The Scientist and the Serial Killer

The Search for Houston's Lost Boys

By: Lise Olsen

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

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 listeners in an astonishing story and reveals why these horrific events remain relevant decades later.

©2025 Lise Olsen (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Lise Olsen’s story of Houston’s Lost Boys gripped me from the first page. In raw detail, she describes the battle between a dead serial killer who targeted teenaged boys and a forensic scientist who sought to identify the victims—a battle between evil and science, and science wins. Olsen is vivid writer, finely drawing the victims and their families, the police and the scientists, and mainly, the obsessed murderer and the equally obsessed forensic heroine. This is a triumph of investigative reporting.”—Barbara Bradley Hagerty, New York Times bestselling author of Bringing Ben Home

“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 bestseller Rebel Yell

“Lise Olsen is not only a masterful investigative reporter, she’s one hell of a storyteller. Her sentences are completely dramatic, her character descriptions spot on. I felt a pit in my stomach reading this book.”—Skip Hollandsworth, author of the New York Times bestseller The Midnight Assassin