The Scientist and the Serial Killer: The Search for Houston's Lost Boys

(Hardback)

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Between 1971 and 1973, more than twenty-seven teenage boys disappeared from idyllic, tree-lined neighborhoods in Houston. This is the true story of how one dedicated forensic scientist finally identified the victims of the "Candy Man," one of America's most prolific serial killers. Between 1971 and 1973, more than twenty-seven teenage boys disappeared from idyllic, tree-lined neighborhoods in Houston. This is the true story of how one dedicated forensic scientist finally identified the victims of the "Candy Man," one of America's most prolific serial killers. Houston, Texas, in the early 1970s was an exciting place-the home of NASA, the city of the future. But a string of missing teenage boys, many from the same neighborhood, hinted at a dark undercurrent that would go ignored for too long. While their siblings and friends wondered where they'd gone, the Houston Police Department dismissed them as thrill-seeking runaways, fleeing the Vietnam draft or conservative parents, likely looking to get high and join the counterculture. It was only after their killer, Dean Corll, was murdered by an accomplice that many of those boys' bodies were discovered in mass graves. Known as the "Candy Man," Corll was a local sweet shop owner who had enlisted two teenage boys to lure their friends to parties where they would be tortured and killed, and then buried. All of Corll's victims' bodies were badly decomposed; some were only skeletal. Known collectively as the Lost Boys, many were never identified. Decades later, when forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick discovered a box of remains marked "1973 Murders" in the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office, she knew she had to act. It would take prison interviews with Corll's accomplices, advanced scientific techniques, and years of tireless effort to identify the young men whose lives had been taken. But one by one, nearly all of their names have been returned to them. Investigative journalist Lise Olsen immerses readers in this astonishing story, simultaneously bringing to life the teens who were hunted by a killer hiding in plain sight and the extraordinary woman who would finally give his victims back their dignity and their names. The upside-down murder mystery reveals new information about this case and astonishing facts about why these victims were forgotten in the 1970s-and why what happened to them remains relevant.

Reviews

Lise Olsen is not only a masterful investigative reporter, shes one hell of a storyteller. Her writing jumps off the page. Her sentences are completely dramatic, her character descriptions spot on. I felt a pit in my stomach reading The Scientist and the Serial Killer.Skip Hollandsworth, New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Assassin

A murder mystery in reverse, The Scientist and the Serial Killer traces the hunt for an essential type of justice: identity. This is the story of a scientists obsession to bring that justice to the families of a killers unknown victims, five decades after they vanished. No surprise that Olsen, who has devoted much of her celebrated career in journalism to the missing, simultaneously delivers a fascinating history of forensic science.Claudia Rowe, author of The Spider and the Fly

The Scientist and the Serial Killer is a brilliant work of reporting and writing as Olsen takes readers on a dark voyage into a mass murder that has haunted Houston for decades. But instead of stopping there, she recounts how one brave forensic investigatorfinally brought light to families whose private investigations and perpetual grief had been repeatedly ignored by authorities. Olsens mystery story is impossible to put down, but the families losses and her heroines persistence will stay with you forever.Mimi Swartz, author of Ticker

Author Bio

Lise Olsen is an investigative reporter, editor, and award-winning author of the books Code of Silence and The Scientist and the Serial Killer. Her reports have contributed to the prosecutions of a former congressman and a federal judge, inspired laws and reforms, helped solve cold cases, restored names to unidentified murder victims, and freed wrongfully held prisoners. Her writing has appeared in the Texas Observer, NBC News, the Houston Chronicle, Texas Monthly and elsewhere. She's featured in Netflix's The Texas Killing Fields, Paramount+'s The Pillowcase Murders, CNN's The Wrong Man, and the A&E series The Eleven. She lives near Houston, Texas and has two boys of her own.