"It's Like Being a Movie Star": Henry Lee Lucas on Death Row, 1993

On death row, Henry Lee Lucas said he had invented hundreds of murder confessions, while a documentary set out how the Lucas Task Force's case fell apart.

Subject

Henry Lee Lucas

Recorded

about 1993

Runtime

25:00

Content warning: Includes clips of Lucas's taped confessions describing sexual assault, shooting and dismemberment of women (confessions that were later shown to be largely false).

The Interview

In this half-hour television documentary, Henry Lee Lucas speaks from death row in Huntsville, Texas, about the hundreds of murders he had once confessed to. "They say I'm the biggest mass murderer in the United States and everywhere else," he says. "I'm not." The programme sets his death-row interview against clips of his 1980s confessions and news coverage, and against interviews with Williamson County Sheriff Jim Boutwell and Texas Ranger Bob Prince, who ran the Lucas Task Force; with the mother and stepfather of a murdered Lubbock woman, Debra Sue Williamson; and with Vic Feazell, the Waco district attorney who challenged the task force and later became Lucas's lawyer.

Historical Context

Lucas, a drifter, had served a prison sentence in Michigan for the 1960 killing of his mother, Viola Lucas. In June 1983 he was arrested in Texas on a firearms charge and confessed to killing Frieda "Becky" Powell, a teenager who had travelled with him, and Kate Rich, an elderly woman for whom they had worked. He then began confessing to murders across the country, eventually to hundreds. A Lucas Task Force, set up by the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety and working with Sheriff Boutwell, made Lucas available to police from other states, and officially cleared hundreds of unsolved killings on the strength of his statements.

The confessions collapsed. In April 1985 a Dallas Times Herald investigation by Hugh Aynesworth and others showed that Lucas could not have travelled to the places he claimed. In April 1986 the Texas Attorney General, Jim Mattox, issued the Lucas Report, which compared the murders attributed to him with records of where he actually was, and found that those records often contradicted his confessions. Mattox wrote that cases had been "cleared" to take them off the books.

Circumstances of the Interview

By the time this programme was made, Lucas had recanted and was on death row for the "Orange Socks" murder, an unidentified woman found in a culvert beside Interstate 35 near Georgetown, Williamson County, at the end of October 1979. Feazell, who had been tried on federal charges and acquitted in 1987, and who had won a $58 million libel verdict against WFAA-TV in Dallas in 1991, was representing him. The programme presents the case largely through Feazell's account; the task force officer it questions cannot explain several of the discrepancies put to him and ends the interview.

What the Interview Covers

Lucas says that confessing was "like being a movie star": "You're just playing the part." He describes the attention and the money, color television, cable TV and cigarettes he had, and says he was "like father and son" with Boutwell and "like brothers" with Prince. He claims he was told about cases before he confessed to them ("They would bring it to me and tell me about it", a line the programme attributes to him, which the task force officer calls "an outright lie"), and describes Feazell's team laying out a record of where he had been and telling him they knew he had not done the cases. The programme cites cases in which Lucas was shown to have been far away when the victim was killed: Debra Sue Williamson in Lubbock (he was with a half-sister in Maryland, her parents found), and several others listed in the task force log. Asked at the end whether he feels ashamed of what he has done, Lucas says, "I do."

What Makes the Recording Significant

The programme captures Lucas between his recantation and the final decision on his death sentence, saying in his own words that the confessions were a performance. It also records the two sides of the dispute, the task force officers and Feazell, while the outcome was still open, and the family of one victim describing how they disproved his confession themselves.

Archival Importance

Lucas's case became one of the best-known examples of mass false confession in American criminal history. After evidence emerged that he had probably been in Florida at the time, and that his confession contained no details beyond what investigators already knew, Governor George W. Bush commuted Lucas's death sentence for the "Orange Socks" murder to life imprisonment in 1998, the only death sentence Bush commuted as governor. In 2019 the "Orange Socks" victim was identified as Debra Jackson. Lucas died in prison in 2001.

Important Caveats

Lucas's statements in this programme, both the old confessions and the recantation, are his own claims and should not be treated as fact. He was convicted of about ten murders (published counts range from nine to eleven), including those of his mother, Becky Powell and Kate Rich; investigators generally accept that he killed Powell and Rich. Most of the hundreds of other murders he confessed to were disproved or are unsupported by evidence, and the confession clips in the programme should be read in that light. The programme was made before the 1998 commutation and says Lucas had been convicted "on ten counts of murder", in line with contemporary press counts. The narrator's statement that Lucas was arrested "on suspicion of murdering an 80-year-old widow" differs from the record of his arrest on a firearms charge. The $58 million libel judgment was later dismissed as part of a settlement whose terms were not disclosed, and Feazell's account of who prompted the FBI investigation is his allegation. Producer and date are not confirmed.

Narrator: Death row, Huntsville, Texas. Inside, awaiting execution, is the world's most notorious serial killer. His name is Henry Lee Lucas.

Henry Lee Lucas: They say I'm the biggest mass murderer in the United States and everywhere else, you know. I'm not.

Narrator: Today, eight years after confessing to more than 300 murders, Lucas says he made it all up. Is Henry Lee Lucas the greatest serial killer of all time, or has he perpetrated the most extraordinary fraud in American legal history?

Henry Lee Lucas: I took her panties and [unclear: "bra" / "brawl"] off, um. I had sex [unclear: "running for it" / "running for"]. Well, after that, I cut her up in little teeny pieces.

Narrator: In 1983, a penniless drifter named Henry Lee Lucas was arrested in Stoneburg, Texas, on suspicion of murdering an 80-year-old widow. What Lucas had to say shocked investigators. Not only did he confess to the murder of the old woman, he also claimed he'd killed 60 other people. It was the beginning of a confession spree that would make Lucas the most notorious killer in America.

Henry Lee Lucas: It's like being a movie star. You're just playing the part. You don't think of it, you just play it. Make out that you're the worst serial killer in the history of the United States. And that's what I did.

Jim Boutwell: I was at home one Saturday morning back in June of 1983. I had a call from the sheriff in Montague County. He called me and said, "Jim, I've got an old boy in jail up here that you might want to talk to. He has confessed to killing two people close to here and has also said that he's killed a lot of other people all over the country."

Narrator: Stunned by Lucas's dramatic revelations, Sheriff Boutwell called in the Texas Rangers, one of America's oldest and proudest police forces. A special task force was formed to coordinate nationwide investigations into the killings. Texas Ranger Bob Prince was assigned to head the new force.

Bob Prince: We were absolutely deluged the first day that we opened the task force doors. We had 70 telephone calls, long-distance telephone calls, to return. And when we started returning them, we were receiving calls all the time. And we began booking interviews with agencies to come and interview Lucas.

Henry Lee Lucas: I walked across to the courthouse and I told the judge that [I] committed these 60 murders, you know. And when I did, it seemed like the house fell in, because I'd never seen as many helicopters and reporters and cars and police cars and things that started to come in there.

News Reporter: A videotaped confession by admitted killer Henry Lee Lucas. Lucas, who claims to have killed over 150 women, was brought into an area in an undisclosed location, [and] confirmed his involvement in more than 200 murders [unclear: "in twenty-six years" / "and twenty"].

Officer: We show him, uh, he cleared a murder of a white female in Norfolk, Virginia, on the [unclear: "night" / "name"].

Narrator: Lucas took phone calls from policemen all over the country. Under the stewardship of the Texas Rangers, he provided details of the hundreds of murders he claimed to have committed. Task force investigators began compiling a log, which gave the locations of the murders being attributed to Lucas. Piece by piece, the task force built up a picture of Lucas's life on the road, roaming the interstates in search of a place to call home. For more than eight years, Lucas drifted from town to town, going nowhere and achieving nothing, except perhaps hundreds of murders.

Henry Lee Lucas: I gave him a number, which, uh, I gave him a long time ago, that it was 150. Nobody didn't believe it. And, uh, after I passed 150, people began to wonder. And I told him it's going to be way over 360.

Narrator: In tape-recorded confessions, Lucas provided gruesome details of his eight-year orgy of killing.

Henry Lee Lucas: I've killed by strangulation, I've killed [unclear: "with knives" / "the knives"], I've killed [unclear: "with hit-and-runs" / "the hit and runs"], shootings, robberies, hangings, whatever. Every type of crime, I've done it.

Henry Lee Lucas: Every case I would go out on for them, you know, they would automatically pick up the telephone and call the news media, tell them that I'd solved four or five cases that day. So the news media would come running, you know.

Reporter: How do you feel?

Henry Lee Lucas: Like I did today.

Reporter: Like what?

Henry Lee Lucas: Like I did today.

Reporter: What do you predict tomorrow?

Henry Lee Lucas: It was interview after interview. I mean, I couldn't turn around unless it was an interview. And I started staying on TV 24 hours a day. I mean, it changed me. And I got so that I thought I was the biggest movie star in this country.

Henry Lee Lucas: [unclear: "I feel my smile yet there"]

Unidentified Voices: Thank you. ... Goodbye.

Narrator: Lucas did become a movie star. The cult film *Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer* was a fictionalised account of his life.

Henry Lee Lucas: Elvis Presley was supposed to be the biggest shot, but I think I even beat Elvis Presley. And I think I even beat, uh, what's his name, Adolf Hitler? Seemed like I was going to beat him. Because it seemed like every time they would bring a murder case in, I would accept it, no matter what it was.

Narrator: The Henry Lee Lucas roadshow was in full swing. And Lucas, who had lived all his life as a bum, was basking in his new career as a serial killer.

Henry Lee Lucas: I was a king. I had everything I wanted, everything possible that a man could want. I had, I had money I didn't have before. I had a colored television I didn't have before. I had cable TV, and I didn't have that before. I had all kinds of food, even stacks of cigarettes and cartons in my house. That's coming from nothing.

Narrator: The relationship between Lucas and his task force supervisors was becoming increasingly intimate.

Henry Lee Lucas: I was real close to Sheriff Boutwell. We were like father and son. Me and Prince were like brothers. We'd go places, we'd do things, we'd, I mean, anything, anytime, no matter what time it was, day or night.

Narrator: For Prince and Boutwell the hard work was bringing dividends. They were making a name for themselves as the lawmen responsible for clearing up more than 200 unsolved murders. But their credibility was about to be called into question. Eighteen-year-old Debra Sue Williamson had been murdered back in August 1975. She'd been married only a few months. In one of his confessions, Lucas claimed he had broken into her home and stabbed her several times. When Debra's parents, Joyce and Bob Lemons, learned that their daughter's murder had been solved, they thought their ordeal was over.

Lemons Parent: We had a call from a detective in Lubbock, um, told us that the case had been solved, that Henry Lucas had done the crime. And we said, okay, we'll be there, uh, Monday morning to see what you have.

Narrator: When the Lemons got to hear Lucas's tape-recorded confession, they were astonished.

Lemons Parent: I think we both sort of simultaneously realized this is a joke, you know. He knew that she was stabbed, he knew that part, but everything else was totally wrong, uh, everything.

Narrator: In his confession, Lucas said he remembered the white house where he'd killed the girl, but at the time of the murder the house was green. Lucas claimed he'd broken in through the patio door to murder Debra; at the time, the door was sealed shut. Finally, Lucas said he'd killed the girl in her bedroom; in fact, Debra was murdered outside the house. The Lemons were convinced that Debra's murderer was still free. They began their own investigation, talking to Lucas's relatives. They discovered that on the day Debra was murdered in Lubbock, Texas, Lucas was with his half-sister in Maryland, nearly 2,000 miles away.

Lemons Parent: I mean, let's face it, uh, even Jesus Christ couldn't be in two places at one time, uh, and Henry is certainly no Jesus Christ.

Narrator: The Lemons visited task force headquarters. They told Jim Boutwell and Bob Prince they'd got the wrong man.

Lemons Parent: We went, you know, pleading with them to just listen to this, just hear this. They were not receptive to that at all. The fact of the matter is, Bob Prince gave me the alternative, uh, by either leave on your own power or we'll throw you out.

Interviewer: What did you think of their investigation?

Task Force Officer: Of the Lemons? Oh, I don't even [unclear: "know" / "want to"] comment about the Lemons, you know.

Interviewer: Well, they've invested years of their life looking into the Lucas case.

Task Force Officer: I have no interest in that.

Narrator: In Waco, Texas, District Attorney Vic Feazell was also having doubts about the Lucas confessions. He was preparing to prosecute three murder cases for which Lucas had already claimed responsibility. But the deeper Feazell got into the case, the more worried he became by the lack of any corroborating evidence.

Vic Feazell: All there are is confessions. That means just Henry's word that he killed these people. No fingerprints, no hair samples, no eyewitnesses, no blood samples, no forensic evidence at all. I don't know if in England you know who Freddy Krueger is, *A Nightmare on Elm Street*. I'm telling you, Freddy Krueger couldn't have committed these murders without leaving some kind of clue.

Narrator: Feazell and his investigators pieced together documentary evidence from Lucas's former life as a drifter: paychecks, work records, applications for food stamps, traffic violations. But much of the evidence they unearthed conflicted with the task force log. In case after case, Feazell's investigators put Lucas in other parts of the country on the days the murders were committed. On two occasions, he was actually in prison.

Vic Feazell: You cannot be in jail in Maryland and be committing a murder in California at the same time. You cannot be getting a traffic ticket in Florida and committing a murder in Texas at the same time. When we started finding this information, suddenly, in our office, uh, we gave Henry the nickname of Rocket Man, because he had to have had a rocket to get around the US to commit these kinds of murders like he was doing. There was just no way that it was physically possible.

Narrator: Task force records had Lucas killing Estella Montoya in Corpus Christi, Texas, on March the 5th, 1981. But on the same day, Lucas was 1,200 miles away, selling scrap metal in Florida.

Interviewer: Do you think it's feasible that he could have been 1,200 miles away in Jacksonville and killed in Corpus Christi, Texas, on the same day?

Task Force Officer: No, sir. No. No, I do not.

Interviewer: So how do you explain the discrepancy?

Task Force Officer: Uh, I can't explain that one.

Narrator: There are many other discrepancies. Lucas was supposed to have strangled Cora Carrillo in Douglas County, Nevada. In fact, he was more than 2,000 miles away in Jacksonville, Florida, buying insurance for his car. Diana Underwood was supposedly shot by Lucas in Baytown, Texas, but Lucas was 750 miles away in Florida, selling scrap metal. Hermine Dufour was murdered in Louisiana, but on the day she was killed, Lucas was in jail in Texas.

Interviewer: Why do you think that Lucas confessed to the murder of Hermine Dufour in Louisiana, when he was in fact in jail in Texas on the day she was killed?

Task Force Officer: Uh, I have no idea. [unclear: "That's the why" / "Mr. White"], because, like I say, I don't recall the name [unclear: "Hermine Dufour" / "Hermione"] before. I, I just don't know.

Narrator: During 1979, Lucas cashed 43 weekly paychecks at the Buy Right grocery store in Jacksonville, Florida. But in the same period, the task force log has Lucas killing on 46 occasions in 16 different states. Could Lucas have managed all these murders and still have made it back to Jacksonville in Florida at the end of every week to cash his paycheck?

Interviewer: Does it make sense?

Task Force Officer: Well, certainly that would make sense if he's the one [unclear: "application of paychecks" / "application the paychecks"]. Uh, let's look at each individual case.

Interviewer: But from your experience as an investigator, does that seem likely, that someone would go on this tour of the United States and every week wind up back in Jacksonville, Florida?

Task Force Officer: Let's look at each individual case and let the individual agency determine: was he there, or was he at the work site, or was he at a, [unclear: "was he cashing his check" / "was he cashless check"]?

Interviewer: I'm not making a point about the individual cases. I'm making a point about the amount of travel that Lucas is supposed to have done during this period.

Task Force Officer: We're getting nowhere.

Interviewer: Do you think that it's ...

Task Force Officer: We're getting nowhere.

Interviewer: ... credible that he could have traveled that much and [unclear: "come through" / "coming through"] that many murders?

Task Force Officer: We're, we're getting nowhere. I'm through. I'm sorry. [unclear: "I'm going to just throw a hole in" / "we're going to start a whole"] [unclear: "our office is closed" / "our office of clothes"].

Interviewer: [unclear: "A series of" / "serious energy"] points about the travel that Lucas was supposed to have made.

Task Force Officer: As soon as you get your [inaudible].

Interviewer: I was hoping we could discuss [inaudible].

Task Force Officer: Okay. And I was really hoping this would be an objective interview, but, uh, I can say it's not.

Narrator: The Rangers' case was being destroyed by their rival, Vic Feazell.

Task Force Officer: Okay, whenever you can get your stuff out, we'll [inaudible].

Narrator: Feazell and his team visited Lucas in jail to present him with their evidence.

Henry Lee Lucas: They sat in the room and talked to me. They said, "Now, we know you didn't do these cases. So look at this." And they had a great big double-page newspaper, I think, I'm not sure of that. But every place I had been, every case that I had confessed to, and where I was at, what time the crime happened, and what time I was here. They had that laid out there on the desk, [and] said, "Now we know you didn't do it."

Vic Feazell: When confronted with this information, he looked at us, he smiled. He said, "I was wondering when somebody was going to get wise to this."

Narrator: Lucas began to recant. But if Lucas's confessions were all phony, how had he conned so many investigators for so long? Lucas had shown a remarkably detailed knowledge of the murders, details it was thought only the killer could have known.

Henry Lee Lucas: When she started to run, I grabbed her, and I put a .22 on her. I told her, I said, that you do what I want or I'm gonna shoot you.

Narrator: But before investigating officers could interrogate Lucas, they had to send in their murder reports to the task force.

Vic Feazell: I believe the Rangers, in particular Prince and Boutwell, were purposefully tutoring and coaching Henry on what to say, letting him read these offense reports that contained all the facts.

Henry Lee Lucas: I didn't go to them saying, "Now look, I've got a murder case down the road here, you know, let me tell you about it." It didn't happen that way. They would bring it to me and tell me about it.

Task Force Officer: That's an outright lie. As I said earlier, the task force was set up to make him available to other officers. We did not feed him information.

Narrator: Vic Feazell's allegation of task force misconduct brought him into direct conflict with the force's heads, Jim Boutwell and Bob Prince. Only days after speaking out publicly, Feazell became the target of an FBI corruption investigation. He believes the Rangers were behind it.

Vic Feazell: As a result of what I said about the task force, about Prince and Boutwell, they got together with their friends in the state police, who had strong ties with the FBI, and they started an investigation of me. My house was searched. I was accused of burglaries. I was accused of homicides. I was accused of bribery. I was accused of being a racketeer. I was investigated for everything. I was handcuffed and dragged through the streets in public view, in front of the TV cameras and everything else, with my four-year-old son sitting at home seeing it all on TV as it happened. But I've said all along, [unclear: "there'll still be truth in life"].

Narrator: Feazell went to trial facing 80 years in jail. He defended himself against the charges and was acquitted. He went on to sue the Dallas TV station which had repeated the Ranger FBI allegations. In that case, the jury were convinced that the Rangers had set out to frame Vic Feazell. They awarded him $58 million, the largest libel payment in American history.

Vic Feazell: All this happened because I spoke out against the Texas Rangers. I stepped on the wrong toes. They didn't like it.

Narrator: With Feazell's victory, the credibility of the task force was finally destroyed. But before he recanted his confessions, Lucas had been convicted on ten counts of murder. He's on death row awaiting his appeal. Vic Feazell is now his attorney.

Vic Feazell: Henry just may be put to death still, in spite of the evidence, in spite of there being no physical evidence, no witnesses, nothing to tie Henry to these crimes except what came out of his own mouth, which was fed to him, that he just regurgitated back out. Henry will probably be put to death for something he didn't do.

Henry Lee Lucas: If my appeal is denied, I won't stand a chance to stay alive. This is Texas, and whatever happens in Texas, no matter what it is, they gonna have their way. And I'm trying to fight a legend. You know that, don't you? The Texas Rangers is a legend. [laughter]

Narrator: Without his confessions, there's no convincing evidence that Henry Lucas committed a single murder. If that's true, hundreds of killers are today walking free. And the legacy of Lucas's gigantic hoax is a trail of suffering.

Henry Lee Lucas: You lie to the police, you lie to the families, you've done nothing but lie. It ain't worth it. I've, I know that a lot of people, unless they put their self in the type of life I lived, wouldn't understand.

Interviewer: Do you feel ashamed of what you've done?

Henry Lee Lucas: I do. [No further speech to the end of the video at 25:00.] ---