“Henry is an unusual prisoner. He’s been given a high security cell and a few special amenities…”
—Jim Boutwell, Sheriff of Williamson County, Texas
O
n June 30, 1998, Henry Lee Lucas—arguably the most prolific and certainly one of the most sadistic serial killers in the annals of American crime—was sched- uled for execution by the state of Texas. Given the advocacy of the death penalty by then-Governor George W. Bush, things were not looking good for Henry. Bush had not granted clemency to any condemned man throughout his tenure as governor. In fact, no governor of any state at any time in the history of the coun- try had carried out more judicial executions than Governor Bush. So Texas was definitely not the place to be for a man in Henry’s position. And considering the nature of Lucas’ crimes, it seemed a certainty that nothing would stand in the way of his scheduled execution.Henry did not attract any high-profile supporters, the way that Karla Faye Tucker did. Then again, even personal appeals to Bush from the likes of Pat Robertson failed to dissuade the governor from proceeding on schedule with Miss Tucker’s execution. There was nothing to indicate that Henry would fare any better, particularly since his crimes were of a particularly brutal nature, involving rape, torture, mutilation, dismemberment, necrophilia, cannibalism, and pedophilia. His tally of victims ran as high as 300–600 by some accounts— including Henry’s own, at times—though such figures are likely inflated. What seems certain is that Lucas—frequently working with erstwhile partner Ottis Toole, a self-described arsonist and cannibal—savagely murdered dozens of vic- tims of various ages, races, and genders. All indications were then that Henry’s execution was a foregone conclusion.
Then a most remarkable thing happened. On June 18, just twelve days before Henry’s scheduled demise, Governor Bush made a special request that the Texas
State Board of Pardons and Paroles, whose members were all Bush appointees, to review Henry’s case. Strangely enough, eight days later the Board uncharacteristi- cally issued a recommendation that Henry’s execution not take place. The next day, just three days short of Henry’s scheduled exit from this world, Lucas became the first—and ultimately the only—recipient of Governor Bush’s ‘compassionate conservatism.’ The official rationale for this act of mercy was that the evidence on which Lucas was sentenced did not support his conviction. There was a possibil- ity, said the Board, that Henry was in fact innocent of the crime for which he was convicted.
The problem here is that many of the 150+ death-row inmates who did not receive special gubernatorial attention prior to their executions had evidence sup- porting their claims of innocence, and yet their appeals to the governor were met with scorn and mockery. So why had Bush suddenly developed a keen interest in not executing innocent convicts? And why, once Henry’s life was spared, did he promptly lose this passing interest and begin once again rubber-stamping every execution order that crossed his desk—including one for a great-grandmother in her sixties who was convicted of killing her chronically abusive husband? And why is it that Henry was granted full clemency, rather than a temporary stay dur- ing which his case could have been reviewed? That is exactly what Bush did in the case of convicted murderer Ricky Nolen McGinn. Tellingly, the proliferation of press reports on the McGinn case made no mention of the governor’s earlier actions on behalf of Lucas.
And what if Lucas was in fact falsely convicted, and what if his innocence was so obvious that the governor had no choice but to commute Henry’s sentence? What then does that say about the Texas criminal justice system and the ease with which it sends innocent men to their deaths? Are we to believe that Henry’s case was an isolated one and that none of the other men put to death during Bush’s reign had equally credible claims of innocence? And what are we to make of the rather peculiar fact that while Henry has been convicted of no fewer than eleven homicides, the only death sentence he ever received was the one that the governor had no problem setting aside? Maybe Henry just had uncannily good luck. He had at one time been scheduled to stand trial for four additional homicides— crimes for which his partner had already been convicted. The trial, however, was canceled on economic grounds, said to be a waste of taxpayer money since Henry was already scheduled to die.
Was Henry just extraordinarily lucky to have his only death sentence set aside by a governor who handed out but one commutation? Or was there something more at work in the Lucas case? Surely there had to be some reason why Bush would take uncharacteristic actions to spare the life of a man who had led a life of such brutality. And this was certainly not the first time the criminal justice system
had shown such inexplicable leniency towards Lucas. The first big break for Henry came in June 1970, when he was released early from a sentence he was then serving following his first murder conviction. Sentenced to 20–40 years, Henry was released after serving ten, just after he appeared before the parole board and explained to them that he was not ready to return to society and would surely kill again if released. As Henry told it, the questioning went something like this: “Now, Mr. Lucas, I must ask you, if we grant your parole, will you kill again?” Henry: “Yes, sir! If you release me now, I will kill again.”
Nevertheless, the board decided that ten years was an adequate amount of time to serve for the crime of killing his mother. Within a year of his release, Henry found himself back in prison after attempting to abduct a young girl. Despite his prior criminal record—which began long before the killing of his mother—Lucas served just four years before again being granted an early release, this time in August 1975. Beginning shortly thereafter, and continuing for nearly eight years, Henry and his new friend, Ottis, committed an untold number of lurid murders. Henry was finally arrested in October 1982 on suspicion of com- mitting two murders, but he was promptly released. He was not arrested again, for the last time, until June 1983.
After the final arrest, Henry was taken on tour, so to speak, by various law enforcement officials around the country, during which time he confessed to committing some 600 murders in 26 states. There were various charges made at the time that Henry was being used by his escorts to clear troublesome, unsolved murders in places he had never even been. That quite likely was the case. Henry seemed to have a very chummy relationship with his captors, particularly the Texas Rangers, and provided a valuable service to them by taking the rap for an amazing array of murders. That alone, however, does not explain the personal attention given to Henry’s case by Governor Bush.
For that, we need to look at some of the more infrequently noted details of Henry’s life history, many of which have been provided by Lucas himself. Henry, as it turns out, has some interesting tales to tell. Just a couple years into his incar- ceration, he told his story in a book written for him by a sympathetic author. The book, entitled The Hand of Death: The Henry Lee Lucas Story, tells of Henry’s indoctrination into a nationwide satanic cult. Lucas claimed that he was trained by the cult in a mobile paramilitary training camp in the Florida Everglades. His training, he said, included instruction in abduction and arson techniques, as well as in the fine art of killing, up close and personal. Henry further claimed that leaders of the camp were so impressed with his handling of a knife that he was allowed to serve as an instructor. Following his training, Henry claimed that he served the cult in various ways, including as a contract killer and as an abductor of children, whom he delivered to a ranch in Mexico near Juarez. Once there,
they were used in the production of child pornography and for ritual sacrifices. Henry has said that this cult’s operations were based in Texas, and included traf- ficking in children and drugs, among other illegal pursuits.
What Henry claimed, essentially, is that what appeared to be the random work of a serial killer was in fact a planned series of crimes often committed for specific purposes. Some of the murders were political hits, according to Henry, including assassinations of foreign dignitaries, local politicians and wealthy businessmen. This was not true for all of Henry’s crimes. Some he did just because that is what he liked to do. And it was the one thing that he was really good at. The beauty of this arrangement was that it allowed Henry to conceal the true motive for many of his crimes. Those performed as contract hits looked like all of his murders— senseless and random acts of violence.
In Henry’s version of events, it was Toole who was responsible for Henry’s recruitment and training by the cult, and for many of the pair’s exploits there- after. Interestingly, in all the standard biographies of the pair, Toole is said to have been Henry’s severely retarded, and decidedly junior, partner. It is quite clear though from reading an interview granted by Toole to a journalist (of sorts) that he was not by any means retarded. Uneducated, no doubt, but certainly not severely retarded. Ottis was able to express himself quite clearly, though per- versely, and displayed a substantial level of knowledge about the practices of Satanism—which isn’t really surprising given that he was, as Joel Norris has writ- ten, “raised as ‘the Devil’s child’ by his Satanist grandmother.”
Toole has described a childhood that was complete with all the trappings of satanic ritual abuse. He has told of being forced to have sex with numerous fam- ily members and others—including his father, his stepfather, his stepfather’s friends, and his older sister Drusilla. His grandmother, who lived with Ottis’ father as man and wife, although they were actually mother and son, is said to have been a member of a multi-generational death cult. Toole once explained to an interviewer how he had “been involved in all this since I was a child, through the cult, you know.” He has spoken of having urine poured on him, of eating dog meat, and of watching two cats fight to their death while their blood dripped down upon him. Ottis also had this to say of his childhood years: “I used to go with my grandmother into graveyards—we used to dig up all kinds of bones— and she used to take the bones and do devil worship.” He has also told of once being forced into a grave to pluck the bones from a freshly rotting corpse. Young Ottis was also frequently dosed with barbiturates, and he has said that he “used to hear voices.”
Toole’s older sister, Drusilla, spent time in a mental hospital, after which she reportedly committed suicide. Her children were placed in the care of their Uncle Ottis and his friend Henry Lee Lucas. Two of them, Frieda and Frank Powell,
accompanied the pair on their homicidal wanderings and were forced to witness, and at times participate in, the rape, killing and mutilation of the victims. Frieda (aka Becky) ended up scattered in a field after suffering years of sexual abuse at the hands of Henry and Ottis. Frank fared slightly better; he was committed to a mental hospital. A third sibling, Sarah Pierce, who shared with her Uncle Ottis a passion for arson, was convicted and imprisoned for indulging her passion.
Lucas also suffered through an incomprehensibly abusive childhood. In fact, when it comes to early childhood abuse, there are few parents of future serial killers who can compare to Viola Lucas, Henry’s mother. So severe was her phys- ical abuse of young Henry that he once slipped into a coma for a day following a particularly brutal beating. On another occasion—through a combination of abuse and neglect—Henry lost one of his eyes. Viola was, as is the case with the mothers of many serial killers, a prostitute. She routinely entertained her cus- tomers in the presence of Henry, who was compelled to watch. Viola also dressed young Henry up as a girl for the first seven years of his life and prostituted him out to her customers. Toole has also spoken of being forced to dress as a girl.
Though Henry and Ottis may represent extreme cases, their horrific child- hoods should not come as much of a surprise to most readers. That serial killers have suffered abusive childhoods has become something of a cliché. It is a fact that is acknowledged in most serial killer biographies, though it is usually fol- lowed by the caveat that such a childhood history does not excuse subsequent actions. Western society preaches that we are ultimately responsible for our own actions. Scapegoating society, or a horrendously abusive childhood, is simply not acceptable. Do we not all, after all, act of our own free will, regardless of our past? That is certainly what we have been conditioned to believe. But what if we do not all act of our own free will? What if a lifetime of being bombarded with prop- aganda has, to some extent, deprived us all of that ability? And what if some of us have been completely robbed of the ability to exercise free will? And what if suf- fering through a chronically abusive childhood lays the groundwork for that to occur? What if Viola Lucas was right when she told young Henry: “I’m going to teach you the beauty of pain and you’re going to be my slave for the rest of your life.” And what if Henry could only break the bonds of that slavery by killing dear old mom? And, finally, what if by killing her, Lucas only succeeded in acquiring a new slave-master?
What are we to make of Henry’s bizarre tale of being a contract killer? And what of Henry’s other stories, including the one about being a close friend of Jim Jones of the People’s Temple? Henry claimed on numerous occasions that it was he who was taken on a chartered plane to Guyana to personally deliver the cyanide to Jones that was allegedly used in the now infamous Jonestown mas- sacre. What are we to make of such stories? Could Henry have been telling the
truth about being a contract killer? And if so, did the contracts he was receiving have some kind of government connection? Though Henry did not address the subject in his book, the training camp, as he described it, clearly had military connections. And Henry has explicitly stated that the cult included among its members various socially prominent individuals, including high-level politicians. Could that be the reason for the actions taken by Governor George W. Bush in June 1998?
“They think I’m stupid, but before all this is over everyone will know who’s really stupid. And we’ll see who the real criminals are.”