Fort Worth Star-Telegram from Fort Worth, Texas • 179

iA Staralegram MI 01A IMMO SUNDAY' JULY 17 1983 u'oi eft a tral of crime tO 0tp (S 04 0 4 'K 4 C) Pe A 4 i A )- N) By GAYLE REAVES StarTelegram Writer The woman with the transients' assistance agency in Wilmington Del remembered Henry Lucas and Otis Toole and Freida and Frank Powell "As soon as I pulled out the file I could see them standing in my office" she said Before the reporter could explain the reason for the call she asked quickly "He didn't hurt that little girl did he?" Unfortunately he stays he did Henry Lee Lucas told police last month that he killed "that little girl" Freida Powell his 15-year-old common-law wife on Aug 24 1982 It may have been her death that finally led Lucas to tell police about the 100 or so slayings he says he has committed he has been indicted or charged in five of them "I will finish giving back the dead I have taken" he said The Delaware agency worker remembered with regret heavy in her voice the day Lucas his friend and lover Otis Toole and Toole's young niece and nephew turned up asking for help "They were in very bad physical shape" she said "Their feet were bare and swollen and their eyes were glazed and they were so thin I got them food and clothing and shelter It was just before the Fourth of July weekend in 19811 was trying to help them make a plan but they took off on me" Henry Lee Lucas in his whole life probably has never had a plan He didn't keep a record of the dates he says he killed people or the places he says he left them over the last eight years the same way he probably can't tell you all the addresses he's I lived at or all the roads he's elect Without a regular job home or 1 family to anchor him his points of reference are mostly the seasons and the highway signs truck stops blood banks and whichever old car he was driving The people he calls his victims he mostly knew for a few hours or a few days' The roads and the trail of corpses he describes lead from New Jersey to New Mexico and back and forth in between Texas Ranger Phil Ryan is spending his summer trying to nail down the details of those Their only common factor is that for Lucas none of the roads led up From his childhood in Blacksburg Va to a cell in the Montague County Jail in Texas Lucas has traveled and lived and killed in the subculture at the bottom of American society He wasn't a good boy who went bad or an outwardly normal person who suddenly went berserk In a sense he grabbed onto the knife that put out his eye as a youngster and never let it go LUCAS WAS BORN in Blacksburg on Aug 23 1936 He came from a childhood where people didn't have money regular jobs or steady relationships and he has lived most of his life the same way The patterns were formed tendency toward friendships with elderly women and sexual advanc- es toward young girls A fascination with knives and occasional threats to use them A habit of stealing cars and wooing other men's women A reputation for being quiet and when he did talk for boasting be yond his abilities Astrange ability considering his appearance and habits to find people he could latch onto for financial and emotional support: his own relatives Toole and his family Kate Rich and her family a couple with whom he traveled through the West and Midwest in 1982 and Rueben Moore the preacher whose church camp Lucas lived at for most of the last year Lucas' mother cleaned houses chopped wood and made and sold whiskey to feed her husband and two sons Her seven children by an earlier marriage had been farmed out to foster homes when that marriage split up When Lucas was about 12 he and his brother Andrew were playing with a knife and Henry's left eye was put out After that relatives say his mother babied and protected him He quit school after the fifth grade He was the child of his mother's middle age She was his first known murder victim Viola Lucas was 74 when he killed her in Tecumseh Mich in 1960 reportedly over his desire to move in with a -woman friend He said he had always hated her "because she lied especially about my father" an alcoholic who lost both legs in a railroad accident Lucas has spent more than a third of his life in jail prison or detention 4 44 04-1731t 1 77 47Ae'f '41 vC 441 --t 2e44 Is' 4 Ibit ii Lee Lueus took him all over the Maryland mostly his half sisters by his mother's earlier marriage and their children In 1975 he married his cousin's widow but the marriage lasted only about a year according to family recollections It ended when his wife found out he had made advances toward her three young (laugh ters While in Maryland he also got rt out for only about a year before being convicted of the attempted molestation and kidnapping of a young girl for which he spent 197 1 75 back in Michigan prisons In 1981 he spent about three months in a Maryland jail for auto theft Between the two Michigan sentences and on his release in 1975 Lucas went to live with relatives in CHARGED IN SLAYINGS The travels of Henry 1 homes beginning when he was 13 From stealing-- radios he soon moved up to burglaries breaking and entering and stealing cars the last a habit that he never broke He served time in the 1950s in Virginia for burglary and auto theft and spent the 1960s in a Michigan' prison and state mental hospital for the murder of his mother He was Deployment of telescoping space antenna I Proposal threatens to split US Jewry ig proposed satellite (urns '10 I tg ott 4 United States around to writing love letters to his sister-in-law threatening to kill his half sister dating his nephew's wife and trying to persuade a niece to run away with him Lucas and his wife made a trip to Texas in 1975 or 1976 to visit her sister He has told police that during Please see Lucas on Page 8 Analysis Rabbi Robert Schur of Temple Beth-El in Fort Worth say the resolution is an attempt to welcome all members of a Jewish family into the religion "There are two sides to his story" said Schur who supports the resolu ton "The time has come to say that the father's role is just as important as the mother's" Schur who serves on the Reform movement's national task force on outreach said the resolution has to do with "developing relationships with persons who have not always been Jewish" "We are a small community (Jews) a diminished community" Schur said explaining the reasons that Jewsshould reach out to keep Please see Resolution on Page 8 1ZZ21 INSIDE DatftWital 157 ETTA HULME: Slap on the wrists 12AA LETTERS: Bottle up drivers 13AA KYLE THOMPSON: F7e7 -0 Olddays laid to A AA AA A A A A AA Cf 4 fe' 1 '444' -1---' PY' cr I 04t4 -b )4 tr- 4 4 ANA i ia 4 1 gina 4 Yi 11 1 4t0' 9 t'l 1 'It 1 073904--AT I iiedAY10-500' I 0 I414 lit 4111bkfr WbAei ---elliel: pr' Alott --Av -d- plow-tmute-- 40--- 0 -r --Imemzar ''--( By ANITA BAKER Star-Telegram Writer With a workhorse like the space shuttle scien lists at the National Aeronautics and Space ministration can now afford to think big And that's what they are doing with a proposed 't giant satellite which when fully expanded would cover an area the size of a football field A Southern Methodist University mathematician and an SMU visiting professor have joined in the early stages of development of this latest space dream Bigger in this situation means better The satellite actually a huge antenna should mean a better viewing angle of the Earth and the ability to send back multiple beams of information to small receivers on the surface said Thomas Campbell head of antenna and microwave research at the Langley Research Center in Hampton Va And in space lanes already becoming crowded with satellite traffic one giant satellite could handle the duties of several smaller ones But bigger also means problems Even the shuttle couldn't handle an antenna the size of a football field and there's the question of how to test the newly developed equipment on Earth where gravity would affect the sensitive mesh of such a huge reflective dish That's where new technology and the skill of mathematicians including Patricia Daniel from SMU and Tom Banks on loan from Brown University in Providence RI enter the picture To solve the problem scientists are considering an umbrella design that could be condensed into a neat package inside the 60-by-15 foot shuttle cargo bay The package would telescope into a long tube then would begin its opening process much as an umbrella unfolds Cables would expand the equipment until a gold-plated metal mesh like the texture of panty hose into what will probably look like a looking at multiple uses for the antenna into a high enough orbit it could communications antenna In a lower Please see Plans on Page 3 routine The Zoning Commission started at 1 pm Dozens of people there because of the high-rise condo proposal had to wait longer than three hours while more routine cases were heard Many of those people were at City Hall for the first time Most of them had 'not attended a Zoning Commission meeting before' While they waited they began to see bow things work The zoning experts hired by developers to plead their cases before the commission are on a first-name basis with the commission members They shared inside jokes and an intimate knowledge of the procedures and Oargon that effectively and clearly set up "insider" and "outsider" status among those in the room Homeowners sector planners and visitors were clearly outsiders Bradshaw former mayor pro tern Bradshaw former mayor pro tern woven much would open huge dish NASA is If placed serve as a Ever wonder why the people feel By JIM JONES Star-Telegram Writer A controversial resolution approved by Reform Jewish leaders earlier this year calling for radical changes in laws on how to identify a Jew will irrevocably split American Jewry Orthodox and other non-Reform Jewish leaders are saying The resolution approved by the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform Jewish leaders) states that a child should be identified as a Jew If either his mother or his father Is a Jew For more than 2000 years the Jewish law has said that a child can be identified as a Jew only if his mother is Jewish Under current tradition if a child's mother is not Jewish even though his father was born a Jew and follows all Jewish laws the child cannot be considered a Jew Reform Jewish leaders including left out? it because these rich old people want such housing and it would make the most money for the developer The commission didn't vote on anything until all the presentations were over It was about 7:30 pm before they started voting on any item They adjourned at about 8 pm The widespread feeling even before the people had a chance to be heard was that Bradshaw would get what he wanted because he is wired into City Hall and the homeowners are not Mayor Bob Bolen recently asked about 50 "community leaders" to address the problems pointed out by the recent Needs Assessment Survey Bolen said he thought Fort Worth was "on the edge of its finest hour" in following a teamwork approach The people on the phone and at that meeting don't feel that they are part of the team and what's worse they don't even feel invited to watch the game Katie Siterrod's column appears Monday Wednesday and Friday in 00 mornin9 Star-Telegram In contrast the homeowners were met with expressionless faces and reprimanded by one member for being unwilling to compromise in a previous unrelated zoning case Bradshaw said the high-rise would be home for 18 or so wealthy people Mostly widows who want to be safe and close to River Crest County Club He said the majority of the property owners within 200 feet were not opposed to the high-rise Two hundred feet is less than the length of a football field The neighborhood associations presented a petition with 300 names on it opposing the zoning change They gave the members copies of the Arlington Heights Sector Plan which deals with high-rises The plan suggests seven alternative locations all near Arlingtonileights all within easy reach of ItNer Crest 1 I Katie SHERROD 4 'N walked over there People we didn't know walked up and pretty soon we were all exchanging Burnett Park stories Hell we're even going to miss the winos Not one person in the group knew they were going to cut those trees down "I will never understand how they could do something like that" George Studdard came downtown on business Monday and was so upset at seeing the park that he forgot why he was there and went back to his office "How could they do that and nobody know about it?" he asked The city followed its routine procedures in accepting the Tandy Foundation's $55 million gift for the new park and agreeing to the foundation's conditions But chopping down that many 50-year-old trees in a centrakily IS not 4 d3 4 1 an" 4' Two experiences this week shed light on why 718 percent of the peo pie in a recent survey said they feel they have no say in how their city is run First 1 listened to readers who called in response to my column Wednesday morning about the chopping down of Burnett Park's trees Then that afternoon I sat in the audience at the Zoning Commission meeting in which the commission approved 6-3 Jim Bradshaw's request for a luxury 12-story condominium in a residential part of Arlington Heights The phone calls One 'woman was in tears "When 1 was in grade school we would make paper chains 0 every year to take down to Burnett Park and put on the Christmas tree 1 wanted my children to do the same But now my park's gone What are they thinking of?" Jim Stewart said "What can we do now? It's too late The decision was made and the trees were gone before we knew anything about it" An attorney said his whole office was in an uproar Monday as office workers arrived outraged about Burnett Park "A bunch of us tit They asked the commission to de-and best friend of commission ny the zoniog beoause they said it is Chairman 'Clark' IVIArttrdefirlitely ncompatibig vith the neighbor was an insider As flood is iiieosSly Of scale in an ed they watched area Of arnily homes and be-people on the back' 011SiotatiV other places already are staffers by name z'oried fOliigh2rises' references to his time at (4y Ii1L 4raitstApy asked them to approve 1.