The Confession Killer (2019) s01e02 Episode Script
Make It Strawberry
Debbie was an exceptional daughter.
She was kind.
She was friendly.
She was very helpful to anybody.
And Except around the house.
This is Deborah when she graduated from high school.
Debbie was 18 when she got married.
I was eight years old.
I was a flower girl in her wedding.
I was so nervous I was going to mess up.
And I wanted to do it so right for her.
The last time I saw Debbie I'm sorry.
That's a terrible day.
Was her dad's birthday.
And we all went out to have dinner.
We ate, and then we took her home to her house, approximately 8:30.
I was supposed to stay the night with her.
And, um for whatever reason, Mother When we pulled into the driveway, Mother had decided that I was not.
I always felt like if I was there, I could've made a difference.
We got a phone call from Doug, her husband.
Told us to come to the house right away, that Debbie was dead.
Oh, it was horrible.
I'll never forget that moment.
No one could come up with anything as far as someone she had made mad or crossed a path with.
We never gave up hope that her murderer would be caught.
Nine years went by with no leads.
We were getting pretty low.
When we got the call from the police and they said they had a confession, we didn't know who, but it didn't matter to us.
We were just so happy.
There's a lot of emotions with that.
Getting that news and thinking it's over.
My parents immediately went to hear this confession and get the details of this person that had killed my sister.
And that's where nightmare number two began.
Henry Lee Lucas came into our lives.
Lucas says he killed more than 150 women.
170 murders directly attributed to Lucas.
189 in 24 states.
Murdered at least 360 people, including his mother.
Henry Lee Lucas has confessed to killing 600 people.
My victims never knew what was gonna happen.
I've had shootings, strangulations, beatings.
I participated in actual crucifixions.
The last person he killed meant no more to him than the last cigarette that he smoked.
To me, it didn't matter.
I mean, I didn't have no feelings about killing.
It's like you just drink a drink of water, really.
I mean, it didn't mean anything to me.
Henry was in Georgetown, Texas.
Sheriff Jim Boutwell was in charge of the jail.
Boutwell told me I could have total access.
And I did for probably six months.
It just gave me access that nobody else had.
They didn't trust too many reporters.
And they trusted me.
- Hi.
- Hi.
When I'd go in there, they would often let him walk free, and he wasn't handcuffed.
Uh-oh.
You got the handcuffs? Let's talk about Jim Boutwell.
He's an unusual man.
What, uh What kind of relationship do you have with him? I look at him as a friend, not as a sheriff.
Uh Uh, he's always treated me good, and he's, uh, went out of his way to do things for me that, uh normally, he wouldn't do for other prisoners.
Boutwell and Lucas did have an unusual relationship.
Henry told me more than once, "Well, he just seems like my daddy.
" Of course, Boutwell did everything in the world for Henry.
Henry, we We'll go get some lunch.
Is there anything we can bring you? Not unless you run into some Sonic out there somewhere and see a milkshake sitting around.
I'll figure it out.
Every day, he brought him a strawberry milkshake.
He praised him to everyone.
He's doing something now, which is a very valuable service to, uh, law enforcement and to mankind.
You can't help but, uh, give him credit for the fact that he knows he doesn't have to clear up these cases, he knows he doesn't have to talk and and yet, uh, he he does want to get it straight.
Henry never lived so good.
He ate good, he drank good, he had cigarettes, more than he could smoke.
My theory during my entire career has been, "treat people the way you'd want to be treated in the same circumstances.
" We'd bring him cigarettes, or have the interviewing officers bring him cigarettes.
This is the kind of cigarettes you like.
If I was a smoker, that's the way I'd wanna be treated.
Boutwell and the Texas Rangers had set up a task force to clear all these hundreds of murders that he was claiming.
It was like Henry was a member of the task force.
He often would be on the phone, talking to officers all over the country, helping to solve their cases.
It was pretty bizarre.
I don't know whether I can find it on a map or not.
I have to look.
We had a map in the inner office, of the United States, and whenever an officer would determine that Lucas was involved in the case, we would put a pin at that location.
Policemen came from all over the country, and they wanted to solve cases.
- How long did you talk to him? - About an hour and a half.
How close do you think you are to making an arrest or having a charge in either one of these cases? Quite close.
Both or just one? We're not allowed to discuss that.
This was the biggest thing that had ever happened to a lot of these cops.
The actual ability to come, and talk, and smoke, and maybe have a bite with the biggest killer in the world.
I want to thank you, uh, for your time.
I want to thank you for myself, for the Pennsylvania State Police.
These cops would come, and they would clear a case, and they'd shake hands with him and pat him on the back.
Where were we? Henry, what were you saying? Well, I guess where I, uh, killed that girl up on the on the marker on 70.
He'd never felt so important in his life.
Suddenly everyone wanted to talk to Henry Lucas.
Do you think it's possible that, uh you committed that homicide? And whenever officers would come in and talk to Lucas, the instructions I'd give 'em, "You believe him if you can confirm it.
If he likes you, he will do everything he can to try to take responsibility for your homicide.
But if you cannot confirm it, um don't believe him.
" I've got 'em scattered all over the country though He liked to impress people with what he'd done.
I've tried to show law enforcement, I've tried to teach 'em.
Instead of trying to hide what he had done, he would exaggerate what he had done.
Everything except poison.
Everything? Sometimes I would go down and I would run into people from two or three police departments at the same time.
And they all had an hour or two or whatever.
This is the dining room area.
And the living room.
You can't just walk in and say, "Okay, Henry.
You've killed 300 people all across the United States.
Tell me the one I'm thinking of now.
" I mean, you got to give him something.
See if that might mean anything to you.
He seemed to respond better with photos of the victim.
This woman is the one that I picked up from this car.
I walked in the room one time to talk to one of the Rangers, and he was looking through the books the police department sent in to the task force.
They'd have crime scene photos.
Well, the next day, here came the police.
He knew what highway they were on, he knew what the house looked like.
Put your initials Sometimes I'd be there for several hours and they'd clear six cases, murder cases.
Sign your name to it, however you want to do it.
Sheriff Boutwell said, "We solved six more.
" And Bob Prince says, "For every case, I promised Henry a milkshake.
So that is six milkshakes.
So you want them once a day?" And Henry says, "Yeah, that sounds good to me, and make it strawberry.
" And I thought, "Six cases Six murder cases.
" Clemmie was convinced that her role was to offer spiritual guidance to Henry, and also uh, emotional support, because, according to her, he would get very emotional after the interviews and was returned to the jail cell.
He was looking to please Clemmie at every juncture.
He had never had a woman friend like this.
He loved her presence.
If it wasn't for her, I'll be honest with you, I don't think I could go through the constant reliving each case and stuff.
Yeah.
Very often, he would get what was called "moody.
" Sheriff Boutwell knew that Henry was more inclined to cooperate if Clemmie believed it was the right thing to do, and very often, they would convince Clemmie that they needed her help.
Sheriff Boutwell said, "We have families waiting for him to come and see if these are his people.
These poor families.
" It was like, "You get him there, Sister Clemmie, and I can take care of the rest.
" They were clearing cases, and, at that point, Henry was already facing several life sentences.
But with the Orange Socks case coming up, the ball game had changed.
Now he faced the death penalty.
Dubbed the Orange Socks case, the body of a woman was found dumped in a culvert north of Georgetown.
She came to be called Orange Socks because that was the only shred of identity Lucas left her.
It was an unsolved murder case of a woman killed on I-35.
Sheriff Jim Boutwell was assigned the case.
I know that he had made a commitment that he was going to do everything he could to find the killer of the Orange Socks victim.
Is this the girl It's the same girl.
- that you picked up? - Same one.
Okay.
Sheriff Jim Boutwell says Lucas confessed to the murder and described details only the killer could know.
He looked at the picture and after a moment, he told me, uh "That girl was a hitchhiker that I picked up near Oklahoma City.
" And he said, "She would've been strangled.
" After I pulled over, why, I grabbed her by the neck and choked her until she died.
I had sex with her again.
I went down here.
Dropped her right over there.
She landed on her side.
Just socks, no clothing.
I didn't kill the girl in the orange socks.
I didn't have anything to do with it.
I did not do it, and I'll prove it if you want to.
When there was nobody around, Henry would deny to me the Orange Socks case.
He was telling me he was at work in Florida.
What about Orange Socks? Did you do that one? Let's put it this way They're not gonna get mad if you tell them.
- You did it.
- I know.
It's done been settled, you know, so that's We'll leave it as what it is.
- Okay.
- Uh I knew I had to check what Henry was telling me.
Really had to find out if it was a legitimate story or not.
I went to Jacksonville where Lucas worked.
I would never have figured that Henry would, you know, end up being a killer, because he was, like I said, a normal person.
He was quiet and the whole family loved him.
You know, we got along great.
They was, um just a working a hard-working family.
You don't really believe that he had killed all those many people, do you? Not really.
I don't.
He was a good boy.
I found out that he had a tremendous memory.
He told me where he sold scrap.
He told me where he bought insurance.
He told me where he was in jail overnight.
His stories checked out.
I was finding real evidence.
You gotta call them, then I can get the exact time.
I found out where Lucas had cashed a check the night before Orange Socks was killed.
And he come to cash the check, they you know, every every week.
I also found work records that showed that he was on the job just hours before Orange Socks was killed, 1,100 miles away.
Why would he travel 1,100 miles to kill a person he didn't know? I mean, it was just ludicrous.
When I got back to Georgetown, I told Boutwell, and Boutwell was always friendly to me up to that point, and he said, "I know he did it.
He's told me he did it.
" I've seen Lucas mention cases himself that he had never been asked about, and describe them in great detail, and direct the officers to the scene of the crimes and tell them in advance what to expect over the next rise in the hill.
Lawmen across the country are keeping a close eye on this case, some even waiting to file murder charges until this trial is complete and a jury decides whether Lucas will die for his crimes.
I knew that Henry was a killer, and I knew that he was a liar, but I didn't think he should get the death penalty on a case he had absolutely nothing to do with.
So I went to Henry's attorneys.
that is that we have no Don and I were now co-counsel on the Lucas case.
When Henry told us that he had not been in Texas, we were like, "Well, why are you confessing to this?" And his his statement, uh which he told us before the beginning of the trial, was that he was trying to commit legal suicide.
And he felt a great deal of remorse for having killed Becky.
Becky was the only person that had ever treated him with any kind of love, or affection, or respect.
He felt so bad he wanted to die, but if he took his own life, he could not get into heaven where Becky was.
And he came up with this idea that "I'll have the state kill me, and then, that way, I will be in heaven with Becky.
" And I'd never studied anything like that in law school, never heard of the concept of legal suicide.
We certainly did not, uh, plead it to the court.
After I pulled over, why Henry, I'm going to tell you one more time you're talking yourself into a very possible death penalty case.
I have to go with whatever goes.
I mean, I can't help it.
I'm asking you not to make any further statements, to terminate this interview.
Well Generally, anyone who is charged with a crime wants to help their lawyer get them out.
It was maddening trying to represent somebody who was actually working against you in a death penalty case.
There were so many times that Mr.
Higginbotham and I walked out of the jail just "What's going on?" Would you like the death penalty if you are convicted? I'm gonna get it.
He said He said he's gonna get it? I slipped away at the start of the second week of of jury selection and flew over to Jacksonville and found four witnesses.
At the jail, I saw Henry's traveling companion, Ottis Toole.
The thing that I remember the most was that he was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon.
He was as as dumb as you get.
I'm gonna show you photographs of of the victim, of the body.
Now, we've looked at these, have we not? Ottis had no clue of what I was talking about other than that I had been with Henry, I was one of Henry's lawyers, and and he wanted to help Henry.
Henry and Ottis Toole played off of each other and, uh tried to impress each other.
When I'd ask him any question, he'd always say, "What does What does Henry say? What did Henry say?" He wanted to match whatever Henry said.
We're all going through this and I've advised What all does he say? - Pardon? - He ain't gonna go in there.
No, no.
I'd I'd like to know what you've got to say.
And I want to know what he got to say.
When I went to see him, he said, "Oh, Henry.
I love Henry.
And he just Whatever he says, I'll just go go along with.
" Wherever we go, we'll still be together.
Oh, yeah.
And It's your decision.
Sure will, 'cause I think about you all the time.
Well, I do too.
I've got your picture down here in my cell.
Well, I got yours too.
The conversations that I had with Lucas and Ottis were I mean, it was just fanciful.
It was just exaggerated boasting.
When they were together, they'd just kind of feed each other.
That time when I cooked some of them people, what made me do that? Wouldn't that make me a cannibal, doing things like that or what? No, you wasn't a cannibal.
Like I say, it was a force of the devil and, uh I would pour some of that blood out of 'em.
Well, I know that.
See what the mess tastes like.
Some of it tastes like real meat when it's got barbecue sauce on it.
Well, you know how that is.
I talked to Lucas about why now Ottis is making up stories about barbecuing people and eating them and all.
And he said, "Well, it's because I got famous.
He was jealous, and he wanted everybody to know who he was too.
" How many people did you kill, Henry? A hundred and fifty.
By yourself? No, not by myself.
I was with you on some of them myself, wasn't I? If you want to admit to that, yes.
- Yeah.
- It's up to you.
Whatever you I don't care what you done.
I still care about you.
That's the way it goes.
Well, I know that.
And as long as we understand each other, as long as we know the truth about each other - Yeah.
- And that's all I want.
Let me walk for a bit.
Today was the day the testimony began in the trial of confessed killer Henry Lee Lucas.
He has never faced the death penalty until now.
Williamson County prosecutors trying to show, mainly through his confessions, that Lucas did indeed kill the unidentified nude hitchhiker found north of Georgetown, Halloween 1979.
In a surprising turn, Williamson County Sheriff Jim Boutwell is heard on the tapes supplying Lucas with some of the key details of the murder Lucas is charged with.
During cross examination, Boutwell said he just refreshed Lucas' memory about the details.
By that time, he was having second thoughts.
Trying to pull himself out, not knowing how.
And he was scared.
It appears the defense may finally get the case tomorrow, and the speculation continues whether Ottis Elwood Toole will be testifying on behalf of the defense.
Latest word we get is "no.
" Nobody in their right mind would put that person on the witness stand to testify to try to help your case.
Ottis did not help us at all.
We had witnesses that we brought over from Florida who testified during the defense.
Roofing company supervisor Fred Ellis took the stand to back up records dated the day the woman died.
Defense lawyer Parker McCullough asked, "Did Henry Lucas work that day?" "Yes.
There's a check by his name.
" "How do you know?" "I put it there.
" "You recall seeing Henry Lucas on this particular job?" "Yes.
" The case for the defense was built on two things: Lucas' alibi that he was working in Florida at the time of the murder and that he was and is insane.
But the prosecution used Lucas' own words to refute both arguments.
Lucas explained how he paid off people in Florida to show him present at his roofing job.
The psychiatrist who examined Lucas said he's a sociopath, a person with no conscience, with deviant sexual disorders including bestiality and necrophilia.
But he falls in the normal range.
After all the evidence had been presented, the only person who was smiling was the defendant, Henry Lee Lucas.
The defense team, on the other hand, seemed to have lost the air of confidence it had been exhibiting for the past several days.
We came to the conclusion that the only way we were gonna be able to get Henry out of the death penalty was to have him testify, and I worked with him for two or three hours in preparation of his testifying the following morning.
I told my attorneys I didn't do the case.
I turn around and tell the sheriff that I did do the case.
Then I turn around and give you information about the work records.
Then I turn around and tell them the work records are no good.
Then are the work records good or no good? They're good.
You gonna say that tomorrow? Yeah.
I felt good when I left him.
Got up early the next day.
I said, "Henry, are you ready to go? Today's a big day.
" He said, "I'm not going to do it.
" I said "Wait a minute.
When I talked to you less than 12 hours ago, you were prepared to testify.
" He said, "I just can't do it.
" Someone must have talked to him.
Someone must have seen him after I left the jail or, uh, before he was brought into our conference room the next morning.
I'm absolutely convinced that Henry refused to take the witness stand in his defense because he did not want to go against the sheriff.
And then we rested our case.
That was it.
That was the end of the defense for Henry Lee Lucas.
After hearing the verdict from the San Angelo jury, convicted murderer Henry Lee Lucas left the courthouse smiling about the capital murder conviction.
Do you feel like it's, uh, suicide for you? It is suicide, because I didn't do the crime.
- Why are you happy? - Because I got what I wanted.
He got exactly what he wanted.
And, uh, I guess I should say I'm happy for him.
But I'm going to do everything that I can, and we tried to do everything that we could to prevent that.
Personally, I had a great sense of disappointment that I had been a participant in a miscarriage.
I felt so close to it and felt really stung by the harshness of the verdict and the realization that this man had talked his way into a death penalty case and been found guilty of capital murder.
Lucas won't be transferred to death row at Huntsville for the time being though.
Instead, he will be kept in the Williamson County Jail to assist the homicide task force, which is working on murders he claims to have been involved in.
The easy thing to have done would've been to take him to the penitentiary the day he was convicted.
That would've been the easy route for everybody.
But to the people that have missing loved ones, we would certainly be doing them an injustice.
Department of Public Safety says they owe it to the families and the lawmen of America to clear as many murder cases as possible before Lucas is put to death.
Now Lucas is headed out of state to continue visits with law officials around the country, and although authorities refuse to reveal his itinerary, they do say he will be on the road until September.
Lucas came to New Orleans amid great fanfare to confess to 30 more murders in our metropolitan area.
He'd never been on an airplane in his life.
Suddenly, they started flying him all around the country to confess to these murders.
He rubs elbows with cops and drinks gallons of coffee, touring murder scenes.
He was pretty cocky.
When we went to California, he said, "I'll come, but I want a TV in my cell every night wherever I am.
" We went to California for five to seven days, something like that and and they did put a TV in his cell.
I'm here this morning to report that 15 outstanding California murder cases have been resolved as a result of a recently completed tour of the state by condemned serial killer Henry Lee Lucas.
Lucas led state and local authorities to murder sites throughout California.
Here is a print-out, by the way, uh, that I have of the various locations, and it almost defies belief.
He did virtually every kind of crime known to man.
Uh, you name it You name it, uh, he did it.
Uh, I do know that he has personally led officers uh, back physically to the scene in excess of 100 times.
It was like he was a movie star everywhere he went.
Here, I'll hold it for you.
I've had a lot of people come to me and say, "Why? Why are you doing it?" And it's very simple.
Why? Because God asked me to do it.
Uh, if it wasn't for Him, I would never confess.
I've been able to completely identify the locations, the details, and the way it's happened.
Henry Lee Lucas was right here in Lubbock yesterday, leading detectives to several locations of murders, including this carport, where, in 1975, detectives found the body of Deborah Sue Williamson.
The detail Lucas provided was so exact, authorities found it frightening.
In some sense, there is a little comfort now in knowing they have solved the unsolved.
We got the call from the police, and we went Monday morning.
They handed us this confession, how he went in the house.
He said that he went in through the glass door.
There was a big curio cabinet in front of that patio door.
He could not have gone through it anyway.
Went down the hall, into the bedroom, and went out the back door.
None of that happened.
We told the detectives we did not believe this, he could not have done this.
How can you even accept this? We were mad.
We went straight to the media.
Bob and Joyce Lemons are the parents of one of the victims in Henry's touted crime spree.
At first, the Lemons were pleased that, at last, their daughter's killer had been captured, but then they listened to a tape of the confessions.
There was absolutely nothing in the confession that indicated to us that he knew anything about it.
I don't think it would be proper for me to comment on on the evidence.
That is their conclusion.
I disagree with their conclusion.
He was absolutely amazed because we didn't buy what, uh, he was trying to sell us.
- Um - He was very upset because we found something wrong with the tape.
We had no help, no support.
So we decided to do our own investigation.
They wanted her case reopened, and that was the only way as to prove either Henry did it or he didn't.
They spent month after month after month investigating and finding these people and getting actual factual documentation to prove where Henry was.
I feel like that Joyce and I were forced to go out and do the work of law enforcement.
Bob Lemons and I went up to Maryland to trace Lucas's whereabouts.
- Your name, please? - Betty M.
Crawford.
We found Betty Crawford who had been married to Henry Lucas.
We got a certificate showing that they were married on the same day that Lucas had already confessed to killing someone in Pennsylvania.
What were your feelings towards Henry Lucas? He is a sick, perverted man.
When I found out, when he he had left, that he had molested my two oldest daughters.
In that process, discovering who he was and where he was, um, there was no way that he could've been in Texas at the time Debbie was killed.
Debbie was murdered on August 24th, 1975.
And we found out that he had just gotten out of prison on the 22nd of August.
Well, he, uh, called me from Perryville - Okay.
- at the bus depot for me to come and pick him up.
And he was living there with his half-sister at the time Debbie was murdered.
Do you believe that he wasn't even in Texas on the night your daughter was murdered? - I know he wasn't.
- We know he wasn't.
We know where he was.
He was in Maryland.
In all our travels and all the time we went to Maryland, we never once met anybody that had talked to an investigator, or a Ranger, or anybody from Texas.
We went to Georgetown to meet with Bob Prince.
I was aware of the Lemons from the criticism of law enforcement that they were doing in the news media.
And they lost a child.
And they were hurting the way any parent would be.
And But they were taking their anger out on the wrong folks.
Bob Lemons and his wife just came into my office one day and demanded that they talk to me about the case.
We took documents with us.
We told him, "Here is the facts.
Henry could not have done this.
" I told them when they got there, "I don't know anything about it, can't talk to you about it.
You'll need to talk to the Lubbock authorities.
" I know they got extremely upset.
Uh Uh Mr.
Lemons got, uh, to where we thought it was gonna be physical.
Bob Prince gave me the alternative of either leave on your own power, uh, or we'll throw you out.
What did you think of their investigation? Uh, the Lemons? Oh, I have no comment about the Lemons.
You know, they're Well, they've invested years of their life looking into the Lucas case.
I have no interest in that.
One by one, I could show that a lot of these murder cases he was taking, it was virtually impossible for Lucas to be there.
So then I went to the Dallas Times Herald.
And, within hours, they agreed.
Gave me the best reporter they had.
I wasn't really into crime reporting.
I'd done a lot of that when I was younger.
I was never one of these people who thought criminals were interesting people.
But we sit down and talked about the Henry Lucas story, and Hugh even said, "Well, we might be able to prove 15 or 20 of these he couldn't have done.
" We found out real quickly that it was a lot more than 15 or 20.
And it was surprisingly easy to prove where Lucas was going back to 1975, when he was turned loose from prison.
And he had work records and dental appointments.
Speeding tickets, banking records, IOUs.
His dog had pooped in a park and he was in trouble for that.
And it turned out Lucas left a large paper trail.
And he really wasn't the drifter he was being described as.
Jim and I were able to get ahold of the task force report.
The first thing we had to do was get the cases in chronological order.
I think there were maybe 200 of them, from when he was released from prison in 1975, up until 1983 when he was in jail in Montague County.
It was simple enough to see the folly of the whole thing.
Some sheriff in Minnesota would call up and say, "You got anything on Henry on June 2nd?" They'd look at the list of crimes he confessed to up on the wall.
"Nope, he was he was available that day.
" They'd write down "June 2nd.
" And then a call came in, the guy said, "Is June 4th open?" Yeah.
So, they got June the 2nd in Minneapolis and June the 4th in Seattle or El Paso.
It was striking.
They have Lucas driving to commit a murder in Spokane, Washington on October 2nd, driving more than 2,000 miles for an attempted abduction on October 4th, driven 600 miles to kill in Saline County, Arkansas on October 7, travel 950 miles to kill in New Mexico on October 16.
Then traveling 1,000 miles to kill in Nevada on October 27, and driving 1,600 miles to kill in Bossier City, Louisiana on October 29.
And another 2,100 miles away to kill two days later, then back another 2,000 miles to kill two days after that.
It just was not possible.
I mean, if they were traveling by cruise missile, they couldn't have gotten there that that many places that quick.
Lucas would have had to travel constantly, 50 miles an hour, with absolutely no sleep, no stop, no gas-up, nothing.
Now, how ridiculous can you get? And if it's that obvious, why wasn't it obvious to the Rangers or and to Sheriff Boutwell? Lucas traveled far and wide.
He loved to drive.
He loved to live in a car.
He got his money for gas by killing and robbing.
I don't think Henry Lucas knows how many people he's killed, uh I don't think anybody knows how many people he's killed.
But I'm certain that he is probably the biggest multiple killer in the history of this country.
I was traveling a lot at that time, trying to pin down Lucas' story.
I came home one time and one of the windows was broken.
Cameras, television sets and everything wasn't touched.
But many of my tapes were missing.
And the tapes that were taken were some of the interviews of Henry Lee Lucas.
I went to, uh, Maryland to live I knew a lot of police in Dallas, but I knew that they all band together, so I never reported it.
Later on, when I ran into Boutwell the next time, he said, "I'm sure sorry to hear about you being burglarized, Hugh.
" It was in no newspaper.
Nobody but my very close friends knew about the burglary.
I remember hearing about Henry Lucas.
I think it was before I was sworn in as DA.
It could have been during the campaign.
It's like, "Whoa! That guy confessed to another one!" I got a call from the Texas Rangers that he had confessed to three crimes in my county, and they wanted to bring him up and let him plead guilty.
For a young ambitious DA like I was, to be handed Lucas cases that he wasn't even gonna contest He would just come in, we'd get the free publicity and it's over.
That was like somebody handing me a a chocolate cake with a big cherry on top, you know? It would help boost my political career.
I was ready to stand in line with the rest of them, get my picture taken, get the boogeyman out of there and go on my way.
But when the Rangers brought the three cases to my office, I had suspicions about those confessions.
I knew he didn't killed Dorothy Collins 'cause we knew who did.
Then I looked a lot closer at Glen Parks and Rita Salazar.
Now, in the Rita Salazar case, Henry's confession sounded funny to me.
I'd read a lot of confessions by then, I'd already tried a lot of cases, so I knew what a real confession smelled like.
And the one on, uh, Miss Salazar just bothered me.
That's when I asked Truman.
Truman Simons was a Sheriff's Deputy assigned to the DA's office for homicide investigations.
And I said, "See if you can figure out where Henry Lucas was on the dates of these murders.
Get into TCIC, NCIC.
" Those are the computer for the Texas Criminal Records and the National Criminal Records.
Now, we didn't have internet back then.
All we had was a little old screen down in the basement like this that was connected to just those two databases.
When I ran him, traffic, I mean, it lit up on NCIC.
He had all kinds of different places where he'd been.
And he had like 11 or 12 dates where Henry had been either incarcerated or getting, uh, tickets in different places from some of these other murders that had already been cleared.
And I remember I was working late one night, and Truman came up to my office, and he looked white as a sheet.
And he said, "You're not gonna believe what just happened.
" I went into NCIC, and when I pulled up Henry Lucas, to try to look for more records in the background, it flickered a little, and then I got a message that said "Access Denied.
" I think my heart skipped a beat.
Well, you got a guy that, you know, supposedly is a serial killer, mass murderer, and all that kind of stuff, and they're trying to keep people in law enforcement from finding out about him.
It's just spooky, and just I never ran into that before.
I knew then we were up against some very, very powerful people.
And somebody was gonna get hurt, and I was afraid it was gonna be me.
She was kind.
She was friendly.
She was very helpful to anybody.
And Except around the house.
This is Deborah when she graduated from high school.
Debbie was 18 when she got married.
I was eight years old.
I was a flower girl in her wedding.
I was so nervous I was going to mess up.
And I wanted to do it so right for her.
The last time I saw Debbie I'm sorry.
That's a terrible day.
Was her dad's birthday.
And we all went out to have dinner.
We ate, and then we took her home to her house, approximately 8:30.
I was supposed to stay the night with her.
And, um for whatever reason, Mother When we pulled into the driveway, Mother had decided that I was not.
I always felt like if I was there, I could've made a difference.
We got a phone call from Doug, her husband.
Told us to come to the house right away, that Debbie was dead.
Oh, it was horrible.
I'll never forget that moment.
No one could come up with anything as far as someone she had made mad or crossed a path with.
We never gave up hope that her murderer would be caught.
Nine years went by with no leads.
We were getting pretty low.
When we got the call from the police and they said they had a confession, we didn't know who, but it didn't matter to us.
We were just so happy.
There's a lot of emotions with that.
Getting that news and thinking it's over.
My parents immediately went to hear this confession and get the details of this person that had killed my sister.
And that's where nightmare number two began.
Henry Lee Lucas came into our lives.
Lucas says he killed more than 150 women.
170 murders directly attributed to Lucas.
189 in 24 states.
Murdered at least 360 people, including his mother.
Henry Lee Lucas has confessed to killing 600 people.
My victims never knew what was gonna happen.
I've had shootings, strangulations, beatings.
I participated in actual crucifixions.
The last person he killed meant no more to him than the last cigarette that he smoked.
To me, it didn't matter.
I mean, I didn't have no feelings about killing.
It's like you just drink a drink of water, really.
I mean, it didn't mean anything to me.
Henry was in Georgetown, Texas.
Sheriff Jim Boutwell was in charge of the jail.
Boutwell told me I could have total access.
And I did for probably six months.
It just gave me access that nobody else had.
They didn't trust too many reporters.
And they trusted me.
- Hi.
- Hi.
When I'd go in there, they would often let him walk free, and he wasn't handcuffed.
Uh-oh.
You got the handcuffs? Let's talk about Jim Boutwell.
He's an unusual man.
What, uh What kind of relationship do you have with him? I look at him as a friend, not as a sheriff.
Uh Uh, he's always treated me good, and he's, uh, went out of his way to do things for me that, uh normally, he wouldn't do for other prisoners.
Boutwell and Lucas did have an unusual relationship.
Henry told me more than once, "Well, he just seems like my daddy.
" Of course, Boutwell did everything in the world for Henry.
Henry, we We'll go get some lunch.
Is there anything we can bring you? Not unless you run into some Sonic out there somewhere and see a milkshake sitting around.
I'll figure it out.
Every day, he brought him a strawberry milkshake.
He praised him to everyone.
He's doing something now, which is a very valuable service to, uh, law enforcement and to mankind.
You can't help but, uh, give him credit for the fact that he knows he doesn't have to clear up these cases, he knows he doesn't have to talk and and yet, uh, he he does want to get it straight.
Henry never lived so good.
He ate good, he drank good, he had cigarettes, more than he could smoke.
My theory during my entire career has been, "treat people the way you'd want to be treated in the same circumstances.
" We'd bring him cigarettes, or have the interviewing officers bring him cigarettes.
This is the kind of cigarettes you like.
If I was a smoker, that's the way I'd wanna be treated.
Boutwell and the Texas Rangers had set up a task force to clear all these hundreds of murders that he was claiming.
It was like Henry was a member of the task force.
He often would be on the phone, talking to officers all over the country, helping to solve their cases.
It was pretty bizarre.
I don't know whether I can find it on a map or not.
I have to look.
We had a map in the inner office, of the United States, and whenever an officer would determine that Lucas was involved in the case, we would put a pin at that location.
Policemen came from all over the country, and they wanted to solve cases.
- How long did you talk to him? - About an hour and a half.
How close do you think you are to making an arrest or having a charge in either one of these cases? Quite close.
Both or just one? We're not allowed to discuss that.
This was the biggest thing that had ever happened to a lot of these cops.
The actual ability to come, and talk, and smoke, and maybe have a bite with the biggest killer in the world.
I want to thank you, uh, for your time.
I want to thank you for myself, for the Pennsylvania State Police.
These cops would come, and they would clear a case, and they'd shake hands with him and pat him on the back.
Where were we? Henry, what were you saying? Well, I guess where I, uh, killed that girl up on the on the marker on 70.
He'd never felt so important in his life.
Suddenly everyone wanted to talk to Henry Lucas.
Do you think it's possible that, uh you committed that homicide? And whenever officers would come in and talk to Lucas, the instructions I'd give 'em, "You believe him if you can confirm it.
If he likes you, he will do everything he can to try to take responsibility for your homicide.
But if you cannot confirm it, um don't believe him.
" I've got 'em scattered all over the country though He liked to impress people with what he'd done.
I've tried to show law enforcement, I've tried to teach 'em.
Instead of trying to hide what he had done, he would exaggerate what he had done.
Everything except poison.
Everything? Sometimes I would go down and I would run into people from two or three police departments at the same time.
And they all had an hour or two or whatever.
This is the dining room area.
And the living room.
You can't just walk in and say, "Okay, Henry.
You've killed 300 people all across the United States.
Tell me the one I'm thinking of now.
" I mean, you got to give him something.
See if that might mean anything to you.
He seemed to respond better with photos of the victim.
This woman is the one that I picked up from this car.
I walked in the room one time to talk to one of the Rangers, and he was looking through the books the police department sent in to the task force.
They'd have crime scene photos.
Well, the next day, here came the police.
He knew what highway they were on, he knew what the house looked like.
Put your initials Sometimes I'd be there for several hours and they'd clear six cases, murder cases.
Sign your name to it, however you want to do it.
Sheriff Boutwell said, "We solved six more.
" And Bob Prince says, "For every case, I promised Henry a milkshake.
So that is six milkshakes.
So you want them once a day?" And Henry says, "Yeah, that sounds good to me, and make it strawberry.
" And I thought, "Six cases Six murder cases.
" Clemmie was convinced that her role was to offer spiritual guidance to Henry, and also uh, emotional support, because, according to her, he would get very emotional after the interviews and was returned to the jail cell.
He was looking to please Clemmie at every juncture.
He had never had a woman friend like this.
He loved her presence.
If it wasn't for her, I'll be honest with you, I don't think I could go through the constant reliving each case and stuff.
Yeah.
Very often, he would get what was called "moody.
" Sheriff Boutwell knew that Henry was more inclined to cooperate if Clemmie believed it was the right thing to do, and very often, they would convince Clemmie that they needed her help.
Sheriff Boutwell said, "We have families waiting for him to come and see if these are his people.
These poor families.
" It was like, "You get him there, Sister Clemmie, and I can take care of the rest.
" They were clearing cases, and, at that point, Henry was already facing several life sentences.
But with the Orange Socks case coming up, the ball game had changed.
Now he faced the death penalty.
Dubbed the Orange Socks case, the body of a woman was found dumped in a culvert north of Georgetown.
She came to be called Orange Socks because that was the only shred of identity Lucas left her.
It was an unsolved murder case of a woman killed on I-35.
Sheriff Jim Boutwell was assigned the case.
I know that he had made a commitment that he was going to do everything he could to find the killer of the Orange Socks victim.
Is this the girl It's the same girl.
- that you picked up? - Same one.
Okay.
Sheriff Jim Boutwell says Lucas confessed to the murder and described details only the killer could know.
He looked at the picture and after a moment, he told me, uh "That girl was a hitchhiker that I picked up near Oklahoma City.
" And he said, "She would've been strangled.
" After I pulled over, why, I grabbed her by the neck and choked her until she died.
I had sex with her again.
I went down here.
Dropped her right over there.
She landed on her side.
Just socks, no clothing.
I didn't kill the girl in the orange socks.
I didn't have anything to do with it.
I did not do it, and I'll prove it if you want to.
When there was nobody around, Henry would deny to me the Orange Socks case.
He was telling me he was at work in Florida.
What about Orange Socks? Did you do that one? Let's put it this way They're not gonna get mad if you tell them.
- You did it.
- I know.
It's done been settled, you know, so that's We'll leave it as what it is.
- Okay.
- Uh I knew I had to check what Henry was telling me.
Really had to find out if it was a legitimate story or not.
I went to Jacksonville where Lucas worked.
I would never have figured that Henry would, you know, end up being a killer, because he was, like I said, a normal person.
He was quiet and the whole family loved him.
You know, we got along great.
They was, um just a working a hard-working family.
You don't really believe that he had killed all those many people, do you? Not really.
I don't.
He was a good boy.
I found out that he had a tremendous memory.
He told me where he sold scrap.
He told me where he bought insurance.
He told me where he was in jail overnight.
His stories checked out.
I was finding real evidence.
You gotta call them, then I can get the exact time.
I found out where Lucas had cashed a check the night before Orange Socks was killed.
And he come to cash the check, they you know, every every week.
I also found work records that showed that he was on the job just hours before Orange Socks was killed, 1,100 miles away.
Why would he travel 1,100 miles to kill a person he didn't know? I mean, it was just ludicrous.
When I got back to Georgetown, I told Boutwell, and Boutwell was always friendly to me up to that point, and he said, "I know he did it.
He's told me he did it.
" I've seen Lucas mention cases himself that he had never been asked about, and describe them in great detail, and direct the officers to the scene of the crimes and tell them in advance what to expect over the next rise in the hill.
Lawmen across the country are keeping a close eye on this case, some even waiting to file murder charges until this trial is complete and a jury decides whether Lucas will die for his crimes.
I knew that Henry was a killer, and I knew that he was a liar, but I didn't think he should get the death penalty on a case he had absolutely nothing to do with.
So I went to Henry's attorneys.
that is that we have no Don and I were now co-counsel on the Lucas case.
When Henry told us that he had not been in Texas, we were like, "Well, why are you confessing to this?" And his his statement, uh which he told us before the beginning of the trial, was that he was trying to commit legal suicide.
And he felt a great deal of remorse for having killed Becky.
Becky was the only person that had ever treated him with any kind of love, or affection, or respect.
He felt so bad he wanted to die, but if he took his own life, he could not get into heaven where Becky was.
And he came up with this idea that "I'll have the state kill me, and then, that way, I will be in heaven with Becky.
" And I'd never studied anything like that in law school, never heard of the concept of legal suicide.
We certainly did not, uh, plead it to the court.
After I pulled over, why Henry, I'm going to tell you one more time you're talking yourself into a very possible death penalty case.
I have to go with whatever goes.
I mean, I can't help it.
I'm asking you not to make any further statements, to terminate this interview.
Well Generally, anyone who is charged with a crime wants to help their lawyer get them out.
It was maddening trying to represent somebody who was actually working against you in a death penalty case.
There were so many times that Mr.
Higginbotham and I walked out of the jail just "What's going on?" Would you like the death penalty if you are convicted? I'm gonna get it.
He said He said he's gonna get it? I slipped away at the start of the second week of of jury selection and flew over to Jacksonville and found four witnesses.
At the jail, I saw Henry's traveling companion, Ottis Toole.
The thing that I remember the most was that he was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon.
He was as as dumb as you get.
I'm gonna show you photographs of of the victim, of the body.
Now, we've looked at these, have we not? Ottis had no clue of what I was talking about other than that I had been with Henry, I was one of Henry's lawyers, and and he wanted to help Henry.
Henry and Ottis Toole played off of each other and, uh tried to impress each other.
When I'd ask him any question, he'd always say, "What does What does Henry say? What did Henry say?" He wanted to match whatever Henry said.
We're all going through this and I've advised What all does he say? - Pardon? - He ain't gonna go in there.
No, no.
I'd I'd like to know what you've got to say.
And I want to know what he got to say.
When I went to see him, he said, "Oh, Henry.
I love Henry.
And he just Whatever he says, I'll just go go along with.
" Wherever we go, we'll still be together.
Oh, yeah.
And It's your decision.
Sure will, 'cause I think about you all the time.
Well, I do too.
I've got your picture down here in my cell.
Well, I got yours too.
The conversations that I had with Lucas and Ottis were I mean, it was just fanciful.
It was just exaggerated boasting.
When they were together, they'd just kind of feed each other.
That time when I cooked some of them people, what made me do that? Wouldn't that make me a cannibal, doing things like that or what? No, you wasn't a cannibal.
Like I say, it was a force of the devil and, uh I would pour some of that blood out of 'em.
Well, I know that.
See what the mess tastes like.
Some of it tastes like real meat when it's got barbecue sauce on it.
Well, you know how that is.
I talked to Lucas about why now Ottis is making up stories about barbecuing people and eating them and all.
And he said, "Well, it's because I got famous.
He was jealous, and he wanted everybody to know who he was too.
" How many people did you kill, Henry? A hundred and fifty.
By yourself? No, not by myself.
I was with you on some of them myself, wasn't I? If you want to admit to that, yes.
- Yeah.
- It's up to you.
Whatever you I don't care what you done.
I still care about you.
That's the way it goes.
Well, I know that.
And as long as we understand each other, as long as we know the truth about each other - Yeah.
- And that's all I want.
Let me walk for a bit.
Today was the day the testimony began in the trial of confessed killer Henry Lee Lucas.
He has never faced the death penalty until now.
Williamson County prosecutors trying to show, mainly through his confessions, that Lucas did indeed kill the unidentified nude hitchhiker found north of Georgetown, Halloween 1979.
In a surprising turn, Williamson County Sheriff Jim Boutwell is heard on the tapes supplying Lucas with some of the key details of the murder Lucas is charged with.
During cross examination, Boutwell said he just refreshed Lucas' memory about the details.
By that time, he was having second thoughts.
Trying to pull himself out, not knowing how.
And he was scared.
It appears the defense may finally get the case tomorrow, and the speculation continues whether Ottis Elwood Toole will be testifying on behalf of the defense.
Latest word we get is "no.
" Nobody in their right mind would put that person on the witness stand to testify to try to help your case.
Ottis did not help us at all.
We had witnesses that we brought over from Florida who testified during the defense.
Roofing company supervisor Fred Ellis took the stand to back up records dated the day the woman died.
Defense lawyer Parker McCullough asked, "Did Henry Lucas work that day?" "Yes.
There's a check by his name.
" "How do you know?" "I put it there.
" "You recall seeing Henry Lucas on this particular job?" "Yes.
" The case for the defense was built on two things: Lucas' alibi that he was working in Florida at the time of the murder and that he was and is insane.
But the prosecution used Lucas' own words to refute both arguments.
Lucas explained how he paid off people in Florida to show him present at his roofing job.
The psychiatrist who examined Lucas said he's a sociopath, a person with no conscience, with deviant sexual disorders including bestiality and necrophilia.
But he falls in the normal range.
After all the evidence had been presented, the only person who was smiling was the defendant, Henry Lee Lucas.
The defense team, on the other hand, seemed to have lost the air of confidence it had been exhibiting for the past several days.
We came to the conclusion that the only way we were gonna be able to get Henry out of the death penalty was to have him testify, and I worked with him for two or three hours in preparation of his testifying the following morning.
I told my attorneys I didn't do the case.
I turn around and tell the sheriff that I did do the case.
Then I turn around and give you information about the work records.
Then I turn around and tell them the work records are no good.
Then are the work records good or no good? They're good.
You gonna say that tomorrow? Yeah.
I felt good when I left him.
Got up early the next day.
I said, "Henry, are you ready to go? Today's a big day.
" He said, "I'm not going to do it.
" I said "Wait a minute.
When I talked to you less than 12 hours ago, you were prepared to testify.
" He said, "I just can't do it.
" Someone must have talked to him.
Someone must have seen him after I left the jail or, uh, before he was brought into our conference room the next morning.
I'm absolutely convinced that Henry refused to take the witness stand in his defense because he did not want to go against the sheriff.
And then we rested our case.
That was it.
That was the end of the defense for Henry Lee Lucas.
After hearing the verdict from the San Angelo jury, convicted murderer Henry Lee Lucas left the courthouse smiling about the capital murder conviction.
Do you feel like it's, uh, suicide for you? It is suicide, because I didn't do the crime.
- Why are you happy? - Because I got what I wanted.
He got exactly what he wanted.
And, uh, I guess I should say I'm happy for him.
But I'm going to do everything that I can, and we tried to do everything that we could to prevent that.
Personally, I had a great sense of disappointment that I had been a participant in a miscarriage.
I felt so close to it and felt really stung by the harshness of the verdict and the realization that this man had talked his way into a death penalty case and been found guilty of capital murder.
Lucas won't be transferred to death row at Huntsville for the time being though.
Instead, he will be kept in the Williamson County Jail to assist the homicide task force, which is working on murders he claims to have been involved in.
The easy thing to have done would've been to take him to the penitentiary the day he was convicted.
That would've been the easy route for everybody.
But to the people that have missing loved ones, we would certainly be doing them an injustice.
Department of Public Safety says they owe it to the families and the lawmen of America to clear as many murder cases as possible before Lucas is put to death.
Now Lucas is headed out of state to continue visits with law officials around the country, and although authorities refuse to reveal his itinerary, they do say he will be on the road until September.
Lucas came to New Orleans amid great fanfare to confess to 30 more murders in our metropolitan area.
He'd never been on an airplane in his life.
Suddenly, they started flying him all around the country to confess to these murders.
He rubs elbows with cops and drinks gallons of coffee, touring murder scenes.
He was pretty cocky.
When we went to California, he said, "I'll come, but I want a TV in my cell every night wherever I am.
" We went to California for five to seven days, something like that and and they did put a TV in his cell.
I'm here this morning to report that 15 outstanding California murder cases have been resolved as a result of a recently completed tour of the state by condemned serial killer Henry Lee Lucas.
Lucas led state and local authorities to murder sites throughout California.
Here is a print-out, by the way, uh, that I have of the various locations, and it almost defies belief.
He did virtually every kind of crime known to man.
Uh, you name it You name it, uh, he did it.
Uh, I do know that he has personally led officers uh, back physically to the scene in excess of 100 times.
It was like he was a movie star everywhere he went.
Here, I'll hold it for you.
I've had a lot of people come to me and say, "Why? Why are you doing it?" And it's very simple.
Why? Because God asked me to do it.
Uh, if it wasn't for Him, I would never confess.
I've been able to completely identify the locations, the details, and the way it's happened.
Henry Lee Lucas was right here in Lubbock yesterday, leading detectives to several locations of murders, including this carport, where, in 1975, detectives found the body of Deborah Sue Williamson.
The detail Lucas provided was so exact, authorities found it frightening.
In some sense, there is a little comfort now in knowing they have solved the unsolved.
We got the call from the police, and we went Monday morning.
They handed us this confession, how he went in the house.
He said that he went in through the glass door.
There was a big curio cabinet in front of that patio door.
He could not have gone through it anyway.
Went down the hall, into the bedroom, and went out the back door.
None of that happened.
We told the detectives we did not believe this, he could not have done this.
How can you even accept this? We were mad.
We went straight to the media.
Bob and Joyce Lemons are the parents of one of the victims in Henry's touted crime spree.
At first, the Lemons were pleased that, at last, their daughter's killer had been captured, but then they listened to a tape of the confessions.
There was absolutely nothing in the confession that indicated to us that he knew anything about it.
I don't think it would be proper for me to comment on on the evidence.
That is their conclusion.
I disagree with their conclusion.
He was absolutely amazed because we didn't buy what, uh, he was trying to sell us.
- Um - He was very upset because we found something wrong with the tape.
We had no help, no support.
So we decided to do our own investigation.
They wanted her case reopened, and that was the only way as to prove either Henry did it or he didn't.
They spent month after month after month investigating and finding these people and getting actual factual documentation to prove where Henry was.
I feel like that Joyce and I were forced to go out and do the work of law enforcement.
Bob Lemons and I went up to Maryland to trace Lucas's whereabouts.
- Your name, please? - Betty M.
Crawford.
We found Betty Crawford who had been married to Henry Lucas.
We got a certificate showing that they were married on the same day that Lucas had already confessed to killing someone in Pennsylvania.
What were your feelings towards Henry Lucas? He is a sick, perverted man.
When I found out, when he he had left, that he had molested my two oldest daughters.
In that process, discovering who he was and where he was, um, there was no way that he could've been in Texas at the time Debbie was killed.
Debbie was murdered on August 24th, 1975.
And we found out that he had just gotten out of prison on the 22nd of August.
Well, he, uh, called me from Perryville - Okay.
- at the bus depot for me to come and pick him up.
And he was living there with his half-sister at the time Debbie was murdered.
Do you believe that he wasn't even in Texas on the night your daughter was murdered? - I know he wasn't.
- We know he wasn't.
We know where he was.
He was in Maryland.
In all our travels and all the time we went to Maryland, we never once met anybody that had talked to an investigator, or a Ranger, or anybody from Texas.
We went to Georgetown to meet with Bob Prince.
I was aware of the Lemons from the criticism of law enforcement that they were doing in the news media.
And they lost a child.
And they were hurting the way any parent would be.
And But they were taking their anger out on the wrong folks.
Bob Lemons and his wife just came into my office one day and demanded that they talk to me about the case.
We took documents with us.
We told him, "Here is the facts.
Henry could not have done this.
" I told them when they got there, "I don't know anything about it, can't talk to you about it.
You'll need to talk to the Lubbock authorities.
" I know they got extremely upset.
Uh Uh Mr.
Lemons got, uh, to where we thought it was gonna be physical.
Bob Prince gave me the alternative of either leave on your own power, uh, or we'll throw you out.
What did you think of their investigation? Uh, the Lemons? Oh, I have no comment about the Lemons.
You know, they're Well, they've invested years of their life looking into the Lucas case.
I have no interest in that.
One by one, I could show that a lot of these murder cases he was taking, it was virtually impossible for Lucas to be there.
So then I went to the Dallas Times Herald.
And, within hours, they agreed.
Gave me the best reporter they had.
I wasn't really into crime reporting.
I'd done a lot of that when I was younger.
I was never one of these people who thought criminals were interesting people.
But we sit down and talked about the Henry Lucas story, and Hugh even said, "Well, we might be able to prove 15 or 20 of these he couldn't have done.
" We found out real quickly that it was a lot more than 15 or 20.
And it was surprisingly easy to prove where Lucas was going back to 1975, when he was turned loose from prison.
And he had work records and dental appointments.
Speeding tickets, banking records, IOUs.
His dog had pooped in a park and he was in trouble for that.
And it turned out Lucas left a large paper trail.
And he really wasn't the drifter he was being described as.
Jim and I were able to get ahold of the task force report.
The first thing we had to do was get the cases in chronological order.
I think there were maybe 200 of them, from when he was released from prison in 1975, up until 1983 when he was in jail in Montague County.
It was simple enough to see the folly of the whole thing.
Some sheriff in Minnesota would call up and say, "You got anything on Henry on June 2nd?" They'd look at the list of crimes he confessed to up on the wall.
"Nope, he was he was available that day.
" They'd write down "June 2nd.
" And then a call came in, the guy said, "Is June 4th open?" Yeah.
So, they got June the 2nd in Minneapolis and June the 4th in Seattle or El Paso.
It was striking.
They have Lucas driving to commit a murder in Spokane, Washington on October 2nd, driving more than 2,000 miles for an attempted abduction on October 4th, driven 600 miles to kill in Saline County, Arkansas on October 7, travel 950 miles to kill in New Mexico on October 16.
Then traveling 1,000 miles to kill in Nevada on October 27, and driving 1,600 miles to kill in Bossier City, Louisiana on October 29.
And another 2,100 miles away to kill two days later, then back another 2,000 miles to kill two days after that.
It just was not possible.
I mean, if they were traveling by cruise missile, they couldn't have gotten there that that many places that quick.
Lucas would have had to travel constantly, 50 miles an hour, with absolutely no sleep, no stop, no gas-up, nothing.
Now, how ridiculous can you get? And if it's that obvious, why wasn't it obvious to the Rangers or and to Sheriff Boutwell? Lucas traveled far and wide.
He loved to drive.
He loved to live in a car.
He got his money for gas by killing and robbing.
I don't think Henry Lucas knows how many people he's killed, uh I don't think anybody knows how many people he's killed.
But I'm certain that he is probably the biggest multiple killer in the history of this country.
I was traveling a lot at that time, trying to pin down Lucas' story.
I came home one time and one of the windows was broken.
Cameras, television sets and everything wasn't touched.
But many of my tapes were missing.
And the tapes that were taken were some of the interviews of Henry Lee Lucas.
I went to, uh, Maryland to live I knew a lot of police in Dallas, but I knew that they all band together, so I never reported it.
Later on, when I ran into Boutwell the next time, he said, "I'm sure sorry to hear about you being burglarized, Hugh.
" It was in no newspaper.
Nobody but my very close friends knew about the burglary.
I remember hearing about Henry Lucas.
I think it was before I was sworn in as DA.
It could have been during the campaign.
It's like, "Whoa! That guy confessed to another one!" I got a call from the Texas Rangers that he had confessed to three crimes in my county, and they wanted to bring him up and let him plead guilty.
For a young ambitious DA like I was, to be handed Lucas cases that he wasn't even gonna contest He would just come in, we'd get the free publicity and it's over.
That was like somebody handing me a a chocolate cake with a big cherry on top, you know? It would help boost my political career.
I was ready to stand in line with the rest of them, get my picture taken, get the boogeyman out of there and go on my way.
But when the Rangers brought the three cases to my office, I had suspicions about those confessions.
I knew he didn't killed Dorothy Collins 'cause we knew who did.
Then I looked a lot closer at Glen Parks and Rita Salazar.
Now, in the Rita Salazar case, Henry's confession sounded funny to me.
I'd read a lot of confessions by then, I'd already tried a lot of cases, so I knew what a real confession smelled like.
And the one on, uh, Miss Salazar just bothered me.
That's when I asked Truman.
Truman Simons was a Sheriff's Deputy assigned to the DA's office for homicide investigations.
And I said, "See if you can figure out where Henry Lucas was on the dates of these murders.
Get into TCIC, NCIC.
" Those are the computer for the Texas Criminal Records and the National Criminal Records.
Now, we didn't have internet back then.
All we had was a little old screen down in the basement like this that was connected to just those two databases.
When I ran him, traffic, I mean, it lit up on NCIC.
He had all kinds of different places where he'd been.
And he had like 11 or 12 dates where Henry had been either incarcerated or getting, uh, tickets in different places from some of these other murders that had already been cleared.
And I remember I was working late one night, and Truman came up to my office, and he looked white as a sheet.
And he said, "You're not gonna believe what just happened.
" I went into NCIC, and when I pulled up Henry Lucas, to try to look for more records in the background, it flickered a little, and then I got a message that said "Access Denied.
" I think my heart skipped a beat.
Well, you got a guy that, you know, supposedly is a serial killer, mass murderer, and all that kind of stuff, and they're trying to keep people in law enforcement from finding out about him.
It's just spooky, and just I never ran into that before.
I knew then we were up against some very, very powerful people.
And somebody was gonna get hurt, and I was afraid it was gonna be me.