After Christmas, Sheriff Boutwell summed up the results: most of the victims had been dumped along I-35. They had been shot, beaten to death, strangled, set on fire, crucified, raped or sodomised and stabbed. There had also been a hit-and-run, which smacked of murder. The sheriff was up to his eyes in murder most foul, and up the creek without a paddle.
In Florida, the Jacksonville City Police and Sheriff’s Department were experiencing similar difficulties, as were their colleagues in Michigan and elsewhere. But Lucas and Toole were ever-mobile interstate killers and, unless they made a mistake, they might carry on with their murderous spree for years to come. The two men also enjoyed another advantage; they were not committing federal crimes, so the FBI and US Marshal’s Service had no interest or jurisdiction. In every respect, it was left to the relatively inexperienced local police agencies to solve their own crimes. State by state, city by city and town by town, these agencies had neither the budget and the time, nor the interest to liaise with each other.
* * *
Henry Lucas was 40 years old, and he had fallen in love with the 13-year-old Becky, who looked every bit of 19, when it was required of her. The two men often used her as jailbait to lure unsuspecting truckers into their murderous net. Hauling long distances, the bored and lonely drivers were unable to resist the temptation of a scantily-dressed girl, thumbing a ride. It became an all-too-familiar scenario; the hiss of air brakes, a cloud of dirt and dust, the throbbing engines of those big trucks. ‘Hop up here, gal,’ they’d shout. Then, as soon as the cab door was thrown open, the driver would find himself examining the dangerous end of a loaded pistol.
A similar technique would be used with Becky ‘dressing down’ for the killing to be done. On one occasion, their car overheated under the blistering Texas sun, so they stopped in Tyler County. Becky knocked on an elderly woman’s door, asking for water to top up the radiator. The trusting lady cooked them all breakfast, and while Becky and Frank finished off their easy-over eggs, grits and ham, the two men finished off their host with a brutal rape and two well-placed shots to her head.
Eventually, though, Lucas claims that Toole began acting weird and doing things that he didn’t approve of, such as mistreating Becky, mutilating bodies, even barbecuing and eating their victim’s flesh. And, there was another problem. Ottis had fallen in love with Henry who, in turn, was in love with Becky. It seems that Ottis didn’t want to share Lucas with Becky – or anyone else, dead or alive. That Lucas raped his victims didn’t help the problem with the possessive Toole, and the rift was the starting point for the men parting company. They broke up in late January 1982, when Lucas raped and sodomised a young girl, while Becky and Frank watched and Ottis seethed with anger.
Now at the point of almost complete mental disintegration, Toole took out his hatred on this victim, beating her mercilessly and slashing her until she died. When he had finished, Toole headed home to Jacksonville, while Lucas, Becky and Frank made for California.
Fifty miles east of Los Angeles, they stopped at the unremarkable city of Hemet and, while searching for work as a carpenter, Lucas met Jack and Becky Smart, who owned an antique refurbishing business. Using his skills learned in prison, Lucas exchanged his labour in return for room and board. As time passed, Mrs Smart grew to like Henry and, at some sacrifice to her own business, she decided that he would make a much-needed handyman for her 80-year-old mother, Kate Rich, who lived in Ringgold, Clay County, Texas. The Smarts bought bus tickets for the trio and, pressing some much-needed cash into their hands, stood and waved their goodbyes.
* * *
Kate Rich was an energetic widow who had difficulty walking. She was well liked by her neighbours, sewed patchwork quilts, enjoyed fresh crayfish, and delighted in the frequent visits made by her many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, several of whom lived in the vicinity. When Henry knocked on her door with a message from her California daughter, Granny Rich ushered him in with open arms. Inadvertently, Mrs Smart had sent her mother the Angel of Death.
Before long, however, Henry’s dingy clothes, backwoods talk, foul language and strange behaviour began to make Kate’s family and friends feel uneasy; besides, he didn’t seem to be so handy after all. It was either that, or he was just bone-idle. For the better part of each day, he chain-smoked cigarettes and drank coffee or beer. Then, making one mouth less to feed, Frank departed, to hit the road on his own. Shortly after this, Kate told Henry and Becky that they had to go. He was a waster, she wanted nothing more to do with him, and the following morning, they went in search of another place to live.
The sun had climbed high in the Texas sky, and the temperature was well over 100 degrees, when preacher, Rubin Moore, spotted Henry and Becky trying to thumb a lift near Ringgold’s bus station. He picked them up and drove them to his House of Prayer, ten miles south, in Stoneburg, Montague County. In 1994, when the author visited the place, with Paul Smith, an investigator for the District Attorney, the place had changed little. It was, and still is, a converted chicken farm inhabited by a small group of religious fundamentalists, who keep the gates padlocked and do not entertain visitors.
Rubin Moore owned a roofing company, and the preacher and Lucas agreed that the couple could live in a shack and use the communal kitchen. In return, Henry would work for Rubin Moore, while Becky would stay behind to help out with the chores around the House of Prayer.
For a while, all seemed rosy in the garden. Becky was very happy, and she attended Sunday services, visiting Granny Rich who had a soft spot for the young girl, whenever she could. And, considering her close contact with the religious comings and goings, it was not long before she got caught up in the spirit of things.
In August 1982, she renounced her life of sin, and decided to leave Henry and return to Florida. Henry could, if he wished to mend his unrighteous ways, join her, she told him. On 24 August, they argued well into the late hours, with Henry finally caving in to her demands, but he would go with her when she left. Around midnight, they silently gathered together their belongings, slipped out of the property without telling a soul, and started to hitch a ride for Florida.
A typically hot and sticky Texas night found them under a flyover intersection in Denton. There, in an open field, they spread out a blanket and undressed. Henry set aside his heavy Bowie knife for protection and asked Becky for sex. She refused, and they started to argue again. Lucas had changed his mind; he didn’t want to return to Florida after all, he wanted to remain at the House of Prayer. Becky was determined to go her own way, then she slapped him across the face. Without thinking, he heaved the knife into her chest. The blade sliced her heart, and she died minutes later. When he realised what he had done, Lucas cradled her in his arms and wept.
Before sunrise, Lucas decided that he should bury the body. He removed a ring from her finger, cut her into pieces, put all but the legs into pillowcases, and placed her in a shallow grave. Then he tied a belt around the legs, and dragged them into the brush where they would be eaten by wild animals. Henry returned to the House of Prayer with the story that Becky had hitched a ride from a truck driver. He appeared calm as he reiterated the phoney account to Rubin Moore, who apparently found it all quite plausible.
On 16 September, a Sunday evening, Lucas announced that he was taking Granny Rich to church. He went to her house, and, as it was too early for the service, they decided to drive across the State line, into Oklahoma, for several six-packs of beer. They drove and talked for almost two hours while the church service started and finished. Then murder took place.
Kate was a regular attender and she was furious at having missed church. As they turned in the direction of her home, Lucas suddenly veered off Route 81, drove along a track, crossed a railway line towards a disused oil well, and slammed on his brakes. Why Lucas killed Kate Rich is unknown and he won’t discuss the matter, but it is known that the old lady was very fond of Becky, therefore it seems feasible that she had been asking Lucas a few, very awkward questions
. He stabbed Kate and, as her last breath was leaving her lungs, he slashed an upside-down cross between her breasts and had sex with the dead body. Afterwards, he dragged the corpse over a nest of fire ants, and down into a reedy ditch, where he stuffed Kate Rich into a dried-out culvert. He lodged the corpse in place with a length of two-by-four timber, which he found by the railroad. He buried her clothes nearby and returned to the House of Prayer.
Known as ‘Hound Dog’, Sheriff Conway of Montague County, told me that Kate’s relatives had grown anxious about her disappearance and had reported the matter to him. The sheriff soon learned that she had last been seen alive in the company of Lucas, so he hauled him in for questioning. But the ugly man just clammed up. ‘There was not enough evidence for me to arrest that little sonofabitch,’ Conway said. ‘I checked his name through the National Crime Information Center’s computer and, yes, Lucas had a criminal record. But, that wasn’t enough and I had to set him free. We did keep an eye on him, believe me.’
The end for Lucas was not far off, for he had two serious problems. Kate Rich and Becky Powell were now reported as missing, both having last been seen alive with Lucas and, in that neck of the woods, news travels fast. Dozens of accusatory fingers were now pointing in his direction, so he left town, spinning the yarn that he was off to find Becky.
From Ringgold, he made his way to California, where he intended to lay a smokescreen by talking to the Smarts. But, while he was there, Mr Smart noticed blood on Henry’s car seat and he contacted the local police, who, in turn, contacted Sheriff Conway.
Lucas spent the remainder of October bumming around the country before he foolishly returned to Montague County. There, ‘Hound Dog’ had found an old 1981 Maryland arrest warrant for Lucas, who had previously violated his parole conditions. Sheriff Conway arrested his man and hooked him up to a polygraph machine, and the print-out indicated that Lucas was not telling the truth about Kate Rich. This was not sufficient evidence with which to charge him with capital murder, so, in an attempt to detain him longer, Conway teletyped his colleagues in Maryland. The Maryland police curtly informed Sheriff Conway that they were no longer interested in Lucas, and they certainly would not pay the extradition costs to have him brought back to their jurisdiction. Lucas was set free again.
* * *
For several months, Lucas drove the interstate highways of America. He visited Mexico, California and Illinois, where he met Gloria Ann Stephens, whom he brought back to Texas with him. He killed her and dumped the body outside the town of Magnolia, near Huntsville. Then, brazen-faced, he returned like a bad penny to the House of Prayer. Fearing that someone might stumble across the corpse of Kate Rich, he drove out to the culvert and retrieved the remains, which he later cremated in a wood-burning stove at the House of Prayer. He dumped the ashes into the garbage for their regular collection.
On 9 October 1982, Wise County Sheriff, Phil Ryan, from Decatur, and Denton County Sheriff Weldon Lucas, interviewed Henry at the House of Prayer, but still no charges were pressed. Within an hour of the law leaving, he went to Kate Rich’s home and set it ablaze, before travelling back to California. His car broke down in Tucumari, New Mexico, so he phoned Rubin Moore, asking him to collect him and take him back to Montague County.
‘Hound Dog’ Conway didn’t earn his name from being anything less than a tenacious law enforcement officer, and it transpired that Rubin Moore had taken possession of a .22-calibre pistol, which Lucas had given to him for safekeeping. With the Maryland parole violation a dead duck, Conway now had a rock-solid reason to arrest Lucas. ‘It is a felony for any ex-prisoner, convicted of a violent crime, to possess a firearm,’ Conway explained, ‘I was rubbing my hands with glee.’
‘Hound Dog’ arrested Lucas at the House of Prayer. He threw him into a cell where he complained about the cold – the sheriff had deliberately turned up the air-conditioning to freeze his suspect into talking. He also stopped Lucas’s ration of cigarettes and coffee. For his part, Lucas bitterly complained, ‘You sure know how to put a man down, sheriff.’
It was perhaps inevitable that a deal would be struck, as Lucas habitually smoked up to 80 cigarettes a day, drank coffee by the gallon, and hated the cold. He was soon confessing to a large number of murders, drawing pictures of his victims, and writing pages of notes, such as these:
one killed in new
york
light Brown hair
Blue eyes
New York
Buffalo
would Have Been Strangled
with white cord
gold ear
pins
had dress
inside apartment
Joanie
white pretty teeth
with gap in front
Top Teeth
Blue eyes small pin
Ear
Hair below shoulders
through over
Bridge
with head and fingers
missing
In Wichita Falls, on 1 October 1983, Lucas pleaded guilty to the murder of Kate Rich, and he was given a 75-year sentence. But he still had Becky’s murder to account for, and he stood trial for this at Denton County Court. His defence was that it was an involuntary act, committed in the heat of the moment, during an argument. In addressing the jury, Henry’s attorney, Tom Whitlock, threw in the only mitigation he had. ‘I think it happened in such a way it was strictly an accident,’ he said. However, what Tom Whitlock said, and what the jury of seven men and five women believed, were poles apart. On 10 November 1983, they deliberated for two hours before reaching a verdict of guilty. The judge gave Lucas a life sentence.
A Texas life sentence does not necessarily mean life, and there was every possibility that Lucas might be paroled in the future. However, Williamson County Sheriff, Jim Boutwell, had other ideas. If he had had his way, he would have seen to it that Lucas went to the electric chair, for the murder of ‘Orange Socks’.
Boutwell had questioned Lucas while he was being arraigned for the murder of Kate Rich. He had shown him a photograph of the body of ‘Orange Socks’, being careful to cover the neck area so that Lucas wouldn’t see the cause of death. The suspect could have come up with a number of causes; instead, he claimed, ‘Yeah, that one was a hitch-hiker, and she would have been a strangle.’ He went on to give other details about this murder, along with another 156 homicides across the country. But his confession to the ‘Orange Socks’ murder was all Sheriff Boutwell needed, and so that there would be no retraction, he filmed the confession on a video camera.
In the United States, the death penalty is usually sought when murder is accompanied by another serious offence, making the crime ‘aggravated’. With his attorney strongly advising his client to shut up, Lucas rambled on and on, saying that he had raped ‘Orange Socks’ before and after her death. Death by execution is merely a legal formality after that type of admission. Lucas had bought a ticket to his own perdition.
* * *
Captain Bob Prince, of Texas rangers Company ‘F’, is a law officer who is larger than life. Weighing in at well over 200lb, he stands 6ft 4in, and he is a formidable cop in every sense of the word. As a sergeant who was placed in charge of co-ordinating the 875 police agencies, with more than 1,000 investigators who wanted to interview Lucas about unsolved murders committed in their respective jurisdictions, Bob Prince was kept so busy that he had to book the interviews six months in advance. So popular was Lucas, that Bob Prince kept written records of most telephone calls and written requests.
Lucas now held centre stage during the greatest crime show on Earth and he was revelling in every moment of it. Dressed in an expensive new suit, shirt and shoes, he visited the dentist for the first time in his life and had a set of dentures fitted. Police officers competed to be photographed with Henry Lucas, who was becoming known as the most prolific serial killer in American history. It seems that no expense was spared as the police were as anxious to clear up as many crimes as possible.<
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By April, police had cleared up 190 cases, although Bob Prince explained that if Henry had had it his way, the number would have totalled 3,000 and more. In their rush to clear up unsolved homicides, and wipe the red chalk from their incident boards, officers did not concern themselves that he often confessed to murders committed on the same day, some 600 miles apart, when his only form of transportation was his feet.
As the files built up, police assumed that common patterns between the murders might emerge, although very few did. Apart from the I-35 and Jacksonville murders, when there was a common MO, the murders had been committed using pistols, rifles, shotguns, table legs, telephone cords, vases, knives, hammers, tyre irons, four-by-two lengths of timber, axes, vacuum cleaner cable, nylon rope, burnt, and even a car. Although Lucas has said, ‘They was killed by every way known to man, except poison,’ it is now commonly agreed that he may have only actually killed a fraction of the total he admitted to. Indeed, before Sheriff Boutwell passed away a few years ago – not getting his wish, to see Lucas executed – he was interviewed by a British television crew on this very subject.
Boutwell was adamant that Lucas had killed hundreds of people during his reign of terror, but when confronted with solid evidence that suggested otherwise, he refused to comment further, and threw the documentary-makers out of his jail. Bob Prince now agrees that Lucas may have murdered 30 people, if that, in his time.
As we are beginning to understand, the structure and quality of family interaction is an important factor in a child’s development. Especially in the way the child perceives family members, and their interaction with the child, and with each other.
Talking with Serial Killers Page 32