Henry Lee Lucas

**DADOCTOR** · 11-25-2009, 07:41 AM

As a child, Henry was the poster child of the dysfunctional "Future Serial Killer Club". Though had eight brothers and sisters whom were farmed out to institutions, relatives, and foster homes, he managed to stay at home where he was mistreated and abused. In true hillbilly fashion, Henry was uneducated, malnourished, beaten, and forced to watch his uncaring, bootlegging, prostitute mom -- Viola Lucas -- turn tricks.

His alcoholic father, called "No Legs" because of a chance encounter with a freight train, killed himself after repeatedly being humiliated by his abusive wife. Henry was often forced to go to school barefoot and wearing a dress and curlers. Not surprisingly, he dropped out by fifth grade and remained semi-literate for the rest of his life.

Lucas, a one-eyed drifter from Texas and Toole, who had a taste for human flesh, killed anyone who crossed their paths, with a preference for picking up hitchhikers. They are known to have killed more than 200 people between the mid-1970s and mid-80s.

Henry Lee Lucas

Classification: Serial Killer & Serial Confessor

Born: August 23, 1936, Blacksburg, Virginia

Arrested: June 15, 1983

Died: Natural causes, Huntsville Prison, March 11, 2001

No. Victims: 3-600

Active: 1947-1983

Victim Profile: Random women, men, young girls, hitchhikers

Fetishes: Necrophilia, bestiality, necrophilic bestiality, child molestation, arson.

Location: Michigan, Texas, and possibly 20 more states.

As a teenager he enjoyed sex with his half-brother and dead animals. The future serial confessor said he first killed and raped a girl at the age of 15.

When he was 17, Henry sliced open his eye while playing with a knife with his brother. His left his gashed orb unattended for days until it eventually withered and had to be removed by a doctor and replaced with prosthetic glass.

Once he was beat so severely with a piece of wood that he lay in a semi-conscious state for three days before one of Violet's boyfriend decided to take him to a local hospital. All this explaining why Lucas spent most of his youth in and out of correctional institutes until January 11, 1960, when, in a drunken binge, Henry stuck a knife in his mother's back and proceeded to rape her dead corpse. Later, like on many other occasions, he recanted his act of inscestuous necrophilia.

He got 40 years for matricide and was sent to Jackson State Penitentiary in southern Michigan. A social worker there met Lucas and observed "a very inadequate individual with feelings of insecurity and inferiority." After two attempted suicides, Hank was transferred to a mental facility for the criminally insane, where he was diagnosed as a suicidal psychopath, sadist, and sexual deviant.

Inexplicably he was out after serving only 10. After his release things didn't get any better. He had an unsuccessful marriage which ended when his wife discovered he was having sex with her two small girls. Then he lived with his sister Wanda, leaving when she accused him of sexually abusing her young daughter.

**DADOCTOR** · 11-25-2009, 08:33 AM

Henry Lee Lucas Dies in Prison

Convicted Serial Killer Found Dead in Bed

Henry Lee Lucas, one of Texas’ most
notorious convicted murderers, died late Monday in prison where he
was serving sentences for nine murders.

Lucas, who was best known for making bogus confessions that prompted law officers nationwide to clear hundreds of unsolved killings, was found dead in his bed at the Ellis I prison unit, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.

The one-eyed ex-drifter, who was in his mid-60s, was narrowly saved from execution in 1998 when then-Gov. George W. Bush commuted a death sentence to life in prison because of flimsy evidence in his capital case.

Lucas’ body was found shortly before 11 p.m. CST Monday, said department spokesman Larry Fitzgerald. He said the death appeared to be from natural causes.

History of Heart Problems
Lucas had a history of heart problems and had been previously hospitalized. His body was taken to the Huntsville Funeral Home, Fitzgerald said, where it will be determined whether there are relatives who want to claim the remains.

Although physical evidence linked Lucas to only two murders, his confession spree prompted authorities to clear their books of more than 600 unsolved killings. Many never were reopened.

In 1999, Lucas told reporters he had become fascinated by Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, the fugitive authorities had connected with at least eight slayings in Texas, Kentucky and Illinois.

'I Made the Police Look Stupid'
“He’s really playing cat-and-mouse with the FBI,” Henry Lee Lucas told the Houston Chronicle at the time. “I follow his case on the TV. ... I’d like to meet him.”

“If this was 1983,” Lucas said, “I’d claim these murders, too. ... I made the police look stupid. I was out to wreck Texas law enforcement.”

Fitzgerald said that Lucas had been in state custody since 1985 and spent most of his time working as a sewing machine operator in a garment factory that produces trousers for correctional officers’ uniforms.

“He spent all of his time running the sewing machine,” he said. “He was our best.”

**DADOCTOR** · 12-01-2009, 08:05 AM

Murderer. Born Henry Lee Lucas on August 23, 1936, in Blacksburg, Virginia. One of nine siblings, Lucas was raised by abusive alcoholic parents. His mother ruled the household with an iron fist and prostituted herself in their backwoods community to make money. As a teenager, Lucas’ sexual deviance became increasingly pronounced, and he reported having sex with his half-brother and with dead animals.

Lucas spent his teen years in and out of jail. In March 1960, he was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison for murdering his mother. He was sent to Jackson State Penitentiary in southern Michigan, but after two attempted suicides, he was admitted to Ionia State Mental Hospital. He was paroled in 1970 after serving 10 years.

A year after his release, Lucas was sentenced to five years for attempting to kidnap a fifteen-year-old girl at gunpoint. After his second release in 1975, he traveled to Michigan where he teamed-up with a petty thief named Ottis Toole. They shared an unhealthy interest in rape and death. In October 1979, Lucas traveled the country accompanied by Ottis and his young niece, Becky Powell, who was mildly retarded.

According to Lucas, he and Powell became romantically involved, filling one another’s lifelong need for love and respect. Despite this romance, however, he eventually killed Powell, along with Katharine Rich, an elderly woman with whom they had been staying.

In June 1983, Lucas was arrested for possession of a deadly weapon. In his cell, he began confessing to hundreds of murders. Egged on by investigators from around the country, Lucas’ confessions became increasingly farfetched.

It is unclear how many murders he actually did commit, but some believe it was just three: his mother, Becky Powell and Katharine Rich. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment by Texas governor George Bush.

While on Death Row, Lucas became a born again Christian and spent the last 18 years of his life as a model prisoner. He died on March 12, 2001 of natural cause at the age of 64.

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