Norman Lamar Prater

• Missing Since 01/14/1973
• Missing From Dallas, Texas
• Classification Endangered Missing
• Sex Male
• Race White
• Date of Birth 06/06/1956 (68)
• Age 16 years old
• Height and Weight 5'8, 130 pounds
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Brown hair, brown or blue eyes. Norman has attached earlobes.

Details of Disappearance

Norman was last seen in Dallas, Texas on January 14, 1973. At about midnight, he went to the all-night coffee shop where his mother worked and had a soft drink. He was accompanied by two teenage boys with shoulder-length hair whom his mother didn't recognize, and one older Hispanic man whom she knew by sight.

Norman told his mother he was going home, and he agreed to help her move the next day. He apparently never arrived home and has never been heard from again.

Authorities looked into the possibility that Norman was a victim of the serial killer Dean Corll. Corll, nicknamed the "Candy Man," was responsible for the sexual assault and murder of at least 28 teenage boys and young men in Houston, Texas between 1970 and 1973. Two accomplices, eighteen-year-old David Owen Brooks and seventeen-year-old Elmer Wayne Henley Jr., helped lure victims to his house, and Corll paid them $200 per person each.

Henley shot Corll to death in August 1973, then called the police and confessed to his role in the abductions and murders. Ultimately, 28 bodies were recovered; one has never been identified. One known victim, Mark Steven Scott, remains missing.

Henley and Brooks were convicted for their roles in Corll's crimes. Henley was sentenced to six consecutive terms of 99 years in prison and remains incarcerated. Brooks was convicted of one count of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 2020, at the age of 65.

Norman lived in Houston with his father during the 1970-1971 school year, in the neighborhood where many of Corll's victims came from, and he attended Jackson Junior High School in Houston, which Henley also went to. After Norman moved to Dallas to be with his mother, he continued to visit Houston regularly on weekends.

It hasn't been proven that Norman was one of Corll's victims, and none of the recovered corpses turned out to be his. His case remains unsolved.