Henry Lee Lucas Myth and Reality
November 22, 2007
The story of Henry Lee Lucas is interesting for one reason. ( See Henry Lee on Youtube here). It didn’t happen. Not the story as we know it today at least. And in this age of mass communication and information overload the lessons we can learn from this story are even more important than ever
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The story as told today is that Henry killed his mother and on release from custody started on a life as a drifter until he was arrested for being in possession of a gun whereupon he was charged with the murder of a woman and proceeded to confess to having killed hundreds of women. Everyone believed him , so the story goes , until he went too far with his body count at which point the story got out of hand in the media. The police had , we are told made every mistake in the book. Henry then changed his mind and claimed that he had lied. The media also changed their minds and having told one story about Henry now started to tell a quite different story , ie that Henry was not a serial killer but a serial liar. Henry died of a heart attack some years ago and the legend , or rather the story lives on.
But a story is all it is. And as someone once said , “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
Henry was born on 23 august 1936. As a child he was abused terribly by his mother. The full story is little short of a nightmare but the bare bones of it is that Henry would be forced to watch his mother ( a prostitute) having sex with several men at a time. Failure on his part to pay attention was rewarded with a severe beating. His mother also sent him to school dressed as a girl for the sole purpose of humiliating him. Henry developed a taste for violence and beastiality at this time. Henry killed his mother and was sent to prison. He had , prior to this been in borstal and prison , it’s a long convoluted story like most of Henry’s life which reads today like a horror story. Henry claims that by this stage he had already killed at least two women. There is no proof that he did but Henry lived in a culture and society where not reporting crimes , even murder was not that unusual.
While in prison for the murder of his mother ( which may ironically have been an accident) he studied - among other things he studied the prison records of all the other inmates. This may been seen as indicating how he later fooled the police when finally arrested however it also tells us something of his intelligence.
Watching Henry Lee on Youtube , which is to say , watching footage of him at the height of his fame many come to see him as a somewhat comical man , naive and bewildered by events as they unfold and out of his dept. A bit dim witted in a street wise kind of way. Playing it by ear much of the time. Some of this is true , he had a habit of letting things happen and in so far as we know never planned anything. He had a sense of humor and a vivid imagination ( claiming at one point that he and a sidekick joined a death cult) however to allow yourself to see Henry as a fool is a mistake.
After Henry was released from prison for killing his mother in (1975) he got married but soon parted from his wife and wandered around staying at different times with various members of his extended family being accused in the process of interfering sexually with most of the children he came across at this time. He had no shortage of women admirers and was a popular man in spite of the fact that he robbed just about everyone he met.
About this time Henry met a man call Ottis Toole. Toole was bisexual and developed a crush on Henry. Most of Henry’s life and his relationship with Ottis borders on the absurd. If you read it in a novel you wouldn’t believe it. If you left the awful violence out of the picture it would make a great ‘over the top’ comedy. According to Ottis they traveled all over killing and raping for the fun of it and leaving at least five or six bodies behind in every state they passed through. Ottis told his story independently of Henry after Henry was arrested , Ottis being in prison for murder himself at the time. It is now claimed that Ottis , just like Henry wanted to be famous and hence made up this story about the murders. What we do know is the Henry and Ottis travelled thousands of miles across the US robbing banks and convenience store with ever more extreme violence. Henry , who was a self taught mechanic would with Ottis drive cars until the engine fell out and pick up abandoned vehicles which they would fix until they in turn fell apart. They were rather like Thelma and Louise but not as attractive. Henry liked to pick women up on route and rape them and Ottis liked to watch Henry while he was doing this. All this is I hasten to add is just skimming the top of the story , the details are so complex and so many that I cannot deal with them here. But to suggest that these two men did not kill on their travels is patent nonsense. Many of the people Henry claimed to kill were transients and many were in transit between states and a relatively small number ( by Henry’s standards that is ) were ‘regular’ people. The actual events of Henry’s life from childhood to his final capture are remarkable well documented as is his violence and to imagine this man crossing America as he did without leaving a trail of bodies is to stretch credibility. The fact that there is no proof of the killings is not in itself significant.
There is a general perception out there that after he was arrested for the last time that he started confessing to multiple murder and that the police just believed him but that is simply not true. Henry was brought in on suspicion ( a gun was found on him) of killing a woman called Kate Rich. Shortly after being arrested he admitted to killing her and by the time the police started questioning him about the details they were notified that he had done time for killing his mother. The details of all this are told in different ways depending on which version you read but the facts are quite straightforward. The police found themselves questioning a man who they knew had killed two women and when questioned about his wife then claimed he had killed her also. He brought them to where her body was so now they were faced with a man who had killed three women. …..by now your probably quite confused….and I don’t blame you so I’ll leave this little gem of a story here….Go onto Youtube and have a look at Henry yourself….but don’t make the mistake of thinking that he was just some sort of hapless fool , because he most certainly was not.
I have just now gone over this story , as I do with anything I write before pressing the ‘publish’ button , and find that even I find it all a bit confusing and hard to follow , so do as I suggest and go to Youtube . You can follow the link at the start of this article. You’ll either have a good laugh or a good cry…..
Ian Brady ( Moors Murders) wrote about Lucas in his book on serial killers. You can read about that HERE.
Ian Brady Henry Lee Lucas Criminal Profiling
June 20, 2007
In his book, The Gates of Janus , Ian Brady examines the case of Henry Lee Lucas and he comes to the following conclusions. Henry Lee he claims was sadistically abused by his father and as a result he at the age of 23 killed his mother for, in effect, just standing by and letting it happen. Brady is correct in pointing out to the reader that this phenomena of the victim of abuse sometimes killing the so to speak innocent parent is not uncommon but he is wrong in his facts and almost certainly wrong in his conclusions.
Henry was no doubt abused by his father though not sexually but this was as nothing compared to the abuse from his mother. His mother , a prostitute , would bring men , several men at a time home and Henry and his young sister would be forced to watch , to literally stare at his mother having sex with these men. If he so much as let his eyes wander from the action for even a very brief moment she would beat him mercilessly. Much of the time his father would be gone for several days on drinking sprees. It also must be noted that his father did in fact try to stop this going on but the local welfare didn’t really believe his complaints about his wife and indeed were giving support to his wife at the time.
Brady also claims that Henry was of average or below average intelligence. He seems to base this on the fact that Henry was something of a feckless drifter with no noticable ambition and little education. But yet again Brady is wrong. Henry when arrested for the murder of his young wife and a woman called Kate Rich began to confess to something in the region of three hundred murders. He convinced the police and the press and through them the entire American nation. He later withdrew his confessions and surprisingly everyone believed him all over again. He claimed that he had seen all the other murders in the papers and decided that he would confess to them all as he , in his own words , “Wanted to be famous , like Elvis Presley”. All this sounds just fine unless you just sit back and think about it for a while. Imagine that you were in police custody and decided to , for whatever reason , confess to a whole array of crimes committed over several years and thousands of miles. How many names , dates , locations etc would you remember? It’s true that much of the time the police were almost leading him on , giving him bits of information about many of the killings to ‘help’ him remember but this does not explain Henry’s ,for the most part , very convincing story. No matter which way you look at it or which of his confessions you believe the one thing that becomes quite clear is that Henry Lee Lucas was far from being a fool.
Henry Lee was a casual killer. He , as far as we know , never planned anything. He lived on the road much of the time and travelled thousands of miles and his story (his first confession) is , no matter how extradordnary it may sound very , very convincing. I have little doubt that he did in fact kill all those people , and I am equally sure that there are others doing the same thing right now. Henry had in some ways the perfect system for killing , ie keep it simple and keep it moving. Brady is certainly wrong about the mans intelligence and seems to , for some reason or other , have believed the official version of events. There is no doubt that Henry Lee did confess to some crimes that he obviously could not have committed , having in some cases been in prison at the time , but that is neither here nor there. Criminals such as Lucas (and Brady) mix half truths , and lies when speaking to the police. This is probably the one thing that all murderers have in common and if anything makes Lucas’s story more believable. But Brady , based on just the afore mentioned fact jumps to the opposite conclusion in spite of his own personal experience. One gets the impression that he is so busy trying to impress us with scholarship that he overlooks the immediate and obvious.
Brady also claims that an ‘eminant author’ asked for his advice in the case and had material sent to him from the FBI at Quantico ( Psychological Profiling Unit of the FBI) which I just don’t believe ever happened.
There is of course no way that we can be sure about the truth about Henry Lee Lucas but Brady’s certainty in the matter is just a little too rigid. Henry Lee’s story may or may not be true but it is not at all improbable that he did in fact kill hundreds of undocumented people on empty highways all over the USA.
I am one of those who belive Brady is a remarkable and highly intelligent man. He has no doubt researched Henry Lee and other criminals of note but he simple does not have , as you and I do , the means to see all the research and the wider debate surrounding people like Lucas. Nor does he have the ability to test his ideas as we do by being able to ‘bounce’ them off a wide circle of people with common interests.
The movie Henry:Portrait of a Serial Killer was based on Henry Lee but it’s a romantic Hollywood version that has very little of fact in it.
You can see Henry himself on Youtube but after you watch him don’t be too quick to jump to a conclusion. Henry Lee is very convincing in claiming that he admitted to all these murders for as he tells it , an endless supply of cigarettes and a bit of fame but he was equally convincing when claiming that he was a mass killer. The police did let the whole thing develop into something of a circus and even the then Governor of Texas George Bush acted out of character for the first and only time in his life but all of that acts as something of a diversion and it’s easy to find yourself thinking that Henry was just a hapless fool. But no one disputes that this man killed three women two of them within a very short space of time immediately before his arrest. He killed these women without so much as a second thought and if he had not been caught would have moved on and lost himself out on the highways yet again. So the question you have to ask yourself is was Henry acting out of character when he killed these people or was he just out of luck in getting caught. I have a feeling that if Brady and Lucas had met in real life then Brady might not have lived long enought to write his book. Watch the Youtube video and make your own mind up.
