The Shreveport Journal from Shreveport, Louisiana • 3

1 MONDAY MONDAY JANUARY 28 1985 3a SHREVEPORT JOURNAL SHREVEPORT-BOSSIER CITY LA 1 I 1" ss I 4 1 a i 1 1 3 fessed to committing a murder in CaGf ornia then one in Florida only two days later Other conflicts have come up During Lucas's trial for the Halloween 1979 murder of a young unidentified female hitchhiker whose body clad only in bright orange socks was found off Interstate 30 near Georgetown the defense introduced work records that showed Lucas was in Jacksonville Fla doing construction work at the time of the killing The prosecution played an edited audio-tape where Lucas said the work records were false and that he bribed the foreman to falsify the records Lucas's video-taped confession also was played for the jury The foreman Mack Caulder appeared in court and denied he had falsified the records and Lucas repudiated his confession in a pre-trial hearing but the jury deliberated only 40 minutes before sentencing him to death "I know the circumstances show it wasn't me that done it" Lucas reportedly said on the video-tape "But I did it" In a pre-trial hearing a few months before the "orange socks" trial Lucas claimed the confession he gave was false but said he wanted to be sentenced to die because he felt guilty about murdering his 15-year-old common law wife Frieda "Becky" Powell He said he confessed to the case because it was under Texas law a capital case and an opportunity to commit "legal suicide" In his earliest statements sources said Lucas contended that he murdered "about a hundred" people around the country but his partner Toole while an arsonist was a coward incapable of murder Now Lucas describes Toole as a man who "enjoyed killing" and eating the flesh of his victims Toole has been charged with over a dozen murders but lawmen have rejected many of his confessions Toole has confessed and recanted twice to the murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh Police in Hollywood Fla investigating the Walsh case have not charged Toole in the slaying and refuse to discuss the case citing a judical "gag order" Lucas and Toole also have confessed in cases in which people have been convicted and are serving time Lucas reportedly enjoys his celebrity status and the treatment he receives in his private cell at Georgetown Despite public statements to the contrary sources said Lucas is afraid of being transferred to Huntsville where he fears he will be killed Lucas also enjoys a friendship with a Catholic lay worker Clemmie Schwartz who visits him on a daily basis when he is in Georgetown "Sister Clemmie" befriended Lucas shortly after he was arrested and brings him religious material to read Lucas also has a color television in his cell and is provided with at least two packs of Pall Mall cigarettes a day As one local lawman who has interviewed Lucas said "as long as you keep him in coffee and cigarettes he'll talk all day" By PHIL MARTIN Journal Staff Writer Henry Lee Lucas a one-eyed drifter with a third-grade education who has spent at least 20 years of his 48 years in mental institutions prisons and reformatories has confessed to more than 600 murders Between 190 and 200 homicides reportedly have been "cleared" as a result of Lucas' confessions Still there are questions Most of the evidence against Lucas has come from his own confessions Is Henry Lee Lucas the most prolific mass-murderer in history? Or just one of the most convincing liars? Hugh Aynsworth a Dallas-journalist and author who has logged more than 60 hours alone with Lucas preparing his biography is skeptical of the killer's claims "I don't know how many he has killed But I think there is a great danger in adding to the tally based solely on his confessions Most law enforcement people are honest hardworking and decent There are some who take shortcuts some who are lazy and some who take the easy way I know of some cases that have been cleared that (Henry Lee Lucas) could not have done" Aynsworth said In an interview that appeared in this month's issue of Penthouse magazine Aynsworth wrote that "only three or four of the solved or cleared cases offer any evidence apart from Lucas's own admissions nothing more than a single fingerprint in one upcoming case a couple of hair matches in another" Just last week Lucas pleaded guilty to the 1 976 shooting death of a West Virginia police officer The officer who was found handcuffed and shot with his own service revolver had been ruled an apparent suicide Lucas has been indicted in two Bossier Parish cases the killing of a still-unidentified female hitchhiker whose body was found off a logging road in the northern part of the parish in January 1982 and the October 1978 killing of Dolly Dement in Bossier City A grand jury indicted Lucas in both cases after viewing a 2Vi-hour videotaped confession Bossier City police reportedly questioned Lucas about at least six other killings that occurred between 1977 and 1982 and were unable to link Lucas to any of them Lucas allegedly led investigators "right to the spot" where the unidentified woman's body was found and later picked the murder weapon out from a table covered with similar weapons at the Northwest Louisiana Crime Lab At the time Lucas was indicted a local law enforcement source who asked not to be identified said though Lucas "would probably cop out to anything right now" both cases against him were "solid" Caddo Parish Sheriff Don Hathaway said he plans to send a deputy to Georgetown Texas where Lucas is being held to interview Lucas about several Caddo Parish cases Hathaway said the sheriff's office has no evidence linking Lucas to any of the cases and he has not confessed to any of them AP LaMrphoto as he is taken to another interview with law Henry Lee Lucas peers through a car window enforcement officials "I think what most law enforcement is doing is just taking their unsolved cases to Lucas on just the chance 1 he knows something about them" Hathaway said "They're not just taking his word the way I understand it he is pointing things out to them that only the person involved in the crime would know" Lawmen admit Lucas has on occasion confessed to crimes he obviously could not have committed Sources said Lucas had confessed to killing "about a hundred people in Canada" when in fact he had never left the country Similarly Lucas has told lawmen he committed homicides in England and Switzerland and has confessed to "about half" of the "Green River" killings in Oregon confessions authorities have rejected Texas Rangers in Georgetown where Lucas is being held have compiled a thick logbook that chronicles the itinerary of Lucas and his sometimes traveling companion Ottis Elwood Toole beginning in August 1975 when Lucas was released from prison Texas authorities have said Lucas and Toole used at least 20 cars during thier travels across the country and that most of these cars were eight to 10 years old "They just drove them until they quit" said Dale Stewart a homicide detective in Riverside County Calif where Lucas has confessed to at least ten murders "They never got a traffic ticket nobody ever picked them up for sleeping in a park or for being drunk even though Henry was a pretty heavy drinker It's amazing" Sources said the logbook shows several "near discrepancies" In one case sources said Lucas has con Henry Lee Lucas The life and travels of a vagabond killer that Ottis was already a member and they had been watching him (Lucas)" Reaves said Shreveport police have reportedly investigated Lucas' story and found no evidence of a cult here And although most lawmen say they doubt the existence of a cult the matter is under investigation by federal authorities Toole wasn't Lucas' only traveling companion The pair was joined at times by Toole's niece and nephew Freida "Becky" Powell and Frankie Powell Becky Powell reportedly began traveling with the men when she was 1 1 years old She was murdered when she was 15 Lucas has described his relationship to Powell as "a father to a daughter" and he says he refrained from having sex with her until a few months before he killed her in the summer of 1982 According to a videotaped interview with Bossier Parish lawmen Lucas said Frankie Powell may have been present at the killing of a still-unidentified woman whose body was found in a rural area of north Bossier Parish in January 1982 Lucas says he killed many of his victims simply to fulfill his desire to have sex with dead women He said he sometimes killed robbery and burglary victims because he "didn't want to be identified" "The biggest majority were killed out of hate" Lucas told Reaves "I don't hate women but I hate what they do the way they do things they're not supposed to do" Along the way Lucas befriended several people In 1982 he befriended Kate Rich She allowed Lucas to live in a house on her land in exchange for his helping with the chores On Sept 16 1982 Rich disappeared Lucas was a suspect from the outset and Montague County Sheriff WF "Hound Dog" Conway dogged him for nine months tracking him through several states before finally arresting him on a weapons charge on June 11 1983 Four days after he was arrested Lucas confessed to killing Rich and burning her body in a stove He also confessed to killing Powell and told jailer Joe Don Weaver "there's at least a hundred more out there" At first lawmen were skeptical of the sordid confessions but now Texas Rangers claim over 190 homicides have been cleared to date and the list is growing every week Twice since his arrest Lucas has attempted suicide by slashing his wrists another time jailers caught him attempting to weave a noose from blanket threads He claims to have converted to Christianity in jail a conversion that led to his remarkable confessions He says if he had his life to live over he would "try to understand and treat people differently maybe I would become a police officer I think I would make the best officer" "I've been treated as an offcast all my life" Lucas said "I became what everybody wanted me to On June 11 1983 Montague County Texas sheriff's deputies arrested a scruffy one-eyed drifter with a third-grade education for the murder of an 80-year-old Ringgold Texas woman The arrest of Henry Lee Lucas for the murder of 80-year-old Kate Pearl Rich marked the end of a killing spree that authorities believe cost the lives of as many as 400 people Lucas and his homosexual lover Ottis Elwood Toole reportedly crisscrossed the country as many as 20 times between 1976 and 1983 In their wake they left a twisted bloody trail that lawmen say will never be completely untangled Lucas has been indicted for two local murders and remains a strong suspect in a Bienville Parish case Last Friday he was sentenced to 60 years in prison or the murder of a 18-year-old Marshall Texas woman Lillie Mae Darty Though he has given various stories to different law enforcement off icals authorities believe Lucas was born in rural western Virginia in 1937 to a 51-year-old woman who had had seven children by a previous marriage Lucas has described his mother as a "prostitute" but investigators who have spoken to people who knew the family have described her as bar-fly" who would "sleep with anyone who bought her a jug of wine" Lucas' father was an alcoholic invalid who had lost both legs in a coal mining accident "My daddy was a drunk my mother was a prostitute and my brother was a thief" Lucas told local law enforcement officals in a videotaped interview "There wasn't no pleasure in my childhood" While he was in elementary school Lucas suffered an accident which caused him to lose his left eye The details of the accident are vague but Lucas told one lawman he lost his eye while trying to leap onto a moving freight train Lucas told some lawmen he was taunted by other students because of his glass eye but he has told others that he "got along well" with his peers "Sometimes he paints sort of an idyllic picture of his youth" Texas Ranger Sgt Bob Prince who is assigned to guard Lucas full-time said "Sometimes he seems real bitter about everything I think he's telling what he thinks is the truth at the time but he tells people what they want to hear a lot" Lucas spent his childhood split between his mother's home in Blacksburg Va and his half-brother's home in North Carolina Around the time Lucas began living with his brother in North Carolina he says he first became involved in crime "There was one time I remember stealing a car and driving to see my mother in Michigan" Lucas said "I was around 15 or 16" Authorities said Lucas recalled being beaten by his mother and that she sometimes forced Lucas and his said'I asked him 'How in the world can you remember the Because you start to think maybe he's just confessing to any dead body that turns up "He told me There are just some things so terrible that you can't forget them' He apparently has a phenomenal memory" Conradt said Phillips was one of the first of Lucas' "random" victims women who died because they had the misfortune to cross his path There would be hundreds more killed by Lucas and Toole Toole and Lucas according to one statement from Lucas met in early 1975 The pair met again in February 1979 in a Jacksonville Fla rescue mission soup line The pair "hit it off" almost immediately Lucas said "Off and on I would live with his (Toole's) mother (Sarah Harley) and stepdaddy in Florida" Lucas said "We were friends really Of course Ottis thought of me like a lover I was his lover" With Jacksonville Fla as a base the pair wandered the country stealing cars and "driving them till they quit" authorities said From the time they met again in late 1981 or early 1982 the pair wandered the country killing hundreds of men women and children Authorities said Lucas preyed mainly on women hitchhikers Toole's victims were usually male Both men have said they practiced necrophilia and often multilated their victims Lawmen say the pair would sometimes dismember their victims and carry their body parts with them for several days Lucas has said Toole sometimes ate the flesh and drank the blood of their victims a practice Lucas said he never participated in and which eventually led to his deciding to leave Toole Toole who is in prison in Florida charged with several murders has been described by his lawyers as "mentally-retarded with an IQ of about 60" and by lawmen who have talked to him as "conniving and pragmatic smart enough to act dumb" After Toole's arrest when he began confessing to various crimes Lucas said Toole was incapable of murder and simply was jealous of the attention he (Lucas) was getting "Ottis didn't do nothing except for arson He ain't a murderer he's just trying to get part of my book" Lucas said But now Lucas says his partner was involved in a cult called the "Hands of Death" a satanic organization which trained its members to kill at a camp in the Florida Everglades Gayle Reaves a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram who interviewed Lucas last April said Lucas told her that he was approached by a man in Shreveport as he walked across a bridge over the Red River and was asked to join the cult "He told me he had been 'screened' by the cult and brother to watch while she had sex with men Lucas said he was initiated into sex by "Bernie" a man who sometimes lived with his mother 1 Lucas has told interviewers "Bernie" taught him "to kill animals and have sex with them" His first victim Lucas said was a "15 or 16 year-old" girl he strangled to death near Christiansburg Va when he was 14 Lucas said he killed the girl becatise he was afraid she would "tell his mother" he had had sex with her The murder has never been confirmed Lucas had several scrapes with the law as a youth The first entry on his "rap sheet" appears in 1952 when he was convicted of breaking and entering a house in Richmond Va He reportedly served no time for that offense In 1954 Lucas was again convicted of burglary and breaking and entering and sentenced to four years in a Virginia prison Lucas escaped shortly after he entered prison In June 1956 Lucas was caught driving a stolen car in Clinton Mich and sentenced to serve 18 months for that offense After being released from the Michigan prison Lucas returned to finish his sentence in Virginia He was released in 1959 In January 1960 Lucas was living with his half-sister in Tecumseh Mich and was engaged to a woman named Stella Keith His mother came to visit and reportedly tried to talk him out of marrying Lucas has said the situation with his mother continued to worsen and he stabbed her to death Lucas' mother actually died of a heart attack after she was wounded very slightly with a kitchen knife authorities said About three weeks later he was picked up for hitchhiking and arrested on a warrant charging him with second-degree murder in his mother's death He was sentenced to 20 years in prison ironically his original release date was Oct 12 1983 Lucas split the next 10 years between Ionia State Hopsital for the Criminally Insane and a Michigan prison before being released on parole on June 30 1970 In early 1971 he returned to prison for a probation viol- ation stemming from the alleged attempted abduction of a child But during the time he was out of prison authorities believe he committed at least two murders in Texas Less than two weeks after his parole a Lubbock woman was stabbed to death in her home Lucas has been indicted in connection with this case And on Aug 10 1970 the body of a pretty 26-year-old Kaufman Texas elementary school teacher ws found in a rural area northwest of the central Texas city She had been stabbed 26 times sexually molested and mutilated "We're all fairly confident he did kill Linda Phillips Kaufman County District Attorney William Conradt Shreveport Journal (USPS 495-440) Parish From Page One "My concern was that something was on the agenda that we had not discussed I wanted to talk to some of the appointees I am concerned that there is an insensitivty to the concerns of the citizens" Aytch said he "didn't want to single out any one person I just want a sensitivity to the concerns of the people" Asked about the controversy Coats said "I guess that's their privilege No one has never personally complained to me not that aware of thing according to the rules they adopted If the rules need changing we should change the rules "To the best of my knowledge all I've ever done was carry out the policies they set forth" Coats said Wyndon said "I was under the impression that the commission is to make decisions but nobody will challenge the staff" He complained that the new 12-member commission is little different from the old 20-member Police Jury Other jurors wince at the allega tions of racial discrimination "I just hate that we are going to have to hassle with this for the next 30 days "said Commissioner Owen McDonnell He added that he had no problem "whatsoever" with the re-appoinments and that "we have the finest staff in the state of Louisiana "Everything I ever asked Mr Coats to provide for me he has done" McDonnell said "For that matter so has Mr Fullerton Mr Walmsley and Mr Lowery so I have had no problems" Published by Shrtvtoort Publishing Corp Pothnottw: Send oddreu change to: Snrtveoort journal lo po bo jim SnrtvMort La 7IIM MontMr MbKrlpttwt rotct: By carrier Doily only $5 05 Douy Journal Sunday Timet 19 SO By moil Douy only $13 0O Daily Journal Sunday Times $17 00 The publisher reserves mt rloht to chanoo subscrip-rl on roles dur Ino the lime of 0 subscription upon twenly-eM (It) dovt notwe This notice may be by moll to the tubscriber by notKe contained In the newspooer itself or otnervlse Subscription rote chonaes moy be Inv pleme nted by changing the duration of tnesubscr iptton Second closs oestooe paid at Shreveport La Rotes for subscriptions outside the continental Untied States will be ovoted upon request All dealers end carriers ore Independent contractors ore not employees of the Shreveport Journol For the convenience of subscribers odvonce payment of sli (41 months ere mere should be mode directly to the Shreveport Journal en behalf of your independent carrier head That's the bottom line" Coats said that in the 10 years he has been director of personnel there has been a 55 to 60 percent increase in the number of black employees Coats also said only three cases of racial discrimination have been filed against his office in 10 years and all three have been dismissed Bickham defended Coats as an "exceptional employee" Coats pulled three notebooks from the shelf and said "Everything is spelt out in writing and has been adopted by the jury I've done every "Whenever they needed anything I always responded" Coats said "To the best of knowledge I have never discriminated against anyone" When asked for specfic reasons for the conflict Coats replied "Who does the hiring and firing Does that answer your question?" Coats said he thinks the problem began when he hired a white person to head the parish food stamp program instead of a black Bickham said of the conflict "Wilson's and Wyndon's problem is that there is not a black department.