Overview

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. NATIONAL BESTSELLER . The true story of how one dedicated forensic scientist restored the long-lost identities of the teenaged victims of the ""Candy Man,"" one of America's most prolific serial killers ""A masterwork of crime writing . . . Lise Olsen has taken a fifty-year-old story and made it new and fresh and terrifyingly real.""-S. C. Gwynne, New York Times bestselling author of Rebel Yell Houston, Texas, in the early 1970s was an exciting place-the home of NASA, the city of the future. But a string of more than two dozen missing teenage boys hinted at a dark undercurrent that would go ignored for too long. While their siblings and friends wondered where they had gone, the Houston police department dismissed them as 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. Corll, known as the ""Candy Man,"" was a local sweet-shop owner who had enlisted two teens to lure their friends to parties, where they would be tortured and killed. All of Corll's victims' bodies were badly decomposed; some were only skeletal. Known collectively as the Lost Boys, many were never identified and some remained undiscovered. Decades later, when forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick discovered a box of remains marked ""1973 Murders"" in the Harris County Medical Examiner's office, she recalled the horrifying crime from her own childhood, and knew she had to act. It would take prison interviews with Corll's accomplices, advanced scientific techniques, and years of tireless effort to identify these young men. Investigative journalist Lise Olsen brings to life the teens who were hunted by a killer hiding in plain sight and the extraordinary woman who would finally give his unknown victims back their names and their dignity. With newly uncovered information about the case, The Scientist and the Serial Killer immerses readers in an astonishing story and reveals why these horrific events remain relevant decades later.

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Reviews

“Lise Olsen is not only a masterful investigative reporter, she’s 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   “The Scientist and the Serial Killer is a masterwork of crime writing. Lise Olsen has taken a fifty-year-old story and made it new and fresh and terrifyingly real. I hate to use the old cliché, but for anyone interested in crime narratives this is a must-read. Her brilliantly organized pages turn themselves.”—S. C. Gwynne, author of the New York Times bestsellers Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell “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 scientist’s obsession to bring that justice to the families of a killer’s 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 once forgotten murder victims of a Houston serial killer are lost no more, their stories brought achingly to life in an act of redemptive recognition that is both haunting and heartbreaking. The Scientist and the Serial Killer is essential reading, for the depth and precision of its meticulous reporting, for its gripping storytelling, and for its insistence on providing the long-overdue justice these Lost Boys never received in their own brief lives. Its elegiac power has stayed with me long after the final pages.”—Ellen McGarrahan, author of Two Truths and a Lie “Lise Olsen has expertly crafted a fascinating, in-depth examination of one of the most horrific serial-killing sprees in U.S. history and the dedicated forensic scientist who unraveled a mystery that haunted Houston for decades. A must read for CSI and true crime fans, The Scientist and the Serial Killer kept me up late into the night. Highly recommended.”—Kathryn Casey, author of In Plain Sight “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 investigator finally brought light to families whose private investigations and perpetual grief had been repeatedly ignored by authorities. Olsen’s mystery story is impossible to put down, but the families’ losses and her heroine’s persistence will stay with you forever.”—Mimi Swartz, author of Ticker

“Lise Olsen is not only a masterful investigative reporter, she’s 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   “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 investigator finally brought light to families whose private investigations and perpetual grief had been repeatedly ignored by authorities. Olsen’s mystery story is impossible to put down, but the families’ losses and her heroine’s persistence will stay with you forever.”—Mimi Swartz, author of Ticker

Author Information

Lise Olsen is an investigative reporter and editor and the award-winning author of 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 and identify 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 is 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, where she and her husband raised two boys of their own.

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