The Confession Killer (2019): Season 1, Episode 5 - Not One Shred of Evidence - full transcript
DNA testing and a close examination of the evidence reveal the truth about Lucas - and the officers who let the real killers get away with murder.
Now, as we take a serial murderer,
what does he look like?
He looks like anyone else.
Look at Henry.
He's pleasant,
he's non-threatening,
and yet, a serial murderer.
Has no morals.
He's callous,
he's cruel,
and actually a killing machine.
Henry,
there's hope that we'll learn from you
to anticipate
what these characteristics are
so that we can help prevent
some Henry Lucases in the future.
Do you understand?
- I understand.
- Right.
Henry was a chameleon.
He was a different person
each time he interacted
with a new individual.
He was figuring out what he needed
to get through the moment,
and he would become what was needed.
Have a seat. Have a seat.
Every psychologist and psychiatrist
he talked to,
he became the...
the kind of clinical study they needed.
They're very learned in their profession,
and you're very learned in yours.
You are gonna be our teacher.
With an IQ of 87,
he was able to convince
a thousand law enforcement officers
that he was guilty of 200,
or whatever it was, crimes.
Every case has a tie.
You can take a look at the way
the body has been killed.
You can look at the way
the body has been done after death.
I'll give you one incident.
I have deliberately left socks
on my victims.
Deliberately done it.
So, in other words, if we looked
at two or three states and found...
victims with socks on...
Yeah.
They would be completely nude,
except for their socks.
I wonder if any of us
will ever find out
the answer to this mystery
about what Henry did
and how all of this happened.
But most shocking,
how all these other killers stayed free.
When we received
the Salazar case in 2008,
the first thing that we did
was take a look at everything
that... that we had in the old file.
Investigators had preserved the evidence,
including Rita Salazar's underwear
taken from the crime scene.
DNA had been stored
on a database called CODIS
that was periodically tested
against other inmates
in the Texas penitentiary system.
2008, a hit came back.
Benny Tijerina Jr.
was a contributor of DNA found
inside of Rita Salazar's underwear.
This guy had been...
literally getting away with murder
for 30 years.
We tracked him down
in the Dallas area.
We made him believe he was coming
to talk to his parole officer,
so we knew we would probably only have
one shot with him in an interview.
Come on in.
Benny, would you mind
sitting over here, please?
Sure, sure.
Very cramped quarters in here.
Too small. Yeah, a little bit, ain't it?
You're not under arrest.
You're free to leave here
anytime you want.
- But I-I-I think what I've...
- Well, I'm here, so.
What I've got to talk to you about, you're
probably gonna be very interested in.
You know, when... when you go in prison
and they swab your mouth?
- Yes, I know.
- Nowadays?
- DNA, yeah.
- Yeah. They did that, and, uh...
they got a possible hit on a... on a case.
So that's why we came up today,
we wanted to talk to you,
see if you'd let us swab you again
- to get another sample to confirm that.
- Sure, I don't have a problem with that.
Just open your mouth
and I'll rub each one of these
on each side of your mouth
and put them on here.
This is the point
where we do the buccal swabs
just to confirm the DNA that was found
on Rita Salazar's panties.
At this point, he really doesn't...
know exactly what we're there
to interview him about.
Back in, uh, November...
1978,
there was two, uh, young kids,
a boy and a girl, they went to Austin.
They were coming back.
Uh, they didn't come home that night.
- That's what this is about?
- Yeah.
- Oh, Lord.
- And, uh...
We've got some, uh, very good evidence
that... that links you to that.
And... that's why we came up.
I would never do nothing like that
in all my life.
I'm not that kind of person.
And I realize
that a lot of time's gone by since 1978,
but I think if you were involved
in something that serious,
you'd remember it.
Yeah, I would. It would be
on my conscience very much still.
You know?
She was sexually assaulted.
And your DNA comes back to that.
Or at least that your... your semen
wound up on her panties. So, now...
You understand what I mean by that?
No, that's... No, that's wrong.
We're not here to bullshit you
because this is a very serious matter...
Very serious.
...for you, for the families
of these people that are dead.
Exactly.
They've been dead
for over 30 years and their...
Her mama still doesn't know
what happened to her.
Oh, man.
He's obviously very upset
and very nervous.
His gears are going.
He's trying to figure out a way out of it.
Now we want to hear
what you know about it.
I don't know nothing about it.
How would your semen
have gotten on her panties?
I don't know how that happened either.
How would it get on her panties
if I wasn't even there?
Right. That's why...
That's why we're here, to find out.
We did our homework on him.
We found that he was becoming...
uh...
religious.
And I used that to my advantage
to talk to him.
- You believe in God?
- Yes, sir, I do.
- I'm a very religious person.
- So am I.
- Okay.
- I can tell you that.
I can look at your eyes right now
- and tell something's eating you alive.
- I know. I know that.
- It's eating you alive.
- It is.
Well, talk to me.
For this many years,
for something to be eating you alive,
it's time to ventilate on this thing.
There's no doubt in my mind...
I was seeing a psychiatrist.
That's what he was talking about.
This young girl's mama's still alive,
Benny. She...
- Yeah, I bet it was hard on her.
- To this day...
To this day, she doesn't... doesn't know
what happened to her daughter.
- We're here all night, brother.
- I know.
We're not here...
We just want to hear...
hear your side of it.
And just talk.
This is it tonight.
From that point on,
he started talking about the case
as if he was there
instead of not being there at all.
All this is in my head.
It's come back to haunt me now.
Oh, man.
Oh, shit.
DNA leads to an arrest
in a 32-year-old cold case
in Williamson County.
Today, 51-year-old
Benny Tijerina
pleaded guilty to being involved
in the shooting deaths of Kevin Key
and Rita Salazar.
His DNA, a match to evidence
at the crime scenes.
I'm still angry that somebody killed
my sister Rita and Kevin.
And it's never gonna go away.
But at least I know who did it.
I... At least I know
that Benny Tijerina killed my sister.
The Williamson County District Attorney...
I saw it on the news.
I realized,
"Oh, my God, that's Ninfa's sister.
That's her case."
I... It changed everything.
It changed everything for me,
because what I'd been believing
for all these years
was Henry did it.
Years ago,
Ninfa and I formed a group.
We called it VOLT,
"Victims Of Lucas Tragedies."
We wanted Lucas to remain on death row.
When I first got transcripts
of Lucas's confessions,
there are very specific things
that he knew about my mom's case.
My mom wore a wig.
He mentioned that.
Another thing that he knew about
was that the seat belt
had been cut out of my mom's car.
It was used to restrain her to a tree.
Then he said he raped her.
There was no doubt in my mind, um,
that... that he killed my mom.
I hated him. I hated him.
When it came to light that someone else
murdered Rita Salazar,
I pulled everything back out again,
and I was reading it
with a different set of eyes.
I just saw so many inconsistencies.
Henry said that my mom
was wearing a watch bracelet.
That was something that, uh, my dad and I
told the police about
in the very beginning.
Much later, we found the watch
in her jewelry box. She...
That day, she didn't wear the watch.
So Henry Lee Lucas,
he had never seen this watch.
And then I saw him on video,
being interviewed about my mother's case.
This is the victim right here.
Clayton Smith was very cautious
to not...
feed information to Lucas that...
he could use.
However, you have to...
you have to give some information.
Henry, I've got a map here.
Henry was handed a map.
Her body and, uh...
car
were found back out in that area there.
Did you ever...
Do you remember anything,
leaving anything in...
in that particular area, around in there?
He was handed a map.
Months later,
he's being interviewed
by the Alabama detectives.
Do you think you could draw us a diagram
of the area the best you remember
and where... where you left
the body of Miss Salazar?
I believe I can.
He drew
where my mom's car was left,
where her body would be found.
That would seal the deal
if I were a detective.
He, uh, was like a...
encyclopedia of maps.
He had recall
that one of the psychiatrists
determined as, or...
uh, had hypermnesia,
which is an antonym of amnesia.
He might not be correct
about the homicide,
but he... he was normally correct on that.
It just seems clear to me
that Henry Lee Lucas
was fed information in my mom's case.
I want to know the truth.
I was a young, uh, police chief.
I was about 27 years old.
I got this communication
that came across my desk
that two FBI agents were coming to teach
for three days
on this new concept...
of, uh, criminal profiling.
And, uh, I can remember, uh,
like it was just this morning,
coming out of that training
after three days and...
having one of those "ah-ha" experiences.
This is what I'm supposed to do.
This will be my mission in life.
Eventually, I attended the FBI Academy
and was selected
for the Behavioral Science Unit
and became an FBI criminal profiler.
With respect to his victims,
not only do they vary in age, but they...
they vary in sex.
Male, female, children.
Uh, we just don't find that
among serial killers.
The Cold Case Foundation
works with law enforcement agencies
and victims' families around the country.
We voluntarily give time,
and resources, and experience
to try and solve those cases.
There are certain characteristics
between many serial killers
that are consistent,
but there are also
some very unique characteristics
that are tailored to that individual.
Ted Bundy selected mostly...
The look is young co-ed type.
Uh, there was a consistency in...
in victimology.
That's Gary Ridgway.
He's known as the Green River Killer.
And you can see the pattern of victims
up and down the thoroughfare there.
And that's not to say
that a guy can't commit a crime in Florida
and then also go to California,
but we're looking for clusters especially.
Now we'll look at Lucas.
All types of victims:
hitchhikers, children,
burglary victims, stranded motorists.
He was continuing, supposedly,
to kill all over the country.
- There's no consistency.
- No consistency.
The only pattern that exists here
is that there's no pattern, at any level.
Near as we can tell, there's about
38 different types of weapons,
uh, used:
uh, tire tools,
forks,
electrical cord, scarf,
nylon cord,
uh, feet.
Uh, he used his own feet.
Uh, he used pantyhose for strangulation.
Used his vehicle to run over, uh, victims.
Used a brick to beat his victim.
A man's tie,
a telephone receiver,
a mop handle,
handguns,
used a necklace,
a two-by-four wooden board,
and also even a ballpoint pen.
We've never come across a serial killer
that uses all of those.
That's not to say it's not possible.
But from a probability perspective,
it's, uh, fictional.
They found her car.
Uh, there were some key items,
as I understand it, in that vehicle.
Things she just never let go of, you know,
her cigarettes being one of 'em.
So that really raised the alarm.
So then there was some suspicion that...
Is it possible that Henry Lee Lucas
could be involved in this?
My mom went to a bar,
and she left sometime that evening.
But we don't know where she went.
It was as if she'd just fallen
off the end of the Earth,
and we didn't know where to look.
Seven months later,
the remains were found
buried in a shallow grave.
Not long after that,
I got news that Henry Lee Lucas
had killed her.
We got a missing person report
that she'd been seen
in the bar that night.
Uh, she was drinking
with a man in there that...
that fit Henry Lee Lucas',
uh, description.
Yeah, a matter of fact, the sheriff
and I went to, uh, Texas together
to talk to Henry Lee Lucas, and...
And, of course, people were in line
to talk to him, you know.
People from agencies
all over the United States
had to come in to talk to him, and so...
Were you limited on the amount of time
you were given as well?
Yeah. They gave us...
They gave us 20 minutes to talk to him.
Twenty minutes?
We had so many people waiting to get in,
20 minutes for the interview.
He admitted to it.
He said to, uh, Sheriff Garnett,
"Yeah, I did that one."
And, of course, he was having a good day.
He was a... He was a superstar.
He was a... you know, a movie star.
He was something special, and...
It's kind of morbid because he said
that he liked to... to behead 'em,
because he didn't like to have sex
with a woman with a head,
so he'd take the head off
- and have sex with the head gone.
- Yeah.
- He said he does all his victims that way.
- Hmm.
Peculiar.
It generally takes, on average,
several hours to get a confession
from an individual
that has committed a heinous crime
and, uh, who is going to suffer
the consequences of that.
Do you recall any other suspects
that were looked at?
There wasn't anybody else
that we knew of who was a suspect.
Other than Henry Lee Lucas,
and that was it?
Yeah, we... we both had the same feeling
on it, that, uh...
That, you know, about 80% sure
we thought he'd done it.
He says
that he picked her up hitchhiking.
She didn't need to be hitchhiking,
she had a car.
He said that she was wearing pigtails.
Mom was not wearing pigtails.
A lot of these individuals
will take responsibility for crimes
they've never committed.
Why? Because it... it...
fills them up with acknowledgment.
For the first time in their life,
they've been recognized.
And it's better to be known for a crime
than to be known for nothing at all.
From the moment
she went missing,
they should have gotten more answers
from interviewing witnesses,
questioning her boyfriend
that she'd just broken up with,
who had tried to strangle her.
I don't know if they just don't care
or if someone has something to hide.
I can tell you my experiences
with the... with the cold case.
This is gonna be the first one on it.
I know... I know that they're out there,
and I know what I've seen on TV,
but this, being 35 years ago,
I think will really show
that the Sheriff's Office in Quay County
is serious about their job
and serious about their citizens.
At the time, Joel Garnett
was the sheriff who...
Have you ever talked with him
about this case?
Uh, very briefly.
He's kind of hard to get a hold of.
Is he?
From what I understand,
there was a flood in the basement,
and it wiped out some records.
There is not
one shred of evidence
to show that Lucas
could have even been in San Jon
when my mother was killed.
But Lucas said he did it,
and law enforcement
chose to take him at his word.
Sergeant Prince says
it is not the task force's job
to investigate the murders,
only to help other police agencies
around the country
with their own investigations.
The task force
wasn't an investigative task force
that you might think of
as a normal homicide task force.
We were not set up to solve them.
We were set up to...
uh, facilitate the interviews.
You tied her hands?
Yeah, her hands were tied.
And you would use electrical cord
or something like that?
Did you ever use...
First thing you'd learn
when you'd learn how to interview is...
stop talking, let them talk.
From the confessions that I've watched,
every one of them...
led him.
"Is this what happened? Is this...
Tell us about this. Tell us about..."
You don't do that. If they're confessing,
they're gonna tell you everything.
Did you stab her from the front
or were you behind her
when you stabbed her?
No, I stabbed her from behind, too,
I think.
Henry had an ability to read...
what it was that a person was asking him
to give back.
Was she trying to fight you
on the way out?
She did fight me on the way out.
Law enforcement officials
had unwittingly given him
all the information he needed
to make a... a confession.
Did you turn the body over,
or did you move the body in any way
after you stabbed her?
Yeah, I think I rolled her over
on her back, if I remember correctly.
Well, he knew if he guessed one way
and they acted funny,
he'd go the other way.
Do you remember anything about a baby?
A baby?
Well, I didn't know anything about a baby,
you know. I said, "Baby?"
You know?
So I made up a story about the baby.
I can remember seeing one in the...
in the house,
but the baby wasn't hurt, I don't think.
Showing the pictures
of the victim.
For shock value, that's okay,
to show the dead body.
But you don't show him the crime scene,
because then...
he got the whole story
just out of the photograph.
You see there's a bridge
that goes over the interstate.
Uh, these officers...
Many of them had never covered anything
more than a...
traffic violation
or a fistfight at the football game.
And suddenly,
you get to meet all these Rangers,
you get to travel there
and talk with Henry and...
he solves your crime.
I mean, that's... that's big stuff.
Well, I cut the woman's head off
so it wouldn't leave no evidence.
So I drive all the way to Arizona.
Forgot all about the head
being in the car then.
They got conned by a con.
And they wanted to believe.
They wanted to believe him.
I still don't believe
Henry's memory. That...
He's amazed me so many times today
that I just...
It's unbelievable.
He's something else.
I really dig this guy.
The police work was less than competent.
They didn't ask the right questions,
they didn't pursue other leads.
If you want it badly enough
to close out an old case,
it's never gonna be solved anyway.
This guy wants it, let's give it to him
and get it off our...
off our books.
Have you told us the truth?
- Yes.
- Okay.
So, lunch break?
Okay.
The task force were quick to say,
"We never closed a case.
It was them, it wasn't us.
It was them. It was the guy in Minnesota,
it was the guy in Virginia.
That policeman closed the case, not us"
But they were the facilitators.
They were becoming famous.
Given all kind of accolades.
They were heroes.
They were heroes to the families,
they were heroes to the local police
that they were calling and saying,
"Guess what? We found your killer."
It was May 12th, 1983,
when 23-year-old Scotty Scott
faced a Little Rock jury
for the 1981 shooting death
of convenience store clerk Betty Thornton.
Thornton was found face down
behind the counter,
shot three times, the cash drawer empty.
I was the deputy prosecutor
in charge of trying Scotty Scott
for the murder of Betty Thornton.
Scotty Scott's dad
had been a police officer
with the Arkansas State Police
and was well-known and well-liked.
I said,
"Son, did you ever go into that store?"
He looked me right back and he said,
"Dad, I never lied to you in my life
and I'm not lying now.
I've never been in that store in my life."
It was hard to try
the state trooper's son,
but we had direct evidence that he was
in the place when Betty was shot.
We, the jury,
find the defendant Scotty Scott
guilty of murder in the first degree...
and fix his punishment to the term
of 25 years in the penitentiary.
When you have a jury
that has seen all the evidence
and is absolutely sure that...
that he was guilty,
th-that was justice.
When Henry Lucas came to Little Rock,
Scotty Scott's case was on appeal
at the Arkansas Superior Court.
And Henry Lucas said
that he killed Betty Thornton,
Do you swear to tell...
But there wasn't anything
other than his statement.
Lucas testified that he killed
a Little Rock convenience store clerk
in 1981,
a crime
for which Scotty Scott was convicted.
I sat and picked that, uh, station out
that I had robbed,
and I described the victim to 'em,
what she, uh, looked like,
and, uh, how she was shot.
There wasn't a bit of truth
to anything he said.
We could prove both by evidence
and by eye-witness testimony
that Henry Lee Lucas
was in Jacksonville, Florida
on the day that Betty Lee Thornton
was killed in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The evidence most damaging
to Lucas' credibility
is an insurance form signed by Lucas
and dated November 6th, 1981,
the day of the murder.
Let me ask you.
This is your signature on this?
That is my signature, yes.
He was a thousand miles away once again.
It's so obvious this was a fraud.
When Henry Lucas
eventually fessed up to me,
he started to tell me the truth
about Betty Thornton's homicide.
How did you hear about this case?
I, uh, was up in the sheriff's office
one day and, uh...
So he put me on the phone
with the lieutenant
at the state police barracks.
He said, "Well, uh, I have a...
a police officer's son that's in prison
for a crime that, uh,
we don't think he did.
That if you could, would you help us out?"
The conviction of Scotty Scott
was set aside
just because they get old Henry
to say he did it.
Henry Lucas was the product
of some manipulation that...
really, uh, hurt our law enforcement
here in Little Rock and our society.
Lucas's confession
freed Scotty Scott.
It just comes back again
and again and again
to someone else...
got away with murder.
I was a pretty sick person back then,
you know? I, uh...
I didn't have any hopes of proving myself
innocent of nothing, you know?
And, uh, I just made up my mind,
if law enforcement
wanted phony confessions,
I'd give it to 'em, so I did.
I hate this dead man,
but then the people that...
created it,
I hate them more.
These are the people
that you trust to find...
the killer, bring them to justice, and...
that wasn't done.
Back in 1985,
the task force was getting Lucas
to confess to crimes,
and on the other hand, they had evidence
he couldn't have committed those crimes.
And they decided they needed to pick out
one big case
and prove that Lucas really was
the mass murderer that they said he was.
Maria Apodaca was killed.
She was a elderly, uh, lady
whose home was burglarized,
and she was brutally murdered.
I got a couple hangers
out of the closet,
and I said, "Well, what the heck?
I might as well have sex."
So I go back and have sex with her.
To defend Lucas, I realized
that I had to...
prove that Lucas lied in El Paso,
just like he lied
on all these other cases.
I had to dismantle Lucas's confessions
case by case,
by case.
I brought in witness after witness
to prove that Lucas
could not have committed those murders
that he confessed to.
At first, the judge thought,
like everybody,
that Lucas was a bad guy, a-a murderer,
but steam started coming out
the judge's ears
because he realized
he'd been lied to for months.
We went through 76 cases.
In all 76 cases, it was pretty well proven
that he could not have done it.
By the end of the case,
I proved that Lucas
did not commit the Apodaca murder.
The judge tossed the confession,
then the DA dismissed the case.
I don't think this thing
started off the way it ended.
I think the Rangers honestly felt
that they were doing the right thing.
What happened to them,
Henry knows that if he confesses,
they're gonna keep him alive.
So he con... he confesses to everything
and this becomes an obsession
with the Rangers.
And then, as you look
at each case that comes up,
you begin to see a pattern
of a state agency
making a serial killer
out of a person
that may not have killed anybody.
And they turned it into the biggest hoax
that this country and this state
has ever seen.
Attorney General Jim Mattox
handed out a year-long study
blistering law officers for alleged
shoddy investigation of Lucas.
Lucas was able to perpetrate
a hoax
on the, uh, criminal justice system.
The Mattox report comes out
and it is a detailed accounting
of Lucas's presence around the country
at the time of each and every murder
that he had confessed to.
We can prove unequivocally
that he was assisted
in making confessions.
Uh, some law enforcement officials
purposely cleared cases
that they should not have cleared.
Even with the ruling
of the judge in El Paso,
and the Mattox report,
no one really paid any attention to it.
And the Texas Rangers themselves
continued to defend their actions.
I wrote the news release
when the Public Safety Commission
and the Texas Rangers
did an investigation
of the Lucas Task Force
and found no culpability
on the part of the Texas Rangers.
And certainly no violations of the law.
There was certainly nothing
that was found improper
uh, by the task force,
by the Rangers, or by Bob Prince.
They believed Henry was a serial killer.
Their reputations were wrapped up in it,
and they were determined to do the...
the kind of job they could be proud of.
Bob Prince still feels
like he accomplished that.
I don't know of anything more
we could have done on the task force.
If we had to do it over again today,
I guess we'd do it the... the same way.
From the hundreds
of Lucas confessions,
we know only three cases
that you can actually link
Henry Lee Lucas to.
In the case of his mother's death,
he was sent to prison for that.
And in the cases of Kate Rich
and Becky Powell,
he took police
to where he buried their bodies
and there was actually physical evidence.
I trained myself, uh...
and was trained
never to leave evidence.
You didn't leave fingerprints?
I didn't leave fingerprints,
I didn't leave footprints,
I didn't leave nothing.
No. Henry Lee Lucas was not a mastermind.
He couldn't have created
any of those crimes
without leaving evidence.
Most of the other people leave evidence.
I don't.
There's not a fingerprint.
There's not a hair.
There's not an eyewitness.
There's nothing, nothing, nothing,
except Henry's confessions,
to put him in any of those murders.
Back when all this was going on
with Henry Lucas,
DNA was just in its inception.
But now there... there's no excuse.
Get back in there and look at it.
DNA is the assault rifle
for law enforcement now,
because you can't change it,
you can't alter it,
you can't hide from it.
New DNA technology helps close
one of the oldest cold cases in Colorado.
Henry Lee Lucas,
the serial killer,
originally confessed to that murder.
The DNA match now points
to 52-year-old Ricky Lee Harnish
in Holly's slaying.
This guy had been walking on the streets
for 32 years.
He... He ain't been caught until yesterday.
And it was cleared
with a little cotton swab.
Now, cases are being solved.
The real killers are being found,
and it's not Henry Lucas.
Joyce and Bob Lemons
have questioned
who killed their daughter,
Deborah Sue Williamson.
I don't know who it was.
I have never known who it was
and never had any idea who it was.
For so many years now,
Lubbock PD has not actively worked
my sister's case.
So, I said in March of '17,
"I'm gonna start the journey again."
The detectives in Lubbock
were not doing anything.
They just told me
they didn't have the manpower,
so I took that to heart
and told them I would find them the help.
So, on August 24th, 1975...
That's when I found
the Cold Case Foundation.
They agreed to take Debbie's case.
The victim is stabbed
between 15 and 17 times.
The... The initial attack takes place
at the vehicle door.
She is then dragged approximately 20 feet
to the back door,
um, and then the body appears to be posed,
but there doesn't appear to be
any, uh, sexual assault.
The way he leaves her.
That's a message,
and that should give us some idea
of the possible relationship
between the victim and the offender.
The probability is that
it's somebody that she knows
and certainly knows her.
And we're looking at Debbie's husband,
Doug's groomsman, the husband's brother,
Debbie's cousin,
and also Debbie's brother.
The Cold Case Foundation felt it was
possibly a family member
that killed my sister.
I hope that's not what the real answer is.
But we've hurt so much,
and we've been through so much,
I don't see that hurting worse...
than what we've already been through.
We submitted
to the Lubbock Police Department
a 23-page report of Deborah's case
identifying those people of interest
that we thought had merit in the case,
and, uh, gave some investigative
recommendations to follow up on.
And we've not really heard back
from them since.
We're just now pulling up.
That's the home right there
across the street.
Lubbock PD had confirmed
not only are they
not working her case currently,
they have no plans
on working her case ever.
I've never been this close.
Debbie's murder scene
was so compromised.
The Lubbock police
had skin under her nails,
they had tissue, they had blood,
they had hair,
they had complete handprints,
they had thumbprints,
they had footprints.
The Lubbock police
lost a lot of her evidence
and have no answers for it.
Hmm.
I just, you know...
All we have ever asked for,
all we ever wanted,
was for them to reconsider,
to take another look,
to-to-to-to do their job.
That's all we ever wanted.
My dad died of a heart attack
in his sleep.
He would have done anything
humanly possible
to find who killed her.
After the Cold Case Foundation
had been there,
we were finally on our way
to a good investigation.
Sheriff Shafer...
...appeared to be very interested
and so accommodating,
and it gave the whole family a lot of hope
that we would finally...
get some answers
about what happened to Mom.
Since then, there was a news article
and Sheriff Shafer
is quoted that, in his sole opinion,
Lucas was in fact the likely perpetrator.
Local law enforcement
had access to the information
if they cared to know.
But they just don't seem
to have cared to know.
They would rather have a murder
off their books
than to actually tell me
what happened to my mom.
There's a resistance
to wanting to reopen the cases.
Law enforcement doesn't like
to make law enforcement look bad.
I can understand the reluctance
of law enforcement
to open a case back up,
because it could expose their predecessors
in an unfavorable light,
but the test is,
did we get the right person?
As well-intentioned
as law enforcement is most of the time,
mistakes can be made,
and we need to figure out what those are
and what caused them
and try to change the way
we go about our business
so they don't happen again.
Well, it's... it's definitely
a learning curve for law enforcement.
If you conduct your cases
and your business like you're supposed to,
you... you shouldn't be...
shouldn't be afraid of the light.
It's not easy to reopen a case
that's been cleared for a couple reasons.
One, it causes us to go down the road
of what we could've missed along the way.
Two, it's somewhat embarrassing.
But if it means
that we need to kind of back up
and... and reverse course a little bit
and readjust
and go in a different direction,
then that's... that's what it takes.
The Linda Sue Adkins case went unsolved
until Henry Lee Lucas had confessed to it,
saying that he had been in California
at around that time.
The case was closed without an arrest
because he was in custody in Texas.
Initially, it seemed Henry Lee Lucas
actually was responsible for this murder.
And then, at the end of 2016,
I was contacted by the film crew
who brought to our attention
just how many crimes
Lucas had falsely confessed to.
I reviewed the case
and looked at the confession
and realized that we didn't have
any forensic evidence
to link him to the crime
and that there was overwhelming evidence
that Lucas wasn't in Bakersfield
around that time.
So there was nightclubs
to the back of the motels.
The riverbank where she was found
runs right there.
Investigation at the time was that
Linda had left the club
and was either lured, carried, uh, taken,
and ended up in this area,
um, that we're looking at now.
Ultimately, we want public trust.
There's the older traditional thinking of,
"We don't make mistakes,
and we don't talk about mistakes,"
or there's the transparency side
where we show the mistakes,
and we show that we're human,
and we show that...
things don't always go
the way that we wanted them,
regardless of intention.
- Hi, Deby, how are you?
- Good.
There's a certain level
of discomfort, to say the least,
going back
and talking to the victim's family.
In this case, uh, Linda's family was...
was very happy and supportive
of the decision to...
seek the truth.
The more we look into it, the...
you know, the likelihood
of him being responsible
is, uh, less and less.
Over the years,
we've heard that, you know,
some of the confessions were false,
and we just didn't feel
that that pertained to us.
Right.
My greatest hope is that
we will be able to find who did do it.
Unfortunately, there's a chance
that taking the seal off of this case,
we may never be able to seal it again...
...but it's the right thing to do
in reopening it
and re-examining what, uh...
what we have.
Linda was my best friend.
Excuse me.
I...
I just wonder
how life would've been different
had she lived.
Now we're right back to square one.
We just need to drop off some flyers,
if you wouldn't mind putting them up.
The most horrifying thought
that goes through my head
is that...
the person who killed her
got away with it.
And because this case
was not properly investigated,
other people have been hurt.
Other families are going through
what I've been through.
We cannot let that happen again.
A family that loses a family member
to a homicidal violence
is never going to forget.
If they can get that closure,
I don't care if it's five years,
ten years, 30 years,
it eases that a little bit.
It does.
It really does.
Love you, Debbie.
This really is a story
about human nature.
About how all of us saw in Henry
what we wanted to see.
And maybe we did lose sight of the truth.
It is a must for all
to identify,
control,
stop a Henry Lucas
before they become a violence to society.
Thank you very much.
♪ If these lies don't make it right ♪
♪ Can we pretend enough is true? ♪
♪ And if a highway calls at night ♪
♪ Well, these bars still make me blue ♪
♪ Can a lie told enough ♪
♪ Become true? ♪
♪ Can a lie told enough ♪
♪ Become enough for you? ♪
what does he look like?
He looks like anyone else.
Look at Henry.
He's pleasant,
he's non-threatening,
and yet, a serial murderer.
Has no morals.
He's callous,
he's cruel,
and actually a killing machine.
Henry,
there's hope that we'll learn from you
to anticipate
what these characteristics are
so that we can help prevent
some Henry Lucases in the future.
Do you understand?
- I understand.
- Right.
Henry was a chameleon.
He was a different person
each time he interacted
with a new individual.
He was figuring out what he needed
to get through the moment,
and he would become what was needed.
Have a seat. Have a seat.
Every psychologist and psychiatrist
he talked to,
he became the...
the kind of clinical study they needed.
They're very learned in their profession,
and you're very learned in yours.
You are gonna be our teacher.
With an IQ of 87,
he was able to convince
a thousand law enforcement officers
that he was guilty of 200,
or whatever it was, crimes.
Every case has a tie.
You can take a look at the way
the body has been killed.
You can look at the way
the body has been done after death.
I'll give you one incident.
I have deliberately left socks
on my victims.
Deliberately done it.
So, in other words, if we looked
at two or three states and found...
victims with socks on...
Yeah.
They would be completely nude,
except for their socks.
I wonder if any of us
will ever find out
the answer to this mystery
about what Henry did
and how all of this happened.
But most shocking,
how all these other killers stayed free.
When we received
the Salazar case in 2008,
the first thing that we did
was take a look at everything
that... that we had in the old file.
Investigators had preserved the evidence,
including Rita Salazar's underwear
taken from the crime scene.
DNA had been stored
on a database called CODIS
that was periodically tested
against other inmates
in the Texas penitentiary system.
2008, a hit came back.
Benny Tijerina Jr.
was a contributor of DNA found
inside of Rita Salazar's underwear.
This guy had been...
literally getting away with murder
for 30 years.
We tracked him down
in the Dallas area.
We made him believe he was coming
to talk to his parole officer,
so we knew we would probably only have
one shot with him in an interview.
Come on in.
Benny, would you mind
sitting over here, please?
Sure, sure.
Very cramped quarters in here.
Too small. Yeah, a little bit, ain't it?
You're not under arrest.
You're free to leave here
anytime you want.
- But I-I-I think what I've...
- Well, I'm here, so.
What I've got to talk to you about, you're
probably gonna be very interested in.
You know, when... when you go in prison
and they swab your mouth?
- Yes, I know.
- Nowadays?
- DNA, yeah.
- Yeah. They did that, and, uh...
they got a possible hit on a... on a case.
So that's why we came up today,
we wanted to talk to you,
see if you'd let us swab you again
- to get another sample to confirm that.
- Sure, I don't have a problem with that.
Just open your mouth
and I'll rub each one of these
on each side of your mouth
and put them on here.
This is the point
where we do the buccal swabs
just to confirm the DNA that was found
on Rita Salazar's panties.
At this point, he really doesn't...
know exactly what we're there
to interview him about.
Back in, uh, November...
1978,
there was two, uh, young kids,
a boy and a girl, they went to Austin.
They were coming back.
Uh, they didn't come home that night.
- That's what this is about?
- Yeah.
- Oh, Lord.
- And, uh...
We've got some, uh, very good evidence
that... that links you to that.
And... that's why we came up.
I would never do nothing like that
in all my life.
I'm not that kind of person.
And I realize
that a lot of time's gone by since 1978,
but I think if you were involved
in something that serious,
you'd remember it.
Yeah, I would. It would be
on my conscience very much still.
You know?
She was sexually assaulted.
And your DNA comes back to that.
Or at least that your... your semen
wound up on her panties. So, now...
You understand what I mean by that?
No, that's... No, that's wrong.
We're not here to bullshit you
because this is a very serious matter...
Very serious.
...for you, for the families
of these people that are dead.
Exactly.
They've been dead
for over 30 years and their...
Her mama still doesn't know
what happened to her.
Oh, man.
He's obviously very upset
and very nervous.
His gears are going.
He's trying to figure out a way out of it.
Now we want to hear
what you know about it.
I don't know nothing about it.
How would your semen
have gotten on her panties?
I don't know how that happened either.
How would it get on her panties
if I wasn't even there?
Right. That's why...
That's why we're here, to find out.
We did our homework on him.
We found that he was becoming...
uh...
religious.
And I used that to my advantage
to talk to him.
- You believe in God?
- Yes, sir, I do.
- I'm a very religious person.
- So am I.
- Okay.
- I can tell you that.
I can look at your eyes right now
- and tell something's eating you alive.
- I know. I know that.
- It's eating you alive.
- It is.
Well, talk to me.
For this many years,
for something to be eating you alive,
it's time to ventilate on this thing.
There's no doubt in my mind...
I was seeing a psychiatrist.
That's what he was talking about.
This young girl's mama's still alive,
Benny. She...
- Yeah, I bet it was hard on her.
- To this day...
To this day, she doesn't... doesn't know
what happened to her daughter.
- We're here all night, brother.
- I know.
We're not here...
We just want to hear...
hear your side of it.
And just talk.
This is it tonight.
From that point on,
he started talking about the case
as if he was there
instead of not being there at all.
All this is in my head.
It's come back to haunt me now.
Oh, man.
Oh, shit.
DNA leads to an arrest
in a 32-year-old cold case
in Williamson County.
Today, 51-year-old
Benny Tijerina
pleaded guilty to being involved
in the shooting deaths of Kevin Key
and Rita Salazar.
His DNA, a match to evidence
at the crime scenes.
I'm still angry that somebody killed
my sister Rita and Kevin.
And it's never gonna go away.
But at least I know who did it.
I... At least I know
that Benny Tijerina killed my sister.
The Williamson County District Attorney...
I saw it on the news.
I realized,
"Oh, my God, that's Ninfa's sister.
That's her case."
I... It changed everything.
It changed everything for me,
because what I'd been believing
for all these years
was Henry did it.
Years ago,
Ninfa and I formed a group.
We called it VOLT,
"Victims Of Lucas Tragedies."
We wanted Lucas to remain on death row.
When I first got transcripts
of Lucas's confessions,
there are very specific things
that he knew about my mom's case.
My mom wore a wig.
He mentioned that.
Another thing that he knew about
was that the seat belt
had been cut out of my mom's car.
It was used to restrain her to a tree.
Then he said he raped her.
There was no doubt in my mind, um,
that... that he killed my mom.
I hated him. I hated him.
When it came to light that someone else
murdered Rita Salazar,
I pulled everything back out again,
and I was reading it
with a different set of eyes.
I just saw so many inconsistencies.
Henry said that my mom
was wearing a watch bracelet.
That was something that, uh, my dad and I
told the police about
in the very beginning.
Much later, we found the watch
in her jewelry box. She...
That day, she didn't wear the watch.
So Henry Lee Lucas,
he had never seen this watch.
And then I saw him on video,
being interviewed about my mother's case.
This is the victim right here.
Clayton Smith was very cautious
to not...
feed information to Lucas that...
he could use.
However, you have to...
you have to give some information.
Henry, I've got a map here.
Henry was handed a map.
Her body and, uh...
car
were found back out in that area there.
Did you ever...
Do you remember anything,
leaving anything in...
in that particular area, around in there?
He was handed a map.
Months later,
he's being interviewed
by the Alabama detectives.
Do you think you could draw us a diagram
of the area the best you remember
and where... where you left
the body of Miss Salazar?
I believe I can.
He drew
where my mom's car was left,
where her body would be found.
That would seal the deal
if I were a detective.
He, uh, was like a...
encyclopedia of maps.
He had recall
that one of the psychiatrists
determined as, or...
uh, had hypermnesia,
which is an antonym of amnesia.
He might not be correct
about the homicide,
but he... he was normally correct on that.
It just seems clear to me
that Henry Lee Lucas
was fed information in my mom's case.
I want to know the truth.
I was a young, uh, police chief.
I was about 27 years old.
I got this communication
that came across my desk
that two FBI agents were coming to teach
for three days
on this new concept...
of, uh, criminal profiling.
And, uh, I can remember, uh,
like it was just this morning,
coming out of that training
after three days and...
having one of those "ah-ha" experiences.
This is what I'm supposed to do.
This will be my mission in life.
Eventually, I attended the FBI Academy
and was selected
for the Behavioral Science Unit
and became an FBI criminal profiler.
With respect to his victims,
not only do they vary in age, but they...
they vary in sex.
Male, female, children.
Uh, we just don't find that
among serial killers.
The Cold Case Foundation
works with law enforcement agencies
and victims' families around the country.
We voluntarily give time,
and resources, and experience
to try and solve those cases.
There are certain characteristics
between many serial killers
that are consistent,
but there are also
some very unique characteristics
that are tailored to that individual.
Ted Bundy selected mostly...
The look is young co-ed type.
Uh, there was a consistency in...
in victimology.
That's Gary Ridgway.
He's known as the Green River Killer.
And you can see the pattern of victims
up and down the thoroughfare there.
And that's not to say
that a guy can't commit a crime in Florida
and then also go to California,
but we're looking for clusters especially.
Now we'll look at Lucas.
All types of victims:
hitchhikers, children,
burglary victims, stranded motorists.
He was continuing, supposedly,
to kill all over the country.
- There's no consistency.
- No consistency.
The only pattern that exists here
is that there's no pattern, at any level.
Near as we can tell, there's about
38 different types of weapons,
uh, used:
uh, tire tools,
forks,
electrical cord, scarf,
nylon cord,
uh, feet.
Uh, he used his own feet.
Uh, he used pantyhose for strangulation.
Used his vehicle to run over, uh, victims.
Used a brick to beat his victim.
A man's tie,
a telephone receiver,
a mop handle,
handguns,
used a necklace,
a two-by-four wooden board,
and also even a ballpoint pen.
We've never come across a serial killer
that uses all of those.
That's not to say it's not possible.
But from a probability perspective,
it's, uh, fictional.
They found her car.
Uh, there were some key items,
as I understand it, in that vehicle.
Things she just never let go of, you know,
her cigarettes being one of 'em.
So that really raised the alarm.
So then there was some suspicion that...
Is it possible that Henry Lee Lucas
could be involved in this?
My mom went to a bar,
and she left sometime that evening.
But we don't know where she went.
It was as if she'd just fallen
off the end of the Earth,
and we didn't know where to look.
Seven months later,
the remains were found
buried in a shallow grave.
Not long after that,
I got news that Henry Lee Lucas
had killed her.
We got a missing person report
that she'd been seen
in the bar that night.
Uh, she was drinking
with a man in there that...
that fit Henry Lee Lucas',
uh, description.
Yeah, a matter of fact, the sheriff
and I went to, uh, Texas together
to talk to Henry Lee Lucas, and...
And, of course, people were in line
to talk to him, you know.
People from agencies
all over the United States
had to come in to talk to him, and so...
Were you limited on the amount of time
you were given as well?
Yeah. They gave us...
They gave us 20 minutes to talk to him.
Twenty minutes?
We had so many people waiting to get in,
20 minutes for the interview.
He admitted to it.
He said to, uh, Sheriff Garnett,
"Yeah, I did that one."
And, of course, he was having a good day.
He was a... He was a superstar.
He was a... you know, a movie star.
He was something special, and...
It's kind of morbid because he said
that he liked to... to behead 'em,
because he didn't like to have sex
with a woman with a head,
so he'd take the head off
- and have sex with the head gone.
- Yeah.
- He said he does all his victims that way.
- Hmm.
Peculiar.
It generally takes, on average,
several hours to get a confession
from an individual
that has committed a heinous crime
and, uh, who is going to suffer
the consequences of that.
Do you recall any other suspects
that were looked at?
There wasn't anybody else
that we knew of who was a suspect.
Other than Henry Lee Lucas,
and that was it?
Yeah, we... we both had the same feeling
on it, that, uh...
That, you know, about 80% sure
we thought he'd done it.
He says
that he picked her up hitchhiking.
She didn't need to be hitchhiking,
she had a car.
He said that she was wearing pigtails.
Mom was not wearing pigtails.
A lot of these individuals
will take responsibility for crimes
they've never committed.
Why? Because it... it...
fills them up with acknowledgment.
For the first time in their life,
they've been recognized.
And it's better to be known for a crime
than to be known for nothing at all.
From the moment
she went missing,
they should have gotten more answers
from interviewing witnesses,
questioning her boyfriend
that she'd just broken up with,
who had tried to strangle her.
I don't know if they just don't care
or if someone has something to hide.
I can tell you my experiences
with the... with the cold case.
This is gonna be the first one on it.
I know... I know that they're out there,
and I know what I've seen on TV,
but this, being 35 years ago,
I think will really show
that the Sheriff's Office in Quay County
is serious about their job
and serious about their citizens.
At the time, Joel Garnett
was the sheriff who...
Have you ever talked with him
about this case?
Uh, very briefly.
He's kind of hard to get a hold of.
Is he?
From what I understand,
there was a flood in the basement,
and it wiped out some records.
There is not
one shred of evidence
to show that Lucas
could have even been in San Jon
when my mother was killed.
But Lucas said he did it,
and law enforcement
chose to take him at his word.
Sergeant Prince says
it is not the task force's job
to investigate the murders,
only to help other police agencies
around the country
with their own investigations.
The task force
wasn't an investigative task force
that you might think of
as a normal homicide task force.
We were not set up to solve them.
We were set up to...
uh, facilitate the interviews.
You tied her hands?
Yeah, her hands were tied.
And you would use electrical cord
or something like that?
Did you ever use...
First thing you'd learn
when you'd learn how to interview is...
stop talking, let them talk.
From the confessions that I've watched,
every one of them...
led him.
"Is this what happened? Is this...
Tell us about this. Tell us about..."
You don't do that. If they're confessing,
they're gonna tell you everything.
Did you stab her from the front
or were you behind her
when you stabbed her?
No, I stabbed her from behind, too,
I think.
Henry had an ability to read...
what it was that a person was asking him
to give back.
Was she trying to fight you
on the way out?
She did fight me on the way out.
Law enforcement officials
had unwittingly given him
all the information he needed
to make a... a confession.
Did you turn the body over,
or did you move the body in any way
after you stabbed her?
Yeah, I think I rolled her over
on her back, if I remember correctly.
Well, he knew if he guessed one way
and they acted funny,
he'd go the other way.
Do you remember anything about a baby?
A baby?
Well, I didn't know anything about a baby,
you know. I said, "Baby?"
You know?
So I made up a story about the baby.
I can remember seeing one in the...
in the house,
but the baby wasn't hurt, I don't think.
Showing the pictures
of the victim.
For shock value, that's okay,
to show the dead body.
But you don't show him the crime scene,
because then...
he got the whole story
just out of the photograph.
You see there's a bridge
that goes over the interstate.
Uh, these officers...
Many of them had never covered anything
more than a...
traffic violation
or a fistfight at the football game.
And suddenly,
you get to meet all these Rangers,
you get to travel there
and talk with Henry and...
he solves your crime.
I mean, that's... that's big stuff.
Well, I cut the woman's head off
so it wouldn't leave no evidence.
So I drive all the way to Arizona.
Forgot all about the head
being in the car then.
They got conned by a con.
And they wanted to believe.
They wanted to believe him.
I still don't believe
Henry's memory. That...
He's amazed me so many times today
that I just...
It's unbelievable.
He's something else.
I really dig this guy.
The police work was less than competent.
They didn't ask the right questions,
they didn't pursue other leads.
If you want it badly enough
to close out an old case,
it's never gonna be solved anyway.
This guy wants it, let's give it to him
and get it off our...
off our books.
Have you told us the truth?
- Yes.
- Okay.
So, lunch break?
Okay.
The task force were quick to say,
"We never closed a case.
It was them, it wasn't us.
It was them. It was the guy in Minnesota,
it was the guy in Virginia.
That policeman closed the case, not us"
But they were the facilitators.
They were becoming famous.
Given all kind of accolades.
They were heroes.
They were heroes to the families,
they were heroes to the local police
that they were calling and saying,
"Guess what? We found your killer."
It was May 12th, 1983,
when 23-year-old Scotty Scott
faced a Little Rock jury
for the 1981 shooting death
of convenience store clerk Betty Thornton.
Thornton was found face down
behind the counter,
shot three times, the cash drawer empty.
I was the deputy prosecutor
in charge of trying Scotty Scott
for the murder of Betty Thornton.
Scotty Scott's dad
had been a police officer
with the Arkansas State Police
and was well-known and well-liked.
I said,
"Son, did you ever go into that store?"
He looked me right back and he said,
"Dad, I never lied to you in my life
and I'm not lying now.
I've never been in that store in my life."
It was hard to try
the state trooper's son,
but we had direct evidence that he was
in the place when Betty was shot.
We, the jury,
find the defendant Scotty Scott
guilty of murder in the first degree...
and fix his punishment to the term
of 25 years in the penitentiary.
When you have a jury
that has seen all the evidence
and is absolutely sure that...
that he was guilty,
th-that was justice.
When Henry Lucas came to Little Rock,
Scotty Scott's case was on appeal
at the Arkansas Superior Court.
And Henry Lucas said
that he killed Betty Thornton,
Do you swear to tell...
But there wasn't anything
other than his statement.
Lucas testified that he killed
a Little Rock convenience store clerk
in 1981,
a crime
for which Scotty Scott was convicted.
I sat and picked that, uh, station out
that I had robbed,
and I described the victim to 'em,
what she, uh, looked like,
and, uh, how she was shot.
There wasn't a bit of truth
to anything he said.
We could prove both by evidence
and by eye-witness testimony
that Henry Lee Lucas
was in Jacksonville, Florida
on the day that Betty Lee Thornton
was killed in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The evidence most damaging
to Lucas' credibility
is an insurance form signed by Lucas
and dated November 6th, 1981,
the day of the murder.
Let me ask you.
This is your signature on this?
That is my signature, yes.
He was a thousand miles away once again.
It's so obvious this was a fraud.
When Henry Lucas
eventually fessed up to me,
he started to tell me the truth
about Betty Thornton's homicide.
How did you hear about this case?
I, uh, was up in the sheriff's office
one day and, uh...
So he put me on the phone
with the lieutenant
at the state police barracks.
He said, "Well, uh, I have a...
a police officer's son that's in prison
for a crime that, uh,
we don't think he did.
That if you could, would you help us out?"
The conviction of Scotty Scott
was set aside
just because they get old Henry
to say he did it.
Henry Lucas was the product
of some manipulation that...
really, uh, hurt our law enforcement
here in Little Rock and our society.
Lucas's confession
freed Scotty Scott.
It just comes back again
and again and again
to someone else...
got away with murder.
I was a pretty sick person back then,
you know? I, uh...
I didn't have any hopes of proving myself
innocent of nothing, you know?
And, uh, I just made up my mind,
if law enforcement
wanted phony confessions,
I'd give it to 'em, so I did.
I hate this dead man,
but then the people that...
created it,
I hate them more.
These are the people
that you trust to find...
the killer, bring them to justice, and...
that wasn't done.
Back in 1985,
the task force was getting Lucas
to confess to crimes,
and on the other hand, they had evidence
he couldn't have committed those crimes.
And they decided they needed to pick out
one big case
and prove that Lucas really was
the mass murderer that they said he was.
Maria Apodaca was killed.
She was a elderly, uh, lady
whose home was burglarized,
and she was brutally murdered.
I got a couple hangers
out of the closet,
and I said, "Well, what the heck?
I might as well have sex."
So I go back and have sex with her.
To defend Lucas, I realized
that I had to...
prove that Lucas lied in El Paso,
just like he lied
on all these other cases.
I had to dismantle Lucas's confessions
case by case,
by case.
I brought in witness after witness
to prove that Lucas
could not have committed those murders
that he confessed to.
At first, the judge thought,
like everybody,
that Lucas was a bad guy, a-a murderer,
but steam started coming out
the judge's ears
because he realized
he'd been lied to for months.
We went through 76 cases.
In all 76 cases, it was pretty well proven
that he could not have done it.
By the end of the case,
I proved that Lucas
did not commit the Apodaca murder.
The judge tossed the confession,
then the DA dismissed the case.
I don't think this thing
started off the way it ended.
I think the Rangers honestly felt
that they were doing the right thing.
What happened to them,
Henry knows that if he confesses,
they're gonna keep him alive.
So he con... he confesses to everything
and this becomes an obsession
with the Rangers.
And then, as you look
at each case that comes up,
you begin to see a pattern
of a state agency
making a serial killer
out of a person
that may not have killed anybody.
And they turned it into the biggest hoax
that this country and this state
has ever seen.
Attorney General Jim Mattox
handed out a year-long study
blistering law officers for alleged
shoddy investigation of Lucas.
Lucas was able to perpetrate
a hoax
on the, uh, criminal justice system.
The Mattox report comes out
and it is a detailed accounting
of Lucas's presence around the country
at the time of each and every murder
that he had confessed to.
We can prove unequivocally
that he was assisted
in making confessions.
Uh, some law enforcement officials
purposely cleared cases
that they should not have cleared.
Even with the ruling
of the judge in El Paso,
and the Mattox report,
no one really paid any attention to it.
And the Texas Rangers themselves
continued to defend their actions.
I wrote the news release
when the Public Safety Commission
and the Texas Rangers
did an investigation
of the Lucas Task Force
and found no culpability
on the part of the Texas Rangers.
And certainly no violations of the law.
There was certainly nothing
that was found improper
uh, by the task force,
by the Rangers, or by Bob Prince.
They believed Henry was a serial killer.
Their reputations were wrapped up in it,
and they were determined to do the...
the kind of job they could be proud of.
Bob Prince still feels
like he accomplished that.
I don't know of anything more
we could have done on the task force.
If we had to do it over again today,
I guess we'd do it the... the same way.
From the hundreds
of Lucas confessions,
we know only three cases
that you can actually link
Henry Lee Lucas to.
In the case of his mother's death,
he was sent to prison for that.
And in the cases of Kate Rich
and Becky Powell,
he took police
to where he buried their bodies
and there was actually physical evidence.
I trained myself, uh...
and was trained
never to leave evidence.
You didn't leave fingerprints?
I didn't leave fingerprints,
I didn't leave footprints,
I didn't leave nothing.
No. Henry Lee Lucas was not a mastermind.
He couldn't have created
any of those crimes
without leaving evidence.
Most of the other people leave evidence.
I don't.
There's not a fingerprint.
There's not a hair.
There's not an eyewitness.
There's nothing, nothing, nothing,
except Henry's confessions,
to put him in any of those murders.
Back when all this was going on
with Henry Lucas,
DNA was just in its inception.
But now there... there's no excuse.
Get back in there and look at it.
DNA is the assault rifle
for law enforcement now,
because you can't change it,
you can't alter it,
you can't hide from it.
New DNA technology helps close
one of the oldest cold cases in Colorado.
Henry Lee Lucas,
the serial killer,
originally confessed to that murder.
The DNA match now points
to 52-year-old Ricky Lee Harnish
in Holly's slaying.
This guy had been walking on the streets
for 32 years.
He... He ain't been caught until yesterday.
And it was cleared
with a little cotton swab.
Now, cases are being solved.
The real killers are being found,
and it's not Henry Lucas.
Joyce and Bob Lemons
have questioned
who killed their daughter,
Deborah Sue Williamson.
I don't know who it was.
I have never known who it was
and never had any idea who it was.
For so many years now,
Lubbock PD has not actively worked
my sister's case.
So, I said in March of '17,
"I'm gonna start the journey again."
The detectives in Lubbock
were not doing anything.
They just told me
they didn't have the manpower,
so I took that to heart
and told them I would find them the help.
So, on August 24th, 1975...
That's when I found
the Cold Case Foundation.
They agreed to take Debbie's case.
The victim is stabbed
between 15 and 17 times.
The... The initial attack takes place
at the vehicle door.
She is then dragged approximately 20 feet
to the back door,
um, and then the body appears to be posed,
but there doesn't appear to be
any, uh, sexual assault.
The way he leaves her.
That's a message,
and that should give us some idea
of the possible relationship
between the victim and the offender.
The probability is that
it's somebody that she knows
and certainly knows her.
And we're looking at Debbie's husband,
Doug's groomsman, the husband's brother,
Debbie's cousin,
and also Debbie's brother.
The Cold Case Foundation felt it was
possibly a family member
that killed my sister.
I hope that's not what the real answer is.
But we've hurt so much,
and we've been through so much,
I don't see that hurting worse...
than what we've already been through.
We submitted
to the Lubbock Police Department
a 23-page report of Deborah's case
identifying those people of interest
that we thought had merit in the case,
and, uh, gave some investigative
recommendations to follow up on.
And we've not really heard back
from them since.
We're just now pulling up.
That's the home right there
across the street.
Lubbock PD had confirmed
not only are they
not working her case currently,
they have no plans
on working her case ever.
I've never been this close.
Debbie's murder scene
was so compromised.
The Lubbock police
had skin under her nails,
they had tissue, they had blood,
they had hair,
they had complete handprints,
they had thumbprints,
they had footprints.
The Lubbock police
lost a lot of her evidence
and have no answers for it.
Hmm.
I just, you know...
All we have ever asked for,
all we ever wanted,
was for them to reconsider,
to take another look,
to-to-to-to do their job.
That's all we ever wanted.
My dad died of a heart attack
in his sleep.
He would have done anything
humanly possible
to find who killed her.
After the Cold Case Foundation
had been there,
we were finally on our way
to a good investigation.
Sheriff Shafer...
...appeared to be very interested
and so accommodating,
and it gave the whole family a lot of hope
that we would finally...
get some answers
about what happened to Mom.
Since then, there was a news article
and Sheriff Shafer
is quoted that, in his sole opinion,
Lucas was in fact the likely perpetrator.
Local law enforcement
had access to the information
if they cared to know.
But they just don't seem
to have cared to know.
They would rather have a murder
off their books
than to actually tell me
what happened to my mom.
There's a resistance
to wanting to reopen the cases.
Law enforcement doesn't like
to make law enforcement look bad.
I can understand the reluctance
of law enforcement
to open a case back up,
because it could expose their predecessors
in an unfavorable light,
but the test is,
did we get the right person?
As well-intentioned
as law enforcement is most of the time,
mistakes can be made,
and we need to figure out what those are
and what caused them
and try to change the way
we go about our business
so they don't happen again.
Well, it's... it's definitely
a learning curve for law enforcement.
If you conduct your cases
and your business like you're supposed to,
you... you shouldn't be...
shouldn't be afraid of the light.
It's not easy to reopen a case
that's been cleared for a couple reasons.
One, it causes us to go down the road
of what we could've missed along the way.
Two, it's somewhat embarrassing.
But if it means
that we need to kind of back up
and... and reverse course a little bit
and readjust
and go in a different direction,
then that's... that's what it takes.
The Linda Sue Adkins case went unsolved
until Henry Lee Lucas had confessed to it,
saying that he had been in California
at around that time.
The case was closed without an arrest
because he was in custody in Texas.
Initially, it seemed Henry Lee Lucas
actually was responsible for this murder.
And then, at the end of 2016,
I was contacted by the film crew
who brought to our attention
just how many crimes
Lucas had falsely confessed to.
I reviewed the case
and looked at the confession
and realized that we didn't have
any forensic evidence
to link him to the crime
and that there was overwhelming evidence
that Lucas wasn't in Bakersfield
around that time.
So there was nightclubs
to the back of the motels.
The riverbank where she was found
runs right there.
Investigation at the time was that
Linda had left the club
and was either lured, carried, uh, taken,
and ended up in this area,
um, that we're looking at now.
Ultimately, we want public trust.
There's the older traditional thinking of,
"We don't make mistakes,
and we don't talk about mistakes,"
or there's the transparency side
where we show the mistakes,
and we show that we're human,
and we show that...
things don't always go
the way that we wanted them,
regardless of intention.
- Hi, Deby, how are you?
- Good.
There's a certain level
of discomfort, to say the least,
going back
and talking to the victim's family.
In this case, uh, Linda's family was...
was very happy and supportive
of the decision to...
seek the truth.
The more we look into it, the...
you know, the likelihood
of him being responsible
is, uh, less and less.
Over the years,
we've heard that, you know,
some of the confessions were false,
and we just didn't feel
that that pertained to us.
Right.
My greatest hope is that
we will be able to find who did do it.
Unfortunately, there's a chance
that taking the seal off of this case,
we may never be able to seal it again...
...but it's the right thing to do
in reopening it
and re-examining what, uh...
what we have.
Linda was my best friend.
Excuse me.
I...
I just wonder
how life would've been different
had she lived.
Now we're right back to square one.
We just need to drop off some flyers,
if you wouldn't mind putting them up.
The most horrifying thought
that goes through my head
is that...
the person who killed her
got away with it.
And because this case
was not properly investigated,
other people have been hurt.
Other families are going through
what I've been through.
We cannot let that happen again.
A family that loses a family member
to a homicidal violence
is never going to forget.
If they can get that closure,
I don't care if it's five years,
ten years, 30 years,
it eases that a little bit.
It does.
It really does.
Love you, Debbie.
This really is a story
about human nature.
About how all of us saw in Henry
what we wanted to see.
And maybe we did lose sight of the truth.
It is a must for all
to identify,
control,
stop a Henry Lucas
before they become a violence to society.
Thank you very much.
♪ If these lies don't make it right ♪
♪ Can we pretend enough is true? ♪
♪ And if a highway calls at night ♪
♪ Well, these bars still make me blue ♪
♪ Can a lie told enough ♪
♪ Become true? ♪
♪ Can a lie told enough ♪
♪ Become enough for you? ♪