Henry Lee Lucas, America's most prolific serial killer

Henry Lee Lucas

Henry Lee Lucas’s life is chilling to the bones like cold wine on a winter night. As a child, he was abused by his mother who was a hooker and made Lucas witness her escapades with her ‘clients.’ She hated her child Lucas for reasons unknown. His father was crippled in an accident and his mother subjected both his father and him to cruelty.

Unable to bear the torture, his father committed suicide. Her abuse continued and Lucas lost an eye in one of her violent attacks. She killed all the animals Lucas brought home as pets and even dressed him as a girl and sent him to school bare feet. One of his teacher’s took pity on him and bought him a pair of shoes for which poor Lucas was thrashed by his mother.

He hated his mother but had no escape from her. His mother’s ‘clients’ who were known as ‘uncles’ stayed with them from time to time and a few of them were kind to him. One of them took Lucas to the hills when he was 10 years old and showed him how to have sex with a goat after slitting its throat. All these traumatic and gruesome childhood experiences pushed him to become a hardened criminal.

Henry committed his first murder in 1951 at the age of 15. He met a 17 year old girl at a bus stop and propositioned her. When she refused he killed her. He then fled to Ohio to stay with his sister. He was arrested at the outskirts of Ohio. He accepted the murder only in 1954. After serving 6 years in prison he went back to live with his half sister Opal. There he met a girl whom he wanted to marry. His mother who visited them for Christmas disapproved of her and took him back toVirginia.Back in Virginia Lucas lived with his mother. He killed her in 1960 in self defense, that’s what he claims and sexually abused her after stabbing her with a knife. He served 15 years in prison and was released in 1975. He drifted around in the south of America doing odd jobs. He met Ottis Toole and had an affair with Toole’s young niece. He even had a relationship with Toole who was a homosexual. Together, they claim to have committed more than hundred murders.

This relationship with Toole’s young niece continued and this odd couple became man and wife. Once on their way to Florida, hitch hiking in trucks, this ‘couple’ had an argument and she slapped him.

Out of habit Lucas pulled out his knife and stabbed her. Later, he dumped her body elsewhere. He told people that she had eloped with a truck driver. Three weeks later, an octogenarian was killed in a fire at her home under mysterious circumstances. On June 11th 1983, he was arrested for possessing a gun. It was surprising that this serial killer had a heart. He regretted murdering his wife, and returned to the field where he had scattered her body parts to commune with the soul of his beloved. He then called the jailer and confessed to all the murders.

He confessed to 500 murders, individually and with Toole as his accomplice. Toole who was also languishing in jail corroborated Lucas’s statements . Lucas kept changing his statements and was awarded life imprisonment due to his mental condition. The then governor of Texas, George W Bush, commuted his jail term and allowed him to die in prison in March 2001. Lucas has the distinction of being the only man ever to have his death sentence commuted by former Texas Governor George W. Bush.

By: Carlos Cabezas López