The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (57 page)

LUCAS, Henry Lee

Jacksonville roofing company, Southeast Color Coat, but they often missed work as they answered the call of the highway. Two years later, after Toole’s mother and sister died a few months apart, Becky and Frank were placed in juvenile homes. Lucas helped spring them both, and they made a quartet on the road, Frank Powell witnessing deeds that would drive him into a mental institution by 1983.

Authorities came looking for Becky Powell in January 1982, and she fled westward with Lucas. In Hemet, California, they met Jack and O’Bere Smart, spending four months with the couple as house guests and hired hands, refinishing furniture to earn their keep. In May, O’Bere Smart had a brainstorm, dispatching Lucas and Henry Lee Lucas, with sketches of several victims (Author’s Powell to care for her 80-year-old mother, Kate Rich, in collection)

Ringgold, Texas.

Henry and Becky arrived on May 14, spending four days with Rich and cashing two $50 checks on her Lucas confessed to the murder and boasted of raping bank account before relatives booted them out of the his mother’s corpse, a detail he later retracted as “some-house. Thumbing their way out of town, they were thing I made up.” Convicted in March 1960, he drew a picked up by Ruben Moore and invited to join his reli-term of 20 to 40 years in prison. Two months later, he gious commune—the All People’s House of Prayer—

was transferred to Ionia’s state hospital for the crimi-near Stoneburg, Texas. Becky grew homesick in August nally insane, where he remained until April 1966.

and they set off, hitchhiking, on August 23. Camped Paroled on June 3, 1970, Lucas went back to Tecumseh out that night in Denton County, they began to quarrel.

and moved in with relatives.

Becky made the grave mistake of slapping Lucas, and In December 1971, Henry was booked on a charge he stabbed her on the spot, dismembering her corpse of molesting two teenage girls. The charge was reduced and scattering its parts in the desert.

to simple kidnapping at his trial, and Lucas went back Back in Stoneburg next morning, Lucas explained to prison at Jackson. Paroled in August 1975 over his that Becky had “run off” with a trucker. Kate Rich own objections, Henry found brief employment at a dropped from sight three weeks later, on September 16, Pennsylvania mushroom farm, then married Betty and police grew suspicious when Lucas left town the Crawford—the widow of a cousin—in December 1975.

next day. His car was later found abandoned in Nee-Three months later they moved to Port Deposit, Mary-dles, California, on September 21. An arsonist burned land, and Betty divorced him in the summer of 1977, Kate Rich’s home on October 17, and deputies were charging that Lucas molested her daughters from a pre-waiting when Lucas surfaced in Stoneburg the follow-vious marriage.

ing day. Held on a fugitive warrant from Maryland, he Meanwhile, according to Henry’s confessions, he was released when authorities there dropped pending had already launched a career in random murder, trav-charges of auto theft.

eling and killing as the spirit moved him, claiming vic-Chafing under surveillance, Lucas huddled with tims in Maryland and others farther afield. In late 1976

Ruben Moore on June 4, 1983, declaring an intent to he met 29-year-old OTTIS TOOLE at a Jacksonville,

“clear his name” by finding Powell and Rich, wherever Florida, soup kitchen. The homosexual Toole was an they might be. He left a pistol with Moore for safekeep-arsonist and serial killer in his own right, and they hit it ing and rolled out of town in a wheezing old junker.

off immediately, swapping grisly tales of their adven-Four days later, Moore was summoned to fetch him tures in homicide. Over the next six and a half years, from San Juan, New Mexico, where his car had given Lucas and Toole were fast friends, occasional lovers, up the ghost. Returning to Stoneburg on June 11, Lucas and frequent traveling companions, taking their mur-was jailed as an ex-con possessing a handgun. Four derous act on the road.

nights later he summoned the jailer, pressing his face to A bachelor again by 1978, Lucas moved in with

the bars of his cage as he whispered, “I’ve done some Toole’s family in Jacksonville. There, he met Toole’s bad things.”

niece and nephew, Frieda and Frank Powell, falling Over the next 18 months, Lucas confessed to a seem-slowly in love with the 10-year-old girl who called heringly endless series of murders, bumping his estimated self Becky. In 1979, Lucas and Toole were hired by a body count from 75 to 100, then from 150 to 360, toss-162

LUCAS, Henry Lee

ing in murders by friends and associates to reach a total were also problems with Henry’s retraction. Soon after

“way over 500.” Ottis Toole, then serving time on a the Aynesworth story broke, Lucas smuggled a letter to Florida ARSON charge, was implicated in many of the author Jerry Potter, claiming that he had been drugged crimes, and Toole chimed in with more confessions of and forced to recant. A local minister, close to Lucas his own. Some of the crimes, said Lucas, were commit-since his 1983 “conversion,” produced a tape recording ted under orders from a nationwide satanic cult, the of Henry’s voice, warning listeners not to believe the

“Hand of Death,” that he had joined at Toole’s request.

new stories emerging from prison.

Toole sometimes ate the flesh of victims they had killed, The most curious part of Henry’s new tale was the but Lucas abstained. His reason: “I don’t like barbecue role of Hugh Aynesworth, himself. In his newspaper sauce.”

series, Aynesworth claimed to have known of the Detectives from around the country gathered in

“hoax”—hearing the details from Henry’s own lips—

Monroe, Louisiana, in October 1983, comparing notes since October 1983. A month later, on November 9, and going home convinced that Toole and Lucas were Aynesworth signed a contract to write Henry’s biogra-responsible for at least 69 murders. A second confer-phy. In September 1984, he appeared on the CBS
Night-ence at Monroe in January 1984 raised the total to 81.

watch program, offering no objections as videotapes of By March 1985, police in 20 states had “cleared” 90

Henry’s confessions were aired. As late as February murders for Lucas alone, plus another 108 committed 1985, Aynesworth published a Lucas interview in Pent-with Toole as an accomplice. Henry stood convicted in house magazine, prompting Henry with leading nine deaths, including a death sentence for the slaying remarks about Lucas “killing furiously” and claiming of an unidentified female hitchhiker, and he was for-victims “all over the country” in the 1970s. Through it mally charged with 30 more across the country. Dozens all, the Times-Herald maintained stony silence, allow-of officers visited Lucas in jail, and he also toured the ing the “hoax” to proceed, while dozens (or hundreds) nation under guard, visiting crime scenes, providing of killers presumably remained free on the basis of details from memory. A California tour in August 1984

Henry’s “false” confessions.

“cleared” 14 cases. Five months later, in New Orleans, In retrospect, the Aynesworth series smells strongly of Lucas solved five more. In the first week of April 1985

sour grapes. A clue to the author’s possible motive is he led a caravan through Georgia, closing the books on found in his first article, with a passing reference to the 10 murders.

fact that Lucas had signed an exclusive publishing con-Lucas was barely home from that trip when the

tract with a Waco used-car dealer shortly after his 1983

storm broke on April 15. Writing for the Dallas Times-arrest. The prior existence of that contract scuttled Herald, journalist Hugh Aynesworth prepared a series Aynesworth’s deal, concocted five months later, and pre-of headline articles blasting the “massive hoax” that vented him from winning fame as Lucas’s biographer. The Lucas had perpetrated, misleading homicide detectives next best thing, perhaps, would be to foul the waters and and the public, sometimes with connivance from the prevent competitors from publishing a book about the officers themselves. According to Aynesworth, overzeal-case. (It is worth noting that Aynesworth omits all men-ous detectives had prompted Lucas with vital bits of tion of his own contract with Lucas, while listing various information, coaching him through his confessions, other authors who tried to “cash in” on the “hoax.”) deliberately ignoring evidence that placed him miles Aynesworth produced an elaborate time line to sup-away from various murder scenes at the crucial port his story, comparing Henry’s “known movements”

moment. From jail, Lucas joined in by recanting his with various crimes to discredit police, but the final statements across the board. Aside from his mother, he product is riddled with flaws. Aynesworth rules out claimed to have slain only two victims—Powell and numerous murders by placing the Lucas-Toole meeting Rich—in his life. By April 23 he was denying those in 1979, while both killers and numerous independent crimes, despite the fact that he led police to Becky’s witnesses describe an earlier meeting in late 1976. (In remains, while Rich’s bones were recovered from his fact, Lucas was living with Toole’s family in 1978, a year stove at Stoneburg. His mother’s death, Lucas pro-before Aynesworth’s alleged “first meeting.”) The claimed, had been a simple heart attack.

reporter cites pay records from Southeast Color Coat to From the beginning, officers had been aware of prove that the killers seldom left Jacksonville, but office Henry’s penchant for exaggeration. One of his first manager Eileen Knight recalls that they would often alleged victims, a Virginia schoolteacher, was found

“come and go.” (At the same time, Aynesworth places alive and well by police. Some of his statements were Lucas in West Virginia while he was working in Florida, clearly absurd, including confessions to murders in the same error of which he accuses police.) According to Spain and Japan, plus delivery of poison to the People’s Aynesworth, Lucas spent “all the time” between Janu-Temple cultists in Guyana. On the other hand, there ary and March 1978 with girlfriend Rhonda Knuckles,
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LUPO, Michele

never leaving her side, but that version ignores the testi-TOOLE: Well, maybe that’s the two I killed my own mony of a surviving witness, tailed by Lucas across 200

self. Just like that Mexican that wasn’t going to let me miles of Colorado and New Mexico in February of that out of the house. I took an ax and chopped him all up.

year. The woman remembers Henry’s face and she What made me—I been meaning to ask you. That time recorded his license number for police, but her story is when I cooked some of those people. Why’d I do that?

lost in Aynesworth’s account. At one point, Aynesworth LUCAS: I think it was just the hands doing it. I know a is so anxious to clear Henry’s name that he lists one vic-lot of the things we done, in human sight, are impossi-tim twice on the time line, murdered on two occasions, ble to believe.

four days apart in July 1981.

Authorities reacted in various ways to Henry’s turn-Indeed. And yet, the victims were dispatched, if not around. Arkansas filed new murder charges against him by Toole and Lucas, then by someone else. The truth on April 23, eight days after his change of heart, and may never be revealed, but in the meantime, Lucas other jurisdictions remain unimpressed by his belated remains in prison, authorities convinced of his involve-claim of innocence. In Marrero, Louisiana, relatives of ment in at least 100 homicides. His death sentence was victim Ruth Kaiser point out that Lucas confessed to commuted to life imprisonment on June 26, 1998.

stealing a stereo after he killed the 79-year-old woman, Lucas died in prison on March 12, 2001, but contro-a theft that was never reported and therefore could not versy followed him beyond the grave. Two months after have been “leaked” by police. As they recalled, “He his death, DNA tests eliminated Lucas as a suspect in described things that we had forgotten about, details the November 1978 murder of Lisa Martini, a Ken-that never appeared in the paper and that we never put newick, Washington, teenager whose slaying he con-in the police report.”

fessed to in 1984.

Investigator Jim Lawson, of the Scotts Bluff County sheriff’s office in Nebraska, questioned Lucas in Sep-LUPO, Michele

tember 1984 regarding the February 1978 murder of A former choir boy in his native Italy, Michele (or schoolteacher Stella McLean. “I purposely tried to trick Michael) Lupo discovered his homosexual tendencies him several times during the interview,” Lawson said, while serving with an elite military unit in the early

“but to no avail. We even tried to ‘feed’ him another 1970s. Commando training taught him how to kill homicide from our area to see if he was confessing to bare-handed, and he took the knowledge with him anything and everything in an effort to build a name for when he moved to London in 1975. Starting out as a himself, but he denied any participation in the crime.”

hairdresser, Lupo worked his way up to ownership of a Commander J. T. Duff, intelligence chief for the Geor-stylish boutique, buying himself a $300,000 home in gia Bureau of Investigation, describes Henry’s April 1985

Roland Gardens, South Kensington. Along the way, he tour thus: “Lucas was not provided with any informa-boasted of liaisons with some 4,000 male lovers, tion or directions to any of the crime scenes but gave the recording the intimate details in numerous journals.

information to law enforcement. When a crime scene The consequence for his promiscuity was revealed in was encountered, Lucas voluntarily and freely gave March 1986 when he tested positive for the AIDS virus.

details that only the perpetrator would have known.”

After this Lupo ran amok, indulging his taste for sado-By November 1985, police in 18 states had reopened masochism in a brutal campaign of revenge against the 90 “Lucas cases,” but what of the other 108? And what gay community.