Henry Lee Lucas died in prison on March 12, 2001, while he was serving his sentence of lifetime imprisonment. Popularly known as the Confession Killer, Lucas was convicted of murdering eleven people. Although he was held guilty and sentenced only for eleven murders, Lucas claimed to have killed over 600 people in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these claims were ruled out as false. The uncertain number that he would keep increasing frequently.
Although the court initially sentenced Henry Lee Lucas to the death penalty, this sentence was revoked when doubts were raised about the credibility of his confessions. Many suspected that his confessions were based on instructions from authorities, while two of the murders had enough evidence to prove that Lucas was the murderer. His sentence was then reduced to lifetime imprisonment because of the uncertainties surrounding his confessions.
During his time in prison, Henry Lee Lucas was reportedly involved with working as a sewing machine operator and preferred that to be his main activity during the day. An investigation into his death revealed a history of heart problems that Lucas was hospitalised for on multiple occasions. His death was declared natural and caused by congestive heart failure. He was then buried at the Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas.
The case of Henry Lee Lucas became revolutionary because it questioned the faith the public had in the Texas Rangers and other authorities. The procedures that were employed to investigate crimes and what evidence was considered valid became a major point of debate. Many believed that the police forced Lucas to confess to those murders, which gave him the name Confession Killer.
How did Henry Lee Lucas get caught?
In 1983, Henry Lee Lucas was arrested based on the possession of unlawful firearms. When he was in custody, he wrote to the sheriff, confessing that he had been killing for over a decade. The letter led to the discovery of the remains of Powell and Rich, two of his victims, whom authorities were sure he murdered. He was then tried for those two brutal murders and began claiming that his kill count was much higher.
Initially, Lucas suggested that he killed over 100 people. He then began to claim that his victims were people of all genders and races. Authorities believed that Lucas could have committed a majority of the unsolved cases at the time. However, with all the evidence put together, only 11 of the murders led to his conviction. The investigation of his other potential victims went on for years after Lucas was sentenced.
This was a time when DNA testing wasn’t used in forensics yet. It became extremely difficult to establish whether or not Henry Lee Lucas murdered all of those people. Circumstantial evidence played a major role in validating the confessions.
Although authorities claimed that Lucas did indeed commit most of the unsolved murders, some prominent suspicions were raised by journalists who claimed it would not be possible for Lucas to commit all of those crimes, some of which occurred at the same time. Families of victims also raised questions about the truth in Lucas’ confessions, many of which sounded unreliable.
Confession Killer is a 2019 true-crime docu-series. It follows the case of Henry Lee Lucas and how the majority of his confessions turned out to be lies after decades of investigation. The mini-series is streaming on Netflix.
