Henry Lee Lucas He was a homeless, pedophile, and madam murderer

 

Henry Lee Lucas

He was a homeless, pedophile, and madam murderer who admitted in 1983 to killing his teenage girlfriend and his 84-year-old landlady.

The trial was uneventful. He was simply a degenerate who was going to receive the death penalty like many others of his ilk.

Then, suddenly and out of the blue, he confessed to the murder of 150 women.

It was an amazing show.

The police began treating him like Elvis Presley for years to gain his trust and identify his victims. They installed a television in his cell, gave him tobacco, food from outside the jail, withheld his handcuffs, and flew him across the United States to search for the scenes of his crimes. Agents from all over the country interrogated him to confirm whether or not he was connected to his cases. From 150 victims, the number rose to 200, from 200 to 300…and so on until he confessed to 600 murders.

Conclusion?

It turns out that many of the confessions were false. Both the police and Henry were using each other. The police to close cold cases and pat themselves on the back, and Henry to receive perks and preferential treatment. When suspicions arose about the veracity of his confessions, his death sentence was commuted due to doubts about his involvement in the crimes. He gave so many false confessions that the real murders he did commit were surely overshadowed. Even the crimes he was originally convicted of were called into question.

He was far from the smartest man in crime (his IQ was 86) but he ended up better than many other intelligent killers, like Bundy:

Jeffrey Dahmer:

He was the only person sentenced to death in Texas whose capital punishment was commuted to life imprisonment by George W. Bush. That's quite an achievement.

He died of natural causes in 2001.