"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 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 sweetshop 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 with the year 1973 in the Harris County Medical Examiner's office, she recalled the horrifying crimes 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 these unknown victims back their names and their dignity"-- Provided by publisher.
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