Henry Lee Lucas

[Scorpio]

Henry Lee Lucas achieved notoriety following his arrest for firearm possession in Texas, 1983, claiming to have committed 150 homicides. After his conviction and incarceration for the murders of his employer,Kate Ritch, and 15 year old girlfriend, Becky Powell, the number of confessions increased to over 600. After meeting accomplice Ottis Toole in 1975, an eight year crime spree followed; this act included, according to Henry, strangling's, knifings , hit and runs, shootings and hangings.
Thses claims were verified by Ottis Toole from his Florida prison cell. Contradictory evidence soon cast doubt upon the validity of the great many of the confessions, and Lucas would retract all of the confessions except one, the murder of Lucas's mother, Viola.
How many people did Lucas really kill ? Is he a fraud or a cunning serial killer who has managed to conceal the truth through a process of obfuscation?

[JeffHamm]

My understanding is that there is nothing to tie Henry and Otis to any of the killings apart from the confessions, and there is evidence that Henry was elsewhere at the time of some of the murders he confessed to. He also confessed to a murder which was a fake (the police made up a murder case and presented it to him, and he confessed to it and started making up a story based upon the photos he was shown, etc).

So, other than his mother and Becky, it seems unlikely that Henry killed anybody else. Otis was in love with Henry, and was also not very bright, and would agree with anything Henry said, so he would probably have confirmed a claim that Henry shot President Lincoln had Henry said so. Henry received a lot of special treatment and favours for each confession, and he enjoyed being the centre of all the fuss. He retracted his confessions once it became apparent he might get convicted for them and sentenced to death.

There's a Netflix documentary series about him (The Confession Killer, I think it's called). It seems a fairly well balanced presentation of what was going on, but I'm not an expert on Henry and O'Toole so take that into consideration with respect to my perception of it.

- Jeff

[Scorpio]

There is no doubt about Henrys unreliability, but Im not so sure someone as unstable as Lucas should be left completely out of the picture. Ottis Toole later threatened to kill Lucas if given the opportunity for the murder of his niece, so I am not convinced he would lie just to please Henry

[JeffHamm]

There is no doubt about Henrys unreliability, but Im not so sure someone as unstable as Lucas should be left completely out of the picture. Ottis Toole later threatened to kill Lucas if given the opportunity for the murder of his niece, so I am not convinced he would lie just to please Henry

I think at the time he was corroborating Henry he was trying to please him, though. His attitude may have changed since then. I suppose, once Henry made all the confessions, Toole could be corroborating simply as a way to get back at Henry as well (same action but with the opposite motivation). Either way, I'm not sure Toole can be considered a reliable witness. If they found something tangible to tie Henry to any of the offenses he confessed to that has never been made public as far as I'm aware. Again, I could be horribly out dated and certainly I'm under informed on the finer details. His unending confessions have created so much noise it's hard to know if there's really anything real in there or not, and if there is, which of the 600+ would be the ones to check? Mind you, if there's any DNA from unsolved crimes, his profile will be in the databases and should eventually be found. So far, though, I don't think he's come up as connected to anything.

- Jeff