The Confession Killer (2019): Season 1, Episode 2 - Make It Strawberry - full transcript
At Georgetown, Lucas regales visiting officers with stories to clear murder cases. But one Lubbock family will do their own police work to refute him.
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.
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.