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The Largest Child Sex Trafficking Ring You Never Knew About (But Should Have...)

Writer's picture: tracy6164tracy6164

Updated: Feb 1




Why is this essay about a 1970s story important today?  I think we all know that the rich and poor are served two different forms of justice.  But child sex trafficking rings are an entirely different insidiousness altogether as they're expert at avoiding detection, manipulating their victims to thinking they are perpetrators and using vast ill-gotten gains to align powerful people whose illicit sexual interests are exchanged for continued facilitation.

 

In March of 2020, I started speaking with Elmer Wayne Henley, a man who had been in prison for almost 50 years in what was known as the Houston Mass Murders: serial murders of at least 28 young men in Houston, Texas perpetrated by a sexual sadist, Dean Corll and two young men he groomed to kill alongside him.  The details of the killings are everyone's worst nightmare and indulged the horrific fantasies of Corll as he kept victims for several days while he tortured and raped them.  As time went on, research revealed those details only scratched the surface of the true tragedy. Myself and Dr. Katherine Ramsland recently published a book entitled The Serial Killer's Apprentice that is a deep dive into the case.

 

I contacted Henley because I was finishing production on the Peacock series, John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise.  That 6-part documentary series took myself and my research partner, Alison True, almost 10 years to gather evidence that John Wayne Gacy was not a lone wolf - he was part of a much larger sex trafficking network and had at least two accomplices we could name.  The last missing piece was understanding the accomplice dynamic.  Henley agreed to talk frankly about his anecdotal experience.

 

After several conversations, it occurred to me not all accomplices are alike.  One of Gacy's accomplices, Michael Rossi, went on to commit a multitude of crimes following  Gacy's arrest (and his use by the prosecution as a fairly flaccid state witness).  But another, David Cram, committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree in Chicago's LaBagh Woods. 

 

Whereas Elmer Wayne Henley's co-accomplice, David Owen Brooks, refused to give a full confession and instead had his father (a Harris County reserve deputy sheriff and general contractor) and uncle work with police to avoid besmirching the Brooks name, Henley poured forth innumerable details of his crimes in order that he "could live again" - guilt and trauma overwhelmed him. 

 

Henley worked with criminologist, Dr. Katherine Ramsland to give her the information she needed to make a distinction between Brooks and Henley: whereas Brooks fully intended on continuing serial murder and had discussed specific female victims with Henley he wanted to pursue, Dr. Ramsland determined a new category of accomplice for Henley who, although a killer, is also a non-traditional victim.  She labeled this "temporary psychopathy": when coercion and threats, coupled with a lack of support to leave, lead a subordinate to comply with a predator's demands.  In other words, that accomplice would not have normally chosen a murderous path but had also not had a gun put to their heads to force them to perform lethal acts.  Elmer Wayne Henley continued his relationship with Dean Corll because psychologically, he didn't feel he had an option.  It's something teen accomplices experience today and recently, we've developed much better laws that recognize this.

 

One other result of my conversations with Elmer Wayne Henley led to the understanding - something Henley did not have for 50 years - that Dean Corll was associated with one of the largest sex trafficking rings we've never studied - one that was nationwide and associated with a man by the name of John David Norman.  Even though both Elmer Wayne Henley and David Owen Brooks told police of a "Syndicate" in Dallas that trafficked in boys, even though witnesses came forward to Houston PD to tell them of pornography that contained images of Houston Mass Murder victims, no further investigation of either lead was made.

 

Instead, looking at the actions of Houston police chief Herman Short as this case unfolded he went on the offense when media suggested Houston PD had never taken desperate parents of the missing victims seriously.  Instead of acknowledging that Houston PD was understaffed as a result of not taking federal grants (and oversight) to buoy his budgets, Chief Short held news conferences where he blamed parents for being "lax".  He then excused his force by saying there were too many missing kids to follow up on.  But that's not all...

 

When a young man named Charles Brisendine called Dallas PD on August 9, 1973 - the day after Dean Corll was killed -  from an apartment in Dallas, TX to tell them he was supposed to be sent to Houston by a sex trafficking ring run by John David Norman, Chief Short almost immediately denied any relationship between Norman and Corll.  When Dallas PD went to the apartment Brisendine had been staying with Norman at, they found 4 tons of child pornography, pounds of marijuana, weapons and other paraphernalia that did not match what Norman was describing as an educational organization meant to teach young men "manners and worldliness".

 

Brisendine gave police enough information that Harris County Assistant District Attorney, Don L. Lambright, went to Dallas to gather further information.  When I spoke with retired ADA Lambright on July 22, 2022 during an interview at his home in Houston, he told me intricate details of his approach to prosecution but said he could not remember ANY details of this trip to Dallas.  To me, that seems convenient...

 

In December 1973, a police report noted that a Mr. Schakel from the US Probation Department had called the Harris County DA to report custody of a Richard van Payne.  This man, Payne, had described being in “the warehouse” in Houston and had “seen photographs of the dead boys in the mass murder.”   While these photos were finally confiscated and acknowledged by Houston PD the very next year as they arrested a known pedophile, Roy C. Ames who owned the warehouse, the December 1973 information was given to ADA Lambright, whose investigator from the DA's office told him Payne did not have enough information to be "helpful".  Payne even told the investigator that Norman was a central figure in Los Angeles and San Diego.  Basic and easy to find business records for John David Norman would have shown him to have 8 businesses in the Houston area.

But all of this would have mattered little, as John David Norman was making so much money from exploiting children, that he left Dallas on bond shortly after his arrest and fled to the Chicago area.  Dallas eventually found nothing to prosecute Norman for and the case was dropped in December 1973.  Norman was in jail in Homewood, IL by this time for re-offending with 10 minors.

 

With all of these machinations that allowed John David Norman to be free to molest again, Elmer Wayne Henley was made to believe he was public enemy #1 for the largest mass murder in US history.  Corll was dead and Brooks would not speak a word, while all the while Henley made himself the distraction sex traffickers and their clients needed to vanish from the scene.

 

In one line that exists on page 448 of 495 in a senatorial report titled SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN - HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, 95TH CONGRESS, 1ST SESSION it says, "Dallas Police...have information associating Norman with the ring that helped transport to Texas the 27 boys murdered in Houston in a widely publicized sex and sadism case...that involved Dean Corll."

 

Michael Rossi lives in the northern suburbs of Chicago and has never been prosecuted for crimes committed with John Wayne Gacy.  John David Norman died in 2012 effectively free to continue molesting over the decades.  Elmer Wayne Henley was jailed at the age of 17 after two and half years of subservience to Dean Corll and sentenced to 596 years in prison. 

 

I can almost guarantee you, the next "Jeffrey Epstein" is operating his sexual trafficking right now and there are powerful people busy having their ding-dongs rung or looking the other way.

 

Don L. Lambright still lives in Houston.  The files that would detail his trip to Dallas have not been forthcoming in my FOIA requests.  But he may be able to shed some light on the largest child sex trafficking ring you never knew about...





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