Saturday, March 22, 2008

Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole

The Tag Team from Hell: The Sadist King and the Generalissimo of Pain. The numbers speak for themselves. As a kid, Henry Lee Lucas lost an eye after a severe beating from his prostitute mother. Years later, in a drunken binge, Henry Lee Lucas stuck a knife in his mother's back and proceeded to rape her dead corpse. He got 40 years but was out after 10. Free again, Henry launched his stellar career as the nation's most notorious random killer.

In 1976 he joined up with part-time transvestite and deeply psychotic retard, Ottis Toole, to carry out numerous homicidal escapades. Ottis had a taste for human flesh and had many his victoms for dinner. Henry, however, was not a cannibal because, he said, he disliked the taste of barbecue sauce. He was more of a sadist and a necrophile, preferring sex with mutilated bodies and live or dead animals. The consummate killer couple, they enjoyed picking up hitchhikers to satisfy their taste for blood. Sometimes, when they didnt want to go through the hassle of killing and disposing of their prey, they would just run over the occasional hitchhiker and continue on their merry way. These lethal lovebirds parted ways after Ottis' teen niece, Becky Powell, shacked up with Henry. The unfortunate lassie was later found dimembered and stuffed in pillowcases.

After his arrest, Lucas toured the country as a star killer uncovering evidence of his handywork for local police departments. In 1985, Dallas Times-Herald journalist, Hugh Aynesworth, claimed their reign of terror was a hoax and that overzealous detectives fed the would be killers many details of their crimes. Henry and Ottis did confess to more than 500 murders. Henry claimed to have taken the poison to Guyana as a favor for his good friend Jim Jones. One of his alleged victoms, a Virginia schoolteacher, was found alive. Henry recanted on all his murders only to confess again when he became a born-again Christian. As he waits execution in Death Row in Texas, Hank still mentions bits and pieces of evidence linking him to killings in 18 states. Meanwhile in Florida Ottis' was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, death sentence was commuted to six life sentences and is said to be stockpiling barbecue sauce.