The Confession Killer (2019) s01e01 Episode Script
Everything Except Poison
1 [tense music plays.]
[Henry.]
I've killed them in every way there is except poison.
There's been strangulations.
There's been knife wounds.
There's been shootings.
There's been hit-and-runs.
[reporter.]
Henry Lee Lucas says he has killed 100 women.
[reporter 2.]
Lucas claims to have killed over 150 women.
[reporter 3.]
Henry Lee Lucas killed at least 360 people during an eight-year spree that only ended when Texas authorities caught him last year.
[reporter 4.]
One policeman said he makes Charles Manson sound like Tom Sawyer.
[woman.]
Henry Lee Lucas murdered my sister, Laura Jean Donez.
[woman 2.]
Henry Lee Lucas murdered my mother, Joan Gilmore.
[woman 3.]
Henry Lee Lucas killed my sister, Rita Salazar.
[man.]
The last person he killed meant no more to him than the last cigarette that he smoked.
[Hugh.]
This is a bad guy.
Everyone's perfect serial killer.
And yet, things just didn't add up.
[man 2.]
You can't kill 200 people and never leave a single shred of evidence.
Nothing.
Zero.
[Henry.]
I just grabbed her around her neck and started choking her.
You talk about being conned, he was playing them like a violin.
[Vic.]
I thought the powers-that-be would welcome the truth.
I was wrong.
[Parker.]
The really sad thing about this, the real tragedy is someone got away with murder.
[man 3.]
Either they found the world's worst serial killer or it was the biggest hoax in American criminal justice history.
[siren wailing.]
[Phil.]
Montague County was, uh, 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 of benefit to the local law enforcement.
I had been a ranger two years, and I got a call from the Montague County sheriff saying that they 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.
After about a month of working this case, I realized that we also got a 15-year-old girl missing.
She went by "Becky," but her name was Frieda 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 forties.
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 "P&N," the, uh, 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.
[camera shutters clicking.]
He'd 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 had 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, "That's out of Florida, isn't it?" I started looking for it in my papers.
He said, "No, Michigan.
" [chuckles.]
I said, "That's right.
That's right.
" [chuckles.]
And, uh, I said, "What What was that for?" He said, "Well, it's originally for stealing a 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 had to keep him up in cigarettes.
He drank coffee 24/7.
- He just loved talking.
- [Henry speaking indistinctly.]
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 was lying, but I just couldn't get a confession, and so I 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 got some ploughing to do anyway.
" And, uh, so we stuck him in jail and didn't talk to him.
Wednesday night, I get a call.
He's passed a note to the jailer.
He told me what he did to Kate.
He just, uh, stuck the knife in her chest, and then he got out and went around and dragged 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 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, uh, 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, uh, 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'll dig right there, you'll find a pillowcase with part of her.
" "The legs are out thataway.
Uh Her head's thisaway.
" And then I brought him back to Denton PD to be interrogated.
We kept arguing cussing each other and that was when I when I hit her with the knife.
Okay, and and after after that part happened, uh, do you recall what you did next? Yes.
I took her panties and her bra off and, uh I had sexual intercourse with her.
It's one of those things that, uh I guess it got to be a part of my life.
Having sexual intercourse with the dead.
Okay.
Uh After After she's dead and after you had sex with her, what happened next? Well, after that, I cut her uh - up in little teeny pieces.
- Mm.
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 a, uh 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, um you know, casually listening, and all of a sudden, Lucas just blurts out, "Well, Judge, what are we gonna do about these other 100 women I killed?" What did he say? [Phil.]
From that point, it went to hell in a handbasket quick.
[indistinct chattering.]
[reporter.]
Mr.
Lucas, in the hearing, you said you killed over a hundred women.
Is that true? [newscaster.]
Investigators in Montague, Texas, are looking into a former mental patient's claim that he has killed about 100 women.
[newscaster 2.]
Lucas claims a cross-country mass murder spree the last eight years.
That immediately brought a flood of inquiries from law enforcement authorities in several other states.
[Phil.]
I started getting calls from law enforcement all over.
Nineteen different states, I believe, was the last count.
There's no way of keeping up with it at this point.
It's gotten out of hand.
It was a nightmare.
[reporter.]
Local authorities revealed that he was a suspect in several killings.
They say he could be a mass murderer.
[Phil.]
Wherever Henry was, the media was there.
It was a circus that would not leave town.
[reporter 2.]
In this trial, the 47-year-old former drifter was his own worst witness.
First, he videotaped a confession to the 1982 crime.
- [weeping.]
- Then he broke down on the witness stand, admitting regret at having killed Becky Powell.
Lucas said Becky hit him in the face.
And the next thing Lucas remembers is seeing Becky with a knife in her chest.
The jury did not buy Lucas' attorney's argument of voluntary manslaughter.
We, the jury, find the defendant Henry Lee Lucas guilty of the offense of murder as it lays in the indictment.
[newscaster.]
In Denton, Texas, the professed mass murderer Henry Lee Lucas was sentenced today to life in prison for murdering and dismembering 15-year-old Becky Powell.
[newscaster 2.]
Lucas has also confessed to more than 150 other murders, and he makes Charles Manson sound like Tom Sawyer.
[newscaster 3.]
Investigators say the Lucas stories are so gruesome that even the interrogation process is difficult.
Yes, I've had days where I just had to make myself go in there.
I didn't feel up to it.
I've had days when I when I've cut it short.
[Phil.]
I was the one that was tasked with with getting information from him, uh, about other murders.
I would just give him a, uh, pencil and say, "If you think of anything, write it down," because we're covering so many murders that it's ridiculous.
He would sit there and draw pictures, and in the sides would describe how they were killed, what they were wearing.
Oh, it it turned your stomach, and it was hard to be decent with him and, um So sort of a self-protection, I guess.
I I went through a period of time where I didn't believe anything he said.
I don't know, I, uh I was ready to do some fence-cutting and goat-stealing cases.
I was sick of murders.
We would send pictures out to, uh, the, uh, agency that we believed would be responsible for investigating that murder.
One of the, uh, Texas sheriffs that we, uh, contacted was Sheriff Boutwell.
I was at home one Saturday morning back in, uh, June of, uh, 1983, I had a call from the, uh, sheriff in Montague County.
He called me and said, uh, "Jim, uh we got an old boy in jail up here that you might want to talk to.
" [Phil.]
Sheriff Boutwell had been actively investigating a string of murders up and down I-35 between Dallas and Austin.
We had several bodies out here on Interstate 35.
And, uh, we weren't having any luck on solving or clearing those cases.
[Phil.]
He felt like it was a single serial killer, and he thought that, uh, Henry very well could have been the one doing that.
Sheriff Boutwell got a bench warrant and picked Henry up right after he was sentenced in Denton County, carried him straight to his jail there in Georgetown.
And then, from that point on, you never saw Henry without Boutwell.
Jim Boutwell was a legend in Texas law enforcement.
If you run the clock back a few years [gunshot.]
to that sniper on the tower of the University of Texas, who killed quite a number of people and wounded many more, Jim got in his plane and flew up and radioed the location where the shooter was, and he got several bullet holes in his aircraft, but he did quite a heroic job.
After Lucas was in the custody of Sheriff Boutwell, he, uh, went to the director of DPS, Colonel Jim Adams, to see if they would set up a task force to coordinate these Lucas investigations.
Lucas, uh is in a tight security cell.
[Phil.]
Being a popular sheriff, he was he had the political clout to get a task force put together.
So the more we can learn about the mentality, the modus operandi, uh, the traveling habits, the public is going to ultimately be more secure.
[Bob.]
Colonel Adams wanted a Texas Ranger officer in charge, and I was assigned to that.
[Phil.]
Sergeant Prince was a Ranger's Ranger.
He'd come from a family of law enforcement.
A straight-up honest guy.
[telephone ringing.]
[Bob.]
The task force was set up in a small office in the county jail.
We were not an investigative task force.
We were a coordinating task force.
Our role was to, uh, allow access to officers wanting to talk with Lucas from all over the nation.
We had an interview room set up, we had a videotape set up.
[officer.]
This statement is being tape-recorded on a Panasonic machine.
[Bob.]
When they were ready for the interview, we'd bring Lucas down, tape it, and then when they were through, we'd debrief him.
"Was there any cases that you believe you were responsible for?" Okay, then what happened? I hit her with a knife.
Yeah, I had sex with her already before I shot her.
I hit her, but I think I hit her with my fist.
I ain't sure, but I think I did.
[Bob.]
I'd set it up like a doctor's office.
If they need four hours, I'd give them from eight to twelve.
We may have to schedule it for a month or two months ahead of time.
We had such a backlog.
That's probably in the neighborhood of a thousand officers that signed in to talk to Lucas.
As a peace officer, that's a satisfying feeling, knowing that you've taken killers like, uh, Lucas off the street.
Maybe bringing closure to some families.
Jack, I talked to, uh, Henry.
He says that he did own a two-tone [Nan.]
The task force seemed innovative, because the task force was an attempt to have all of these law enforcement people come into a central location, so that people were sharing information, and at the time, this was brand new.
[newscaster.]
Since Lucas was arrested, authorities from all over the country have been to see him about unsolved murders.
They say it may be years before a full construction of his crimes is complete.
[newscaster 2.]
None of the known serial murderers approaches the record of Henry Lee Lucas.
[newscaster 3.]
Lucas was a drifter who murdered at random across America.
[newscaster 4.]
A drifter with no conscience and a compulsion to kill.
He cruised the interstates and the back roads looking for that woman in a jam.
Yes, many of his killings, uh, exhibited a lot of violence and overkill.
Very, very violent.
Very cruel in many cases.
I heard that this man up in North Texas had said he'd killed hundreds of people.
[reporter on TV.]
Now in jail, just a few miles from [Hugh.]
I had just spent four years interviewing Ted Bundy.
But Bundy only killed about 30 people.
Here's a guy who says he's killed a hundred.
I really had to go talk to him and find out.
Sheriff Jim Boutwell had read my Bundy book.
And he said, "Well, you come down and talk to Henry anytime you want to.
" Well, I started doing it quite often.
[indistinct chattering.]
I've never had quite as good access, even with with Bundy.
I could go any day of the week, any time of the day, generally.
My first impression was Lucas was just a dirtball.
I was horrified by the smell.
He was one-eyed and his other eye dripped.
He had three, maybe four teeth.
He was a pitiful looking gentleman, really.
[indistinct chattering.]
Y'all want a cigarette? [Hugh.]
I was able to bring in a Japanese film crew, and Sheriff Boutwell thought that was exciting.
They were from Japan, and my goodness, of course, we'll we'll take the day and we'll we'll show 'em a good time.
We appreciate the the opportunity to show the people of your country, uh [speaking Japanese.]
some of the things that go on here.
I, uh I'm sorry they have to be such bad things.
[speaking Japanese.]
The Japanese were just thrilled to death, and stunned, I might say.
[man.]
Sister Clemmie! - Hi.
- Yeah.
Nice to meet you.
[speaks indistinctly.]
And Yoichi Aoki.
Nice to meet you, sir.
Oh.
They brought you a present from Japan.
A painting set.
Please.
[speaks Japanese.]
- [Clemmie.]
Open it.
- It's a watercolor set.
[speaks Japanese.]
I hope you enjoy it.
[Clemmie.]
Open it, Henry.
[Yoichi.]
In Japan, you're becoming really famous in Japan too.
Yeah.
Look, nobody had ever paid that much attention to Henry Lee Lucas.
Uh, we understand you were born in Blacksburg, in Virginia, and if you can tell us a little bit about your background? I had a family that, uh [exhales.]
was I guess what you'd say a poor family.
They didn't have anything, and, uh My mother was, uh, a prostitute, and, uh [Jim.]
Your mother would bring people home and she would have sex with them in front of you kids? Right, yeah.
Sometimes I was forced to watch her.
What was your dad doing? [exhales.]
Laying up drunk sometimes.
Uh, sometimes he'd just go on out of the house because he didn't want to be in there.
[birds chirping.]
[Hugh.]
Henry Lucas grew up in rural Virginia in a dilapidated little house.
He only went till the fourth grade.
He was trouble all the way.
His dad had lost his legs in a railroad accident, and so he was on a mat and he sold pencils on the street.
His mother would beat him.
She would ridicule him incessantly.
[Yoichi.]
Your mother was really hard on you.
Did you ever think that "Someday I'm gonna kill her"? Yeah, I told somebody I was.
Uh So here comes Mom in, uh, drunk, and and during the argument with her, and her striking me over the head with a broom handle, I swung at her with a knife.
And, uh Uh I just turned and walked right on out of the room.
And, uh It's as though she didn't exist.
[Hugh.]
Well, I believe you told, uh, Sheriff Boutwell that when you'd kill, you'd get this cold feeling.
Well, it's like being in an icebox.
You get just as cold, uh No feelings, uh You don't have no feelings for the actual human itself, you just It's as though it's not there.
But yet, uh, it's You know, something takes its place, and, uh - [Jim.]
An inanimate object, almost.
- [Henry.]
Yeah.
- [Jim.]
A thing, not a person.
- [Henry.]
Right.
You know, most normal people can still have a terrible background and there's still some kind of a firewall there that prevents them from moving off into killing people.
You know, that firewall did not exist for Lucas.
[Nan.]
When you talked to him, he was cooperative.
He was polite.
But during the interview, I was terrified.
Who wouldn't be scared? I mean, I certainly had read about who this was and I'd never, ever been in the vicinity of someone like that.
The editor said to me, "Life magazine is doing a feature on the phenomenon of serial killing.
" Within a week, I was in Henry's interview room.
His "office," he called it.
[newscaster.]
According to an article in the current issue of Life magazine, 5,000 Americans were murdered by serial killers in 1983 alone.
There was this national interest in the whole idea of serial killing.
[newscaster 2.]
Motiveless, random killings, sometimes thousands of miles apart.
They're known as "serial killers," and according to law enforcement officials, there are at least 35 of them roaming the country now, stalking victims.
[Nan.]
People were just beginning to try to understand how something like that could happen.
The psychologist I worked with had developed what he called a serial killer profile.
And in that profile, there were distinctive characteristics.
The person usually hadn't married and didn't have children.
There was usually a controlling parent.
There was a history of the child visiting emergency rooms repeatedly.
And then psychological issues like suicidal tendencies, cruelty to animals.
I had, uh been taught sexual relation by a man that lived at, uh with my mother.
What did he tell you about having sex with animals? Did he teach you to kill 'em? Yeah, he taught, uh you know, to kill animals and have sex with them.
Uh What kind of animals? Goats? Anything, it didn't matter.
Uh Any kind of animal.
[Nan.]
You could see the way Henry fit into the profile that we had created.
Henry's mother was violent.
Several times, he went to the emergency room.
Once, when he was six, she hit him over the head with a two-by-four, and he says he was unconscious for 30 to 36 hours.
He talked about the fact that whenever he had a pet, she would kill it.
That's Henry's brain.
Here, there's frontal lobe damage, these little white spots.
The doctor said it looked like a head trauma that happened between the ages of five and ten.
They found some temporal lobe damage, some frontal lobe damage.
The combination is supposed to be the worst that it can be.
Temporal lobe means uh no control over impulse.
Frontal lobe is lack of compassion, empathy.
You put those together, it looks to me like you have a serial killer.
[indistinct chatter.]
[Hugh.]
Well, I don't understand how this thing progressed, Henry.
You started out killing your mother in '60, then it really escalated.
[Henry.]
Uh-huh.
[Hugh.]
Was this What was in your mind then? - What what made it just get so - [Henry exhales.]
Did it get easier as you went on? Oh, yeah.
Uh It just didn't matter no more.
Uh There was no, uh [inhales deeply.]
It just become After '79, it become an impulse.
And then, by me meeting Ottis Toole, uh, that didn't help so good, you know, 'cause me and him started running around killing together too.
[Bob.]
Ottis Toole was Henry Lucas' running buddy, and probably had some, uh, murders together.
Uh, Toole was a homosexual, and, uh Lucas apparently was on the receiving end of that time, but, uh He was a very much of a vicious, vicious person.
Very low IQ.
[Hugh.]
Toole would dress up like a woman and go pick up people in bars and get money for sex.
This was a huge, big man.
He was about six-three or four, and he was muscular, and yet he talked very softly.
They became good friends.
We picked up lots of hitchhikers and all, you know.
Henry mostly killed all the women, you know, himself, you know.
Some of them would be shot in the head and in the chest and Some of them would be, uh, choked to death and some of them would be, uh beaten in the head with a tire tool.
[Phil.]
They made a lot of trips, you know, from Florida to California and back and around.
I think all they did was just drive, and drive, and drive, and drive, and camp out at parks and wherever they could.
And he was a walking Rand McNally.
He knew this country.
You know, little tiny roads and freeways and And you just don't learn that much about roads unless you've spent a lot of time on the road.
[newscaster.]
Roaming murderers like Lucas create enormous problems for the police.
They could do two in Texas and be in Arizona or New Mexico and do one, uh, again in ten hours, and then go from there to California and do them, so, uh, they're very hard to track.
[Bob.]
A serial killer is probably the hardest person to detect and identify uh, because they'd have no connection with the victim.
Probably a whole lot of serial killers have been out there in years past that weren't ever recognized because there'd be no connection made between a murder that happened in Texas and in the panhandle of Florida.
Lucas got away with it for quite a number of years.
And that's why we set up the task force.
[indistinct chattering.]
[Nan.]
Sheriff Boutwell called a conference together where he invited people from across the country to come and try to see if they could make any discoveries pertinent to the Lucas information.
Maybe we can come up with Lucas and Toole as being a suspect in your particular area.
[newscaster.]
Lawmen met to compare notes and piece together the Lucas-Toole trail of terror.
[newscaster 2.]
Police now link at least Lucas to scores of murders in 17 states, stretching from coast to coast.
I don't know whether it's me or whether I looked trusted or what, I don't know, but, uh, they'd get in the car.
And I'd go up and knock on people's doors, and tell them I'm hungry, tell them I want a drink of water, they'd invite me right in their house.
They'd say, "Come on in," you know? "Come on.
" [man.]
Mm-hmm.
Which is the worst mistake they make.
I think that was the secret of his success, because he acts low-key, harmless.
Uh You know, somebody'd climb in a car with him.
If they could stand the smell, they'd say, "Oh, this old boy wouldn't hurt anybody.
" [indistinct chattering.]
[Hugh.]
But what causes you to grab a woman or kill one? I mean, just just It's just, uh I don't like women, you know? - You know, at the time, I didn't like 'em.
- Yeah.
And every time I'd see a woman, whether they was walking down the road, walking down the street, uh wherever I seen that woman, I was gonna pick her up.
- [Hugh.]
Yeah.
- Uh, I just hate them.
[Hugh.]
Well, that's a feeling.
That's a pretty strong feeling.
Didn't any woman ever treat you really good? Clemmie has been the only woman that has actually ever treated me good.
Uh She has gone completely out of her way, uh, to help me.
[Clemmie.]
I had been visiting the jails.
They said, "Oh, Sister Clemmie, we have a new inmate, and he's a serial killer.
Be careful.
" You know, all of the jailers, "Sister, please be careful.
" It was, uh, right before Christmas, and I was, uh taking, uh, Bibles and handing them out to prisoners, and I had one left, and, um I was going to take the Bible home, and and I said, "Uh, Lord, did I forget someone? Should this Bible go to someone?" [Henry.]
And she says, "If I give you this Bible, you won't tear it up, will you? You'll read it?" I said, "Yeah.
" "I have given you my Holy Spirit to live in you and to help you.
" What does that mean to you, Henry? That means living a clean life.
Living according to God.
[Henry.]
She's become a very, very good friend.
She's taught me - the Bible - [man.]
Mm-hmm.
And she's taught me how to care, uh, about others.
After about the fourth visit, I baptized him and I had a love for him that I couldn't explain, you know? [Clemmie.]
He said that this is the first time in his life that he has ever felt good about himself.
He's able to see beauty in things all around him.
He enjoys oil painting.
And he's one of the most gentle persons I know, and it's like he was never capable of loving before, and it's like he has a deep brotherly love for me.
[Henry.]
God himself sent her to me.
[newscaster.]
Lucas says God told him to start telling what he'd done.
Uh [exhales.]
It's an experience I had with a light, uh, that came in my cell.
Jesus Christ himself came in and asked me to accept Him as my personal savior.
And I said then, I says, "I can't, uh clear up the cases because I can't remember 'em.
" And He says, "I will take care of that.
" From that day on, I've been able to go back to the bodies, I've been able to tell where they're at and everything else.
[newscaster.]
Authorities say he has an incredible recall for names, dates, and details of his crimes and crime scenes.
[newscaster 2.]
Lucas was relaxed, and he even lit a cigarette, after he led deputies down a road where he allegedly killed one of the women.
[Clayton.]
Being able to direct persons ten, 15 years after the offenses occurred is sort of frightening.
There's just so many things that would lead you to believe that he was there.
That's the That's the door I came out of right there.
- The one in the front? - Yeah.
[Jim.]
I recall, uh, one particular murder case where a, uh, Playboy magazine was found by the, uh, victim.
Henry told the officers, uh, that that they would have found that magazine there and even told them the year and the month the magazine was issued.
[officer.]
I think this one is a better one right there.
[Henry.]
All I have to do, if I've ever killed a person, is they can show me a live photograph of that person and I can look at the picture and I can tell you if I've killed her.
And if I've killed her, I tell you how and where.
Uh He's, uh, confessing to all of his crimes, and he's bringing forth the bodies so they can have Christian burials.
Receiving letters from his victims' families are very moving and touching to him.
[Henry.]
There's people out there in this world today that's lost their loved ones, and they wanna know who done it.
Why should I hide my face, saying I'm a coward, you know? Uh I want them to know who I am.
He feels like he's doing the will of God and this is the first time that he has any inner inner peace.
[Nan.]
Clemmie was his spiritual advisor, but she also cooked his dinners.
I did an interview with Henry during one of those dinners.
He was not in handcuffs.
Clemmie was cutting his meat [small laugh.]
and cantaloupe, and handing him the plate, and we were interviewing him while that was happening.
She also cut his hair.
I couldn't believe that he was right next to a pair of barber scissors, smiling at everyone, and Clemmie not really understanding how dangerous that was.
They created a community.
It almost seemed like a family.
Sheriff Boutwell and Bob Prince, especially, would talk about maintaining Henry's mood so he would continue to cooperate.
We've gained his confidence and we need to keep his confidence.
Um Uh You know, if he doesn't have our confidence, he could um, he could either quit talking or or, uh, tell us some things that that were not true.
[indistinct chattering.]
[Hugh.]
He had free rein in Georgetown.
He got drinks out of the soft-drink machine.
He wandered around without handcuffs.
[Henry.]
I consider Georgetown my home.
It's a little hard to say, you know, being a jail, - but, uh, it's home.
- [woman laughs.]
[newscaster.]
There is an easy-going, relaxed feeling between lawman and killer.
[Henry.]
Being friendly towards each other, and, uh, I joke a lot with Bob, kid with him, and I do the Sheriff the same way, or Clayton Smith.
Henry was so happy being at the jail.
They didn't treat him as a killer, but as a friend that they would be working with.
[Nan.]
It was making him feel as though he was contributing by helping to solve the cases, because the families needed him to do that.
[Henry.]
I was trying, like I'm doing right now, just to get, uh, the cases solved, you know? But, uh, there's nobody else gonna solve them except me.
[Hugh.]
As I started talking to Henry, things just didn't add up.
[Henry.]
Uh There's hundreds of 'em.
[Hugh.]
One of the Japanese guys said, uh, "Well, you've just been all over.
" And he Henry said, "Yes, I got some in your country.
" [speaking Japanese.]
He's going to be caught by the police.
Because it's a small country.
Make you a bet.
[laughs.]
I've been in your country, too.
[laughs.]
Somebody asked him, "Well, how did you get there?" And he said, "Well, I drove, of course.
" - [interviewer.]
To where? - To Japan.
[Hugh.]
The task force was doing very, very well.
Boutwell was thrilled.
He wanted everybody to know that in his jail, they had this task force, and that they were they were clearing all these murders.
Hey, let's face it, everybody wants to solve murders.
Families were pleased.
You know, you have a member of your family killed, you want to find out the perpetrator.
And so many of them slept better because they felt they had found the perp.
This is a bad guy.
Everyone's perfect serial killer.
And yet, I had interviewed a lot of murderers over the years, and this was this was so far out of the norm.
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
f[Hugh.]
I knew I had to keep questioning, checking.
When there was nobody around but me and Henry, he'd say, "Well, I didn't really do all them things.
" He said, "I'm just making this up.
I'll talk to you later.
" [mid-tempo music plays.]
If these lies don't make it right Can we pretend enough is true And if the highway calls at night Well, these bars still make me blue Can a lie told enough Become true? Can a lie told enough Become enough for you?
[Henry.]
I've killed them in every way there is except poison.
There's been strangulations.
There's been knife wounds.
There's been shootings.
There's been hit-and-runs.
[reporter.]
Henry Lee Lucas says he has killed 100 women.
[reporter 2.]
Lucas claims to have killed over 150 women.
[reporter 3.]
Henry Lee Lucas killed at least 360 people during an eight-year spree that only ended when Texas authorities caught him last year.
[reporter 4.]
One policeman said he makes Charles Manson sound like Tom Sawyer.
[woman.]
Henry Lee Lucas murdered my sister, Laura Jean Donez.
[woman 2.]
Henry Lee Lucas murdered my mother, Joan Gilmore.
[woman 3.]
Henry Lee Lucas killed my sister, Rita Salazar.
[man.]
The last person he killed meant no more to him than the last cigarette that he smoked.
[Hugh.]
This is a bad guy.
Everyone's perfect serial killer.
And yet, things just didn't add up.
[man 2.]
You can't kill 200 people and never leave a single shred of evidence.
Nothing.
Zero.
[Henry.]
I just grabbed her around her neck and started choking her.
You talk about being conned, he was playing them like a violin.
[Vic.]
I thought the powers-that-be would welcome the truth.
I was wrong.
[Parker.]
The really sad thing about this, the real tragedy is someone got away with murder.
[man 3.]
Either they found the world's worst serial killer or it was the biggest hoax in American criminal justice history.
[siren wailing.]
[Phil.]
Montague County was, uh, 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 of benefit to the local law enforcement.
I had been a ranger two years, and I got a call from the Montague County sheriff saying that they 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.
After about a month of working this case, I realized that we also got a 15-year-old girl missing.
She went by "Becky," but her name was Frieda 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 forties.
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 "P&N," the, uh, 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.
[camera shutters clicking.]
He'd 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 had 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, "That's out of Florida, isn't it?" I started looking for it in my papers.
He said, "No, Michigan.
" [chuckles.]
I said, "That's right.
That's right.
" [chuckles.]
And, uh, I said, "What What was that for?" He said, "Well, it's originally for stealing a 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 had to keep him up in cigarettes.
He drank coffee 24/7.
- He just loved talking.
- [Henry speaking indistinctly.]
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 was lying, but I just couldn't get a confession, and so I 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 got some ploughing to do anyway.
" And, uh, so we stuck him in jail and didn't talk to him.
Wednesday night, I get a call.
He's passed a note to the jailer.
He told me what he did to Kate.
He just, uh, stuck the knife in her chest, and then he got out and went around and dragged 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 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, uh, 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, uh, 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'll dig right there, you'll find a pillowcase with part of her.
" "The legs are out thataway.
Uh Her head's thisaway.
" And then I brought him back to Denton PD to be interrogated.
We kept arguing cussing each other and that was when I when I hit her with the knife.
Okay, and and after after that part happened, uh, do you recall what you did next? Yes.
I took her panties and her bra off and, uh I had sexual intercourse with her.
It's one of those things that, uh I guess it got to be a part of my life.
Having sexual intercourse with the dead.
Okay.
Uh After After she's dead and after you had sex with her, what happened next? Well, after that, I cut her uh - up in little teeny pieces.
- Mm.
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 a, uh 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, um you know, casually listening, and all of a sudden, Lucas just blurts out, "Well, Judge, what are we gonna do about these other 100 women I killed?" What did he say? [Phil.]
From that point, it went to hell in a handbasket quick.
[indistinct chattering.]
[reporter.]
Mr.
Lucas, in the hearing, you said you killed over a hundred women.
Is that true? [newscaster.]
Investigators in Montague, Texas, are looking into a former mental patient's claim that he has killed about 100 women.
[newscaster 2.]
Lucas claims a cross-country mass murder spree the last eight years.
That immediately brought a flood of inquiries from law enforcement authorities in several other states.
[Phil.]
I started getting calls from law enforcement all over.
Nineteen different states, I believe, was the last count.
There's no way of keeping up with it at this point.
It's gotten out of hand.
It was a nightmare.
[reporter.]
Local authorities revealed that he was a suspect in several killings.
They say he could be a mass murderer.
[Phil.]
Wherever Henry was, the media was there.
It was a circus that would not leave town.
[reporter 2.]
In this trial, the 47-year-old former drifter was his own worst witness.
First, he videotaped a confession to the 1982 crime.
- [weeping.]
- Then he broke down on the witness stand, admitting regret at having killed Becky Powell.
Lucas said Becky hit him in the face.
And the next thing Lucas remembers is seeing Becky with a knife in her chest.
The jury did not buy Lucas' attorney's argument of voluntary manslaughter.
We, the jury, find the defendant Henry Lee Lucas guilty of the offense of murder as it lays in the indictment.
[newscaster.]
In Denton, Texas, the professed mass murderer Henry Lee Lucas was sentenced today to life in prison for murdering and dismembering 15-year-old Becky Powell.
[newscaster 2.]
Lucas has also confessed to more than 150 other murders, and he makes Charles Manson sound like Tom Sawyer.
[newscaster 3.]
Investigators say the Lucas stories are so gruesome that even the interrogation process is difficult.
Yes, I've had days where I just had to make myself go in there.
I didn't feel up to it.
I've had days when I when I've cut it short.
[Phil.]
I was the one that was tasked with with getting information from him, uh, about other murders.
I would just give him a, uh, pencil and say, "If you think of anything, write it down," because we're covering so many murders that it's ridiculous.
He would sit there and draw pictures, and in the sides would describe how they were killed, what they were wearing.
Oh, it it turned your stomach, and it was hard to be decent with him and, um So sort of a self-protection, I guess.
I I went through a period of time where I didn't believe anything he said.
I don't know, I, uh I was ready to do some fence-cutting and goat-stealing cases.
I was sick of murders.
We would send pictures out to, uh, the, uh, agency that we believed would be responsible for investigating that murder.
One of the, uh, Texas sheriffs that we, uh, contacted was Sheriff Boutwell.
I was at home one Saturday morning back in, uh, June of, uh, 1983, I had a call from the, uh, sheriff in Montague County.
He called me and said, uh, "Jim, uh we got an old boy in jail up here that you might want to talk to.
" [Phil.]
Sheriff Boutwell had been actively investigating a string of murders up and down I-35 between Dallas and Austin.
We had several bodies out here on Interstate 35.
And, uh, we weren't having any luck on solving or clearing those cases.
[Phil.]
He felt like it was a single serial killer, and he thought that, uh, Henry very well could have been the one doing that.
Sheriff Boutwell got a bench warrant and picked Henry up right after he was sentenced in Denton County, carried him straight to his jail there in Georgetown.
And then, from that point on, you never saw Henry without Boutwell.
Jim Boutwell was a legend in Texas law enforcement.
If you run the clock back a few years [gunshot.]
to that sniper on the tower of the University of Texas, who killed quite a number of people and wounded many more, Jim got in his plane and flew up and radioed the location where the shooter was, and he got several bullet holes in his aircraft, but he did quite a heroic job.
After Lucas was in the custody of Sheriff Boutwell, he, uh, went to the director of DPS, Colonel Jim Adams, to see if they would set up a task force to coordinate these Lucas investigations.
Lucas, uh is in a tight security cell.
[Phil.]
Being a popular sheriff, he was he had the political clout to get a task force put together.
So the more we can learn about the mentality, the modus operandi, uh, the traveling habits, the public is going to ultimately be more secure.
[Bob.]
Colonel Adams wanted a Texas Ranger officer in charge, and I was assigned to that.
[Phil.]
Sergeant Prince was a Ranger's Ranger.
He'd come from a family of law enforcement.
A straight-up honest guy.
[telephone ringing.]
[Bob.]
The task force was set up in a small office in the county jail.
We were not an investigative task force.
We were a coordinating task force.
Our role was to, uh, allow access to officers wanting to talk with Lucas from all over the nation.
We had an interview room set up, we had a videotape set up.
[officer.]
This statement is being tape-recorded on a Panasonic machine.
[Bob.]
When they were ready for the interview, we'd bring Lucas down, tape it, and then when they were through, we'd debrief him.
"Was there any cases that you believe you were responsible for?" Okay, then what happened? I hit her with a knife.
Yeah, I had sex with her already before I shot her.
I hit her, but I think I hit her with my fist.
I ain't sure, but I think I did.
[Bob.]
I'd set it up like a doctor's office.
If they need four hours, I'd give them from eight to twelve.
We may have to schedule it for a month or two months ahead of time.
We had such a backlog.
That's probably in the neighborhood of a thousand officers that signed in to talk to Lucas.
As a peace officer, that's a satisfying feeling, knowing that you've taken killers like, uh, Lucas off the street.
Maybe bringing closure to some families.
Jack, I talked to, uh, Henry.
He says that he did own a two-tone [Nan.]
The task force seemed innovative, because the task force was an attempt to have all of these law enforcement people come into a central location, so that people were sharing information, and at the time, this was brand new.
[newscaster.]
Since Lucas was arrested, authorities from all over the country have been to see him about unsolved murders.
They say it may be years before a full construction of his crimes is complete.
[newscaster 2.]
None of the known serial murderers approaches the record of Henry Lee Lucas.
[newscaster 3.]
Lucas was a drifter who murdered at random across America.
[newscaster 4.]
A drifter with no conscience and a compulsion to kill.
He cruised the interstates and the back roads looking for that woman in a jam.
Yes, many of his killings, uh, exhibited a lot of violence and overkill.
Very, very violent.
Very cruel in many cases.
I heard that this man up in North Texas had said he'd killed hundreds of people.
[reporter on TV.]
Now in jail, just a few miles from [Hugh.]
I had just spent four years interviewing Ted Bundy.
But Bundy only killed about 30 people.
Here's a guy who says he's killed a hundred.
I really had to go talk to him and find out.
Sheriff Jim Boutwell had read my Bundy book.
And he said, "Well, you come down and talk to Henry anytime you want to.
" Well, I started doing it quite often.
[indistinct chattering.]
I've never had quite as good access, even with with Bundy.
I could go any day of the week, any time of the day, generally.
My first impression was Lucas was just a dirtball.
I was horrified by the smell.
He was one-eyed and his other eye dripped.
He had three, maybe four teeth.
He was a pitiful looking gentleman, really.
[indistinct chattering.]
Y'all want a cigarette? [Hugh.]
I was able to bring in a Japanese film crew, and Sheriff Boutwell thought that was exciting.
They were from Japan, and my goodness, of course, we'll we'll take the day and we'll we'll show 'em a good time.
We appreciate the the opportunity to show the people of your country, uh [speaking Japanese.]
some of the things that go on here.
I, uh I'm sorry they have to be such bad things.
[speaking Japanese.]
The Japanese were just thrilled to death, and stunned, I might say.
[man.]
Sister Clemmie! - Hi.
- Yeah.
Nice to meet you.
[speaks indistinctly.]
And Yoichi Aoki.
Nice to meet you, sir.
Oh.
They brought you a present from Japan.
A painting set.
Please.
[speaks Japanese.]
- [Clemmie.]
Open it.
- It's a watercolor set.
[speaks Japanese.]
I hope you enjoy it.
[Clemmie.]
Open it, Henry.
[Yoichi.]
In Japan, you're becoming really famous in Japan too.
Yeah.
Look, nobody had ever paid that much attention to Henry Lee Lucas.
Uh, we understand you were born in Blacksburg, in Virginia, and if you can tell us a little bit about your background? I had a family that, uh [exhales.]
was I guess what you'd say a poor family.
They didn't have anything, and, uh My mother was, uh, a prostitute, and, uh [Jim.]
Your mother would bring people home and she would have sex with them in front of you kids? Right, yeah.
Sometimes I was forced to watch her.
What was your dad doing? [exhales.]
Laying up drunk sometimes.
Uh, sometimes he'd just go on out of the house because he didn't want to be in there.
[birds chirping.]
[Hugh.]
Henry Lucas grew up in rural Virginia in a dilapidated little house.
He only went till the fourth grade.
He was trouble all the way.
His dad had lost his legs in a railroad accident, and so he was on a mat and he sold pencils on the street.
His mother would beat him.
She would ridicule him incessantly.
[Yoichi.]
Your mother was really hard on you.
Did you ever think that "Someday I'm gonna kill her"? Yeah, I told somebody I was.
Uh So here comes Mom in, uh, drunk, and and during the argument with her, and her striking me over the head with a broom handle, I swung at her with a knife.
And, uh Uh I just turned and walked right on out of the room.
And, uh It's as though she didn't exist.
[Hugh.]
Well, I believe you told, uh, Sheriff Boutwell that when you'd kill, you'd get this cold feeling.
Well, it's like being in an icebox.
You get just as cold, uh No feelings, uh You don't have no feelings for the actual human itself, you just It's as though it's not there.
But yet, uh, it's You know, something takes its place, and, uh - [Jim.]
An inanimate object, almost.
- [Henry.]
Yeah.
- [Jim.]
A thing, not a person.
- [Henry.]
Right.
You know, most normal people can still have a terrible background and there's still some kind of a firewall there that prevents them from moving off into killing people.
You know, that firewall did not exist for Lucas.
[Nan.]
When you talked to him, he was cooperative.
He was polite.
But during the interview, I was terrified.
Who wouldn't be scared? I mean, I certainly had read about who this was and I'd never, ever been in the vicinity of someone like that.
The editor said to me, "Life magazine is doing a feature on the phenomenon of serial killing.
" Within a week, I was in Henry's interview room.
His "office," he called it.
[newscaster.]
According to an article in the current issue of Life magazine, 5,000 Americans were murdered by serial killers in 1983 alone.
There was this national interest in the whole idea of serial killing.
[newscaster 2.]
Motiveless, random killings, sometimes thousands of miles apart.
They're known as "serial killers," and according to law enforcement officials, there are at least 35 of them roaming the country now, stalking victims.
[Nan.]
People were just beginning to try to understand how something like that could happen.
The psychologist I worked with had developed what he called a serial killer profile.
And in that profile, there were distinctive characteristics.
The person usually hadn't married and didn't have children.
There was usually a controlling parent.
There was a history of the child visiting emergency rooms repeatedly.
And then psychological issues like suicidal tendencies, cruelty to animals.
I had, uh been taught sexual relation by a man that lived at, uh with my mother.
What did he tell you about having sex with animals? Did he teach you to kill 'em? Yeah, he taught, uh you know, to kill animals and have sex with them.
Uh What kind of animals? Goats? Anything, it didn't matter.
Uh Any kind of animal.
[Nan.]
You could see the way Henry fit into the profile that we had created.
Henry's mother was violent.
Several times, he went to the emergency room.
Once, when he was six, she hit him over the head with a two-by-four, and he says he was unconscious for 30 to 36 hours.
He talked about the fact that whenever he had a pet, she would kill it.
That's Henry's brain.
Here, there's frontal lobe damage, these little white spots.
The doctor said it looked like a head trauma that happened between the ages of five and ten.
They found some temporal lobe damage, some frontal lobe damage.
The combination is supposed to be the worst that it can be.
Temporal lobe means uh no control over impulse.
Frontal lobe is lack of compassion, empathy.
You put those together, it looks to me like you have a serial killer.
[indistinct chatter.]
[Hugh.]
Well, I don't understand how this thing progressed, Henry.
You started out killing your mother in '60, then it really escalated.
[Henry.]
Uh-huh.
[Hugh.]
Was this What was in your mind then? - What what made it just get so - [Henry exhales.]
Did it get easier as you went on? Oh, yeah.
Uh It just didn't matter no more.
Uh There was no, uh [inhales deeply.]
It just become After '79, it become an impulse.
And then, by me meeting Ottis Toole, uh, that didn't help so good, you know, 'cause me and him started running around killing together too.
[Bob.]
Ottis Toole was Henry Lucas' running buddy, and probably had some, uh, murders together.
Uh, Toole was a homosexual, and, uh Lucas apparently was on the receiving end of that time, but, uh He was a very much of a vicious, vicious person.
Very low IQ.
[Hugh.]
Toole would dress up like a woman and go pick up people in bars and get money for sex.
This was a huge, big man.
He was about six-three or four, and he was muscular, and yet he talked very softly.
They became good friends.
We picked up lots of hitchhikers and all, you know.
Henry mostly killed all the women, you know, himself, you know.
Some of them would be shot in the head and in the chest and Some of them would be, uh, choked to death and some of them would be, uh beaten in the head with a tire tool.
[Phil.]
They made a lot of trips, you know, from Florida to California and back and around.
I think all they did was just drive, and drive, and drive, and drive, and camp out at parks and wherever they could.
And he was a walking Rand McNally.
He knew this country.
You know, little tiny roads and freeways and And you just don't learn that much about roads unless you've spent a lot of time on the road.
[newscaster.]
Roaming murderers like Lucas create enormous problems for the police.
They could do two in Texas and be in Arizona or New Mexico and do one, uh, again in ten hours, and then go from there to California and do them, so, uh, they're very hard to track.
[Bob.]
A serial killer is probably the hardest person to detect and identify uh, because they'd have no connection with the victim.
Probably a whole lot of serial killers have been out there in years past that weren't ever recognized because there'd be no connection made between a murder that happened in Texas and in the panhandle of Florida.
Lucas got away with it for quite a number of years.
And that's why we set up the task force.
[indistinct chattering.]
[Nan.]
Sheriff Boutwell called a conference together where he invited people from across the country to come and try to see if they could make any discoveries pertinent to the Lucas information.
Maybe we can come up with Lucas and Toole as being a suspect in your particular area.
[newscaster.]
Lawmen met to compare notes and piece together the Lucas-Toole trail of terror.
[newscaster 2.]
Police now link at least Lucas to scores of murders in 17 states, stretching from coast to coast.
I don't know whether it's me or whether I looked trusted or what, I don't know, but, uh, they'd get in the car.
And I'd go up and knock on people's doors, and tell them I'm hungry, tell them I want a drink of water, they'd invite me right in their house.
They'd say, "Come on in," you know? "Come on.
" [man.]
Mm-hmm.
Which is the worst mistake they make.
I think that was the secret of his success, because he acts low-key, harmless.
Uh You know, somebody'd climb in a car with him.
If they could stand the smell, they'd say, "Oh, this old boy wouldn't hurt anybody.
" [indistinct chattering.]
[Hugh.]
But what causes you to grab a woman or kill one? I mean, just just It's just, uh I don't like women, you know? - You know, at the time, I didn't like 'em.
- Yeah.
And every time I'd see a woman, whether they was walking down the road, walking down the street, uh wherever I seen that woman, I was gonna pick her up.
- [Hugh.]
Yeah.
- Uh, I just hate them.
[Hugh.]
Well, that's a feeling.
That's a pretty strong feeling.
Didn't any woman ever treat you really good? Clemmie has been the only woman that has actually ever treated me good.
Uh She has gone completely out of her way, uh, to help me.
[Clemmie.]
I had been visiting the jails.
They said, "Oh, Sister Clemmie, we have a new inmate, and he's a serial killer.
Be careful.
" You know, all of the jailers, "Sister, please be careful.
" It was, uh, right before Christmas, and I was, uh taking, uh, Bibles and handing them out to prisoners, and I had one left, and, um I was going to take the Bible home, and and I said, "Uh, Lord, did I forget someone? Should this Bible go to someone?" [Henry.]
And she says, "If I give you this Bible, you won't tear it up, will you? You'll read it?" I said, "Yeah.
" "I have given you my Holy Spirit to live in you and to help you.
" What does that mean to you, Henry? That means living a clean life.
Living according to God.
[Henry.]
She's become a very, very good friend.
She's taught me - the Bible - [man.]
Mm-hmm.
And she's taught me how to care, uh, about others.
After about the fourth visit, I baptized him and I had a love for him that I couldn't explain, you know? [Clemmie.]
He said that this is the first time in his life that he has ever felt good about himself.
He's able to see beauty in things all around him.
He enjoys oil painting.
And he's one of the most gentle persons I know, and it's like he was never capable of loving before, and it's like he has a deep brotherly love for me.
[Henry.]
God himself sent her to me.
[newscaster.]
Lucas says God told him to start telling what he'd done.
Uh [exhales.]
It's an experience I had with a light, uh, that came in my cell.
Jesus Christ himself came in and asked me to accept Him as my personal savior.
And I said then, I says, "I can't, uh clear up the cases because I can't remember 'em.
" And He says, "I will take care of that.
" From that day on, I've been able to go back to the bodies, I've been able to tell where they're at and everything else.
[newscaster.]
Authorities say he has an incredible recall for names, dates, and details of his crimes and crime scenes.
[newscaster 2.]
Lucas was relaxed, and he even lit a cigarette, after he led deputies down a road where he allegedly killed one of the women.
[Clayton.]
Being able to direct persons ten, 15 years after the offenses occurred is sort of frightening.
There's just so many things that would lead you to believe that he was there.
That's the That's the door I came out of right there.
- The one in the front? - Yeah.
[Jim.]
I recall, uh, one particular murder case where a, uh, Playboy magazine was found by the, uh, victim.
Henry told the officers, uh, that that they would have found that magazine there and even told them the year and the month the magazine was issued.
[officer.]
I think this one is a better one right there.
[Henry.]
All I have to do, if I've ever killed a person, is they can show me a live photograph of that person and I can look at the picture and I can tell you if I've killed her.
And if I've killed her, I tell you how and where.
Uh He's, uh, confessing to all of his crimes, and he's bringing forth the bodies so they can have Christian burials.
Receiving letters from his victims' families are very moving and touching to him.
[Henry.]
There's people out there in this world today that's lost their loved ones, and they wanna know who done it.
Why should I hide my face, saying I'm a coward, you know? Uh I want them to know who I am.
He feels like he's doing the will of God and this is the first time that he has any inner inner peace.
[Nan.]
Clemmie was his spiritual advisor, but she also cooked his dinners.
I did an interview with Henry during one of those dinners.
He was not in handcuffs.
Clemmie was cutting his meat [small laugh.]
and cantaloupe, and handing him the plate, and we were interviewing him while that was happening.
She also cut his hair.
I couldn't believe that he was right next to a pair of barber scissors, smiling at everyone, and Clemmie not really understanding how dangerous that was.
They created a community.
It almost seemed like a family.
Sheriff Boutwell and Bob Prince, especially, would talk about maintaining Henry's mood so he would continue to cooperate.
We've gained his confidence and we need to keep his confidence.
Um Uh You know, if he doesn't have our confidence, he could um, he could either quit talking or or, uh, tell us some things that that were not true.
[indistinct chattering.]
[Hugh.]
He had free rein in Georgetown.
He got drinks out of the soft-drink machine.
He wandered around without handcuffs.
[Henry.]
I consider Georgetown my home.
It's a little hard to say, you know, being a jail, - but, uh, it's home.
- [woman laughs.]
[newscaster.]
There is an easy-going, relaxed feeling between lawman and killer.
[Henry.]
Being friendly towards each other, and, uh, I joke a lot with Bob, kid with him, and I do the Sheriff the same way, or Clayton Smith.
Henry was so happy being at the jail.
They didn't treat him as a killer, but as a friend that they would be working with.
[Nan.]
It was making him feel as though he was contributing by helping to solve the cases, because the families needed him to do that.
[Henry.]
I was trying, like I'm doing right now, just to get, uh, the cases solved, you know? But, uh, there's nobody else gonna solve them except me.
[Hugh.]
As I started talking to Henry, things just didn't add up.
[Henry.]
Uh There's hundreds of 'em.
[Hugh.]
One of the Japanese guys said, uh, "Well, you've just been all over.
" And he Henry said, "Yes, I got some in your country.
" [speaking Japanese.]
He's going to be caught by the police.
Because it's a small country.
Make you a bet.
[laughs.]
I've been in your country, too.
[laughs.]
Somebody asked him, "Well, how did you get there?" And he said, "Well, I drove, of course.
" - [interviewer.]
To where? - To Japan.
[Hugh.]
The task force was doing very, very well.
Boutwell was thrilled.
He wanted everybody to know that in his jail, they had this task force, and that they were they were clearing all these murders.
Hey, let's face it, everybody wants to solve murders.
Families were pleased.
You know, you have a member of your family killed, you want to find out the perpetrator.
And so many of them slept better because they felt they had found the perp.
This is a bad guy.
Everyone's perfect serial killer.
And yet, I had interviewed a lot of murderers over the years, and this was this was so far out of the norm.
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
f[Hugh.]
I knew I had to keep questioning, checking.
When there was nobody around but me and Henry, he'd say, "Well, I didn't really do all them things.
" He said, "I'm just making this up.
I'll talk to you later.
" [mid-tempo music plays.]
If these lies don't make it right Can we pretend enough is true And if the highway calls at night Well, these bars still make me blue Can a lie told enough Become true? Can a lie told enough Become enough for you?