“Son O Son”
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Medium: |
India ink, pencil, graphite, digital transfer and encaustic on wood (found headboard) |
| Height: |
44 inches |
| Width: |
30.5 inches |
| Depth: |
1.25 inches |
| Status: |
Completed, 2003 |
| Comments: |
The headboard itself is a found object. The images around the extreme (purplish) edge are a digital collage created from scans of the original cartoon decals which are present on the headboard. |
| Background: |
The piece is created in memory of Mary Henley, the mother of Elmer Wayne Henley, the accomplice to Dean Corll ("The Candy Man") the most prolific mass murderer in Houston history. Corll killed 24 boys in the Houston Heights. Corll was killed by Elmer Wayne Henley in 1973, shortly after their only female victim escaped.
Henley claimed to be a victim of Corll, and he said Corll had forced him to bring him boys from the neighborhood to abuse and later kill.
Henley also claimed he had killed Corll in self-defense shortly after their intended victim escaped. Henley led the police to a boat storage warehouse where Corll's many victim's bodies were buried. Henley is serving a life sentence in prison (this was before the death penalty in Texas was reinstated). I heard he has taken up art as a hobby.
I worked with Mrs. Henley at Kaplans Ben Hur in the 70s. It was hard to believe that such as sweet woman could have borne a mass murdurer, but I remember her telling me that two of her four boys were in prison for murder and the other two died in motorcycle accidents. The men and women depicted around the baby in the painting are all famous mass-murderers. Many of the other images come from the Lindburg baby case. The pencil sketch of the woman is based on an old photograph which I bought at a thrift store.
There are two other links to this case which cropped up later in my life. My piano teacher lived in Woodland Heights at the time Corll was active and around 1971 she told me that several of her young male students had "gone missing." It was such a strange thing, and she was very worried about these students. She said that they were "good kids" and that they would not have run off, as the authorities had suggested. I am sure that these young boys were Corll's victims, for most of his victims had lived in the Woodland Heights neighborhood.
And secondly, after I had lived in the Woodland Heights neighborhood myself for ten years, I found out that my grandmother's apartment (where I had been living) was just a few houses down from the duplex that Corll had lived in, and from which his last intended victim escaped.
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