Mandaeism or Mandaeanism (Modern Mandaic: Mandaʻiūtā‎ (מנדעיותא); Arabic: مندائية‎ Mandāʼīyah/Mandāʾiyyah; Persian: مندائیان‎ Mandâ'iyân) is a gnostic religion^{[citation needed]} (Aramaic manda means "knowledge", as does Greek gnosis) with a strongly dualistic worldview.

Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist, but reject Jesus of Nazareth and are hostile to Christianity. They are sometimes identified with mentions in the Quran of the Sabian religion, particularly in an Arabian context, but the Sabian religious community is extinct today.

According to most scholars, Mandaeans migrated from the Southern Levant to Mesopotamia in the first centuries CE and are certainly of pre-Arab and pre-Islamic origin. They are Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. They may well be related to the "Nabateans of Iraq" who were pagan, Aramaic speaking indigenous pre-Arab and pre-Islamic inhabitants of southern Iraq.

Dean Arnold Corll (December 24, 1939 – August 8, 1973) was an American serial killer, also known as the "Candy Man" and the "Pied Piper" who, together with two youthful accomplices named David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, abducted, raped, tortured and murdered a minimum of 28 boys in a series of killings spanning from 1970 to 1973 in Houston, Texas. The crimes, which became known as the Houston Mass Murders, came to light only after Henley shot and killed Corll.

Corll was known as both the Candy Man and the Pied Piper due to the fact that he and his family had owned and operated a candy factory in the Heights and he had been known to give free candy to local children.

At the time of their discovery, the Houston Mass Murders were considered the worst example of serial murder in American history.

Dean Arnold Corll was born on December 24, 1939 in Fort Wayne, Indiana; the first child of Mary Robinson and Arnold Edwin Corll. Corll's father was strict with his son, whereas his mother was extremely protective of Dean. The marriage of Corll's parents was marred by frequent quarrelling and the couple divorced in 1946, four years after the birth of their younger son, Stanley. Mary Corll subsequently sold the family home and relocated to a trailer home in Memphis, Tennessee, where Arnold Corll had been drafted into the Air Force after the couple had divorced, in order that her sons could retain contact with their father. Corll's parents subsequently attempted reconciliation.