‘Mass Killer’ a Fraud, Texas Official Says

Texas Atty. Gen. Jim Mattox said Wednesday that the more than 360 confessions of Henry Lee Lucas were a “grand fraud” and that polygraph tests showed the “mass murderer” was a hoaxer who may have killed no more than three people.

In releasing a 60-page report after a yearlong investigation, Mattox took law enforcement agencies to task, saying that, in order to clear their books, they had ignored mounting evidence that Lucas was confessing to murders he did not commit.

While Lucas was confessing to hundreds of murders, lawmen did nothing to bring an end to his hoax, Mattox said, adding: “Even as evidence of the hoax mounted, they continued to insist Lucas murdered hundreds of persons.”

After the confessions, law enforcement agencies cleared more than 200 killings from their books by attributing them to the one-time drifter. Last year, Lucas recanted all but three murders.

Mattox called on police agencies in Texas and the rest of the country to reopen any case closed with a Lucas confession, pointing out that, where cases have been wrongly closed, murderers remain free.

“I’m concerned about the ones he did not kill,” he said. “The trails to them are getting very cold.”

Mattox said polygraph tests showed that Lucas had committed at least three murders: the slayings of his mother in Michigan in 1961 and of two other women, Kate Rich and Freida Powell, in North Texas in 1982. He said the yearlong investigation showed that, on numerous occasions, Lucas could not have committed the murders he confessed to because he was in another part of the country.

Rangers Defend Selves

This is not the first time that Mattox and others have questioned the thoroughness of police investigators in the Lucas case. Last year, the Dallas Times Herald printed an exhaustive study that drew many of the same conclusions as the report issued Wednesday by the attorney general’s office. The Texas Rangers, who coordinated the investigation, were cited by Mattox’s office earlier for sloppy police work. The Rangers defended themselves by saying they only assisted other law enforcement agencies in their investigations.

Col. Jim Adams, the head of the Rangers, said there was little new in the Mattox report.

“Little effort appears to have been made to explore and report on those many cases where the investigative agencies involved still believe Lucas to be the prime suspect,” he said. “I don’t know of one case that has been cleared by a law enforcement agency attributed to Lucas where some other person has subsequently been charged with a crime.”

Lucas has been convicted of 10 murders and received the death penalty in one of them. Adams said about 160 cases remain in which Lucas is considered a suspect.

Data Spoon-Fed

But Mattox said it appeared that investigators spoon-fed Lucas information about various murder cases before he confessed to them. He said also that Lucas was never able to lead authorities to a body that had not already been found. Further, he said, there was no physical evidence to connect Lucas with any of the murders except the three in Texas and Michigan.

“It is inconceivable an individual could have committed that many murders without leaving some physical evidence,” Mattox said. “He did not commit the majority of these cases.”