Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Confession Killer” Pt. 2 - Henry Lee Lucas

Episode Date: May 22, 2018

Henry Lee Lucas served only 10 years for killing his abusive mother. After being released early due to overcrowding, he longed for a sense of family and befriended fellow murderer Ottis Toole. Lucas moved in with Toole and his family. Once together,they spent most of their time together, working as roofers, and killing innocent victims. Or did they?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You in? Must be 21 to enter. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes dramatizations and discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Convicted. For almost a dozen murders you never committed. Even worse, all of America believes you're guilty. And the public is ready to see you pay for your crimes with your life.

Inmate Lucas, you'll remain under observation throughout today. It sounds like something straight out of... a nightmare, but that's the situation that Henry Lee Lucas may have purposely put himself into. In the 1980s, Lucas confessed to the murders of thousands of people all across the United States. If he was telling the truth, then he was the country's most dangerous serial killer. But was Lucas really the most prolific killer in America? Or was it all a bunch of lies? Hi, I'm Greg Polson, and this is serial killers.

Today we're going to continue our deep dive into the life of Henry Lee Lucas, otherwise known as the Confession Killer. Lucas may have killed more people than any other serial killer in American history. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. We'd like to ask a quick favor. Would you leave a five-star review of serial killers on your favorite podcast directory? It seems so simple, but it really helps us out. And don't forget to subscribe while you're there because a new episode comes out every Monday. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and on Twitter at Parcast Network

or on our website, parcast.com. Henry Lee Lucas was an itinerate American serial killer who became active in 1978 after he befriended fellow murderer Otis Thule. They allegedly committed many of their murders together as they traveled around the United States during the late 1970s. Lucas also killed several women on his own, and he's infamous for the murder of a young hitchhiker from Oklahoma,

known only as Orange Sox. Lucas confessed to over 3,000 murders after his arrest in 1983, which led to his designation as a marriage. America's most prolific serial killer. But Lucas later recanted, and the factual inaccuracies of his confessions have led many to believe he was lying about all of it. In part one, we got a glimpse into Henry Lee Lucas's early life and his troubled history growing up in an abusive home.

Lucas' own mother struck him repeatedly on the head with a wooden board when he was eight years old, putting him in a coma for 36 hours and leaving him with a permanent brain injury. Two major factors affected Lucas's psyche growing up, his physically, emotionally and sexually abusive household, and the traumatic brain injury, or TBI, that stunted Lucas's mental development and caused serious lasting side effects. Vanessa is going to dive into Lucas's psychology here and throughout the episode. She's not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she's done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. Unsurprisingly, Lucas's first murder victim was his abusive mother, whom he killed on January 11, 1960, when he was 23. He then spent most of the next

10 years in the Michigan penal system. Lucas made multiple suicide attempts during his time in prison and repeatedly claimed to hear the voice of his dead mother. So authorities eventually transferred Lucas to the Iona State Mental Hospital and subjected him to electroshock therapy. In 1970, Lucas was released early due to prison overcrowding, but he was arrested twice more over the next several years, once for the attempted kidnapping of two young girls and a second time for stealing a relative's truck. But there are more vicious crimes Lucas committed during the late 1970s that he was never charged for. From 1975 to 1977, Lucas sexually abused his two stepdaughters over the course of his marriage to their mother, Betty Crawford. Fortunately,

the girls told their mother about the abuse, and Betty quickly divorced Lucas in the summer of 1977. But if we're to believe his confessions, it wasn't enough for Lucas to abuse those close to him. He wanted to kill. That brings us to where we left off at the end of part one, and what we'll discuss today in part two, the crimes Lucas confessed to committing after he met Otis Toole. In the mid-1970s, Lucas met Otis Tool at a soup kitchen in Jacksonville, Florida. Lucas had just turned 40, and Toole was in his 30s. Tool quickly became a seminal figure in Lucas' life. The two had a lot in common, including including childhoods marked by abuse and severe head injuries.

They also shared a fascination with violence that led them to become a deadly duo, and in November of 1978 they began their murderous rampage. On November 1, 1978, Lucas and Toul traveled to Kennewick, Washington and broke into the apartment of 19-year-old Lisa Martini. Lucas violently raped Lisa before stabbing her to death and mutilating her body. But Lucas and Toole were just getting started. A few days later, on November 5th, the pair claimed their next victims. While driving along Interstate 35 in Texas,

Lucas and Toole spotted Frank Kevin K. And Rita Salazar walking along the road. Tool shot Kevin with a pistol, while Lucas raped Rita before shooting her six times in the chat. It's important to note that the rapes and murders that Lucas confessed to were spread out far across the country. This is one of the key issues that would later lead investigators to doubt his confessions. But it does make sense that Lucas would keep up the vagabond lifestyle necessary to commit these numerous murders. He had spent his entire young adult life roaming around the country in search of shelter and family. And it was in Tool that he found that sense of family.

Tool looked out for Lucas, getting him several manual labor jobs in his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. He even gave Lucas a place to live. In 1978, the same year Lucas and Toole began their murders, Lucas moved into the overcrowded Tool home in Florida. Lucas and Toole lived with Toole's mother, Sarah, Sarah's husband, Robert, and Toole's wife, Novella. Also living in the home were two young children, Toul's nephew, Frank Powell, and his 11-year-old niece, Frida Becky Powell. Lucas inexplicably gave Frida the nickname Becky and the name stuck. It wasn't long before Lucas quickly began grooming the little girl. Forensic psychologist Catherine Ramsland notes that sexual

predators frequently start the grooming process by befriending the parents and family members of the children they plan to victimize. Lucas did just that by embedding himself in the Toul family. This gave him easy access to the young girl so he could manipulate and sexually assault her. But Lucas wasn't just spending his time grooming Becky. Not long after Lucas moved in with Toul in 1978, the pair began committing some of their most notorious murders. On the evening of April 18th of 1979, 24-year-old Yolanda Hernandez-Garcia was walking down the street in Uvaldi, Texas when Lucas and Toul jumped her. The men raped Yolanda,

then stabbed her four times in the chest and once in the genitals, killing her. The next night, on April 19th, Lucas and Toul traveled to Oklahoma City to continue their violent rampage. They stabbed, mutilated and dismembered 23-year-old Arlie Bell Killian.

Lucas and Tool decided to lie low after their southwestern spree, returning to Florida to work as roofers and hard laborers. Like many other serial killers we've investigated on this show, Lucas seemed to have cooling off periods. According to a 2008 FBI report, serial killers will sometimes stop murdering if they find greater satisfaction in their work or, home life. Perhaps Lucas stopped killing from April to October of 1979 because his job as a roofer

kept him occupied. Unfortunately, Lucas soon grew restless as summer turned to fall, and on October 22, 1979, Lucas and Toole committed their next heinous murder. That October evening, Harry and Molly Schlesinger were working the counter at the local convenience store they owned in Travis County, Texas. Lucas and Toole burst into the shop, ready to rob the place with no witnesses left behind. They fired a bullet into Molly's face, then shot Harry in the head and the gut. With the potential witnesses dead, Lucas and Toole helped themselves to money from the till and a beer from the fridge. The pair then camped out across the street and watched the investigators comb through the crime scene. Staying behind at the scene of the crime shows just how confident Lucas.

and Tool were that Texas police wouldn't catch them. Criminologist Scott Bonn notes that serial killers can eventually come to believe that they are infallible. That's when they finally make careless mistakes. But despite Lucas's reckless behavior, Texas police had no idea he was behind the October 22nd murders of Molly and Harry Schlesinger. Lucas was free to keep killing. And just a few days later, he would commit his most notorious murder.

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On Halloween night, 1979, Lucas was traveling alone without Toole, but that wasn't going to stop him from finding a new victim. victim. Lucas was driving through Oklahoma when he picked up a young woman hitchhiking outside of Oklahoma City. Lucas later claimed that he and the hitchhiker initially had consensual sex in the back of his car until she wanted to stop. Lucas then raped her, though he didn't use the word rape. In a New York Times article on what experts know about men who rape, Dr. Koss, a professor of public health at the University of Arizona, reveals that the that men will openly admit to raping women as long as their actions aren't categorized as rape. Apparently, even hardened criminals feel uncomfortable admitting that they are rapists.

Despite his claims of consensual sex, Lucas raped the hitchhiker. And when she tried to fight back, he grew enraged. He said, quote, I done choked her until she died. I had sex with her again. Then I pulled her out of the car and dropped her down the culvert. end quote. The hitchhiker's body was discovered on the interstate 35 outside of Austin, Texas. She was stripped completely naked, except for a pair of orange socks. Her identity was never determined, so the press and the police began to refer to her as

orange socks, and this was a crime that local police were eager to solve. Bodies had been appearing on the interstate at an alarming rate, and authorities were beginning to suspect a serial killer was a crime. in their midst. But was Lucas really the one committing these Texas murders? Contrary to his confession that he was in Texas in 1979, he was actually finding steady work in Jacksonville. He was also continuing to spend the fall of 1979 integrating himself into the Toul family. And while we don't know for sure if he raped and murdered the young hitchhiker in Texas, we do know that he was sexually abusing young Becky Powell.

Lucas already had a history of sexually abusing his stepdaughters. His former wife had divorced Lucas in 1977 to protect her children from him, but in the tool household, 12-year-old Becky Powell didn't have a parent willing to step in and protect her. And Becky may have been especially defenseless against Lucas's abuse. Those who knew the young girl as she was growing up described her as having an undiagnosed learning or cognitive disability. Professor Hillary Brown, author of a paper on the sexual abuse of children with disabilities,

notes that children with disabilities are both more vulnerable to sexual predators and less likely to receive government help and protection. She warns, quote, this places them in double jeopardy, end quote. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children confirms that Deaf and disabled children are over three times more likely to be abused or neglected than non-disabled children. Becky was raised by her grandmother, Sarah, but she was frequently neglected. According to Lucas's biographer Michael Cox, even while her grandmother was alive, Becky started to look to Lucas as a father figure of sorts.

All of these factors made it easier for Lucas to prey on Becky. We've already seen how he began the grooming process by before. friending her family. However, it seemed as though Becky might get a chance to escape Lucas's abuse. After Becky's grandmother, Sarah, passed away in 1981, 14-year-old Becky and her brother, Frank, moved out of the house they shared with Lucas and Toole, and into their mother, Drusilla's home. Unfortunately, Drusilla was struggling with a drug addiction. She was in no place to take care of Becky or keep her safe from predators like Lucas. He was easily able to maintain. his contact with the young teen and her 10-year-old brother.

Lucas even claimed that he and Tool dragged the children along on a murder-fueled road trip to Dave County, Florida in May of 1981. Lucas and Toole supposedly made Becky and Frank watch from the car as they raped and drowned 19-year-old Hazel Hawk and 17-year-old Linda Carbin. Police would later find Hazels and Linda's bound and gagged corpses in the marsh. But this is where we get to one of Lucas's many factual inconsistencies. School records show that both Becky and Frank were in school on the day of Linda's and Hazel's murders. So either Lucas got the date of the murders wrong, or he wasn't the one who actually killed Linda and Hazel. Becky may not have actually witnessed Lucas killing the two teens, but her home life still wasn't easy.

Her mother, Lucilla, wasn't able to overcome her drug addiction. And on December 16, 1981, Drusilla passed away from an overdose. Becky and Frank were placed into the state's care at the Jacksonville home for children that December. Frightlingly, Becky now had no guardians left to protect her from Lucas. After years of grooming the young girl,

Lucas saw this as the perfect opportunity to abuse and control her. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children warns that sexual predators will try to make children entirely reliant on them. And that's exactly what Lucas did with Becky. Just a few weeks after Becky was put into state care, Lucas and Toole kidnapped her. They stole Becky from the children's home on January 3rd, 1982, and brought her on the road with them. By breaking Becky out of the state facility, Lucas had taken complete control over her life.

Becky's uncle Toole offered her no protection. It's unclear whether he participated in her abuse or turned a blind eye to Lucas. But either way, Becky couldn't expect to get any help from the adult figures in her life. Lucas and Toll set off across the country with Becky in tow, keeping up their violent, vagabond lifestyle. Lucas claimed he was in love with Becky, but his actions don't line up with that. In February of 1982, they made a pit stop in Covington, Louisiana. Lucas raped 16-year-old Roxanne Sharp as Toul masturbated. Lucas then beat Roxanne and strangled her to death.

But what makes this even more disturbing is that Lucas allegedly coerced Becky into watching Roxanne's rape and murder. Lucas seems to have been grooming Becky not just as a romantic partner, but possibly even as his new partner in crime. As we've seen with other serial killer pairs, dominant serial killers sometimes devised tests for their new potential partners to see how they react to violence and murder. forcing Becky to watch as he committed murder could have been Lucas's twisted escalation of the grooming process. Lucas soon decided that he preferred Becky to her Uncle Tool. In the spring of 1982, Lucas left Toole behind so he could travel alone with Becky. Tool was furious about being replaced as Lucas's partner, and he took out his resentment over being abandoned on his victims. He was suspected of killing several more people from Texas down to his family.

Florida before he was arrested the next year. After leaving Tool behind, Lucas took Becky westward. They eventually found themselves hitchhiking in Hemet, California, where they met the Smart family, early in 1982. Jack Smart noticed Lucas and 15-year-old Becky by the side of the road and picked up the hitchhikers out of pity. Jack didn't realize that Becky was a young teen and mistook the pair for a down-on-the-their-luck-married couple.

Becky was eating food. Becky was eating food that had been donated to a shelter, and Lucas looked in dire shape. So Jack took them to the home he shared with his wife, Obera. The Smarts let Becky and Lucas stay in their home in exchange for labor provided by Lucas. Lucas and Becky settled into a comfortable pattern with the smarts. Lucas did odd jobs around the house, and Becky helped Obera with homemaking. Lucas and Becky stayed in Hemet until May of 1982. That's when O'Bara had an idea.

O'Bara's 82-year-old mother, Kate Rich, was in need of help on her farm in Texas. Lucas and Becky could stay with Kate and help her out. On May 17th, the Smarts purchased bus tickets for Lucas and Becky and sent them to Ringgold, Texas, to meet O'Bara's elderly mother, Kate. Kate Rich was a devout woman and very welcoming to the young couple. As Lucas worked on the house, Kate grew close to young. young Becky, and Lucas grew jealous of Becky's and Kate's friendship. He didn't want to give up an

ounce of control over Becky's life. Not long after they arrived, Lucas got hold of Kate's checkbook and began forging checks to steal her money. As soon as Kate found out, she kicked Lucas out and poor Becky with him. Lucas was happy to leave. Becky was all his again. Following their expulsion from Kate Rich's home, Lucas and Becky found shelter just a few miles south in Stoneberg, Texas by June of 1982. They became acquainted with Pastor Rubin Moore, who hired Lucas on as a roofer for the House of Prayer. Lucas kept Becky isolated in a shack on the House of Prayer property, but Becky sought some freedom from Lucas's controlling behavior by attending weekly services at the house a prayer. She even periodically visited Kate Rich throughout that summer as Lucas completed his

roofing work. But by August of 1982, Becky was feeling homesick for Florida. As she spent more time in the company of others at church, she began to realize that Lucas was manipulating and abusing her. She wanted to leave. As we've discussed in past episodes, women are in the most danger from their abusers when they try to flee. According to the documentary, No Safe Place, Abusive Partners murder 1,500 women each year. Sadly, Becky's attempt to escape the man who had prayed on her since she was a little girl also ended in murder. On August 24, 1982, Pastor Moore dropped Becky and Lucas off at a truck stop under the assumption that they would be finding somewhere new to stay. Becky took the chance to try and leave Lucas for good,

but she wasn't able to flee from her abuser. Lucas stabbed Becky in the heart and killed her near the truck stop. After murdering Becky, Lucas raped her lifeless body, then mutilated and dismembered her corpse. He then hid the young teen's corpse in a pillowcase and threw her belongings away near the train tracks. A few days after Lucas killed Becky on August 24th, he showed up at Pastor Moore's House of Prayer.

He fed Moore a wild story to cover up Becky's murder, claiming that Becky had left him and was traveling with some trucker. Most of the residents believed Lucas's story easily, but there was one person who didn't fall for Lucas's lies, Kate Rich. The elderly woman was worried when she found out that Lucas had returned to the House of Prayer without Becky, and she was determined to find out what happen to the young teen. Kate called Lucas repeatedly at the house of prayer, demanding to know where Becky was. Eventually, Lucas grew tired of the elderly woman's questions. It was time to get rid of her.

On Sunday, September 16, 1982, Lucas offered to drive Kate Rich to church. But after he picked Kate up, he drove right past the church and into Oklahoma. He drove Kate off the road and deep into the woods, then stabbed the old woman to death. He raped and mutilated Kate's corpse before finally dragging it into a culvert off the road. And then, Lucas vanished. It didn't take Kate's concerned relatives long to notice she was missing. After she disappeared on September 16th, they quickly reached out to local authorities. The sheriff of Montague County, Texas, Bill Hound Dog Conway, was assigned to the case. Conway soon looked at learned that the last person to see Kate alive that September was Lucas.

He then realized that Lucas was also the last known person to see young Becky Powell, who had now been missing for over a month. A pattern was emerging. Conway strongly suspected that Lucas was involved in both women's disappearances. The problem was he needed to track Lucas down. After fleeing Texas, Lucas traveled all over the country throughout the fall of 1982. He racked up abandoned vehicle charges in San Bernardino, California, and completed a money transfer in Joplin, Missouri.

Lucas then contacted Pastor Moore about getting his old job at the House of Prayer back. Pastor Moore said he would, and Lucas made his way back to Stoneberg in October 1982. Pastor Moore informed Sheriff Conway that Lucas was returning to town. Shortly after Lucas arrived, Moore brought Lucas in for questions. under the pretense of an old violation of a parole case back in Maryland. While he had Lucas in custody, Conway questioned him about Kate's disappearance. The polygraph indicated that Lucas was lying about Kate Rich,

but Conway couldn't get Lucas to confess to her murder. He was forced to release him. Conway's questioning must have spooked Lucas. Later that year, in 1982, Lucas returned to Kate Rich's burial site so that he could burn her remains. He cremated the elderly woman in a stove at the house of prayer and scattered her ashes. Lucas left Texas again and spent the remainder of 1982 traveling across the country. It seemed like he was going to get away with everything.

But in 1983, Conway came up with a clever scheme to bring Lucas to justice. Lucas had previously asked Pastor Moore to hold onto a firearm for him. In the 1980s, it was a clever scheme. illegal for any criminal convicted of a violent crime to possess a firearm. Conway warned Moore that if he didn't want to get in trouble for keeping Lucas's gun, then he needed to help Conway lure Lucas back to Texas. Moore utilized the relationship he developed with Lucas, when Lucas had worked for him at the House of Prayer, to call in a favor. In June of 1983, Moore managed to coax Lucas back into town by claiming his car was broken down, and he needed a ride.

As soon as Lucas arrived in Montague County, he was arrested. Police hoped to get a confession out of Lucas for the murders of Kate Rich and Becky Powell. But they got so much more than they bargained for. Our story will continue in a moment after the break. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band teas, but on Deep Hop, people are searching for exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now, a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back.

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then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Seeful terms at mintmobile.com. And now let's continue the story. In June of 1983, Texas police finally arrested Henry Lee Lucas. They suspected he had murdered 15-year-old Becky Powell and 82-year-old Kate Rich. They had no idea that they might have just arrested the most prolific serial killer in American history.

In an effort to get Lucas to confess, police denied him cigarettes and coffee and stripped the bedding from his cell. It only took four days of deprivation for Lucas to break and tell Sheriff Conway he was ready to confess. First, Sheriff Conway got the confession he expected. Lucas readily admitted to stabbing Kate Rich and disposing of her remains. Then he confessed to killing Becky Powell. But soon, Lucas was confessing to an alarming number of murders. Lisa Martin, Kevin Kay, Rita Salazar, all of them. It may seem strange that Lucas would confess so easily,

but even a simple offer of coffee and cigarettes can potentially persuade a suspect to start talking. Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at John Jay College, notes that seemingly trivial offers of food, drugs, or a phone call to a loved one can be enough to convince a suspect to offer a false confession. Lucas later claimed he confessed to all of the murders after police started offering him hamburgers, milkshakes, and even steaks. We also have to remember that Lucas wasn't just getting cigarettes and junk food by confessing. He was getting attention. He was getting attention and encouragement from the police with each confession. That's right. After growing up in a neglectful and abusive household, Lucas may have been willing

to confess just to impress the police and get the undivided attention he so desperately craved. Professor Casson has studied the reasons why some suspects offer what are known as voluntary false confessions. Basically, suspects want to link themselves to a notorious crime purely for the attention. Lucas certainly seemed to have been addicted to the attention he got from confessing to so many heinous murders. He began making increasingly elaborate confessions that earned him even more notoriety. On September 30, 1983, Lucas pled guilty to Kate Rich's murder. But even that wasn't dramatic enough of a confession for him. When Lucas was arraigned in open court in October for Kate's murder, he made an announcement in front of the entire court designed to garner as much

attention as possible. Quote, I've killed about a hundred more. Lucas was quickly sentenced to 75 years in prison for murdering Kate Rich. And on November 10th, he was given an additional sentence of life in prison for murdering Becky Powell. But even after Lucas went to prison, his confessions kept coming. He eventually confessed to Williamson County, Sheriff Jim Boutwell that he was the one responsible for murdering the unidentified hitchhiker, still known to police only as orange socks. Sheriff Boutwell showed Lucas pictures of the crime scene, careful to cover the victim's neck with his finger, so Lucas couldn't see how the victim died. In response to seeing the photo, Lucas responded, quote, yeah, that one was a hitchhiker, and she would

have been strangled. Note the use of the phrase would have been. In his confessions, Lucas utilized the same psychological tricks that fake psychics use every day. Essentially, they listen very carefully to their clients for clues about their current situation, then offer vague statements about the future that somehow sounds specific and prophetic. In Lucas's case, seeing Sheriff Boutwell cover up the neck of the victim in the photo clued him into the fact that orange socks was likely strangled. So he may have simply guessed that she was strangled and confirmed, to the crime just for the attention.

On the other hand, maybe Lucas really did strangle the hitchhiker. He did manage to offer Sheriff Boutwell some very specific information about the victim. He told Sheriff Boutwell that the hitchhiker was wearing a co-tex or sanitary napkin when he raped her. And as it turns out, orange socks was found with a wad of toilet paper inserted up her vagina as a makeshift tampon. This confession alone served as the basis for the state's new case against Lucas, and things moved quickly from there. In April of 1984, Lucas was sentenced to death for murdering the young woman, tragically known only as Orange Sox.

If Lucas was only confessing to all of these murders for the attention, then it worked. His confessions captivated the country. Reporters clamored to get interviews with him, hoping he might confess to another murder. They were intrigued by his tragic history and his. unique relationship with Otis Toole. Tool had been arrested in April 1983, just a few months before Lucas for the immolation of 64-year-old George Sonnenberg. Lucas and Toole remained in contact throughout their imprisonment, and their friendship

captivated the press. Their conversations were recorded, of course, and the transcripts are chilling. They proudly bragged about their many crimes. In one recorded conversation, Lucas said, quote, What I want you to do is just to tell the truth. If I was involved in something, you tell the truth. Don't hold back because of me. And I'm not going to hold back because of you, end quote.

Tool then asked Lucas how many people he had killed. Lucas wasn't shy about his answer. He readily admitted, quote, between 150, 160. In the years following his imprisonment in 1983, Lucas would continue to confess to hundreds and eventually thousands of murders. Many of the confessions occurred during these recorded prison conversations with Tool. And it was Lucas's elaborate confessions that convinced FBI agents that he really was a serial killer. As one FBI member said, quote, you just can't shut these guys up.

They want to talk about their crimes, end quote. But despite Lucas's many confessions, in reality, there's only evidence strongly tying Lucas to three murders, his mother's murder in 1960, Becky Powell's murder in August of 1982, and Kate Rich's slaying in September of 1982, a far cry short of the thousands of murders that Lucas claimed he committed. After Lucas was sentenced to death in 1984,

a team was put together to investigate the validity of all of the deaths Lucas had confessed to. The investigative team was shut. to discover that Lucas had lied about nearly everything. Pays Stubbs put Lucas in Jacksonville, Florida at the time of Orange Sox's murder. DNA evidence in the cases of Lisa Martin, Frank Kevin K., and Rita Salazar eventually proved other suspects were responsible for those murders. It was also impossible for Lucas to have murdered Harry and Molly Schlesinger in Texas.

At the time they were killed in October of 1979, Lucas and Toul were busy collecting pay stubs in Jacksonville, Florida. All Lucas had given police was a string of false confessions. Lucas may have confessed for the attention, but he may have also had another reason for offering false confessions, the traumatic brain injury he received as a child. In their 2016 Newsweek article on false confessions, reporters Samuel Gross and Morris Posley note that people with intellectual disabilities

are much more likely to give false confessions. A study of exonerated inmates with cognitive disabilities revealed that a full 72% of them had offered false confessions. This is an incredibly high number of false confessions compared to exoneries without disabilities. They only gave false confessions 7% of the time. So it's certainly possible that the traumatic brain injury that Lucas suffered as a child contributed to his numerous false confessions. In 1996, biographer Giesley-H. Goyanson interviewed Lucas, asking how he felt about the fact

that he might be executed for murdering orange socks, even though he likely didn't kill the young hitchhiker. Lucas admitted that he enjoyed his notoriety. Before his confessions, he was a nobody But now, people listened to him. Perhaps his confessions really were nothing more than a bid for attention. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the media were paying attention. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is granting a stay for Lucas, who had been scheduled to die after midnight,

for the 1979 Central Texas strangulation of an unidentified woman referred to since the crime by the nickname Orange Sox. President officials had anticipated the stay, and Lucas had not yet been moved from death row north of Huntsville to the Wals Unit where the execution chamber is located. Lucas has other murder convictions in six Texas counties and has been linked by law enforcement officers to as many as 266 cases based upon his confessions. Wayne Sorge, Huntsville. Lucas was scheduled to die by lethal injection on June 30, 1998 in Texas. But three days before his execution was to take place, Texas, Texas Governor George W.S.

Bush handed down the one and only stay of execution that he issued during his entire gubernatorial term. Governor Bush concurred with the recommendation that came from the Board of Pardons and Parolees and paroles yesterday and commuted the sentence to life in prison. He feels a special obligation to make sure the state of Texas never executes a person for a crime they may not have committed. A report issued from the governor stated, quote, Henry Lee Lucas is unquestionably guilty of other despicable crimes, which he has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.

However, I believe there is enough doubt about this particular crime that the state of Texas should not impose its ultimate penalty by executing him, end quote. In a state like Texas, with the highest capital punishment rate in the country, it was surprising that Governor Bush would spare Henry Lee Lucas of all people. Even if Lucas didn't murder thousands of people like he claimed, he was still responsible for murdering three people and sexually assaulting several children. In particular, let's not forget Lucas's most tragic victim, Becky Powell. Lucas devoted years to sexually assaulting and grooming the young girl

before brutally murdering and dismembering her. Given the savagery of this act, it's not a stretch to think he committed more murders and atrocities than police were able to prove. On March 12, 2001, Lucas died of heart failure at age 64. He lived long enough to inspire a Hollywood film, Henry, portrait of a serial killer. The film took quite a few creative licenses and fabricated the details of the crimes that Lucas committed. But perhaps it's fitting that the movie about Lucas made up so many details about his crimes. Lucas himself was an incorrigible liar, falsely confessing to thousands of things.

of murders in an attempt to portray himself as America's most prolific serial killer. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. If you want to listen to any previous episodes of serial killers, you can find them on Apple podcasts, tune in, Google Play, Stitcher, and Spotify, or on our website, parkast.com. Spelled p-ar-c-s-a-st-com. If you like what you hear, please leave a five-star review or tell us what you think on social media were on Facebook and Instagram as at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. It seems simple, but it really helps our show.

Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler, is a production of Cutler media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Carrie Murphy, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro and Paul Mahler. Additional production assistance by Carly Madden and Maggie Admeyer. Serial Killers is written by Kyle Harabi and stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Do you want to hear something spooky? Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot.

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