Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 4: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime.
Speaker 3: Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 2: And I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 5: We're joined today by doctor Katherine Ramsling here to talk
to us about Henry Lee Lucas, the Confession Killer, and
various other true crime concepts.
Speaker 3: Catherine, thank you for joining us again.
Speaker 6: I'm glad to be here. It's always fun to be
both you.
Speaker 5: So start us off by telling us about some of
the writing projects you've been working on since we last talked.
To you about the serial Killers Apprentice.
Speaker 6: One is the Palamino Pi. That's a book for the
horse that I ride, but that's not a very serious one.
And I also have the fourth book of my crime
fiction series, the Nutcracker Investigations, and this one is set
in the Outer Banks, and it might be the last
one maybe, But that was a lot of fun to write.
And I used a number of actual cases of serial
killers blended together to write that one that's coming out
in August.
Speaker 2: So what would make you step away from the Nutcracker series.
It sounds like it's been fun for you to write.
Speaker 6: My editor left, Oh no.
Speaker 7: Not because of anything you did or said. I hope no.
Speaker 6: I had other ideas, but I can. I will be
looking for other projects, so it won't stop writing. But
that's just the one that I've been working on.
Speaker 2: And how many books does this make now?
Speaker 6: Seventy three?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, how.
Speaker 5: I'm in awe of that ability that you have to
just write and churn things out.
Speaker 3: I keep trying, and I can't manage it.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm not managing it much anymore. I used to
do eight to ten hours every day despite working full
time as a professor, but anymore. I'm not as driven
because I spent a lot of time working on a
horse farm.
Speaker 5: Can you tell us a little bit about Sonny to
for anybody who isn't familiar.
Speaker 6: Sonny is a Palomino Kentucky Mountain sallehorse that I ride,
and he was a project for me who was lame,
and we've gotten him back to health and I ride
him now and in the process he told me his story.
So we have a book called Sonny says. It's all
about the farm and his philosophical ancestors like Son Crates
and Son Hostotle wise things they had to say, and
now he wants to be detective. So the book is
Sherlock Horse Palomino PI.
Speaker 7: I love that so much.
Speaker 2: Sonny was inspired by the fact that you've worked as
a criminal psychologist for so many years, and some of
that must have rubbed off on your rides.
Speaker 6: He was more inspired by the fact that he knew
I was a writer and now is his time. But
he could use me to do this.
Speaker 2: So when you're on a long trail ride with a writer,
you then tell some of your story. If you're a horse.
Speaker 6: And believe it or not, when you're riding, you have
to be very present. You're the vigilant one, and Sonny
is always the lead horse, so you have to be
vigilant for all kinds of things that could come jumping out.
So he trusts you and you trust him. But believe
it or not, when I was stuck on things, I'd
go for ride and he would convey to mex plot, twist, store,
character or something when it comes to me grooming or writing.
So that was funny.
Speaker 5: I love that. That's really great. That is amazing. So
when do Sunny's books come out? I know the first
one is already out, what about the second?
Speaker 6: One person is that the second will be out within
probably a week or so.
Speaker 5: Fantastic and we will put links to that in our
show notes as well as all of your other books,
all seventy three.
Speaker 6: There's a lot out of print, like the case of
a cookbook.
Speaker 5: And Catherine, we asked you to join us today to
talk about Henry Lee Lucas, who was called the confession Killer.
For anyone who isn't familiar with him, because he isn't
necessarily the most well known in the serial killer pantheon,
can you give us an explanation for why Henry Lee
Lucas was called the confession killer.
Speaker 6: He is most renowned for the fact that he confessed
to multiple murders. When he went to court one day
on weapons charity, he started confessing and said he killed
one hundred women. Then it was two hundred, it was
three hundred, that was six hundred, and I think the
last total was like three thousand, and then recanted, and
then recanted the recantation, and then it was clear that
many of these were false confessions, most of them by
fire were false confessions. So he was this very manipulative,
slick guy who took advantage of all these things that
law enforcement really wanted him to say, and he figured
out how to say it in a way that convinced
them that he had solid confessions to hundreds of crimes murders.
And so he's a confession murder because he just confessing confessed.
He spent so much time going from place to place
in the company of law enforcement from I think as
many as twenty seven states, and also he confessed to
several countries Canada, Japan said he drove to Japan in
his car.
Speaker 7: Well, that's unusual.
Speaker 2: I want to see the routing for the driving the
car to Japan.
Speaker 6: He said he delivered the kool aid to Jim Jones's town.
Speaker 3: Why didn't hear that one?
Speaker 7: W wow?
Speaker 6: Well, yes, you know. The funny thing is he's saying
some of these things and nobody, like he told the
guy the film Croup from Japan, I drove there, and
there's some in your country, And nobody at that point said,
wait a minute.
Speaker 2: Show me how you drove here from the United States.
Speaker 6: And just an old, crappy, old car. And yet unbelievably
he could have put on many thousands of miles to
get all over the place, but still he officers were
closing cases based only on his confession, no corroborating evidence,
and so it became. It was nineteen eighties and there
wasn't really a lot of work on how to figure
out if somebody's falsely confessing. People didn't really think somebody
would confess to something they didn't do. There was nothing
like that in those days. I think it was a
really interesting time for him to have done. So I
don't think it could be done today anywhere near as
easily as he did. But he had multiple reasons why
he did it, So we'll get into that at some point. Too,
So that's why it's called a confession killer.
Speaker 2: When you say in twenty twenty five, Catherine, that it
would be much more difficult for somebody who's obviously a
serial liar in addition to being a killer, it would
be more difficult for him to confess multiple times. Are
you referring to advance forensics and.
Speaker 6: What it's a person to be embarraed like they were
embarrassed by him, so they're more careful. I remember one guy,
I think his name was Robert Brown out of Colorado,
who confessed to forty eight murders, and at the forty
nine murders at the time, it was one more than
Gary Ridgeway. So I contacted him and said, beware, he
may just want the record, and that officer who was
in Texas said, I'm on it. He said, because we
do not have corroborating information for most of what he's saying,
no one's taken that seriously, and that they were roundly embarrassed.
And now it was a documentary out that shows how
they fed him information, how they did inadvertently. He showed
him crime scene photos, allowed him access to files. It's unbelievable.
But now we have a lot more sense, forensic sense
of how interrogation should go, so that you're not giving
information and letting the person have to tell you stuff
rather than you refreshing their memory. As the Texas Rangers
like to say, Yeah, it's a combination of we want
integrity here, why because we don't want to follow a
false confession while the real killer might be gaining time
to get away with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he's busy spinning tall tales. Someone else, yes,
has gotten away with murder.
Speaker 6: And in that case, multiple people. I think there were
at least twenty of his once he confessed to were
closed to other people. I'm sure there are more by now.
But once once some reporters started saying, this doesn't add up.
There's no chance he could be doing this in the
order in which they're talking about, because they're just too
far away from these incidents. They're too far away from
one another. They began to start looking at the actual
files and seeing that Lucas wasn't even getting things right
and the officers didn't seem to care.
Speaker 5: Let's the start was a very obvious premise. Why in
the world would someone confess to hundreds of murders that
he did not commit. You mentioned this idea of maybe
wanting notoriety to have the record, But what sort of
psychological need is somebody serving who's confessing willingly to hundreds
of crimes that they just did not do.
Speaker 6: Lucas had a number of motives. It doesn't cover everybody's
potential motives, but he has quite a few. And the
first one was he was arrested on a weapons chargement.
They suspected him of more serious crimes because he was
associated with some missing people, and so they threw him
into a cold cell with no bedding, and I think
he lasted four days before he called the jailer over
and said, I've got some things to tell you. So
his original motive was to improve his situation. But once
he put out he went to court and he said
I've killed one hundred women. That was more for attention,
because he was figuring out that they he was going
to get some privileges, he was going to get some
good meals, he was going to get a good bed
if he were delivering information that was helping them to
close cases. And then as things moved along, there was
a sister, a nun, sister Clemmy, who got really close
to him and began to lead him spiritually into why
the confessing was the will of God and that he
was doing a good thing clearing these cases and clearing
his soul, and so that then for a while became
the prominent part of his motivation. But also some of
the investigators, especially the Texas strangers in Sheriff Boutwell, who
was his sponsor, they were praising him. This is a guy,
a nobody, a loser is of life who was getting
praise and being called to hero for you're doing the
right you're doing a great thing. He was given an office,
he was allowed to wander around the prison, He had
access to places that were under security locks, he was
given files, he was he got phone calls from all
over the country. So this became a big deal to him.
And also he wanted to please people. He was the
kind of person that like in Lonesome Dove, there's a
guy named Jake, where they say any window blow him
and he'll just go with whatever the influences. And that
was Lucas. Absolutely, if it sounded he's getting attention or
he's getting something in return, he'd say whatever you wanted
him to say. If there were a couple of times
when somebody would say, when one of the officers would say,
can you help us out here, Henry, we got case.
Oh sure, I'll do it too. There. So there were
so many motivations for him at different periods of time
while he's doing this, But a lot of it was
that kind of thing that he had with sister Klemmy
and Sheriff Boutwell. The three of them were like a community,
and Boutwell was firing him around. There was a Japanese
film company that came in the hoarders who would come
in and write about it. It really became a big deal.
So it was enhancing his status, was getting him better
living conditions. He had one death penalty, so he knew
they were never going to put him to death as
long as he was confessing, so it potentially gave him
more years to live and it made him famous. This
is a guy who really just was nobody, and now
he's the biggest serial killer in the world. I know.
It was very easy for him to achieve that status.
Speaker 2: Where was he incarcerated when he was starting this spree
of confessions was.
Speaker 6: The exact town. It was in Texas, and he was
moved around a lot. Sometimes offices would come to him,
but sometimes he was taken to other locations. And I
remember Waco County. I think it was right. They thought
something's up with this. This doesn't make much sense, and
there were people who tested him with fake cases, and
he came through and confessed to them. But it's still
it didn't stop. It didn't stop the rangers from continuing this.
I don't call it a hoax, even though they did
call it that it was. I think they were well intentioned,
but they were sloppy at what they were. You can
see it on camera. I'm not just saying that. You
see their techniques on camera, showing him crime scene photos,
telling him information leading him to close the case. These
are all amateur things for stigators to do, and so
that's that was a problem. But then he would go
he'd get these trips.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about this. These are like field
trips if you're normally locked up in a prison somewhere.
Speaker 6: Not just field trips.
Speaker 7: There.
Speaker 6: He went to long distances. In one place, he cleared
a suicide as a homicide, so the woman got the
insurance payout and they had a big party. The law
enforcement brought in allegedly brought in hookers and.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Wow, I missed that from the documentary.
Speaker 7: Wow, they didn't mention.
Speaker 6: That allegedly because as a story I read that they
actually got He got a lot of He was taken
for steak dinners, he was taken love. And they said
they didn't have any fear of him. They would let
him wander around without handcuffs on or any medicals of anything,
and honest, and they would obey his orders. He was
ordering them around and they would do whatever it took
to keep getting these confessions. So it all started in Texas,
but he went to a lot of different places.
Speaker 5: I just feel like, shouldn't law enforcement agencies, like not
only the rangers, but also the others who were flying
in from across the country to talk to him.
Speaker 3: Shouldn't somebody have been able to tell that he was lying?
Was this some sort of mass delusion? Like what was
happening here?
Speaker 6: Skillful? And it was the eighties, nineteen eighties, so we
have to keep that in mind. They had cases they
wanted to clear. There was one time when they filled
an auditorium with officers from I think, oh more than
twenty maybe twenty twenty seven states with their case files
asking him, and he's in the middle answer their questions,
and he's like a book, a mind reader who's reading
clues off of you and watching your response. And I
think I stabbed her in the back. No, it wasn't
the back, guy, It must have turned her. So he'd
watched their face and if it looked like he wasn't
saying quite the right thing, he'd back off. And then
he'd tried to get them to tell him what he
needed to say, and they would quite often, Oh wow, No,
she was turned over than when we found her. But
then he's just the cold reading that psychics.
Speaker 2: Dude, it's just regurgitating what they're telling him. Though, say
that again, he's just regurgitating what they're telling you.
Speaker 6: Because he's adding things that they don't know. Yeah, he's
adding things. Is it's sounding very much like he must
have the whole story, because he knows a lot more
than we know. If you're a good storyteller and you
can pull all kinds of Look at Casey Anthony, how
fast she was at her feet with all these facts.
It turned out not to be true, but she could
pull these names out of the air. And that was
it was quite a talent, and Lucas had that too.
He had a way to fabricate facts that made it
sound like as part of the case.
Speaker 5: So Lucas had a partner named Audust Tool, and he
allegedly perpetrated some of these crimes with Autist Tool, though
I don't think it was all of them.
Speaker 3: I think it was just some of them.
Speaker 5: So what do we know about Autis And was he
falsely confessing to these crimes as well, or was he
actually linked to some of them, like via DNA?
Speaker 3: What do we know about this guy?
Speaker 6: There was no DNA in the eighties, of course. Yeah.
The first DNA in our country is nineteen eighty seven,
and at that there were very few cases, very expensive
process and it wasn't really in use to the early nineties,
so we're not really talking about that kind of linkage.
Audust too. I'm glad you called him Audist because many
people call him Otis, but Henry certainly called him Audist
anytime he referred to him. And this is an interesting duo.
Both of them had very abusive, terrible childhoods. Both of
them were dressed as girls by their mothers.
Speaker 7: That's such a rare thing.
Speaker 6: And yet both of them were, so it was very strange.
They met in Florida like a skid row place and
got along, became lovers, and they would go on the road,
and who knows how many people they claimed have murdered
they actually did. Ottis was his own He was a
serial killer in his own right. And both of them
claimed to have killed when they were fourteen, first when
they were fourteen, now Lucas retracted that later, but who knows.
And both of them killed in sexual situations when they
were fourteen. Henry Lucas killed a girl that he was
trying to have sex with and at least the way
he described it. And then Oudis killed a guy that
he claimed was hitting on him. So they start young,
both tortured animals. As two talked about being part of
the Hand of Satan, the sort of Satanic occult group.
He said that his grandmother would go dig up bodies
and to get body parts, things like that. How much
of this is true, we don't know. We really don't know.
That he loved making up stories and he would catch
There was a point at which he was in prison
in Florida and Lucas was in prison in Texas, and
they had them talking on the phone and they were
just egging each other on and having a blast because
they thought this was fun to kid with law enforcement.
And they're talking about cannibalism and barbecue sauce and you know,
all these absurd things. And unfortunately the officers were eating
it up, so to speak, barbecue sause. But they were
just as as Lucas said, just funning with them. Having
it was a game. And that's another motive for false
confessions is duping delight. We can fool them, They're at
no cost to me. I can have fun with law
enforcement and make them look stupid. And Lucas said that
many times that was why he was doing this.
Speaker 5: Honest tool actually did confess, she said to the murder
of Adam Walsh at one point or another, and recanted
later again, did they ever figure out? Did they ever
come down?
Speaker 6: They closed the case, and I think they simply closed
it because they were so sick of everybody second guessing
did he do it? And didn't he do it? It
was he couldn't. I think there was no DNA run
and they lost some of the evidence, I believe, so
they couldn't really make a solid case. They had to
at least two confessions for me, if not more. But
they also did have him denying it too, so it
was a difficult case. But I know that they eventually
did close it and say that he's the guy. And
I think that John Walsh, Adam Walsh's father, said he's
satisfied with that.
Speaker 2: John Walsh also said to me in a one on
one conversation for what it's worth, that the more he
learned about the Colonial Parkway murders my sister's case, the
more reminded him of Adam's case. With the mistakes, discarded evidence,
the arrogance of the FBI. It just goes on and on.
And because I had said to him, John, you're so
pro law enforcement on the air, and he said, that's
on the air. This was at the time that America's
most wanted was on the air. So I'm not sure
if mister Walsh accepts this idea that autist's tool was
responsible for Adam's death or not. I think he's probably
as a father, has probably moved on and.
Speaker 6: You moved on. I'm not sure everybody in that family has.
But I don't have any reason to doubt him either,
even though he's got a persona on the air that
to an audience that loves things good or ebook black
and white, that I don't know that he would have
just said I accept this if he didn't right agree,
it's about his son, And I don't know all the
things that went on, because they really didn't disclose why
they decided to close the case. At least maybe they have.
In my understanding, it was a back room thing where
they talked to the parents, didn't really make the public
aware of everything they had.
Speaker 2: Here's something I really struggle with though, in these stories.
When we're talking about Lucas Antool, we're dealing with probably dozens,
if not hundreds, of really smart, accomplished investigators, and I
think of law enforcement people. Kristen may back me up
on this, or she can feel free to disagree. They're
usually very smart, cynical. They've seen it all, They've worked
tough cases around the country. Why are they falling for
this stuff? You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be
right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back
here at mindover Murder.
Speaker 6: Again forty years ago. You have to keep that in mind.
They're not trained in seeing and I think it was aboutwis.
I can't believe anybody would confess to the many conscious
to get a state dinner. But he was not seeing
all the motivations that Lucas had going for him. He
was not recognizing the sister Clemmy angle of clearing your
soul and being how heroic you're being and you're doing
the good work of God. He wasn't seeing the bigger
picture he was, and he was all caught up in
ego stuff too. I think that's pretty clear. It's not
the only case that some things were mishandled with him.
I don't want to get myself in trouble with law enforcements,
so I'm not going to say I'm not going to
make a judgment a blank at judgment about how smart
or efficient or effective there as a whole. I think
you have to look at the actual case, who was
involved in it. Like the Confession Killer documentary is a
Bob Prince is in it. He was part of this,
And even right after you show a clip of them
making huge mistakes, he's denying any of that happened. It's
right there on the video and you're saying it didn't happen.
What do you make of that. He's not going to
say anything against the Texas Rangers no matter what. I
don't care what you have in video, So make of
that what you will. But I think if you watch
that documentary you will see many contradictions. Now that's the
Texas part of it, right. We've got investigators coming in
from half of the states, if not more, and they're
coming in and really earnestly trying to close the case,
and they don't have much evidence. Now we've got Lucas saying, oh, yeah,
I was able to talk about different features of the
landscape and to say, oh, yeah, there was a body
right by the car because he saw the picture. He
was allowed access to the files, but they might not
have even known he saw the files. And if they
didn't know he saw the files, and he's describing a
house with a very peculiar feature that only the killer
could not. Of course, they're going to believe it because
they don't know what he's being shown before they get there.
So that's a lot of the story that we don't
know now when you look at what the journalists were doing.
Hugh Ainsworth Steve Ager was a criminology professor. He interviewed
Lucas for forty and you interviewed this tool also. The
two of them try to get multiple perspectives. So you
have those people coming in and now it's cop versus journalists.
Have almost this war game over. You know what's going
on with Henry Le Lucas. Don't take my star witness
away from me, don't take the glory of all these
cases closed away from us, and the journalists going, maybe
none of your cases are any good. So you get
the two extremes and you got this conflict going, and
you have newspapers trying to get a big scoop on it.
So much dynamic was happening at a time when there
was very little forensic training.
Speaker 3: It is very interesting.
Speaker 5: There are six cases here in Tidewater that investigators had
taken to Lucas to try to clear to.
Speaker 3: See was he involved in all of them?
Speaker 5: And since then, four of those cases have been linked
via DNA to other people who are not Lucas, and
there's two left. And I'm very curious. I've been trying
to do some research and unfortunately not getting very far
because law enforcement doesn't want to talk about these cases.
Speaker 3: It's made about.
Speaker 6: It was so frustrating. Because it is why not talk
about them? They were exactly some long ago. Nobody in
the current department is going to be embarrassed. So what
is what's the problem? And I know part of the
problem is what's going on right now with true crime culture,
with everybody jumping in and taking ownership of cases and
claiming their speculation is fact. And I think they just
don't want to get into the fray of that. I think.
But I do believe if you were to develop trust
with any of the officers who had access to those cases,
you would and you would eventually get access.
Speaker 5: I'm hoping so, because ultimately, at the end of the day,
it really is just getting justice for these victims.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the last thing these guys want, to women want
is a podcaster coming along. I'd say, look how mishandled
this case was by that department, And because you're seeing
a lot of those podcasts out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that is not at all what we want.
Speaker 5: What we want is to ensure about trut Yeah, absolutely,
but boy, you do have to wonder how many of
these cases from that era that he confessed to need
a second look. Not because we want law enforcement to
be ashamed or embarrassed, But because there is a victim
out there and families along with it who need to
see justice served.
Speaker 6: And that second look needs to be soon. Because people died,
evidence is lost or corrupted. Yeah, that's the problem. But
the number of families who were told it was Lucas
and then found out later through DNA, a confession, a
different confession that it wasn't Lucas. Imagine what they had
to go through, especially if they weren't really sure, are
you sure it's him? And then we're stonewalled and then
years later come back to it and find out, oh
never find was not him? Oh God, the anguish of that,
the mishandling of their loved one was horrifying.
Speaker 2: If anything, my default position going forward now would be
if Henry Lee, Lucas or hotiest Tool for that matter,
confess to something. Given their plethora of lies here, I
actually think a safer assumption is if those two idiots
said they did it, you can probably take it to
the bank that they didn't do it.
Speaker 6: Great that I would have the same default position now.
Steve Egger, who did interview them, he's no longer alive,
but who did interview him, estimated about sixty. I think
that's a high number. I think it's not sixty at all.
And I really think the way Tool and Lucas played
off each other entertaining themselves, I think there were some
they did. I don't think it was anywhere near the
high and maybe we'll never know who their actual victims were.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: I remember back in the I think it was pre pandemic,
but only barely when the name Samuel Little came to
the forefront of public consciousness.
Speaker 6: Because stroke killer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because he had He ended up ultimately confessing to
I think it was ninety three.
Speaker 3: Sixty have been confirmed?
Speaker 6: Do?
Speaker 3: People like Henry.
Speaker 6: Lucas said it was fifty something.
Speaker 5: It was the last time I checked, it said sixty.
But I guess who really He did.
Speaker 6: Something similar to Lucas and he it was Axis Ranger
who actually kind of go into But he did something
similar to Lucas. He drew the pictures right, yeah, and
again we but he did something in a more predatory
way than Lucas did. He would pick victims that he knew,
like drug addicts, sex work, black sex workers. He would
pick people he knew were not going to have many
resources devoted to solving it. And he traveled a lot,
and there are very clear travel records for him, so's
he's more credible. And in fact, because he fought not
to be convicted. He was picked up in Los Angeles
and he really fought those convictions and then he wouldn't
talk at all. Unlike Lucas, he wasn't using this to
improve his status or anything. So I would guess I
don't know if ninety three is it, but he was
killing for decades and the way in his manner of
killing was very calculated, in a way that Lucas's wasn't. Now,
Lucas said he used all manner of weapons and everything
but poison, and really it was absurd when they put
all the different ways people had died. It was absurd
to think one person was using all these things, whereas
with Little it is the same thing over and over.
Then mostly the same type of victim here and there,
where it was a runaway or somebody who just got
off a bus or something like that, but it was
pretty consistent. So if you were to look at him
against Lucas, he's got a lot more going for him
in terms of credibility.
Speaker 2: I think in the Samuel Little example, do you feel
like the paintings, the drawings that he did of his victims,
and then the stories that he told that went with them.
I remember reading that the detectives were surprised at his
level of re call. He seemed to remember a lot
about where he was and when this happened, and a
bit about who the women were, And as you said,
he definitely zer it in on marginalized individuals. But do
you think the drawings helped cement Little as a potential
killer in many of those consultations.
Speaker 6: If he captured something excuse me, if he captured something
unique about the victim in terms of their parents or
where they're found, or jewelry or a tattoo something, Yes,
but it wasn't like he was like an amazing artist.
Now it had to it would have to be things
that you know, with the circumstances, it would have to
be things that stand out that make that drawing seem authentic.
Now we also have DNA now that we didn't have
with Lucas, to confirm some of those. But I think
if you compare the two side by side, you really
can see how lucas confessions are all over the place
and absurd and there's no way he covered all that
that many miles in that limited period of time, and
we definitely have records of him being elsewhere and he
didn't drive a thousand miles in one day to then
get back to check into work. You don't have that
with Sam Little, and I also do I go with
his reluctance. He wasn't keen about talking, and you'll find
something similar with Richard Cottingham and the kinds of confessions
he's doing now, whereas initially he wasn't saying anything, but
little by little, some people have won him over that
Lucas was the initiator of it all. That makes a
big difference. There was something else about him about the
Oh there was one thing he said to I can't
remember which investigator, but he said, you figure out if
it's one of my victims, because I always left him
naked with only their socks on. And I thought, well,
then you could just go look at every single victim
to see if they were naked with only their socks on,
because he just said that is what he did to
all his victims. And yet nobody thought of that. There
was only one with no only socks on, and it
wasn't his victim, but he was playing with them. He
had hooked into Oh that's a unique thing, and he
threw it out there, but nobody went, wait a minute,
my victim was fully clothed, or my victim didn't have
socks on. You didn't see people doing that? Why not?
Speaker 5: There's another really intriguing component of Henry Le Lucas's story,
and I think it was about episode three of the
Confession Killer documentary. This is five episodes when this came up,
and that is Phyllis Wilcox. So, Frennie and I feel like,
for the record, Catherine, you would suggest that we could
do a whole entire episode just on serial killer groupies.
And I think it's a great idea. But Phyllis Wilcox,
for anybody who doesn't know the background on her, she
assumed the identity of one of Lucas's victims, Becky Powell,
in an attempt to get him out of jail. We
learned later that she had also communicated with Charles Sminson
and Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. So what can
you tell us about the women who become serial killer groupies?
For lack of a better term, I guess groupie is
the best thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Because there's prison groupies and there are serial killer groupees.
They cross over a bit, but they are distinctly different.
Often the women who get enamored of an inmate, whether
serial killer or not, I have often seen some aspect
of fame to it. They're on the news, they're being
talked about, and they and they see them and for
some of them number of reasons, I can't put them
all among group but some of them see the little boy.
And it's also, by the way, not just women. There
are males who also do this, So it's largely women,
but it's not exclusively women. But they see the little
boy and they're hookers out and they think they can
make a difference in that person's life. Sometimes they're religious
and they want to save their souls. Sometimes it's they
want to have a boyfriend, and it's the best, the
best kind of boyfriend, because he's always thinking about them
because he's got nothing else to do, writing them letters
and whatnot. But he can't stop them from going out
if they want to go out, and they don't have
to do any laundry or dishes. Are cooking for you.
In a way, there's an upside to that kind of relationship.
For some women, sometimes they've been abused and they see
they're at home with this person they or they feel
that he's the alpha male. He can kill others, and
so he would protect me. So there's a number of
different really have to look at each case, And in
her case, she took it more farther than most. She
studied up on a book about Lucas and learned everything
she could about Becky. She was clearly not Becky, but
she learned everything she could about her, so that when
people questioned her, she had all the answers. Plus Henry
was given her more. He was telling her things in
part because Becky had, according to him, been the love
of his life, even though she's only ten years old
when he met her, fifteen when he killed her. That
was the love of his life. And so he would
cry over the idea that maybe Becky is coming back
to him in some form, and so he would feed
her all kinds of information and details, and finally they
outed her because she had all the letters. But originally
she was able to fool people because she knew the
answers to their questions about where Becky lived, what was
her actual name, and how did she get along with people,
and so all the things that they were asking her,
she'd memorized, so it was very easy for her to
pass herself as Becky. And she was in love with Henry,
even though she had her own husband, who she said
was okay with this, and that does happen too, by
the way, because she's not the only one I've heard
about with So she wanted to show that Becky was
alive and that Henry was unjustly imprisoned for that death.
Says she's got Kate Rich to contend with another woman.
Henry was tied to her murders as she's clearly delusional,
but she was getting away with it. And it's a
very interesting story of the devotion of some of these
women to these inmates who and they believe somehow they're
going to get them out. Now he had a death penalty.
I think he still had the death penalty hanging over
his head, so she was trying to save his life.
Speaker 3: I just find it so bizarre.
Speaker 5: He did not seem in the videos that I watched
of him, He did not seem all that charismatic.
Speaker 3: He did not seem charming.
Speaker 5: He's certainly not a Ted Bundy, who we know that
was all surface shine anyway, there was a monster underneath.
I just don't I don't understand how this happens.
Speaker 6: He had a fiance when the year he killed his
mother in nineteen sixty, even with his false eye and
a prison sentence behind him. What can you say? Love
is blind? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just sitting here shaking my head, like this
stuff makes no sense to me.
Speaker 6: Look at the Menendez brothers and how many women have
been involved with them.
Speaker 2: Oh, they've been married several times. This is nuts. I
was thinking about the Menanda's brothers.
Speaker 6: And I think you're going to find any one who's
got a degree of fame for nefarious crime will attract
these women. And some are highly educated. One woman was
a model, when was a philosophy PhD. It's not like
there's stupidity here. It's something is going on with the
person who wants to do this, and it's the dynamic
of their background that somehow is getting something back, some
reward back from getting involved like this.
Speaker 5: So the lessons we learned from Henry Lucas, of course,
is that you have to be very careful about believing
somebody who is offering up tons and tons of confessions.
What kind of training does law enforcement have now that
keeps them from falling into the trap of this guy's
confessing endlesslie.
Speaker 3: And I believe him.
Speaker 6: There's great training, but the department has to pay for it,
so I go around and do a lot of trainings.
I don't train them in interrogations, but I know people
who do who are really expert at it, including I
remember an FBI agent who was absolutely certainly there was
no such thing as a false confession, and he was
an interrogation specialist, and then he got one that really
changed his training. His name as Jim's Jim train him,
I think his name. He's got a book about that.
He got a false confession despite all his training, and
he realized the assumptions that went into his work, that
we had led him into this error. And I think
you can see with the Rangers, they have this the
notion of the integrity and they couldn't be wrong, and
nobody's going to falsely confess to get a steak dinner,
and the ego that's involved clearly that they're not seeing.
If there was one case in the Confession Killer where
Lucas actually says that there were two kids and the
male was up here and he says, fifty five miles
down the road? Was it female? Like? What? What did
he drive?
Speaker 7: And keepometer?
Speaker 6: It was fifty six miles And he could only have
known that because Boutwell told.
Speaker 7: Him that it was in the file.
Speaker 6: Right, It is them denying, and yet you watch them
hand over the case file and the show the crime
scenes and the maps and all the stuff. He needs
to be able to say these things so that they
have a tunnel vision about what they're actually doing. And
then when you ask them did you do this? They
can say no, of course not. And it is a
blindness that comes from a certain belief system. They're not
nuts or stupid, they just don't believe they've done anything wrong.
And you can show them the video and they still
nope't do that. So it's a very instructive documentary, I think.
But back your question, there is a lot of good training,
and it requires that the departments have the resource to
be able to send their officers to this training. Now,
some of us, like in Pennsylvania, I do it just
for the state troopers for free, and you will find
that but that's pretty rare because hardly anybody has the
time to just be able to go train for free.
You have to have some kind of compensation, so you
have to have resources in the department, and typically they're
going to if it's a small department, they're going to
bring in a specialist and they can and the FBI
will offer that for free. So that's great. And the
FBI now they realize all the duping that can go on.
They understand the notion of duping delight and of the
seeking fame and all the things that go into false confessions.
They're up on the research. There's a lot of it,
and I think that I think we're a long ways
away from where we were forty years.
Speaker 2: Ago, so that I question some lessons have been learned
from some of these most egregious cases. Yes, we're at
forty nine minutes, so we have to steer to a close.
Speaker 5: All right, Catherine, this has been eliminating as always. Is
there any projects you're working on that you'd like to
plug for us before we wrap for this episode.
Speaker 6: At the novels series, I think because every one there's
for it of the novels and everyone is based on
actual cases and actual methodologies, and the person who's my
main character is a forensic psychologist who runs a PI agency,
and a lot of the cases are based on things
that I've worked on or done, so that's part of it.
And I'm working on a memoir. When it will ever
come out, I don't know, but it's involved all the
encounters I've had, the unusual encounters I've had, my in
the criminal justice world that I am in.
Speaker 3: We are looking forward to that. Hopefully it will come
out at some point or another.
Speaker 6: I hope so too.
Speaker 5: And again, remind everybody the name of your most recent
books so that they can pick it up.
Speaker 6: The most recent book that's coming out in August is
You Can't Hide, and the one before that was called
Dead Handed.
Speaker 5: Thanks all right, Catherine, Thank you so much for joining us.
We really appreciate you taking the time to offer your expertise.
Speaker 6: I had fun.
Speaker 5: Thank you That is going to do it for this
episode of Minded for Murder. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 3: We'll see you next time.
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