Katherine Ramsland and Tracy Ullman’s true crime book The Serial Killer’s Apprentice: The True Story of How Houston’s Deadliest Murderer Turned a Kid Into a Killing Machine is a deeply discomforting reading experience. Given the subject matter, it would be almost impossible for it to be anything else. It’s the story of Dean Corll, a multiple murderer and sex offender who not only preyed upon children, but who also groomed two teenagers to help him gather victims.
In the wrong hands, this story could be turned into an exploitative, tawdry, and tasteless cash grab. But thankfully, that is not the case here. Ramsland and Ullman take a horrible series of events and treat it intelligently, sensitively, and always respectfully. This is not true crime as entertainment. This is true crime as a morality tale, an attempt to explore how twisted predators work, and how ordinary young people can be brainwashed and corrupted. Throughout the book, the authors walk a tightrope, always keeping their moral compass clear and never shying away from the horrific aspects of the crimes, yet simultaneously they manage to keep their emotions in check, refraining from infusing bathos into the narrative, while simultaneously preventing the prose from being cold, clinical, and detached. The Serial Killer’s Apprentice is not the sort of book that was written purely for profit. This book was crafted to inform readers how evil can be confronted.
The Serial Killer’s Apprentice tracks a stomach-churning series of crimes, before addressing some of the behavioral science and neurology that informs what caused these terrible actions. One of the teenagers who became one of Corll’s confederates has been interviewed, and there’s a real sense that he’s trying to find some level of redemption through attempting to warn parents about how their children could potentially be caught up in unthinkable traps that can never be escaped.
Frequently unnerving and full of details that may haunt readers for a long time to come, The Serial Killer’s Apprentice is definitely not light reading, but it is a valiant and dignified effort to confront a subject that defies easy analysis.
