Lise Olsen — The Scientist and the Serial Killer: The Search for Houston's Lost Boys - with special guest Sharon Derrick

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.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593595688?ic_referral=F02d9y_9zB5eGL2W-cwYqFNXD7Md23oo1RgK2BGlJKQwM0Z6uAS7OOTGdPzGcaJoL-lS3NUXV__kUjOzEkTm9Jfz2v-IjTGfCviVj07BLJRo_i94rV7sYqKSshMHF3uJfGmb4wLise 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.Olsen is joined by special guest Dr. Sharon M. Derrick, an Austin, Texas native, who began an investigation to identify the teenaged victims of serial killer Dean Corll in 2006 as a Forensic Anthropologist for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. Her groundbreaking investigation and discoveries are featured in The Scientist and the Serial Killer, as well as in Texas Monthly,  The Clown and the Candy Man docuseries, and in The Houston Chronicle. She is currently Coordinator of the Forensics Sciences Program and Associate Professor at Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi.*recorded 4/4/2025