Post by marionumber1 on Apr 15, 2021 19:23:28 GMT -6
The major turning point regarding belief in Henry Lee Lucas's confessions was the investigation undertaken by McLennan County District Attorney Vic Feazell. After feeling skeptical that Lucas was responsible for three McLennan County murders that he had confessed to, Feazell got Lucas transferred over to McLennan County (away from Boutwell and the Texas Rangers) and put him in front of a grand jury. There, Lucas talked about how he had been fed case file information by the Rangers, which of course would indicate that many if not most or all of his confessions were bogus. Lucas began taking back his confessions, and public opinion about him shifted after that to the idea that he was probably not much of a serial killer at all. Feazell, meanwhile, found himself under investigation on corruption charges, which he portrayed as retaliation from the Texas Rangers for humiliating them. He was acquitted, won libel judgments against various individuals who accused him, and since then it's pretty well-accepted that he was the hero of the Lucas story.
But how well do we really know that? Most of that version of events comes solely from him, with no outside corroboration that I am aware of. The Confession Killer did interview one Waco lawyer who said that his testimony about paying bribes to Feazell was a lie, but that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot, because he would have plenty of self-interest to clear his own name from an accusation of bribing the district attorney. We don't even have any evidence outside of Feazell's claims that the corruption investigation into him started after he questioned Lucas's confessions. Without official records to the contrary, it could have easily begun before, with Feazell going after the Rangers because they went after him instead of the other way around as he claims.
Some of the things about Feazell's actions rub me the wrong way. Around 14:40 in episode 3 of The Confession Killer, Lucas's jailhouse minister Sister Clemmie Schroeder gives a description of what was happening to Lucas in Waco that suggests he may have been subject to coercive interrogation before his grand jury appearance. She describes how Feazell was keeping Lucas for hours at a time and quoting scripture at him, which all sounds like Feazell was trying to force a particular narrative into Lucas's head. Lucas himself even offered some indications that he felt he was being coerced into recanting his confessions.
D Magazine, "THE TWO FACES OF HENRY LEE LUCAS" by Nan Cuba and Dr. Joel Norris, 1985/10:
p.278-279 of Henry Lee Lucas by Dr. Joel Norris (1991):
p.163-164 of The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Michael Newton:
Lucas's apparent belief that Feazell was doing the bidding of a "death cult" to force him to cover up for the Hand of Death conspiracy is quite interesting. It is the case that no one seemed to have a problem with Lucas's confessions until the satanic cult story began getting circulated circa mid 1984 going into 1985. Could Feazell have actually been the dirty one, covering up for the Hand of Death?
Earlier in his DA tenure, Feazell oversaw a highly controversial prosecution of four defendants for the 1982 Lake Waco murders of teenagers Kenneth Franks, Jill Montgomery, and Raylene Rice. While I have not yet delved very deeply into the police and court records, what I have read so far suggests troubling signs about how Feazell and his colleagues handled that case. An excellent long-form overview is Texas Monthly, "The Murders at the Lake" by Michael Hall, 2014/04, and also worth reading is the clemency petition for defendant Tony Melendez.
The prosecution advanced a dubious theory that defendant David Wayne Spence had been hired to murder Gayle Kelly and ended up killing Jill Montgomery because he mistook her for Gayle, even though he knew both girls and would have been unlikely to make that mistake. In doing so, Kenneth's drug connections, which were most likely the actual motive for murder, were swept under the rug. Much of the case was built on the word of jailhouse informants all cultivated by one cop: Truman Simons. A number of these informants would later claim they had been fed information by Simons, and sometimes enticed with similar rewards to what the Rangers were accused of offering Lucas. (Simons, by the way, makes an appearance in The Confession Killer to back up Feazell's account of retaliation from the Rangers, including the oh-so-spooky but uncorroborated claim that they were barred from looking up Lucas's info in NCIC.)
Not long after Spence's conviction, his mother Juanita White began investigating the case herself, and days after securing an admission of perjured testimony from one of the jailhouse witnesses against Spence, she was murdered and then had someone break into her house hours later to rifle through her possessions. The investigation by Waco police officer Jan Price was quickly usurped by Feazell, whose office took over the case and appointed Simons as an investigator. Simons developed two suspects through his informant network, who were prosecuted and convicted over the objection of numerous Waco cops testifying for the defense that Simons's witnesses couldn't be trusted. DNA later indicated that White was raped by a different individual who happened to be Price's initial suspect, and both convicted men were exonerated by the state. Also key to those later-overturned convictions was bite mark evidence from the same expert Dr. Homer Campbell who identified Spence as leaving bite marks on Jill Montgomery, a finding rejected by a blind expert panel that Spence's appeal attorneys set up. (Dr. Campbell happens to have assisted in yet another dubious Texas conviction of Steven Chaney for the murder of drug dealer John Sweek and his wife, who were most likely actually killed under contract from the Mexican Mafia.)
I have no idea for sure if Vic Feazell was a good guy or bad guy in the Lucas story. But it does feel to me that what's been presented so far is incredibly one-sided in favor of Feazell, despite there being very little evidence other than his own claims. And with Feazell's grand jury discrediting Lucas to a point where most people would not consider him a serial killer at all, much less credit any of his stories about the Hand of Death, I think we need to be absolutely certain just how valid his findings are before embracing them.
But how well do we really know that? Most of that version of events comes solely from him, with no outside corroboration that I am aware of. The Confession Killer did interview one Waco lawyer who said that his testimony about paying bribes to Feazell was a lie, but that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot, because he would have plenty of self-interest to clear his own name from an accusation of bribing the district attorney. We don't even have any evidence outside of Feazell's claims that the corruption investigation into him started after he questioned Lucas's confessions. Without official records to the contrary, it could have easily begun before, with Feazell going after the Rangers because they went after him instead of the other way around as he claims.
Some of the things about Feazell's actions rub me the wrong way. Around 14:40 in episode 3 of The Confession Killer, Lucas's jailhouse minister Sister Clemmie Schroeder gives a description of what was happening to Lucas in Waco that suggests he may have been subject to coercive interrogation before his grand jury appearance. She describes how Feazell was keeping Lucas for hours at a time and quoting scripture at him, which all sounds like Feazell was trying to force a particular narrative into Lucas's head. Lucas himself even offered some indications that he felt he was being coerced into recanting his confessions.
D Magazine, "THE TWO FACES OF HENRY LEE LUCAS" by Nan Cuba and Dr. Joel Norris, 1985/10:
For a year and a half Lucas and many law enforcement officials claimed he was the most prodigious killer in history, with as many as 3,000* victims. Then Dallas Times Herald reporter Hugh Aynesworth cried hoax, Lucas decided he didn’t want to be put to death by the state and Attorney General Jim Mattox helped start a grand jury investigation in McLennan County. During those days, Lucas told reporters, “I didn’t kill nobody excepting Mom,” but privately he said that he suspected he had been captured by a death cult and that McLennan County District Attorney Vic Feazell and others were forcing him to deny the truth.
p.278-279 of Henry Lee Lucas by Dr. Joel Norris (1991):
Lucas also denied in the letter [on April 28, 1985 to Sister Clemmie] that he was shown crime scenes by officers to encourage his confessions. "Look at the facts, they know they didn't show me the places. I took them there. But if they aren't going to fight for the truth, then why hold me? Turn me loose, since I haven't killed anyone like they say here." And in a final postscript, written to Jim Boutwell, Lucas says that what is happening in Waco is an attempt to silence him. It is, he says, what he predicted would happen once he began telling the full story of his crimes. The crimes were too fantastic, they implicated a conspiracy, and they implied that one person and the cult he belonged to were able to elude the police too well. He says that he is being provided with false information to back up his recantations, recantations he will keep on making to protect Sister Clemmie. "You are safe as long as I do as they say," he writes. "I know they have the power to do what they say. They have given me false records everywhere now and I can't stop it."
p.163-164 of The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Michael Newton:
From the beginning, officers had been aware of Henry's penchant for exaggeration. One of his first alleged victims, a Virginia schoolteacher, was found alive and well by police. Some of his statements were clearly absurd, including confessions to murders in Spain and Japan, plus delivery of poison to the People's Temple cultists in Guyana. On the other hand, there were also problems with Henry's retraction. Soon after the Aynesworth story broke, Lucas smuggled a letter to authors Jerry Potter and Joel Norris, claiming that he had been drugged and forced to recant. A local minister, close to Lucas since his 1983 "conversion," produced a tape recording of Henry's voice, warning listeners not to believe the new stories emerging from prison.
Lucas's apparent belief that Feazell was doing the bidding of a "death cult" to force him to cover up for the Hand of Death conspiracy is quite interesting. It is the case that no one seemed to have a problem with Lucas's confessions until the satanic cult story began getting circulated circa mid 1984 going into 1985. Could Feazell have actually been the dirty one, covering up for the Hand of Death?
Earlier in his DA tenure, Feazell oversaw a highly controversial prosecution of four defendants for the 1982 Lake Waco murders of teenagers Kenneth Franks, Jill Montgomery, and Raylene Rice. While I have not yet delved very deeply into the police and court records, what I have read so far suggests troubling signs about how Feazell and his colleagues handled that case. An excellent long-form overview is Texas Monthly, "The Murders at the Lake" by Michael Hall, 2014/04, and also worth reading is the clemency petition for defendant Tony Melendez.
The prosecution advanced a dubious theory that defendant David Wayne Spence had been hired to murder Gayle Kelly and ended up killing Jill Montgomery because he mistook her for Gayle, even though he knew both girls and would have been unlikely to make that mistake. In doing so, Kenneth's drug connections, which were most likely the actual motive for murder, were swept under the rug. Much of the case was built on the word of jailhouse informants all cultivated by one cop: Truman Simons. A number of these informants would later claim they had been fed information by Simons, and sometimes enticed with similar rewards to what the Rangers were accused of offering Lucas. (Simons, by the way, makes an appearance in The Confession Killer to back up Feazell's account of retaliation from the Rangers, including the oh-so-spooky but uncorroborated claim that they were barred from looking up Lucas's info in NCIC.)
Not long after Spence's conviction, his mother Juanita White began investigating the case herself, and days after securing an admission of perjured testimony from one of the jailhouse witnesses against Spence, she was murdered and then had someone break into her house hours later to rifle through her possessions. The investigation by Waco police officer Jan Price was quickly usurped by Feazell, whose office took over the case and appointed Simons as an investigator. Simons developed two suspects through his informant network, who were prosecuted and convicted over the objection of numerous Waco cops testifying for the defense that Simons's witnesses couldn't be trusted. DNA later indicated that White was raped by a different individual who happened to be Price's initial suspect, and both convicted men were exonerated by the state. Also key to those later-overturned convictions was bite mark evidence from the same expert Dr. Homer Campbell who identified Spence as leaving bite marks on Jill Montgomery, a finding rejected by a blind expert panel that Spence's appeal attorneys set up. (Dr. Campbell happens to have assisted in yet another dubious Texas conviction of Steven Chaney for the murder of drug dealer John Sweek and his wife, who were most likely actually killed under contract from the Mexican Mafia.)
I have no idea for sure if Vic Feazell was a good guy or bad guy in the Lucas story. But it does feel to me that what's been presented so far is incredibly one-sided in favor of Feazell, despite there being very little evidence other than his own claims. And with Feazell's grand jury discrediting Lucas to a point where most people would not consider him a serial killer at all, much less credit any of his stories about the Hand of Death, I think we need to be absolutely certain just how valid his findings are before embracing them.