Henry Lee Lucas | Netflix: The Confession Killer | Mental Health & Personality

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks I can analyze the Netflix special the confession killer this was a series that described the life of convicted killer Henry Lee Lucas they also looked at certain members of law enforcement they talked to some of the families of murder victims and other people tied to his case Henry Lee Lucas of course was a real person as were all the people featured in the series so just to remind her I'm not diagnosing anybody only speculating about what could be happening in a case like this I will add the references to the sources that I used to the description of this video now many of those references are really from Henry Lee Lucas himself right many the references featured interviews with Lucas which of course is a problem because he seemed to have a poor relationship with the truth right so even though many of the references seem pretty good if they relied on Lucas that's a problem the story of Henry Lee Lucas is fascinating for a variety of reasons not only his mental health and personality characteristics but those of law enforcement specifically the law enforcement officers that believed his confessions and those who appeared to have conspired with him to create those confessions his story is a story of pathological lying confirmation bias illogical behavior manipulation corruption retaliation narcissism and a variety of other worrisome behavior again not just on the part of Lucas but on the part of other people as well so first I'll take a look at the timeline they don't analyze what could be going on in terms of mental health and personality characteristics for Lucas and also some of the other people involved in this case so first the timeline so we see that Henry Lee Lucas was born in 1936 in Virginia he was the youngest of seven children both his parents were alcoholics his father manufactured alcohol illegally and his mother was a prostitute the mother appeared to be particularly vicious in terms of her treatment of Lucas she allegedly that him frequently made him watch while she had sex with various men and forced him to crossdress although that would be put to an end by teachers who report that activity to law enforcement now he was beaten what they wouldn't plank by his mother when he was 8 years old he spent three days in a coma as a result of that assault when he was 10 years old he lost the use of his left eye he was in a fight with his brother whereas I was injured and subsequently it became infected it had to be replaced with a glass eye when he was in sixth grade he ran away from home and it's possible that at this time he killed his first victim he would have been around 15 at this time the possible victim was a 17 year old female who disappeared in March of 1951 but there's no way of knowing this for sure he confessed to this crime but of course recanted later this was a popular pattern that we see with Henry Lee Lucas in 1954 he was convicted of several counts of burglary he spent about five years in prison after he was released he went to live with his half-sister in Michigan in January of 1960 we see that Lucas's mother was visiting him in Michigan and Lucas's mother got into an argument about him returning to Virginia to take care of her he stabbed her to death in the midst of that argument now Lucas claimed it was self-defense but he was convicted and sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison but he was released in 1970 just ten years later about a year after this he was convicted of attempted kidnapping the victims were three girls he was sentenced to three and a half years after he was released from this sentence he moved to Pennsylvania and was married to a woman named Betty Crawford that lasted about two years but Lucas had to leave after he was accused of assaulting her two daughters he started drifting through various states at this point mostly in the South eventually ending up with a man named Otis O'Toole in Florida O'Toole had a niece named Frieda Powell otherwise known as Becky Powell at this time she would have been about ten years old Lucas worked with O'Toole at a roofing company from 1979 to 1981 during this time he allegedly committed over a hundred murders some of them were with O'Toole but again we see that Lucas recanted he claims that he fell in love with Becky and they moved to Texas where they ended up caring for a woman named Kate rich in August of 1982 in Texas we see that Lukas killed Becky Powell three weeks later he killed Kate rich in June of 1983 he was arrested by a Texas Ranger for illegally possessing a firearm Lukas claimed that he was abused by the Texas Rangers and ended up confessing because of that to the murders of Powell and rich he led the Rangers to the place where he allegedly killed those two victims and in each place the police found bone fragments the remains they found were human but they were never identified as belonging to the victims so at this point we see that Henry Lee Lucas has an extensive criminal history including three homicides there seems to be no doubt about the homicide committed against his mother right he clearly killed his mother and he probably committed the other two homicides as well Powell and rich while pleading guilty to these two murders in court we see that Lucas announced that he had committed over a hundred murders after this we see that Williamson County Sheriff Jim Boutwell sets up a task force led by the Texas Rangers that was supposed to facilitate access to Lucas by other law-enforcement professionals so the task force really wasn't designed to investigate just to arrange interviews essentially with these other law enforcement agencies that are trying to close cold cases or cases where they're struggling to find leads so essentially law enforcement officers could visit Lucas get a confession and closed cases and this is what happened Lucas eventually confessed to 213 unsolved murders one of those murders he confessed to was that of Deborah Jackson at that time she was known as orange socks because there was no other identity just the fact that she was wearing orange socks when her body was found now this was a capital murder case that resulted in a death penalty for Lucas eventually the texas governor at that time George Bush commuted the sentence for Lucas so he ended up dying in prison in 2001 of heart failure he was 64 years old so now taking a look at the mental health and personality characteristics here for Henry Lee Lucas now the problem with the pathological lying that we see with Lucas is there's no real way to know the truth it seems fairly clear he had a terrible history of abuse terrible boundaries impulse control problems a tendency to commit criminal acts and again he probably committed at least three homicides what was going on all this time in terms of mental health and personality well we see some evidence that there was disorganized thinking and in some of the interviews we see with Lucas he reports experiences that appear to be consistent with delusions and hallucinations also he was diagnosed with schizophrenia several times while in custody so it seems likely that he had schizophrenia or at least had some of the symptoms of schizophrenia he certainly seemed to have alcohol use disorder although technically when he was in custody it would have been a remission because he wouldn't have had access to alcohol but either way substance use disorders specifically alcohol use disorder seemed to be a factor there's been a lot of speculation about psychopathy he seems to have had features of both factor 1 and factor 2 psychopathy and of course both are associated with criminality now both factor 1 and factor 2 psychopathy are dividing the two parts with factor one the two parts are interpersonal and affective so on the interpersonal side we see that Lucas appeared to have a grandiose sense of self to have killed over 3,000 people including Jimmy Hoffa we see that he had pathological lying that seems pretty clear he actually confessed to fictitious crimes and he admitted that he lied he had superficial charm although this feature I don't think is quite as strong as some of the others and he was manipulative this seems pretty clear I think he was also being manipulated though too so he was manipulative and being taken advantage of at the same time now looking at the factor one effective side we see he has a lack of guilt shallow effect and certainly a lack of empathy the question really becomes did he have the failure to accept responsibility for actions interestingly it appears that he accepted responsibility for everything even crimes he didn't commit but there are other times when he failed to take responsibility so I think he still qualifies in terms of this characteristic now moving over to the factor to side we see this is sometimes called sociopathy or secondary psychopathy this factor is more associated with antisocial personality and again it's dividing the two parts lifestyle and anti-social on the lifestyle side he seems to have sensation-seeking we see evidence of a parasitic lifestyle he didn't seem to have realistic long-term goals he was impulsive and irresponsible so all the traits from lifestyle on the anti-social side of factor 2 he clearly had early behavioral problems juvenile delinquency poor behavioral controls and criminal versatility now in terms of revocation of conditional release this is one of the traits of factor 2 antisocial we see that he did actually escape from jail briefly in 1957 while serving time for burglary that would probably count as meeting this characteristic although of course technically it wasn't conditional release again he escaped but the idea here is that somebody doesn't follow the rules of being punished right so we didn't follow the rules of being in prison so essentially it appears as though Lukas has all the characteristics of both factor 1 and factor 2 psychopathy and this is actually highly unusual usually somebody if they are psychopathic will lean more strongly to factor 1 or factor 2 many have traits from both but again one kind of really stands out and here we don't really see that he seems to be somehow in both categories at the same time it's my guess though that Lukas is more on the factor-2 side so again we see all the characteristics met but I think he fits more strongly with antisocial personality disorder with sociopathy than he does with factor 1 psychopathy now psychopathy also has some overlap with narcissism we see several narcissistic characteristics with Lukas not just what we see from the overlap with psychopathy like manipulation lack of empathy and Oh sense of self but also with other narcissistic traits like believing oneself to be special or unique resistance to criticism and fantasies of success and power so we not only see psychopathy but some narcissism as well so was Lucas really a serial killer I think in looking at all the evidence to me at least it seems pretty clear he did commit several murders but was he the serial killer that many people believe that he was did he kill over 200 people or even much more than that I don't think he did I think the best evidence points to this idea that Lucas was lying to satisfy the demands of the police to get better treatment from them to be famous or to be wanted or it could have been all these things he was never like to recognize for anything positive in his life so maybe it seemed like a good deal to him to be liked for something negative we know that 20 of the murders that he confessed to have actually been linked to other people so clearly he was lying there I mentioned before he confessed two fictitious murders so clearly lying there and for many of the murders he simply could not have committed them because he was at a different location when the murder took place Lucas had an IQ of 87 so that's almost one standard deviation below the mean that would be 85 so again close to that and this puts him at about the 19th percentile so about 19% of population would have an IQ equal to his or less than his but Lucas did have an exceptional memory we see that many people noted this including some of the law enforcement officers who interviewed him so somebody was feeding him information he could recall what he needed to recall I think the best example of this in the series was when Sheriff Jim Boutwell Lucas and few other people or at the site of the murder of a young man whose girlfriend was also murdered around the same time we see the sheriff asking Lucas questions designed to help Lucas recover a specific memory about the murders this is referred to as cued recall the sheriff asked Lucas how far away the girlfriend's body would have been right so the male's body was left in one place and the female's body was left in another so he was really asking Lucas what was the distance between them and Lucas said 55 miles later the sheriff said it was 56 so it was amazing how accurate Lucas was not confirmed that Lucas committed the murder Lucas was clearly confessing to a crime he didn't commit nobody would confess in that manner no one would remember exactly how many miles between one body and another are we supposed to believe that Lucas wrote down the mileage on the odometer when he killed the male and then when he killed the female he wrote the mileage down again again I don't think anyone would do that doesn't make any sense of course with those two murders we see that the real killer was apprehended because of the DNA evidence I think Lucas had the right combination of personality traits and abilities to pull off his manipulation of law enforcement and at the same time to be a victim of manipulation which brings me to taking a look at the personality characteristics of the law-enforcement officers involved in this case we see different levels of involvement here in terms of somebody like sheriff Boutwell his odd handling of Lucas's confessions and other things like letting Lucas wander around the jail giving him codes some of the internal doors buying him milkshakes all the time none of these things I guess are technically criminal I don't know but it seems like there's more going on here than just incompetent performance rather there seems to be evidence at the sheriff or somebody in that office fed information to Lucas it really seems to be nothing short of a criminal conspiracy a desire to close cases while knowing that the real killers are still free now I was specifically curious about this point to this relationship between Boutwell and Lucas this is featured prominently in the series it seemed obvious that this was highly peculiar it seemed unlikely that Lucas could have killed over 200 people and that the credit for catching him and collecting all of his confessions could go to so few people including to sheriff Boutwell usually if somebody does something criminal or dishonest and you catch them you find out that they did the same thing before or you see that they engage in the same behavior or similar behavior in the future while I was watching the Netflix special about Lucas I remembered another case I researched not long ago about a man named michael morton i don't believe he was mentioned in the series that I remember hearing his name there he was accused of killing his wife Christine Morton in 1986 and the case was handled by sheriff Boutwell michael Morton was wrongly convicted of that murder and served 25 years before being exonerated they eventually caught the person who did it several people broke the law in terms of the investigation and prosecution of michael morton it seems possible that sheriff Boutwell would have been held accountable if he were still alive Jim Bell died in 1993 of lymphatic cancer the prosecutor of that case Ken Anderson was convicted of a felony for falsely prosecuting michael Morton although Anderson only had to serve 10 days in jail which is an incredibly light sentence considering Michael Morton's spent 25 years in prison Ken Anderson was also the district attorney that prosecuted Lucas for the murder of Deborah Jackson the orange socks murder and this is particularly important because Lucas was sentenced to death for that murder so it seemed that bad behavior was not limited here to just Henry Lee Lucas Lucas stumbled upon law enforcement officials that had difficulty following the law now what about the other law enforcement officers that encountered Lucas well many were fooled by Lucas however many were not what's amazing to me is how many didn't really say a whole lot when they knew that something wasn't adding up again it seemed clear that Lucas really didn't kill over 200 people or 360 people or 3,000 people all these kind of numbers that were thrown out there yet many law enforcement officers were willing to believe that all the Texas Rangers involved and the district attorney were simply working in good faith maybe Lucas was lying about some of the murders but not about others but if this were true then how could you trust Lucas about anything this is really quite illogical I think the only most frightening things we see on this series on Henry Lee Lucas was really about how few people were willing to stand up and say this doesn't seem right and how those that did were retaliated against for example Vik gazelle right he was a DA who had Lukas testify about the false confessions and he was falsely accused of a number of crimes now eventually of course he was found not guilty and won a lawsuit against a news media outlet that covered the story but either way he was in jeopardy a long time because of his willingness to take on the law enforcement officers including Jim bow-wow what we see with a lot of the people who dealt with Lucas is these people believed what they wanted to believe or what they needed to believe and there was a lot of confirmation bias going on they wanted to believe Lucas was the killer they wanted to believe that he was the person involved in the case that they were looking at and anything that they saw that pointed to him being guilty they believed and evidence that pointed to him not being involved they ignored this is actually a fairly common problem we see with any type of investigation we also don't see much in the way of flexible thinking I think this was particularly disturbing this really stood out in the series it didn't seem like many people were willing to look as situation say even though I want one particular outcome the evidence seems to point to another the motto of made the people involved in this case seem to be somebody has to pay for a crime that's committed as opposed to the person who's actually guilty has to pay now I know whenever I talk about cases like the Lucas case there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate a really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of the Henry Lee Lucas case to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 67,237

Rating: 4.9416294 out of 5

Keywords: Henry Lee Lucas, Jim Boutwell, Netflix, The Confession Killer, Michael Morton, Vic Feazell, Becky Powell, Kate Rich, Otis O’Toole, Ken Anderson, Texas rangers, corruption, psychopathy manipulation, scandal, false confession, serial killer, Williamson County Texas, Debra Jackson, orange socks, narcissism, schizophrenia

Id: JUWQYEvPhTs

Length: 19min 27sec (1167 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2019