotional nude photos of his sex workers.

    Brad Hunter wrote; “Two of the boys believed to have been slain by Gacy were last seen near Norman’s home. Coincidence?”

    First, one of those two boys, Michael Marino, was determined to be a misidentification, so there’s only one – Kenneth Ray Parker. On October 24, 1976, 16-year-old Kenneth Parker was last seen near a restaurant at Clark Street and Diversey Parkway, an intersection where Gacy picked up many of his victims. It was also close to a pinball arcade frequented by juvenile male prostitutes and the men who preyed on them – such as Gacy. So, yes, it’s a coincidence. No one has ever claimed to have seen Parker with Norman or Paske that day.

    Refer:

    https://www.thejohnnydoeproject.com/kenneth-ray-parker/

    Brad Hunter wrote; “Accomplices of Dean “Candy Man” Coryll alleged that the Houston killer worked with Norman and bought, sold and murdered scores of young boys” – OUTRAGEOUS! A bald-faced lie.

    David Brooks and Wayne Henley never “alleged that the Houston killer [Dean Corll] worked with Norman”, that’s bs. What they did say, was that Corll told them he was involved in a ring that bought and sold boys, also operating out of Dallas. Corll never named John Norman to them, he had no idea that John Norman even existed, and neither Brooks nor Henley ever uttered the name John Norman – not in their statements to Houston police nor during their long terms in prison.

    Refer: “Dean mentioned there was a group of people in Dallas which had similar activities to his. He mentioned a man named Art…”, David Brooks statement, Aug. 9, 1973

    “Dean told me that he belonged to an organization out of Dallas that bought and sold boys, ran whores and stuff like that. Dean told me he would pay me $200 for every boy I could bring him…” Statement of Elmer Wayne Henley, Aug.9, 1973

    Brad Hunter wrote; “Even after he was busted in 1973, Norman was shockingly never convicted for sex trafficking…”

    If Brad knew anything about these cases, which he obviously did not, he would have known that The Mann Act, the federal law prohibiting “transporting minors across state lines for the purpose of prostitution”, specifically applied to FEMALE minors only. Norman couldn’t be charged for trafficking BOYS and neither could anyone else!

    Refer: The Mann Act

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act

    Brad Hunter wrote; ““Gacy, Norman and Paske are all in Chicago around that time,” Tracy Ullman, an executive producer of the Peacock docuseries John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise, told oxygen.com. “I find it hard for all these things to just be a coincidence.”

    Well, Gacy LIVED in Chicago for many years, and both Paske and Norman were released on parole into Chicago – they were REQUIRED to live there under the terms of their release. None of them “arranged” for them all to be living in Chicago at that time. Maybe the Illinois parole board set that up deliberately, just to create a mysterious “coincidence” to trouble Tracy Ullman 50 years later?

    Brad Hunter wrote; “One of Gacy’s claims was that Norman’s sex-trafficking ring was making snuff films with young boys. Gacy told detectives they should look through Norman’s videos to see if they recognized any of the victims he’d killed over the years”

    There’s no way Gacy could know that, of course. But there simply were NO “Norman’s videos” to look through! John Norman never made ANY films. All of the CSAM Norman is documented to have made, was in the form of photographs. All of it.

    Refer: “chicken” film which Chicago police claimed Norman had somehow masterminded from his jail cell, was really THEIR idea, and THEY incited a group of pedophiles to make it!

    Andre “Andy” Drath Betrayed

    “Handy Andy” was a photo-magazine, the only commercial grade CSAM John Norman ever produced – “Hearing Set For Accused Child Pornographer”, by Jeffrey R Roth

    A link to the original Sun article, below

    https://torontosun.com/news/world/crime-hunter-how-pedophiles-pedophile-linked-two-serial-killers

  • “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…