Lucas was born in 1956 and ran a carpet cleaning business in the eastern part of San Diego County, giving him access to houses.
Between 1979 and 1984 several people in the county were killed by having their throats cut: Suzanne Jacobs and her three-year-old son Colin in 1979, Gayle Garcia in 1981, Anne Swanke in 1984, and others. He was charged in 1984.
He was convicted of three of the killings and sentenced to death on September 19, 1989. He was acquitted or not charged on the remainder, which is the range of three to six.
The case has been contested throughout. His conviction rested substantially on hair and fibre comparison and on an identification, and the defence argued that other people had access to the houses through the same business. He has consistently maintained his innocence, and his appeals have run for more than thirty years.
He remains on California's death row, where no execution has been carried out since 2006 and a moratorium has been in force since 2019.
The entry records the three convictions and records that the physical evidence belongs to a category, comparative hair and fibre analysis, that has been substantially discredited in American courts since the trial. No court has disturbed the verdict.