Henry Lee Lucas. Self: Murder: No Apparent Motive. An unwanted child born to a destitute family in Blacksburg, Virginia, Henry Lee Lucas' mother, 41-year-old Viola, turned tricks in their dirt floor cabin in front of the family. She hated her new son from the time he was born and continually...
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Henry Lee Lucas
Biography
2
3 August 1936, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
Date of Death 12 March 2001, Huntsville, Texas, USA (apparent heart failure)
Nicknames The Deadly Drifter
The Confession Killer
An unwanted child born to a destitute family in Blacksburg, Virginia, Henry Lee Lucas' mother, 41-year-old Viola, turned tricks in their dirt floor cabin in front of the family. She hated her new son from the time he was born and continually abused him. Her husband Anderson, who had lost his legs in a railroad accident, was also constantly subjected to Viola's violence, but Henry, being a child, got the worst of it. Anderson eventually committed suicide by sleeping outside in the snow when he could no longer bear it, Viola entertaining another trick in his home; he contracted pneumonia and shuffled off this mortal coil. Henry, thus, bore the full focus of Viola's wrath after his pappy's unseasonable demise.
When Henry entered school in 1943, Viola in her meanness deliberately dressed him as a girl, even going so far to coif his hair into sausage curls, then sent him off to the schoolhouse, all dolled up, albeit barefoot. Not only forced to face the antagonism of his boy schoolmates as he attended to his education in such unlikely duds, he also had to face Viola's wrath when a teacher, pitying the lad, bought young Lucas a pair of shoes. Viola beat her son for accepting charity. This charmless woman killed any animals that her son tried to keep as a pet, and denied him medical attention when he cut his eye with a knife, leading to its surgical removal.
Viola once beat Henry with a a piece of lumber that put him in a coma, off and on, for three days. Viola's live-in lover, familiarly known as "Uncle Bernie," eventually took the Lucas lad to the hospital. In the demerit column, Uncle Bernie introduced Lucas to the joys of bestiality, teaching the boy how to kill hapless and unhappy animals after they had been tortured and sexually abused.
In March 1951, the 15-year-old Henry Lee Lucas picked up a 17-year old girl near Lynchburg, Virginia, propositioned her, then strangled her when she resisted the advances of this loathsome Lothario. He buried the corpse in the woods near Harrisburg, Virginia. (Lucas confessed to the murder in 1983.) Three years later, he was sent to prison for six years, convicted of the crime of burglary. Lucas escaped from prison twice in 1957, but was caught each time.
On September 2, 1959, he was released from prison and moved in with his sister in Tecumseh, Michigan, but his now-elderly mother demanded that he return with her to Blacksburg. It was there, on the night of January 11, 1960, that an intoxicated Viola struck her likewise intoxicated son with a broom and was stabbed to death for her transgression against his person. After his arrest, Lucas confessed that he had sexually assaulted his mother's corpse, though he soon recanted, a pattern of behavior that was a harbinger of things to come.
Henry Lee Lucas was sentenced to 20-40 years in prison for the killing of Viola and was clapped in the hoosegow in March 1960. He was soon transferred to the state hospital for the criminally insane, where he remained for six years. Paroled on June 3, 1970, he moved in with his relatives in Tecumseh. However, he ran afoul of the law in December 1971, charged with molesting two teenage girls, a charge later reduced to simple kidnapping. Sent to the state penitentiary, he was paroled in August 1975, over his own objections. Employed by a Pennsylvania mushroom farm, he married his cousin's widow in December of that year. They moved to Maryland, but they broke up, his wife eventually divorcing him in the summer of 1977, claiming that he had molested her daughters by a previous marriage.
Cast out, Henry Lee Lucas became a drifter, roaming throughout the South, allegedly killing female hitch-hikers as he moseyed along Interstate 35 in the Lonestar state of Texas. Fatefully, the 40-year old, one-eyed bisexual met the 29-year-old homosexual drifter Ottis Toole in a Florida soup kitchen in late 1976.
They hit it off immediately, becoming lovers and boon traveling companions; whether they actually were serial killers together is still clouded in mystery, though it likely is true.
In 1978, Toole and Lucas moved in with Toole's mother and sister in Jacksonville. Lucas fell in love with Toole's 10-year old female cousin, Frieda "Becky" Powell, whom he eventually adopted and lived with as husband and wife. But that lay in the future. Toole and Lucas went to work for a local roofing company, but they often missed work as they frequently went back on the road, two men born to ramble, spreading their version of hell along the highways and by-ways of America.
In 1981, Toole's mother and sister died within a few months of each other, and Becky and Frank were placed in juvenile homes. Returning to Jacksonville, Lucas helped obtain their release, and Becky and her brother Frank were taken on the road by the Henry Lee and Uncle Ottis, where they were exposed to the depravity of their murderous traveling show. It was at this time that Becky, Ottis Toole's niece, became the common-law wife of Lucas, who was over 30 years her senior. When child welfare authorities launched a search for Becky and Frank in January 1982, Becky fled to California with Lucas. Her brother Frank eventually wound up in a psychiatric facility in 1983 after bearing witness to the the brutality of his uncle and "brother-in-law."
