This week’s edition of Criminally Texas is the second of a multi-part series about the “Candyman” murders of 1970-73.
B etween the summer of 1971 and the summer of 1974, at least 10 preteen and teenage girls were found dead in an area south and east from Houston, stretching from Galveston down to Angleton. The area became known as the Texas Killing Fields; in this part of the state, young women were targeted, becoming victims of sexual assault in many cases before being killed.
Sometimes, the young victims would be identified as runaways, which was often the case back in the early 1970s. Back then, the narrative was that kids were stirred by the promise of a counterculture, and they’d pack up and head to big cities where drugs, music and social liberation were all the rage.
It was always more complicated than that. Some youths had mental health challenges they couldn’t face in their homes. Maybe teens were fleeing bad or ignorant parents. Or maybe they didn’t really run away at all; maybe they went out one day with a friend thinking they’d return home before dinner, only to turn up later in a special news bulletin…