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Synopsis

Henry Lee Lucas was a murderer born on August 23, 1936, in Blacksburg, Virginia. Born to alcoholic parents, including a mother who prostituted herself, Lucas's sexual deviancy formed in his teen years. In 1960, he was sentenced for the murder of his mother. Paroled in 1970, Lucas went back to jail for the attempted kidnapping of a 15-year-old girl. Released again in 1975, he killed two more women, and was arrested in 1983. He confessed to murdering hundreds of people, though no proof existed beyond three known victims. Lucas sat on Death Row, later changed to life in prison by Texas Governor George W. Bush. He died in a Texas prison from natural causes on March 12, 2001.

Early Life

Murderer Henry Lee Lucas was born on August 23, 1936, in Blacksburg, Virginia. One of nine siblings, Lucas was raised by abusive alcoholic parents. His mother ruled the household with an iron fist and prostituted herself in their backwoods community to make money. As a teenager, Lucas's sexual deviance became increasingly pronounced, and he reported having sex with his half-brother and with dead animals.

Lucas spent his teen years in and out of jail. In March 1960, he was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison for murdering his mother. He was sent to Jackson State Penitentiary in southern Michigan, but after two attempted suicides, he was admitted to Ionia State Mental Hospital. He was paroled in 1970 after serving 10 years.

Murder and Conviction

A year after his release, Lucas was sentenced to five years for attempting to kidnap a fifteen-year-old girl at gunpoint. After his second release in 1975, he traveled to Michigan where he teamed-up with a petty thief named Ottis Toole. They shared an unhealthy interest in rape and death. In October 1979, Lucas traveled the country accompanied by Ottis and his young niece, Becky Powell, who was mildly retarded.

According to Lucas, he and Powell became romantically involved, filling one another's lifelong need for love and respect. Despite this romance, however, he eventually killed Powell, along with Katharine Rich, an elderly woman with whom they had been staying.

In June 1983, Lucas was arrested for possession of a deadly weapon. In his cell, he began confessing to hundreds of murders. Egged on by investigators from around the country, Lucas's confessions became increasingly farfetched. It is unclear how many murders he actually did commit, but some believe it was just three: his mother, Becky Powell and Katharine Rich. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment by Texas Governor George W. Bush. While on Death Row, Lucas became a born again Christian and spent the last 18 years of his life as a model prisoner. He died in a Huntsville, Texas, prison from natural causes on March 12, 2001, at the age of 64.

Serial Killer. Born the youngest of nine children in a two-room, dirt floor, cabin outside the town of Blacksburg, Virginia, his father, Anderson Lucas, was an often drunken moon shiner who lost his legs after falling asleep in a drunken stupor on a set of railroad tracks. His father died early, of pneumonia. His mother, Viola Wall Lucas, was a prostitute. From the moment of his birth, she hated Henry, and made his life a virtual Hell on earth. When he started school in 1943, she sent him to school dressed like a girl. Any pet he adopted was quickly killed. Often beaten by his mother, he lost an eye when she gashed it with a knife during one of her many rages. One of Viola's live-in lovers, Bernie, taught him bestiality, to rape and torture animals before killing them. Thus, Henry's first human victim, 17 year-old Laura Burnley, was raped and strangled in March 1951. In June 1954, he was convicted of a series of burglaries around Richmond, VA, and given 6 years in prison. Released in 1959, he moved to Tecumseh, Michigan, when his mother showed up to demand his return to Virginia. Several days later, he killed her and raped the corpse. Convicted of her murder, he was given 20 to 40 years in prison, but in May 1960, he was transferred to the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he was released in 1970. In 1971 he was convicted of molesting girls and sentenced to ten years, but was paroled in 1975. The next year, he met and teamed up with Ottis Elwood Toole, another serial killer, and they became close friends and partners, robbing, raping and murdering as they moved from state to state to avoid the police. In a Texas jail in 1983 over a minor weapons charge, Lucas confessed to the sheriff of a murder. Subsequent interrogations led him to confess to having participated in over 500 murders, but police eventually reduced this to 90 confirmed murders that he committed and 108 murders in which he assisted Toole. He would claim that he and Toole joined a satanic cult, The Hand of Death, that instructed him in murder, human sacrifice and cannibalism; however, no proof of the cult's existence has been found. Convicted of ten murders in Texas, he was sentenced to death, but on June 26, 1998, Governor George W. Bush commuted his death sentence to life in prison. He died in prison on March 15, 2001 of undisclosed causes. Ottis Toole was picked up, tried and sentenced to death, but his sentence was also commuted to life in prison, and he would die in a Florida prison of cirrhosis of the liver in 1996. (bio by: [fg.cgi?page=mr&MRid=46483611" target="_blank Kit and Morgan Benson)] Maintained by: Find A Grave Record added: Mar 31, 2001

Find A Grave Memorial# 20992

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jul 28 2018, 3:28:05 UTC