40 years after Houston serial killings, one victim still unidentified

This cabin near Lake Sam Rayburn in Broaddus, Texas, is owned by the family of Dean Corll, 33, the alleged central figure in 1973 a mass slaying case. Sheriff's deputies searched the cabin and found torture items inside the cabin and under it. (AP Photo) less This cabin near Lake Sam Rayburn in Broaddus, Texas, is owned by the family of Dean Corll, 33, the alleged central figure in 1973 a mass slaying case. Sheriff's deputies searched the cabin and found torture ... more Photo: Anonymous, ASSOCIATED PRESS Photo: Anonymous, ASSOCIATED PRESS Image 1 of / 35 Caption Close 40 years after Houston serial killings, one victim still unidentified 1 / 35 Back to Gallery

As the 40th anniversary of serial killer Dean Corll's death approaches, a forensic anthropologist is again asking for the public's help in naming the last of 29 young men discovered in mass graves.

Sharon Derrick, of the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, is seeking the identity of a boy, possibly as young as 16, who was found buried in a stall Corll had rented in a southwest Houston boat shed.

The murder spree ended Aug. 8, 1973, when Corll was killed in his Pasadena house by teenaged accomplice Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. Henley remains in prison, as does David Brooks, who also helped lure victims.

That day and the next, investigators found the remains of 16 boys and young men at the boat shed in the 4500 block of Silver Bell Street. It was the largest of three mass graves where Corll and his helpers buried their victims.

Next month, Derrick will make a brief presentation at the 40th high school reunion of Waltrip High School's class of 1973.

The class members would likely be about the same age as the unidentified victim, whom Derrick believes probably disappeared in 1971 or 1972.

"I really want to get this information out to them," she said. "What we need is people to step up and say, 'I had a friend who went missing. Here's his name.' "

Something that bothers Derrick is the relatively little news coverage the case has received over the years outside the Houston area.

"In Houston, there's a core of people who are still very angry and very sad about what happened here," said Derrick, who has helped identify five of the victims since 2006.

"I'm concerned that family members of this boy have completely moved out of the area, and we're not getting national coverage on the Internet," she said.

The unidentified teen was buried with striped swim trunks, a tan shirt with a peace symbol on the back and cowboy boots.

The shirt has several tiny letters that might be LB4 MF or possibly LBHMF.

"We still wonder if he had a military person in his family," Derrick said. "There's just something about his clothing that makes you think he's either protesting the military or has a conection to the military. A lot of boys his age had older brothers or fathers who were in Vietnam."

Derrick believes the teen stood 5-5 or 5-6 and had dark brown hair that hung over the tops of his ears. His teeth were in good condition and had no fillings.

The boy's DNA profile has been entered into a national database and, locally, has been compared against six or seven family samples with no match, Derrick said.

Because almost all of the known victims were from the Houston area, Derrick said she believes the unidentified young man was, also.

"Nobody was from any further away than Baton Rouge, that we know of," she said.

Anyone who might have information about the boy's identity is asked to call the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences' Identification Unit at 713-796-6774.