NEW: Confession Killers w Katherine Ramsland

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
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 (00:25):
My name is Kristin Dilly.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
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, Bill Thomas.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm
Bill Thomas. We're joined today by doctor Katherine Ramslin here
to talk to us about Henry Lee Lucas, the Concession Killer,
and various other true rhyme concepts.

Speaker 5 (00:55):
Catherine, thank you for joining us again. I'm glad to
be here. It's always fun to be with both of you.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
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 (01:08):
One is the Palamino PI.

Speaker 5 (01:10):
That's a book brought 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.
This one is set in the Outer Banks and it
might be the last one.

Speaker 6 (01:26):
Maybe that was a lot of fun to write.

Speaker 5 (01:28):
And I used a number of actual cases of serial
killers blended together to write that one that's coming on
in August.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
So what would make you step away from the Nutcracker series.
It sounds like it's been fun for you to write.

Speaker 6 (01:41):
My editor left.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Oh no, not because of anything you did or said.
I hope no.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
I had other ideas. I will be looking for other projects,
so it won't stop writing. But that's just the ones
that I've been working on.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
And how many books does this make now?

Speaker 6 (01:59):
Seventy three?

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Oh my god, I'm in awe of that ability that
you have to just write and turn things out. I
keep trying and I can't manage it.

Speaker 6 (02:09):
Well, I'm not managing it much anymore.

Speaker 5 (02:11):
I used to do eight to ten hours every day
despite working full time as a professor. But I'm not
as driven because I spent a lot of time working
on a horse farm.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Can you tell us a little bit about Sonny to
for anybody who isn't familiar.

Speaker 5 (02:26):
Sonny is a Palomino Kentucky Mountain Salah horse 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.

Speaker 6 (02:40):
So we have a book called Sonny says. It's all
about the farm and.

Speaker 5 (02:44):
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 3 (03:00):
I love that so much.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
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 5 (03:12):
He was more inspired by the fact that he knew
I was a writer and now is his time, or you.

Speaker 6 (03:18):
Could use me to do this.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
So when you're on a long trail ride with a writer,
you then tell some of your story.

Speaker 5 (03:27):
If you're a horse, believe it or not, when you're riding,
you have to be very present. You're the vigilant one,
and Sonny's always the lead horse, so you have to
be vigilant for all kinds of things that could come
jumping out.

Speaker 6 (03:39):
So he trusts you and you trust him. But believe
it or not, when I was stuck on things, I'd
go to ride and he would convey to me the
next plot, twist, store character, or something when it comes
to me grooming or riding. So that was funny.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
I love that. That's really great. That is amazing. So
when do Sunny's books come out? But I know the
first one is already out, what about the second one?

Speaker 6 (04:02):
Versions that the second will be out within probably a
week or so.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Fantastic and we will put links to that in our
show notes, as well as all of your other books,
all seventy three of them.

Speaker 6 (04:15):
There's a lot out of print, like the Casada Cookbook.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
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 5 (04:37):
He is most renowned for the fact that he confessed
to multiple murders. When he went to court one day
on a weapons charity. We started confessing and said he
killed one hundred women. Then it was two hundred, it
was three hundred, that I was six hundred, and I
think the last total was like three thousand, and then recanted,

(05:00):
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

(05:21):
them that he had solid confessions to.

Speaker 6 (05:24):
Hundreds of crimes murders.

Speaker 5 (05:26):
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.

Speaker 6 (05:37):
As twenty seven states.

Speaker 5 (05:39):
He confessed his several countries, Canada, Japan, said he drove
to Japan in his car.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, that's unusual. I want to see the routing for
the driving the.

Speaker 5 (05:53):
Car to said he delivered the kool aid to Jim
Joneses town.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Why didn't hear that?

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Wow?

Speaker 6 (06:02):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 5 (06:02):
The funny thing is he's saying some of these things
and nobody, like he told the guy the film group
from Japan, I drove there and there's some in your country,
And nobody at that point said, wait a minute, show.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Me how you drove here the United States our and
just an.

Speaker 6 (06:24):
Old, crappy, old car.

Speaker 5 (06:26):
And yet unbelievably, he could have put on many thousands
of miles to get all over the place, but still
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

(06:47):
think somebody would confess to something they didn't do.

Speaker 6 (06:50):
There was nothing like that in those days.

Speaker 5 (06:53):
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 he's as he did. But
he had multiple reasons why he did it, so we'll
get into that at some point too.

Speaker 6 (07:07):
So that's why it's called the confession killer.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
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.

Speaker 5 (07:26):
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. I contacted him and said, beware,

(07:48):
he may just want the record, huh.

Speaker 6 (07:50):
And that officer who was in Texas said, I'm on it.

Speaker 5 (07:54):
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,

(08:16):
allowed him access to files.

Speaker 6 (08:18):
It's unbelievable.

Speaker 5 (08:19):
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.

Speaker 6 (08:34):
As the Texas Rangers like.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
To say, Yeah, it's a.

Speaker 5 (08:39):
Combination of we want integraty here, why because we don't
want to follow a false confession while the real killer
might be gaining time to get.

Speaker 6 (08:48):
Away with this.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, well he's busy spinning tall tales. Someone else, yes,
has gotten away with murder, and.

Speaker 5 (08:57):
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 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 are too far away from

(09:18):
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 3 (09:30):
Let's start with 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. What sort of psychological need
is somebody serving who's confessing willingly to hundreds of crimes
that they just did not do.

Speaker 6 (09:50):
Lucas had a number of motives.

Speaker 5 (09:51):
It doesn't cover everybody's potential motives, but he has quite
a few.

Speaker 6 (09:55):
And the first one was he.

Speaker 5 (09:58):
Was arrested on a weapons charge that they suspected him
of more serious crimes.

Speaker 6 (10:03):
Because he was associated with some missing people.

Speaker 5 (10:05):
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

(10:27):
for attention, because he was figuring out 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 Clemmie, who got really close
to him and began to lead him spiritually into why

(10:51):
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 became 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

(11:14):
a guy, a nobody, a loser because of life, who's
getting praise and being called a 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,

(11:34):
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 wind'll
blow him. He'll just go with whatever the influences. And

(11:55):
that was Lucas. Absolutely. If it sounded he is 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.

Speaker 6 (12:09):
Help us out here? Henry Oh sure, I'll too. So
there were so.

Speaker 5 (12:16):
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 Clemmy and
Sheriff Boutwell.

Speaker 6 (12:25):
The three of them were like a community, and Boutwell
was squiring him around.

Speaker 5 (12:29):
There was a Japanese film company that came in with
hoarders who would come.

Speaker 6 (12:33):
In and write about it. It really became a big deal.

Speaker 5 (12:37):
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.

Speaker 6 (12:52):
And it made him famous.

Speaker 5 (12:53):
This is a guy who really just was nobody, and
now he's the biggest serial killer in the world. And
it was very easy for him to achieve that status.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Where was he incarcerated when he was starting this spree
of confessions.

Speaker 6 (13:12):
The exact town.

Speaker 5 (13:16):
In Texas, and he was moved around a lot. It
was sometimes offices would come to him, but sometimes he
was taken to other locations.

Speaker 6 (13:26):
And I remember Waco County. I think it was right.

Speaker 5 (13:30):
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

(13:51):
were well intentioned, but they were sloppy at what they
You can.

Speaker 6 (13:56):
See it on camera. I'm not just saying that.

Speaker 5 (13:58):
You see their technique on camera, showing him crime scene photos,
telling him information leading him to close the case. These
are all amateur things for investigators to do, so that's
that was a problem. But then he would go get
these trips.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, I was thinking about this. These are like field
trips if you're normally locked up in a prison somewhere.

Speaker 5 (14:24):
Not just field trips. 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.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
And wow, I missed that from the document of.

Speaker 5 (14:46):
They did 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 taking love, and
they said they didn't have any fear him. They would
let him wander around without handcuffs on or any medicals
have been wold. And on this end they would obey

(15:07):
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.

Speaker 6 (15:17):
A lot of different places.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
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. 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 (15:36):
Skillful?

Speaker 5 (15:37):
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 more than twenty maybe
twenty twenty seven states or.

Speaker 6 (15:53):
With their case files asking him.

Speaker 5 (15:55):
He's in the middle answer their questions, and he's like
a book, a mind reader's reading clues off of you
and watching your response.

Speaker 6 (16:04):
And I think I stabbed her in the back. No,
it wasn't the back guy. It must have turned her.

Speaker 5 (16:09):
So he'd watched their face and if it looked like
he wasn't saying quite the right thing, he'd back off.

Speaker 6 (16:14):
And then he'd tried.

Speaker 5 (16:15):
To get them to tell him what he needed to say,
and they would quite often, oh wow, yeah, no, she
was turned over than when we found her.

Speaker 6 (16:23):
But then he's just reading that psychics.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Dude, he's just regurgitating what they know because he's adding
things that they don't know.

Speaker 5 (16:33):
Yeah, he's adding things as it's sounding very much like
he must have the whole story, because he knows a
lot more than we know. If you have 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.

Speaker 6 (16:51):
It turned out not to be true. But she could
pull these names out of the air. That was. It
was quite a talent. And Lucas had that too.

Speaker 5 (16:59):
He had a way to fabricate facts that made it
sound like as part of the case.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
So Lucas had a partner named Audust Tool, and he
allegedly perpetrated some of these crimes with Audust Tool, though
I don't think it was all of them. I think
it was just some of them. What do we know
about Audis And was he falsely confessing to these crimes
as well, or was he actually linked to some of them,
like via DNA?

Speaker 6 (17:24):
What do we know.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
About this guy?

Speaker 5 (17:26):
There was no DNA in the eighties, of course, yes,
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.

Speaker 6 (17:42):
Audust too.

Speaker 5 (17:43):
I'm glad you called him Audis because many people call
him Otis, but Henry certainly called him Audist anytime he
referred to him.

Speaker 6 (17:51):
And this is an interesting duo.

Speaker 5 (17:54):
Both of them had very abusive, terrible childhoods.

Speaker 6 (17:58):
Both of them were dressed as girls by their mothers.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
That's such a thing, and.

Speaker 5 (18:03):
Yet both of them were so 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 to have murdered
they actually did. ODIs was his own He was a
serial killer in his own right, and both of them

(18:26):
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're fourteen.
Henry Lucas killed a girl that he was trying to
have sex with and.

Speaker 6 (18:45):
The way he described it.

Speaker 5 (18:46):
And then Oudis killed a guy that he claimed was
hitting on him. So they start young, both tortured animals.
As Tool 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.

Speaker 6 (19:02):
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.

Speaker 5 (19:10):
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, barbecue sauce and you know,
all these absurd things. And unfortunately the officers were eating

(19:33):
it up, so to speak, barbecue sauce. But they were
just as Lucas said, just fun in 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

(19:55):
enforcement and make them look stupid. And Lucas said that
many times that was why he was doing this on
his tool.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Actually did confess, she said to the murder of Adam
Walsh one point or another, and recanted later confessed again.
Did they ever figure out? Did they ever come down?

Speaker 5 (20:14):
They closed the case, And I think they simply closed
it because they were so sick of everybody second guessing
who did he do it?

Speaker 6 (20:24):
And didn't he do it? It was he couldn't. I
think there was.

Speaker 5 (20:27):
No DNA run and they lost some of the evidence,
I believe, so they couldn't really make a solid case.
They had too 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, Adamalsh, his father, said

(20:49):
he's satisfied with that.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
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 more
reminded him of Adam's case. With the mistakes, discarded evidence,
the arrogance of the FBI. It just goes on and on.
Because I had said to him, John, you're so pro

(21:11):
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.

Speaker 5 (21:31):
On and you've done. 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 plays to an audience that loves things good
or evil, black and white.

Speaker 6 (21:46):
I don't know that he would have just said I accept.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
This if he didn't right agree.

Speaker 6 (21:51):
It's about his.

Speaker 5 (21:52):
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.

Speaker 6 (21:59):
At least maybe they have.

Speaker 5 (22:01):
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 (22:09):
Here's something I really struggle with, though, in these stories.
When we're talking about Lucas and Tool, 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.

(22:30):
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.

Speaker 6 (22:41):
Stuff again forty years ago? I have to keep that
in mind. They're not trained in seeing. And I think
it was Aboutwisa.

Speaker 5 (22:51):
I can't believe anybody would confess to this many conscious
to get a stay 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

(23:11):
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.

Speaker 6 (23:24):
With law enforcements.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
I'm not I'm not going to.

Speaker 5 (23:27):
Make a judgment, a blanket 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. If like the Confession Killer documentary, Bob.

Speaker 6 (23:43):
Prince is in it, he was part of this.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
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.

Speaker 6 (24:00):
What do you make of that.

Speaker 5 (24:02):
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. We've got investigators
coming in from half of the states, if not more,

(24:23):
and they're coming in and really earnestly trying to close
the case, and.

Speaker 6 (24:30):
They don't have much evidence. Now we've got Lucas saying,
oh yeah, I.

Speaker 5 (24:34):
Was able to talk about different features of the landscape
and to say, oh, yeah, there was a body right
by the car.

Speaker 6 (24:41):
Because he saw the picture.

Speaker 5 (24:43):
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 know. Of course they're going to believe it
because they don't know what he's being shown before they

(25:03):
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 Agger was a criminology professor.
He interviewed Lucas for forty hours and he interviewed Tool also.
The two of them try to get multiple perspectives. So
you have those people coming in and now it's cop

(25:24):
versus journalists, almost this war game over 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.

Speaker 6 (25:41):
Of your cases are any good.

Speaker 5 (25:43):
So you got 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 2 (25:56):
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Speaker 3 (26:07):
It is very interesting. There are six cases here in
Tidewater that investigators had taken to Lucas to try to
clear to see was he involved in all of them?
And since then, four of those cases have been linked
via DNA to other people who are not Lucas. There's
two left, and I'm very curious. I've been trying to

(26:27):
do some research and unfortunately not getting very far because
law enforcement doesn't want to talk about these cases.

Speaker 6 (26:33):
It's made about it.

Speaker 5 (26:34):
I mean, I am so frustrating because it is why
not talk about them? They were some long ago. Nobody
in the current department is going to be embarrassed. So
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

(26:56):
claiming their speculation is fact. And you and I think
they just don't want to get into the fray of that.
But I do believe if you were to develop trust
with any of the officers who had access to those cases,
you would you would eventually get access.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
I'm hoping so, because ultimately, at the end of the day,
it really is just getting justice for these victims.

Speaker 5 (27:21):
The last thing these guys want, to women want is
a podcaster coming along and say, look, how this handled.
This case was by that department, And because you're seeing
a lot of those podcasts out there.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
Yeah, and that's that is not at all what we want.
What we want is to be sure about trust. 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

(27:56):
see justice served, and that.

Speaker 6 (27:58):
Second look needs to be seen. Because people died, evidence
is lost or corrupted. Yeah, that's the problem.

Speaker 5 (28:05):
But the number of families who were told it was
Lucas and then found out later through DNA or 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,

(28:29):
oh never find was not him. Oh God, the anguish
of that, the mishandling of their loved one, is horrifying.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
If anything, my default position going forward now would be
if Henry Lee Lucas, or Hotist Tool for that matter,
confess to something. Given their lethra 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 a.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
Great that I would have the same default position now.
Steve Eggar, 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

(29:20):
they did. I don't think it was anywhere near the
high and maybe we'll never know who their actual victims
were now.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
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 because stroke killer. Yeah, because
he had he ended up ultimately confessing to I think
it was ninety three. Sixty have been confirmed?

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Do?

Speaker 3 (29:45):
People like Henry.

Speaker 6 (29:46):
Lucas said it was fifty something.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
It was the last time I checked, it said sixty.
But I guess who really.

Speaker 5 (29:52):
He did something similar to Lucas, and it was a
Texas ranger who actually kind of going to But he
did something similar to Lucas. He did the pictures right, Yeah,
and again he did something in a more predatory way
than Lucas did. He would pick victims that he knew,
like drug addicts, right, sex work, black sex workers. He

(30:14):
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.

Speaker 6 (30:36):
And then he wouldn't talk at all.

Speaker 5 (30:38):
Unlike Lucas, he wasn't using this to improve his status
or anything.

Speaker 6 (30:43):
So I would.

Speaker 5 (30:44):
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 wasn't.

Speaker 6 (30:54):
Now. Lucas said he used.

Speaker 5 (30:55):
All manner of weapons and everything but poison, And really
it was absurd when they put all the different ways
people had died.

Speaker 6 (31:05):
It was absurd to think one person was using.

Speaker 5 (31:07):
All these things, whereas with Little it is the same
thing over and ova 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 (31:26):
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 recall. He seemed to remember a
lot about where he was and when this happened, and

(31:46):
a bit about who the women were. And as you said,
he definitely zeroed in on marginalized individuals. But do you
think the drawings helped cement Little as a potential killer
in many of the I'm slid.

Speaker 5 (32:01):
Maybe he capture something unique about the victim in terms
of their appearance or where they're found, or jewelry or
a tattoo something, Yes, but it wasn't like he was
like an amazing artist. 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

(32:22):
that joint seem authentic.

Speaker 6 (32:24):
Now we also have DNA.

Speaker 5 (32:26):
Now that we didn't have with Lucas to confirm some
of those.

Speaker 6 (32:30):
But I think if you compare the two side by.

Speaker 5 (32:32):
Side, you really can see how lucas confessions are all
over the place and absurd, and there's no way he'd
cover 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 one day to then
get back to check into work. You don't have that

(32:54):
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. Lucas
was the initiator of it all. That makes a big difference.

(33:16):
There was something else about him. I was thinking about
the way. 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. 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.

Speaker 6 (33:37):
And yet nobody thought of that. There was only one
with only.

Speaker 5 (33:40):
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.

Speaker 6 (33:55):
You didn't see people doing that? Why not?

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Another really intriguing component of Henry Lee 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, 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

(34:19):
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. 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 5 (34:39):
Yeah, Because there's prison groupies and there are serial killer groupees.

Speaker 6 (34:44):
They cross over a bit, but they are distinctly different.

Speaker 5 (34:47):
Often, the women who get enamored of an inmate, whether
serial killer or not, I.

Speaker 6 (34:53):
Have often seen some aspect of fame to it. They're
on the news, they're being.

Speaker 5 (34:59):
Talked about, they see them, and for some of them,
there's a number of reasons. I can't put them all
in one 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

(35:20):
make a difference in that person's life. Sometimes they 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.

Speaker 6 (35:34):
He's got nothing else to do, writing them letters and whatnot.

Speaker 5 (35:37):
He can't stop them from going out if they want
to go out, and they don't have to dirty laundryer
dishes are cooking for 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,
or they feel that he's the alpha male he can
kill others and so he would protect me. So there's

(35:59):
a number of different so you really have to look
at each case. And in her case, she took it
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

(36:19):
the answers, plus Henry.

Speaker 6 (36:21):
Was given her more.

Speaker 5 (36:22):
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.

Speaker 6 (36:31):
When fifteen when he killed her, that was the love
of his life.

Speaker 5 (36:34):
And so he would cry over the idea that maybe
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

(36:55):
where Becky lived and what was her actual name, and
how does she get along with people, and so all
the things that they were asking her she had 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

(37:18):
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. 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

(37:40):
inmates and they believe somehow they're going to get them out. Now.

Speaker 6 (37:44):
He had a death penalty.

Speaker 5 (37:45):
I think he still had the death penalty hanging over
his head, so she was trying to save his life.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
I just find it so bizarre. He did not seem
in the videos that I watched of him. He did
not seem all that charismatic. He did not seem charming,
certainly not a Ted Bundy, who we know that was
all surface shine. Anyway, there was a monster underneath. I
don't understand how this happens.

Speaker 5 (38:09):
He had a fiance when the year he killed his
mother in nineteen sixty, even with his.

Speaker 6 (38:14):
False eye and the prison sentence behind him. What can
you say? Love is blind?

Speaker 5 (38:20):
Right?

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah, I'm just sitting here shaking my head like this
stuff makes no sense to me.

Speaker 5 (38:27):
Look at the Menendez brothers and how many women have
been involved with them.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
No, they've been married several times, and this is nuts.
I was thinking about the Menanda's brothers.

Speaker 5 (38:38):
I think you're going to find anyone who's got a
degree of fame for nefarious crime will attract with these women.

Speaker 6 (38:46):
And some are highly educated some.

Speaker 5 (38:49):
One woman was a model, one 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 3 (39:09):
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
endlessly and I believe him.

Speaker 5 (39:26):
There's great training, but the department has to pay for it.
Like I do, 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 certain
there was no such thing as a false confession, and
he was an interrogation specialist, and then he got one

(39:46):
that really changed his training. His name is Jim's Jim
train him. I think his name'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
were had led him into this error. And I think
you can see with the Rangers, they have this the
notion of their the integrity and they couldn't be wrong.

Speaker 6 (40:10):
And nobody's going.

Speaker 5 (40:11):
To falsely confess to get a steak dinner and the
ego that's involved.

Speaker 6 (40:16):
Literally they're not seeing.

Speaker 5 (40:19):
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.

Speaker 6 (40:28):
The road was a female, Like what what did he drive?
And keep.

Speaker 5 (40:34):
Dometery it was fifty six miles and he could only
have known that because Boutwell told him.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
That it was in the file.

Speaker 5 (40:43):
But see 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

(41:04):
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 no.

Speaker 6 (41:18):
Do that.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
So it's a very instructive documentary. But back to 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.

Speaker 6 (41:29):
Now, some of us, like in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 5 (41:31):
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.

Speaker 6 (41:39):
Just be able to go train for free.

Speaker 5 (41:41):
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.

Speaker 6 (41:54):
So that's great.

Speaker 5 (41:55):
And the FBI, now they realize all the duping that
can go on. They understand and the notion of dipping
delight and of the seeking fame and all the things
that go into false confessions.

Speaker 6 (42:06):
They're up on the research. There's a lot of it.

Speaker 5 (42:09):
I think we're a long ways away from where we
were forty years.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Ago, so some without questions, some lessons have been learned
from some of these most egregious cases.

Speaker 6 (42:19):
Yes, we're right, Catherine.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
This has been illuminating as always. Is there any projects
that you're working on that you'd like to plug for
us before we wrap for this episode?

Speaker 5 (42:29):
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.

(42:49):
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 in in
the criminal justice.

Speaker 6 (43:01):
World that I am in.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
We are looking forward to that. Hopefully it will come
out at some point or another.

Speaker 6 (43:07):
I hope so too.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
And again, remind everybody the name of your most recent
books so that they can pick it up.

Speaker 5 (43:13):
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 3 (43:21):
All right, Catherine, thank you so much for joining us.
We really appreciate you taking the time to offer your expertise.

Speaker 6 (43:27):
I had fun. Thank you that is going to do.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
It for this episode of mind and for murder. Thank
you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder

Speaker 2 (45:00):
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