Joseph Allen Lyles was 17 when he disappeared from Houston on February 1, 1973. He was an acquaintance of Dean Corll and lived on the same street as one of Corll’s teenage associates, David Brooks. Witnesses reported that Lyles had been at Corll’s apartment and was seen being grabbed by Corll at his Wirt Road residence; after being overpowered he was murdered and taken to a beach in Jefferson County for burial.

The larger pattern behind Lyles’s death emerged in August 1973, when Dean Corll was shot and killed by accomplice Elmer Wayne Henley. Henley and Brooks then confessed and led authorities to multiple burial sites tied to what became known as the Houston Mass Murders. Lyles’s remains were discovered on a Jefferson County beach in August 1983 and finally identified by DNA in November 2009, confirming him as one of Corll’s victims.

Does anyone have memories of Joseph, his neighborhood, or that Wirt Road area in early 1973 that could add detail to his last movements?