Heike Neumann

As a little boy Henry Lee Lucas was forced by his mother to watch her with her clients, and for years she sent him out in public dressed as a girl. At 10 a knife wound in his eye went untreated, a teacher hit him with a ruler and the eye burst. At 23 he stabbed his mother to death. In the '80s he confessed to about 600 murders across America, and police believed him. Then the confessions turned out to be mostly lies. The governor who spared his life was George W. Bush. He sat in front of a camera and told this story like it happened to someone else. In the video below, Henry talks about his mother and his family with a glass eye and a lazy little smile, like he's describing the weather. I had to pause it twice. According to him, his mother hated him from the day he was born and made him watch things no child should ever see. When his eye got infected, nobody bothered to take him to a doctor until it was too late. The fight with his mother ended with her dead on the floor. He swore it was self-defense, the court called it murder, and out of everything he ever confessed to, that's the one he never took back. It's also the one I believe. Then came the confessions. 60 victims. Then 100. Then 600. "I killed 'em every way there is except poison." Police took him out to restaurants, let him read case files and barely kept him in cuffs. He fed them exactly what they wanted to hear. I keep thinking about the families who were told their daughter's killer had finally been found. A Texas investigation later called the whole thing a hoax, and DNA cleared him of about twenty of the murders. His death sentence was the only one Bush ever commuted as governor. Henry died in prison in 2001. Was Henry Lee Lucas a monster, or a broken man who figured out that confessing got him the first attention he ever had?