Sex-torture conviction overturned; 27 were slain

AUSTIN, Tex. (AP) A state court yesterday overturned the conviction of Elmer W. Henley, four years after he was sentenced to six life terms in a case stemming from 27 sex-torture killings in the Houston area.

The Texas Court of Criminal

Appeals ordered the case returned

to San Antonio on grounds that the trial court there had not given enough consideration to a request for a change of venue. The defense had contended publicity in San Antonio would prejudice the jury.

Ironically, the case had been

again,

taken to San Antonio after a change of venue from Houston on grounds of the wide attention the grisly case had attracted.

The case had unfolded in 1973 when Henley, a high school dropout who was then 18, telephoned police and told them he had shot and killed

Dean A. Corll, head of a homosexual torture ring. A teen-age girl told police she had been strapped nude to a large board and tortured just before Corll was killed.

Police arrested Henley, who, over a period of days, led police to the bodies of 27 males buried in a boat

shed in Houston, on a beach near Galveston, and in the East Texas pine forests north of Houston.

Many of the young victims were from Henley's neighborhood, and he eventually was convicted of killing six of them.

However, the appeals court found he was denied due process when District Judge Preston H. Dial re-

fused to allow him to present evidence to support the claim that the trial should be moved from San Antonio.

The appeals justices also voiced concern over Henley's contention he was denied a fair trial when the court refused to sequester the jury and overruled his objection to placing of newsmen.