69 South
Podcast 69 South is about mystery, true crime, attempting to find the truth in a world full of chaos. We dig deep in to current and past true crime incidents. Reporting what we find to our listeners. We want to become your reliable source for all things relevant, while we live in a society that is truly lost.
69 South
Inside the Mind of a False Confessor: Henry Lee Lucas
What drives a man to confess to crimes he didn't commit? Join us as we unravel the twisted life of Henry Lee Lucas, dubbed the Confession Killer, and explore the shocking revelations behind his admissions that led to a nationwide investigation. From a childhood marred by abuse and a traumatic upbringing to his bizarre and violent behaviors, we delve deep into how Lucas's early experiences may have shaped his dark path. Discover the intricacies of his confessions, which perplexed law enforcement and captivated the nation, revealing a complex interplay of manipulation, desperation, and perhaps a desire for notoriety.
As we scrutinize the investigation led by the Texas Rangers, you'll learn about the extraordinary leniency Lucas received and the controversial tactics employed by law enforcement to extract his confessions. We'll also engage in a thought-provoking discussion on the age-old nature vs. nurture debate, considering whether Lucas's violent tendencies were a result of his environment or something inherently sinister. Reflecting on our own formative years, we ponder the profound impact of childhood experiences on one's future actions. Don't miss our promise of more gripping true crime content with the return of co-host Julie in upcoming episodes, and for those intrigued, we highly recommend watching the documentary on Lucas for an even deeper understanding of this chilling case.
69 South 69 South 69 South. Welcome everyone to Podcast 69 South, where we cuss and discuss true crime, cold cases, current events and hot topics, along with our state of society today. This is your trigger warning. Our podcast content is produced for adult listeners, 18 years of age and older. We discuss situations that may be offensive and triggering to some listeners. Sit back, relax and enjoy.
Speaker 1:I've killed them in every way there is, except poison. There's been strangulations, there's been knifings, there's been shootings, there's been hit and runs. Henry Lee Lucas says he has killed 100 women. Lucas claims to have killed over 150 women. Henry Lee Lucas killed at least 360 people during an eight-year spree that only ended when Texas authorities caught him last year. One policeman said he makes Charles Mans manson sound like tom sawyer. Henry lucas murdered my sister, lara jean doñas. Henry lucas murdered my mother, john gilmore. Henry lucas killed my sister, rita salazar. The last person he killed meant no more to him than the last cigarette that he smoked. This is a bad guy, everyone's perfect serial killer, and yet things just didn't add up.
Speaker 2:Welcome to 69 South Podcast. Everybody, I'm your host, chop. My co-host, julie, is not going to be with me today. She is investigating our next big case, which you guys cannot miss. Really need to tune into our next couple episodes, man, because it's a woozy doozy as they say this week. I'm going to jump on here by myself. I'm going to be talking about Henry Lee Lucas, and when that Texas Ranger said shit didn't add up, boy was he not lying.
Speaker 2:Henry Lee Lucas stories has always fascinated me, man. Oh, henry was born 8-23-36. He was also known as the confession killer. He was convicted of killing his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. His story rose to infamy because he falsely confessed to around 600 murders. He was eventually convicted of 11 murders and sentenced to death, with the unidentified victim later ID'd as Brenda Jackson. Now the Dallas Times-Herald did an investigation of their own I guess that was the paper right there in Dallas and they came to the conclusion that it was pretty much impossible that he committed a lot of these murders that he confessed to just by the simple timelines like he couldn't have been two places at one time type shit. He was sentenced to death in 1998, but his death sentence was commuted to life.
Speaker 2:So let's get started at the beginning of little Henry's life. Man, he had a fucked up childhood. His mother was a prostitute and she would make little Henry Lucas watch as she serviced her Johns. And when he wouldn't watch, she caught him turning his head. He would take a hell of a beating. She would beat his fucking ass when she caught him not watching. That's fucked up in itself. And if that wasn't fucked up enough, for a couple of years she made little Henry dress up like a girl in school, dress up like a girl in school. That went on for a couple of years until the teachers in the school got tired of it and they eventually got a court order to stop the cross-dressing. Now you could imagine, man you're talking about back in the 50s and the 40s. Shit was a lot different back then. I mean shit was a lot different in the 80s when I went to school. If a boy would have come to school dressed like a girl, man, I mean just to be honest with you he'd have probably got his ass whooped, made fun of and shunned. It just would not have been accepted in those times. It's not like today, completely different world out there people. But it was reported she was making him dress like a girl and making him wear makeup and shit to get him ready so she could start pimping him out to men and women alike later on down the road. That had to be pure hell for this boy. It ain't no wonder that he turned out so fucked up.
Speaker 2:She beat and abused this boy, and I mean to the point of where I'm sure he just about went insane. He got used to the beatings. It just got worse and worse and worse. I probably just didn't even hurt him anymore, he just probably just rolled with it. But when the beatings stopped satisfying his mother and what I mean by that folks is, I guess, when you know she wasn't inflicted enough pain to get her rocks off or whatever she was getting out of it oh, henry had a mule. It was his prized possession that was given to him by his uncle just an old mule man, and you got to realize they lived out in the country. This mule was probably his only friend. Um, she killed the mule and that really hurt Henry. And uh, to beat all that when she had to pay to get the carcass removed, because I'm sure the town or the city or the country. Folks who lived around there started complaining about it. She beat the fuck out of Henry again because she had to pay to get his mule carcass removed. That she killed and understandably man.
Speaker 2:He was bullied in school. He was reported saying that he hated his childhood. Other kids beat him up for dressing like a girl. He said he hated everything. Henry's dad passed away from pneumonia after Mama Nelly made him sleep outside for a couple of nights.
Speaker 2:Henry dropped out of school in about sixth grade and started drifting around Virginia. That's awful young, you're talking about 11, 12 years old. He started a weird sexual incestual relationship with his half brother and if that wasn't weird enough, uh, he was self-reportedly. He was capturing small animals and was um having bestiality, sexual bestiality with them, like he would catch cats and dogs and do nasty shit to him and then he'd kill him. That's where a lot of the real weird shit started going on. He was reportedly about 14 when he was doing that stuff. Well, just a little bit later, around June 10th of 1954, henry was convicted of dozens of burglaries in and around Virginia. That's what he was doing to support himself and he was sentenced to four years. He escaped prison in 1957. He was captured three days later and he was later released in 1959, and that was his first little stint in prison.
Speaker 2:Now Henry claimed to committed his first murder in 1951. He admitted to strangling Laura Bernsley. She had disappeared from a bus stop and I'm pretty sure her body has never been found to this day. According to Henry, he picked her up at a bus stop and he said in his mind he really just wanted to try all the sexual shit that he'd been seeing his mother do with a human instead of animals this time, and she refused his sexual advances. He started to rape her and when he got real rough with her I guess all he saw was his mother and he just started going nuts man and he said he strangled her and then he buried her. Henry said that really scared him, that that type of feelings came out at him, revolving around his mother and the sexual shit, and you know she probably did some molesting to him too. I don't think he ever admitted to that, but I mean you could just imagine the shit that went on with all the other shit that was talked about and admitted to.
Speaker 2:Now, in late 1959, henry Lucas went to Michigan. He went to live with his half-sister, opal Jennings, and he got engaged to some chick that he was pen-palling with when he was in the joint, so he was writing this chick letters and I guess she lived up by his sister. So he moved over there and they got engaged and his mom came to visit Opal that was his sister's name came to visit Opal and Henry and she disapproved of the new love Henry had and she demanded for him to move back to Virginia. Well, that became a big old argument because Henry didn't want to go back to Virginia and he wanted to stay there with his new pen pal lover that he'd found, and who in the fuck would want to go back with her anyway, after all the shit she put him through. So this turned into a big fight. They were yelling, they were screaming. It was just Henry and his mother there.
Speaker 2:Henry said that she hit him in the face with a broomstick and at this time Henry lost his temper. He said that what he remembers he smacked her in the neck real hard, tried to go for her face but smacked her in the neck and then, when he tried to pick her up, he realized that he had had a knife in his hand when he smacked her. I guess he just realized that he had a knife after he saw her fucking neck cut in half. But he fled the scene and when his sister got home she found the mother in a pool of blood and she was still alive when she got there. But she called the ambulance and the EMS, which probably took a long time to get there. This was back in the days again people she was. Her official cause of death was ruled as a heart attack. I guess the whole situation just made her heart explode, but to me it seemed like a cut throat and a pool of blood doesn't seem like a heart attack to me.
Speaker 2:So he cut out from the scene and he was later arrested in Ohio. Of course he claimed self-defense but that didn't work. Henry was reported saying I have bruises all over my back and scars on the back of my head from where that woman beat me and if I hadn't defended myself she would have just done the same damn thing again. But his mom was around in her 70s at this time. So I mean the self-defense shit didn't go very well in court and Henry was sentenced to 40 years for the murder While he was in prison. For those years he was sentenced to for killing his mother. He tried to commit suicide several times, so at that point they sent him to a mental hospital. He was at this mental hospital for about four years. They subjected him to shock treatments, they kept him doped up to the extreme on weird ass antidepressants, and back then I'm sure they were experimenting with all kinds of weird drugs and weird ways to try to make a crazy dude act. Right After the four years, though, he was sent back to prison. Prison, and then, after 17 years of his 40-year sentence, he was released due to prison overcrowding.
Speaker 2:So, henry's little fuck-ups here and there, he kept messing up. He's, I think he stole a car in michigan, and then he was um, he was under investigation for a couple missing girls that was in the area that he was in, and this is where the story really takes off. I mean, this is where it gets good. It's almost comical, except for the victims, of course, but this is the part of the story that I want you to really pay attention to, because this is what fascinated me. This is the Texas Rangers talking about how it got started, about the whole confessions killer deal, and then we'll listen to his testimony and then we'll talk about it, because there's a lot of funny shit. Man, he really had these cops snowed.
Speaker 1:Montague County was almost like stepping back in time. People were laid back, mainly farmers, very little industry. The sheriff's office and the police departments were all real small, understaffed. I became a ranger in 1979. Texas rangers usually work a lot of high-profile cases Murders, rapes, robberies, organized crime. They put them in the area to be a benefit to the local law enforcement. In the area to be of benefit to the local law enforcement.
Speaker 1:I had been a ranger two years and I got a call from the Montague County Sheriff saying that he needed some help on a missing woman named Kate Rich. Kate was 82 years old, lived by herself. The family member told the sheriff that there was a suspect in her mind of Henry Lee Lucas and he was living with Kate for a while. We did a lot of searching for the body. We found Kate's purse thrown over a bridge so you know that pretty well told me that the body was probably still in the vicinity. I realized that we also got a 15-year-old girl missing. She went by Becky but her name was Frida Lorraine Powell. She was Henry's girlfriend. Becky's missing, kate's missing, henry's the common denominator. He was a pretty good suspect. Henry was probably in his mid to late 40s. He was a scruffy looking, skinny guy, you know, and had a bad eye. We'd done a lot of background on him. We learned that Henry went to prison in 1960 for killing his mother, did some time in the pen and the psychiatric ward For a period of time. My theory was that he killed Becky and then Kate figured it out and that's why he killed Kate.
Speaker 1:He come up to the sheriff's office with us, friendly enough, act like he was sincere, but there was nothing we could hold him on. He was pretty impressed that we'd already gathered a lot of information on him. He said I guess, since you found all that out about me, you you know about that warrant on me. I said, praise the lord. In the back of my mind. I said yeah, that's out of Florida and I started shuffling and looking for it in my papers. He said no, michigan. I said that's right. And I said what was that for? He said well, it's originally for stealing the car, but the warrant's for probation violation. So I got the warrant number and then when he come back we put him in jail. I'd keep him up in cigarettes. He'd drink coffee 24-7. He just loved talking. Well, I talked to him day and night and I I mean I just couldn't get him to give me anything I could prove he's lying. But I just couldn't get a confession and so finally told the sheriff I said, look, let's just put him in jail and just not talk to him. Tell your people not to talk to him. I ain't gonna come up here and talk to him like he's used to me doing. And the sheriff said, well, I've got some plowing to do anyway. And so we stuck him in jail and didn't talk to him.
Speaker 1:Wednesday night I get a call. He's passed a note to the jailer. He's passed a note to the jailer. He told me what he did to Kate. He just stuck the knife in her chest and then he got out and went around and drug her down into the ditch, had sex with her. Well, when he takes me back out there at daylight the next morning, the stuff he described is still there Parts of her glasses that had been run over quite a bit. We found some of her clothing. And then we went to his old apartment and he showed us the stove that he burned her in. I could see some what I thought was bone fragments, but we collected them as evidence just to prove that they were human bones. He said I'll have to show you where Becky is, but it's not a pretty sight. He said if you dig right there you'll find a pillowcase with part of her. The legs are out. That way her head's this away.
Speaker 1:And then I brought him back to denton pd to be interrogated. Back to Denton PD to be a part of my life having sexual intercourse with a dead. Okay, after she's dead and after you've had sex with her, what happened next? Well, after that I cut her up in little teeny pieces. You know, he told me I killed the only girl I've ever loved. At least it bothered him a little bit that he killed Becky. After that there's an arraignment for Kate's murder and there was a couple of local newspapers there and the reporter from the Austin Statesman was following it. The judge asked him do you understand that you're being charged with murder? I'm sitting there in open court, you know, casually listening, and all of a sudden Lucas just blurts out well, judge, what are we going to do about these other 100 women I killed?
Speaker 2:From that point, it went to hell in the handbasket quick. From that point, it went to hell in the handbasket quick. So here's where the crazy shit starts, people. He jumped up in court and said what are we going to do about the other 100 people that I killed? Of course, everybody was just flabbergasted. It was all over the news I mean, it was national headlines. It was a serial killer. He was confessing to killing just 100 hundred people at this point.
Speaker 2:Well, the Texas Rangers started investigating this shit and I know you guys have probably known people like this when they're a child and in their younger ages, when they don't get any good attention and they don't get any attention at all, sometimes bad attention is all they can get. Well, henry Lee Lucas started getting attention, man. He started getting a lot of attention. So they put together a task force with the Texas Rangers and they started investigating these hundreds of murders that he reportedly blurted out in court that he did so. For quite a long time Henry Lee Lucas was in the jail. They moved him to a jail in Texas and the Rangers would buy him milkshakes and McDonald's and they would just have a field day with him and they would let old Henry walk around with him and they would let O Henry walk around the jail free, not handcuffed. There was a Texas Ranger that was handling him. His name was Bob Prince. He was in charge of Henry Lee Lucas and he was in charge of taking all the information from all the detectives around the country that was trying to solve crimes. And then there was another ranger named Clayton Smith. He was in charge of all the mail in. So these detectives around the country they would mail in, like their case files, the dates, the pictures of the victims. And it was kind of weird because Bob Prince and Clayton Smith, they were getting a lot of good publicity and attaboys and shit, because they were, you know, everybody thought they were getting Henry Lee Lucas to confess to all this shit. But it turns out that they were letting Henry Lee Lucas look at the paperwork and shit the paperwork, the case files. So when they would ask him about it he would already know certain aspects. So they were closing cases left and right. They even had filmmakers from Japan come over and they brought Henry gifts. They just thought Henry was, you know, the coolest thing since sliced bread back then they had. They just wanted to do a big story on an American serial killer. Well, it turned out Henry Lee Lucas didn't do a fraction of the shit that he confessed to.
Speaker 2:And there was another man that was Henry Lee Lucas's partner, sexual partner, partner in crime. They traveled around the country together for a few of the years. His name was Otis Elwood Toole. He was a part-time transvestite. They struck up a friendship. They met working at a soup kitchen somewhere in about 1976. Otis O'Toole was convicted on some murders too and he had fun elaborating on the stories with Henry Lee Lucas too. So it was a little bitty fun thing between the both of them.
Speaker 2:And if you go to Netflix and you watch the documentary the Confession Killer, you can just see old Henry Lee Lucas having a ball with this shit man. I mean it's almost comical. The cops acted like they were best friends with him. He was getting all the attention in the world. I mean it was probably the best time of his life until they started figuring out that he was bullshitting. So after these stories, you know, started appearing around 1985, they revealed the flawed methods of the task force and, in law enforcement's opinion, began to turn against the claims that the crimes had been solved, because the bulk of Lucas's reports was devoted to a detailed timeline of Lucas's claimed murders. The report compared his claims to reliable, verifiable sources of his whereabouts his claims to reliable, verifiable sources of his whereabouts. So, basically, when he said I was in such and such state, such and such date and killed such and such woman, it was verifiable that he was in a different state and it was impossible. I mean, this was happening time and time again. So they figured out that he was just a straight bullshitter and had been bullshitting the whole time, and it made the Texas Rangers look really, really bad. It was a whole bad ordeal for them. It was embarrassing for the Texas Rangers that give him a bad name. So, needless to say, man, he stayed in prison for the rest of his life and they ended up finding O Henry dead in prison from congestive heart failure, natural causes, at age 64, 11 pm March 12th.
Speaker 2:I just think this story is really interesting, man, because you know a lot of us have a bad childhood. I had a not a horrible childhood, nothing compared to Henry Lee Lucas, man, but you know, it just makes you wonder how much that contributed. Well, obviously it contributed 100% to the killings and the crazy shit that ended up happening to Henry. But you know, what if Henry would have had a good life? What if Henry's mom would have treated him right? What if everything would have went different? You think Henry Lee would have been, you know, a contributing member to society? Or do you think that shit's instilled in someone's head at birth? I don't know, man, but you guys got to go watch the documentary. I had a really good time telling you this story and I look forward to being with you guys next week. Julie will be back and we got a really really, really good couple episodes on a really interesting case. Man no-transcript.
