Robert Pickton is a serial killer from Canada who was convicted of six murders but is believed to have murdered at least forty nine murders in which he fed the bodies to pigs. In this article on My Crime Library we are going to take a closer look at serial killer Robert Pickton “The Pig Farmer”
Robert Pickton Early Life
Robert Pickton was born on October 24 1949 to Leonard and Louis Pickton in Port Coquitlam British Columbia Canada on a pig farm. Robert who has an older sister Linda and a younger brother named David was raised by an abusive farmer. Both of Robert’s parents would die in 1978 leaving the pig farm to their children. However David and Linda wanted nothing to do with the farm so Robert took it over as his brother would take the Family home.
Pig Farm Parties
Robert Pickton would host parties at the Pickton pig farm where as many as two thousand people would attend including members of biker gangs and women who worked as sex workers in Vancouver. In 1997 Robert Pickton would be arrested for the attempted murder of a sex worker who was thankfully able to escape. Pickton would be released on a bond. The charges would later be dismissed due to lack of evidence.
That same year there were a number of legal issues against the pig farm due to its poor condition as it had been neglected by both Robert Pickton and his brother David. However the two brothers would continue to host their parties.
People began to notice that a variety of women who attended the parties would soon go missing. Even though this was reported to police the fact that they were sex workers made the women very low priority to the police.
Robert Pickton Pig Farm Search
Robert and his brother David were arrested after police searched the property and found a variety of weapons in 2002. Both of the brothers would be released however Robert was kept under surveillance by police.
Robert Pickton was arrested again and charged with the murders of two women who disappeared after attending a party at the Pickton farm.
The police began a deeper search into the Pickton farm and they would excavate the bodies of four more women. As the months passed over and the search into Robert Pickton and his farm continued police would find more and more bodies of women who were reported missing. By the time the search was through Robert would face twenty seven counts of murder.
Robert Pickton Trial
Robert was tried on twenty seven counts of murder on January 30, 2006 in which he plead not guilty. The judge presiding over the case would later break up the case into one where there was six counts of murder and the second for the remaining twenty counts. One of the cases was dropped due to lack of evidence. Eventually Robert would be convicted on the six counts of murder and would not face the other twenty counts. Robert was sentenced to twenty five years to life in prison, under Canadian law he must serve twenty five years before he becomes eligible for parole.
Robert Pickton More News
After DNA evidence linked serial killer Robert Pickton to the disappearance of her sister, Lori Ellis asked police for a prayer card belonging to her sister Lori Ellis
“It was the serenity prayer,” she said. “It was found on a shelf in [Pickton’s] slaughterhouse.”
The RCMP has applied to B.C. Supreme Court to dispose of evidence related to the Pickton case, news victims’ families say is traumatizing. The card owned by Cara Ellis is among the items
“I think it’s absolutely appalling they have done this without notifying the families,” Lori Ellis said of the disposal application. “We were told it would be in storage forever.”
Campbell River’s Rick Frey, whose daughter Marnie was among Pickton’s victims, said news of the bid to destroy the evidence just traumatizes everyone again.
He said Marnie’s daughter is afraid Pickton will be released and come after her. Pickton is in a Quebec prison, ineligible for parole until 2032.
RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Janelle Shoihet confirmed that there is an application to dispose of exhibits related to the investigation.
Documents filed in court in New Westminster say the evidence includes videos of crime scenes, shoes, hypodermic needles, sex toys, rosary beads, knives, a gun, pieces of ammunition and licence plates, among other things.
The documents list most of the items as having no value, with ownership or lawful entitlement unknown. Two items have been returned to their owners, and the licence plates have been returned to ICBC. The videos of crime scenes are being kept by police.
What scant human remains investigators found on the property Pickton co-owned with his brother and sister were returned to the families a decade ago.
The application to dispose of the remaining evidence was filed by lawyer John Ahern, a prosecutor in the case.
In an affadavit, RCMP officer Shane Parsons says he does not anticipate further criminal proceedings related to the Pickton case. “Nor do I believe that the [exhibits] will be required as evidence in criminal proceedings against any other person.”
The Port Coquitlam pig farmer was convicted in 2007 of six counts of second-degree murder involving women who went missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Twenty additional counts were stayed.
Investigative consultant Bruce Pitt-Payne, a retired RCMP sergeant, said evidence disposal is normal in criminal cases.
“The RCMP has very strict polices on when evidence from major crimes such as murder or sex offences may be destroyed,” Pitt-Payne said. “It is in the area of 80 years or more.”
However, once investigators tender evidence to courts, it becomes the decision of the courts on what should be done with it.
Michael Madison was sentenced to death by the State of Ohio for a series of murders. According to court documents Michael Madison was responsible for at least three murders and a series of sexual assaults. This serial killer would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.
The death sentence handed down to an Ohio man convicted of killing three women whose bodies were found wrapped in garbage bags was appropriate, the state Supreme Court ruled in upholding the sentence.
East Cleveland resident Michael Madison was arrested within days of the discovery of the bodies in 2013. He was indicted and eventually convicted at trial in 2016.
Justice Pat DeWine wrote the court’s unanimous opinion, released last week and rejecting claims by Madison’s attorneys that Madison deserved life in prison, and not a death sentence, because of irregularities in the jury selection and trial process,
DeWine said there was overwhelming evidence to support a death sentence for the killings carried out over nine months. A killer’s “course of conduct” behavior involving multiple deaths, even if they don’t occur at the same time, is a factor under Ohio law for receiving a death sentence.https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/ncod/sf-q1a2z3be0d353f.min.html
“The similarities in the murders indicate that a single person killed all three victims,” DeWine wrote. “Madison’s admissions and the strong evidence connecting the victims to him and to his residence prove that he was the murderer.”
The court also rejected arguments that Madison should be spared because of an abusive and unstable childhood, noting the killings happened when Madison was 36 years old.
Madison’s attorney, Tim Sweeney, declined comment. Madison has years of both state and federal appeals ahead of him.
Joseph Duncan is a serial killer who was sentenced to death by the Federal Government. According to court documents Joseph Duncan was responsible for three murders in Idaho Brenda Groene, 40; her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, 37; and her son, Slade Groene, 13, and the two younger children were missing. Seven weeks later a witness saw one of the children with an unidentified man and called the police. Police would arrest Joseph Duncan and identify Shasta Groene, 8, but her brother Dylan was still missing. Unfortunately the remains of Dylan Groene would be found in Montana months later. Joseph Duncan was also responsible for the murders of ten year old Anthony Martinez and Sammiejo White, 11, and her half-sister, Carmen Cubias, 9.
Joseph Duncan would be convicted of seven murders and would be sentenced to death. In 2021 it was announced that Joseph Duncan has brain cancer and his prognosis is six to twelve months meaning he will die from cancer and not lethal injection. Joseph Duncan died on March 28 2021
Convicted child killer Joseph Duncan has terminal brain cancer and will likely die before his federal death sentence is carried out, according to court documents.
Duncan was convicted of killing four members of a family from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 2005. He kidnapped two children, Dylan and Shasta Groene, from the family’s home and tortured them in Montana before killing the boy.
Shasta Groene was the only survivor of the rampage and was rescued when Duncan stopped at a restaurant in Coeur d’Alene and the girl was recognized by the staff.
Duncan was also linked by DNA to the murder of a 10-year old boy in California. He was convicted of that crime after he was convicted of the Idaho murders and kidnappings.
KXLY-TV reports Duncan, who is from Tacoma, has been on federal death row in Indiana for years as his appeals move forward.
In court filings earlier this year, attorneys disclosed that Duncan underwent brain surgery last October and was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a brain cancer, at stage IV. According to court records, he has declined chemotherapy and radiation.
“In November 2020, Bureau of Prisons medical staff determined his life expectancy to be 6-12 months…. medical staff discussed end-of-life preparations with Mr. Duncan,” according to court documents.
Nearly 16 years after he terrorized North Idaho and murdered several members of a Coeur d’Alene family, convicted killer Joseph Duncan is dead.
Duncan’s attorneys disclosed late last year that he had terminal brain cancer and did not have much longer to live.
He died at just after 2:30 am pacific time at a hospital in Indiana. He was on federal death row at a prison in Terre Haute.
He was convicted of killing Brenda Groene, Slade Groene, Dylan Groene and Mark McKenzie; he murdered the family in order to kidnap Dylan and his sister Shasta. He held the children captive for several weeks in Montana before returning Shasta to a Coeur d’Alene Denny’s.
After his arrest, DNA linked him to the murder of 10-year old Anthony Martinez in California. Martinez was murdered in 1997 while Duncan was on parole for a rape charge in Washington. He was kidnapped while playing outside of his home, his body was found 15 days later. It wasn’t until after Duncan’s arrest in Idaho that he was linked to the crime.
He’s also been linked to the murders of two young girls in Seattle in the 1990s.
After his release from prison, he moved to Fargo and was attending college. Shortly before graduating in 2005, he was accused of molesting a young boy on a playground in Minnesota. He posted a low bail and skipped town. He was driving to Washington where his family lived when he said he spotted the Groene children playing outside their home along Interstate 90. He hatched a scheme then to kidnap the children, buying night vision goggles and stalking the family.
He videotaped many of his horrific crimes against the Groene children. One veteran investigator said the video “shook him to his core.”
Duncan said early on that he would not appeal his death sentence, but an appeal in his case has been going forward.
“The sun is a little brighter today,” said Anthony Martinez’s mother, Diana. “My soul is lighter. The world is a more beautiful place without the evil that is Joseph Duncan. God chose to make his end a long suffering and I believe that is fitting. The horror of his thoughts consumed him.”
Anthony would have been 34.
Anthony’s father Ernesto said “While I would’ve liked to witness his execution, knowing he is now standing before God being held accountable for what he has done, what he did to my son, and the horrible crimes he committed to others, that is the real justice.”
“God has brought pure justice for all those Joseph Duncan has hurt,” said Anthony’s younger brother Marcos. “There is less evil in the world. Nothing can bring my brother back, but now Duncan can never hurt anyone again. Because of him, I will spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to fight against any evil left in the world.”
Arthur Shawcross was a serial killer from New York State who would kill two children and then be released from prison to kill more. In this article on My Crime Library we will take a closer look at Arthur Shawcross
Arthur Shawcross Early Life
Arthur Shawcross was born in Kittery Maine on June 6, 1945. The Shawcross family would move to Watertown New York when he was young. Shawcross had below normal IQ levels but was able to do well in school. According to Arthur he was a frequent bed wetter who was frequently abused by his mother, sexually abused by an aunt and had sexual relations with his sister. Arthur Shawcross would drop out of high school before graduating
When he was twenty one years old Arthur was drafted into the United States Army where he would serve a tour in Vietnam, Shawcross would brag about violent events during the war however he never saw active duty.
Once out of the Army Arthur Shawcross and his second wife, his first wife divorced him when he was drafted, would move to Clayton New York
Arthur Shawcross would be arrested several times during the first few years for burglary and arson. Eventually he would be sentenced to five years in prison however he was paroled after twenty two months.
Arthur Shawcross First Murders
Just six months after being released from prison Arthur Shawcross would sexually assault and murder a ten year old boy, Jack Owen Blake, the little boys body would not be found until September.
In September just days before the body of Jack Blake was found Arthur Shawcross would sexually assault and murder a eight year old girl. This time the body was found quickly and Shawcross would be arrested the next day.
When it was time for trial Arthur Shawcross would take a plea deal where he was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter for both years and was given an indeterminate prison sentence with a maximum of twenty five years.
Arthur Shawcross would serve fourteen years for the two murders and would be paroled in April 1987
Arthur Shawcross More Murders
It did not take Arthur Shawcross to start his reign of terror once released and in early March of 1988 women began to go missing. Arthur would target for the most part sex workers
Arthur Shawcross would be arrested in January 5, 1990 after a witness saw him near the location where June Cicero was found.
Arthur would be charged with ten counts of murder and would plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Shawcross would be found guilty of the murders and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole
Arthur Shawcross Death
Arthur Shawcross would die on November 10, 2008 from cardiac arrest
Arthur Shawcross Videos
Arthur Shawcross More News
Arthur J. Shawcross, a serial killer serving a 250-year sentence for strangling, suffocating or beating to death 11 women in the Rochester area in the late 1980s, died on Monday. He was 63.
Erik Kriss, a spokesman for the New York State Department of Correctional Services, told The Associated Press that Mr. Shawcross had been taken earlier on Monday from the Sullivan state prison in Fallsburg, N.Y., to a hospital in Albany after complaining of leg pain. The cause of death was under investigation, he said.
Mr. Shawcross was arrested on Jan. 4, 1990, a day after the state police spotted him near the frozen body of one of his victims. In the previous 21 months, the bodies of many women nine of them prostitutes who been working the streets of downtown Rochester had turned up along the banks of the Genesee River and in creeks, gorges and remote wooded areas off country roads.
At the time of his arrest, Mr. Shawcross was on parole after serving 15 years of a 25-year manslaughter sentence for the 1972 strangling of an 8-year-old girl in Watertown, N.Y. He had confessed to that killing, as well as to strangling a 10-year-old boy in Watertown. But he had not been prosecuted for killing the boy because law enforcement officials did not believe they had sufficient evidence.
On Dec. 13, 1990, after a 13-week trial and six hours of deliberation over a two-day period, a Monroe County jury convicted Mr. Shawcross on 10 counts of murder. It was one of the longest and most expensive trials in the county’s history. Three months later, in neighboring Wayne County, Mr. Shawcross pleaded guilty to murdering another woman.
Throughout his trial for the 10 killings, Mr. Shawcross, beefy and graying, sat virtually still, his shoulders sloped and his head down. In his pretrial confession, he had told investigators that for several years while being married, having an affair and often going fishing he also regularly patronized prostitutes he met in Rochester’s red-light district near Jones Park. He said he had killed one after she bit him, another for being too loud during intercourse, another for trying to steal his wallet and a fourth for calling him a “wimp.”
The jurors rejected the defense claim that he was insane at the time of the killings because of brain damage, childhood abuse and traumatic experiences as a soldier in Vietnam.
Mr. Shawcross was born in Watertown in 1945. After his parole from his sentence for the 1972 killing of the 8-year-old girl, he lived briefly in Binghamton and then in the small town of Delhi. But public protests drove him from both communities. State parole authorities helped him move to Rochester in 1987. There, he married a woman who had been his pen pal during his imprisonment and worked at night as a $6-an-hour salad maker for a food wholesaler.
In October 1999, eight years after his conviction for the 11 murders, prison authorities sent Mr. Shawcross into nine months of solitary confinement after it was discovered that, through friends outside, he was selling paintings he had made in prison and his autograph on eBay.
Henry Lee Lucas was a serial killer from Texas who would ultimately be convicted of eleven murders however he would confess to over a hundred. Henry Lee Lucas case would change how authorities looked at confessions. In this article on My Crime Library we will take a closer look at Henry Lee Lucas.
Henry Lee Lucas Early Years
Henry Lee Lucas was born in Blacksburg Virginia on August 23, 1936. Henry whose mother worked as a prostitute was forced to watch her with her clients and reports were made that she made Lucas to dress in drag and attend school.
Henry Lee Lucas would lose his left eye after getting into a fight with his brother and the eye would get infected.
When Henry Lee Lucas was thirteen years old his alcoholic father would die from hypothermia after he got lost walking home in a blizzard. Lucas would drop out of school and began drifting around the country at the age of thirteen.
Lucas would be arrested in 1954 for a number of robberies in Virginia and would be sentenced to four years in prison. Henry Lee Lucas would briefly escape from prison but would be recaptured days later. In 1959 he would be paroled.
Henry would meet a woman through correspondence while in prison and would travel to Michigan to live with his half sister and his new fiance. When Henry mother came to visit she disapproved of his fiance and demanded Lucas move back in with her in Virginia.
A couple of months later during an argument with his mother on whether or not he should move back to Virginia to take care of her the argument turned violent. Henry claimed his mother hit him over the head with a broom handle and he responded by stabbing her in the neck with a knife causing her death. Henry Lee Lucas would plead self defense however he would be convicted of murder and sentenced to twenty to forty years in prison for second degree murder. After ten years Henry was paroled due to overcrowding.
After getting out of prison in 1970 Henry Lee Lucas would travel around the United States and end up in Florida by 1971 where he would be charged after he attempted to abduct three schoolgirls. Lucas would be sentenced to five years in prison. During his time in prison Henry would meet another woman who he would marry in 1975 upon his release. The marriage would fall apart after the woman’s daughter claimed he sexually abused her.
Henry Lee Lucas And Otis Toole
Henry Lee Lucas would meet Ottis Toole in Jacksonville Florida and would later move into the home Toole shared with his parents and his fifteen year old niece Frieda “Becky” Powell. Otis Toole who would later make a number of false confessions of his own would also say that his home was filled with abuse and that he was sexually assaulted by family members when he was young.
In 1982 when Frieda “Becky” Powell mother and grandmother died she was placed in a shelter however Henry would convince her to run away with him. She complied. The two would work as assistants to an elderly woman, Kate Rich, however when the two began to steal from the woman they were fired.
Around this time Frieda “Becky” Powell became homesick for Florida and Lucas would tell authorities he dropped her off at a bus stop however he would later confess to her murder along with the elderly woman the two were paid to take care of.
In June 1983 Henry Lee Lucas was arrested on charges of unlawful possession of a firearm. While in custody Henry Lee would confess to the murders of Frieda Powell and Kate Rich. Lucas would lead them to an area where two bodies were located however the identities of the two remains could not be identified.
Henry Lee Lucas Confessions
Henry Lee Lucas would be transferred to another jail in Texas where he would confess to the murders of twenty eight people. According to reports the Texas officers were able to clear 213 previously unsolved murders.
Later on when investigators looked back at the false confessions they realized there were a number of problems including that Henry Lee Lucas was given files of unsolved murders that he would later confess too.
Henry Lee Lucas would be sentenced to death for a murder of an unidentified woman in Texas, the woman was identified in 2016 as Debra Jackson. Later authorities learned at the time that the woman was killed at a time Lucas was working in Florida. Henry death sentence would later be commuted to life in prison.
Henry Lee Lucas Death
Henry Lee Lucas would die from a heart attack at the age of 64 on March 12, 2001. He was an inmate at the Huntsville Unit in Texas
Henry Lee Lucas Videos
Henry Lee Lucas More News
Henry Lee Lucas wouldn’t shut up.
In the claustrophobic police interrogation room, the one-eyed drifter was ready, willing and able to take credit for hundreds of homicides in the fly-over states as his own sordid handiwork.
And the cops were listening. Intently.
Lucas was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a mosaic of unsolved murders off the books.
And lots of police services did just that. Got a cold case? Blame Henry Lee Lucas.
He told the Texas Rangers that during his time drifting across the U.S., he had shot, stabbed, bludgeoned and strangled a staggering 600 people.
One of the killings the Virginia-born Lucas boasted committing was that of Brigham Young University student Marla Sharp.
On June 29, 1978, Sharp, 26, was discovered raped and murdered inside her Provo, Utah apartment.
For more than five years, the case gathered dust.
Then, Lucas started talking in Texas.
And talking.
But there was something about the self-proclaimed serial killer’s tale Marla Sharp’s family never quite bought.
“I have never believed that Henry Lee Lucas committed the murder,” Sharp’s cousin, Valerie Colgain, told ABC News.
Lucas’s endless confessions may have helped cops balance the blood book back in the 1980s but now more victims’ families are casting doubt on the fiendish fabulist’s chronicle of murder and mayhem.
Unfortunately, the serial killer can’t clear things up: He pegged out in prison from natural causes in 2001.
For the record, Lucas was a killer.
He murdered his prostitute mother in 1960 and two more people in 1983. He was sentenced to death but avoided the big adios when his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
Lucas’s outlandish yarns began unravelling when the late, lamented Dallas Times Herald began picking away at his claims.
He was claiming responsibility for murders he couldn’t have possibly committed.
If he was doing a jolt in a Florida jail, killing someone in Oklahoma would have been wildly difficult. Right?
The newspaper found that at least 100 of the murders Lucas took credit for would have been impossible for him to have committed.
The Texas Attorney General’s office concurred. Lucas was a fabulist. A serial false confessor.
Cops in Provo have now reopened Sharp’s murder.
“Her loss was something that I never got over,” her sister, Leah Scharp said. “None of our family ever got over it. Somebody killed my sister and they need to be brought to justice.”
Colgain told ABC she reached out to the Utah Cold Case Coalition and they concluded Henry Lee Lucas wasn’t the killer.
Others are also asking law enforcement to reopen murders Lucas boasted were his.
Janelle Hanna Peet’s father was murdered in Texas in 1980.
Lucas claimed that deadly bit of business as well.
“He was shot four times,” said Peet.
“He owned a convenience store, and it was at closing. They tried to make it look like a robbery, but there was still money under the shelf, under the register. He still had his wedding ring on, money in his pockets. It seems like it was personal, and I would like to know who did it and why.”
n the mid-1980s, Henry Lee Lucas was a star – at least in the context of America’s exploding fascination with serial killers. The subject of anxious news features and four feature films, Lucas confessed to murdering hundreds of people – at first 100, then 200, then about 600. An odd-jobs drifter with three teeth and a lazy eye, Lucas would recall, often on camera, precise and grisly details about each victim. Police officers from across the country interviewed him for more than 3,000 murder cases, to much fanfare; at least 200 cases were attributed to him, closing them to further investigation and making Lucas the country’s most prolific serial killer.I Love You, Now Die: behind the text suicide scandal that shocked AmericaRead more
Except that it was all a lie, one spun through a toxic brew of people-pleasing, power, and convenience on the part of law enforcement, and documented in the Netflix series The Confession Killer, directed by Taki Oldham and Robert Kenner. Over the course of five 45-minute episodes, the series illustrates how the Lucas story spiraled from a by-the-book murder case – the killings of his housemate, Kate Rich, and girlfriend, Becky Powell, in Texas – into a media frenzy in which Lucas and his handlers, the Texas Rangers (a statewide investigative unit with the most Texas of uniforms) enabled confessions which shut down numerous departments’ botched or incomplete investigations.
Forty years on, it’s difficult to know the exact number of cases falsely attributed to Lucas, who was far more pathological liar than serial killer. But there are “certainly dozens of cases where either killers are walking free because they’re still credited to Lucas, or dozens more cases that were never properly reinvestigated because it was credited to Lucas”, Oldham told the Guardian. Though the first episode focuses mostly on Lucas – his arrest in 1983 and his relationship with the Texas Rangers taskforce established to “investigate” his ever-expanding claims – the series ultimately explores the larger environment fostering his lies. A respected Rangers department, led by the imposing Sheriff Jim Boutwell, drawing widespread acclaim for “catching” a prolific serial killer. A tragic pattern of unsolved murders, almost all of women, left underinvestigated or ignored. A symbiotic relationship between the Rangers, various investigators and Lucas that ran on easily obtained, low-evidence confessions (the series openly suggests the Rangers fed Lucas information on several cases he confessed to, and Lucas was clearly amenable to the desires of whoever he was talking to), milkshakes and mutual goodwill. Case closed.
But not for many of the victims’ families, several of whom are interviewed throughout the series. The Confession Killer, said Oldham, is a chance to reopen their cases – less a true crime story of Henry Lee Lucas, who died of natural causes in prison in 2001, than a “launching pad for the true work to begin”.
Some of that corrective work is already being done, thanks to advances in DNA technology since Lucas confessed to a spree of killings in the late 1970s that even circumstantial evidence suggests would be almost impossible (as the veteran Lucas journalist Hugh Aynesworth points out in one episode, Lucas would have crisscrossed 11,000 miles across the country on no sleep for his supposed murders in October 1978 alone). Just this year, several cases attributed to Lucas have been reopened or resolved.
The potential to change cases in the present is what drew Oldham back to the story of Lucas, which he originally covered in the early 2000s. Several years ago, “I decided to do a quick Google search and sure enough, I found one or two cases that had been Lucas cases where the real killer had been found,” he recalled. Soon he had a list of about 10, and “a chance to write a new chapter to a story that had kind of been lost to confusion and uncertainty”.
Much of the series is composed of extensive archival footage of Lucas from the height of his confession spree in the 1980s – news coverage as well as internal footage from his defense team and the Rangers, which show his confessions and officers’ interview tactics. But “the more we got into it, the more we began to realize it wasn’t a story about Henry”, Kenner told the Guardian, “because Henry was this cipher where all these people saw in him what they wanted to see, and Henry was willing to be that for everybody”
Thus, later episodes take a number of unexpected twists into interconnected stories which add extra layers to the Lucas confession hoax: an upstart district attorney framed for corruption charges after he challenged the conduct of the Rangers taskforce, more fraud, a power struggle between different departments of Texas law enforcement. Texas Rangers and law enforcement officials who signed on to false Lucas confessions, many of whom defend the methods used at the time, are also interviewed. However, Oldham and Kenner noted that not every department was willing to re-evaluate their association with Henry Lee Lucas. “The reluctance of police to talk about controversial cases where they may have done wrong in the past was certainly something that we encountered,” said Oldham.
The series offers ample evidence that several institutions acted in bad faith at numerous points in the Lucas saga, but Kenner maintains that “we didn’t think it was a conspiracy story; it’s really a human nature story”, one that ultimately focuses on the families who, four decades on, are still searching for justice for their cold cases.
“We met with a lot of victims’ family members,” said Kenner. “They’re still in pain – they want to know what happened to their loved ones. Some of them thought Lucas had been the killer, and now some have found out he wasn’t and they’re feeling betrayed.”
Kenner and Oldham believe that the series has the potential to reopen numerous cases that were not properly investigated because of Lucas’s claims. “Justice was denied by what happened,” said Kenner of the Lucas media and law enforcement blitz. “And there’s a chance to reopen it, and I’m hoping the juries will and the series can bring about some comfort to the victims’ family members.
“We’re really trying to give [the family members] as much of a voice as possible,” said Oldham. “To us, it’s a project and it means a lot, but to these people – this is their lives. They’ve been living with this for 40 years.”
Henry Lee Lucas died on March 12, 2001 from a heart attack inside of a Texas prison
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
