Lise Olsen w/ Lewis Kamb, THE SCIENTIST AND THE SERIAL KILLER

About the Book

Houston, Texas, in the early 1970s was an exciting place—the home of NASA, the city of the future. But a string of missing teenage boys, many from the same neighborhood, hinted at a dark undercurrent that would go ignored for too long. While their siblings and friends wondered where they’d gone, the Houston Police Department dismissed them as thrill-seeking 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. Known as the “Candy Man,” Corll was a local sweet shop owner who had enlisted two teenage boys to lure their friends to parties where they would be tortured and killed, and then buried.

All of Corll’s victims’ bodies were badly decomposed; some were only skeletal. Known collectively as the Lost Boys, many were never identified. Decades later, when forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick discovered a box of remains marked “1973 Murders” in the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office, she knew she had to act. It would take Pr*son interviews with Corll’s accomplices, advanced scientific techniques, and years of tireless effort to identify the young men whose lives had been taken. But one by one, nearly all of their names have been returned to them.

Investigative journalist Lise Olsen immerses readers in this astonishing story, simultaneously bringing to life the teens who were hunted by a killer hiding in plain sight and the extraordinary woman who would finally give his victims back their dignity and their names. The upside-down M**der mystery reveals new information about this case and astonishing facts about why these victims were forgotten in the 1970s—and why what happened to them remains relevant.

Lise Olsen is an investigative reporter and author of The Scientist and the Serial Killer, a bestselling new book from Random House that recounts how a forensic anthropologist unlocked the identities of the unnamed victims of a Texas serial killer -- thereby revealing shocking truths about that case that still resonate today. Lise is a long-time investigative journalist whose work in several states has led to the prosecutions of a federal judge, and of a corrupt congressman, as well as the release of wrongfully held prisoners and the identifications of several M**der victims. Her work has been featured in the Texas Observer, the Houston Chronicle and in documentaries on CNN, A & E, Paramount+ and Netflix. Her long-term fascination with America's missing persons and unnamed dead began during her stint at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, during which she co-wrote a series on those topics in collaboration with Lewis Kamb, now of NBC News. Her first book, Code of Silence, (Beacon Press 2021) won book awards from the Texas Institute of Letters and the nonprofit Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Lewis Kamb, now with NBC News, previously worked at The Seattle P-I and at the Seattle Times, where he won a Pulitzer in national reporting for his work. In 30 years as a watchdog journalist, he’s specialized in stories on corporate negligence, police misconduct, political corruption, child sexual abuse, medical malpractice and other complex investigations into wrongdoing.

Pre-order your copy of The Scientist and the Serial Killer here.

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