Roy Bunton

Roy Eugene Bunton, a 19-year-old Black man known to his loved ones as "Ikie," was a hardworking assistant manager at a shoe store in Houston, Texas. He lived with his family on East 13 1/2 Street in the Houston Heights neighborhood. Remembered as a beloved son and brother, his sudden disappearance in the summer of 1972 left his family with decades of unanswered questions and the enduring pain of not knowing his fate. For nearly four decades, his sister never stopped looking for him, scanning crowds in the hope of seeing his face.

On August 21, 1972, Bunton vanished while walking to his job at the Northwest Mall. His family reported him missing, but the trail went cold. Unbeknownst to them, he had become a victim of one of Houston's most notorious serial killers, Dean Corll. Corll, with the help of teenage accomplices David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley Jr., was in the midst of a killing spree that targeted dozens of boys and young men. Bunton was abducted, taken to one of Corll's residences, and his eyes and face were bound with adhesive tape. He was shot twice in the head at close range and his body was hidden away.

The horrific scope of Corll's crimes, which became known as the "Houston Mass Murders," came to light on August 8, 1973, when Henley shot and killed Corll. Henley then confessed, leading police to multiple burial sites. In a boat storage shed Corll rented at 4500 Silverbell Street, investigators unearthed the remains of numerous victims. In the confusion and hysteria of the gruesome discoveries, one of the bodies recovered from the boat shed was misidentified as another of Corll's victims, 15-year-old Michael Baulch. In reality, these were the remains of Roy Bunton. Because of this error, Bunton was not listed among the identified victims, and his family was left to wonder if he was among the dead or had simply run away.

For 38 years, Roy Bunton was officially a missing person, his case unsolved. The break came decades later through the persistent work of Dr. Sharon Derrick, a forensic anthropologist with the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office. Suspecting a misidentification had occurred in 1973, Dr. Derrick obtained a court order to exhume the body that had been buried under Michael Baulch's name. After 10 months of laboratory analysis, forensic examination and DNA testing confirmed the remains were not Baulch's. In November 2011, the victim was positively identified as Roy Eugene Bunton.

The identification finally brought a painful answer to the Bunton family. His sister was informed that her long-lost brother had indeed been a victim of the serial murders she had always feared he was connected to. The news was devastating, but it ended the torment of uncertainty. Because Bunton's body had been misidentified for so long, Corll's accomplices, Henley and Brooks, were never specifically charged or tried for his murder. Corll, the primary suspect in Bunton's death, was killed before his full list of victims was known.

Following his identification, a court-ordered delayed certificate of death was issued, officially marking his date of death as August 21, 1972, the day he disappeared. On December 3, 2011, Roy Eugene Bunton was finally laid to rest under his own name at Forest Park East Cemetery in Webster, Texas. His case is now considered closed, as his killer is deceased. The resolution, nearly 40 years after his murder, stands as a testament to the dedication of forensic scientists and the enduring love of a family that never stopped searching for answers.