Serial Killers, Serial Liars | Bring Out Your Dead | 4

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It's the night of October 21st, 1983, and the police station in Hollywood, Florida is buzzing.

In one of the interrogation rooms, 36-year-old Ottis Toole is walking detectives through the murder of young Adam Walsh.

Again, he spent most of the day riding around with a van full of cops, pointing out where he grabbed Adam, where he killed him, where he disposed of the remains.

For most people in the station, Ottis Toole's confession brings a feeling of relief.

It's been over two years since the murder of Adam Walsh captured the attention of the entire country, and the lack of progress in the investigation has become embarrassing for the city's police.

Not everyone is convinced by Ottis' story, though.

Detective Jack Hoffman is the cop in charge of the case, and he's sure that one of the Walsh's family friends is the killer, not some drifter from Jacksonville.

Still, Jack's boss, the chief of police, has called a press conference to update the public about the case at 11 p.m., so Hoffman's sitting across from Ottis, taking down notes so the chief can answer any tricky questions that might come up.

Jack shakes his head when Ottis starts to weep over Adam's death.

Jack's certain that it's all an act.

This guy doesn't feel anything.

He's bragged about killing dozens of people and he hasn't cried about any of those crimes.

Jack figures it's just a weird play for sympathy or attention.

When another cop asks Ottis why this is the murder that makes him so emotional, Ottis says it's because Adam was the youngest person he ever killed.

At that, Jack flips his notebook closed and stands.

He's hurt enough.

A few minutes later, Jack takes his place beside his boss, as the Hollywood police chief addresses a room full of attentive reporters.

The chief announces that they've caught the man responsible for the murder of Adam Walsh.

The culprit is a confessed serial killer, he explains, who's got the blood of up to 50 people on his hands.

Hearing his stories makes Charles Manson sound like Tom Sawyer, the chief says.

Ottis Toole's confession is a breakthrough in the case that only happened because of the hard work and dedication of the Hollywood PD.

At least that's what the chief says.

He explains that investigators grilled Ottis for 10 to 20 hours a day until he cracked and admitted to the crime.

But that's not true.

Ottis offered his confession, unprompted, to an officer from another jurisdiction, and he was the one who alerted the Hollywood team earlier this month.

Still, the journalists in the room don't know that.

So the next morning, people will read all about Ottis Toole in their morning newspapers, and they'll see his face on the evening news.

Among those watching will be Heidi Meyer.

Ottis tried to abduct her from a Kmart just days before he killed Adam.

Heidi will recognize him at once, and she'll know that the police have the right man no matter how they found him.

Detective Jack Hoffman might not believe Ottis is the killer, but William Bessler will be another one who won't need any convincing.

When he sees Ottis in the paper, he'll remember watching him lead a little boy to a black and white Cadillac outside of Sears in July of 1981.

He'll finally understand the significance of what he witnessed that day and feel a sense of relief that even though he didn't try and stop the abduction, at least the cops finally have their man.

Unfortunately, despite the Hollywood PD's claims that they found Adam Walsh's killer, the case won't be closed for decades.

because although Ottis has given a vivid confession to the crime, his credibility will soon be called into question.

Over the next several years, dozens of murders once thought solved will be re-opened, and investigators around the country will rue the day they ever heard the names Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

At the end of 1983, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole reunited in person for a closely monitored prison visit.

Over the previous few months, Henry had been confessing to dozens of unsolved murders from around the country.

He'd been convicted of two of them, including the death of Ottis' niece, Becky Powell.

Ottis himself had recently claimed responsibility for the high-profile murder of Adam Walsh and was serving a life sentence of his own for an arson-related murder.

But despite their bleak prospects as convicted killers, Henry and Ottis were happy to be together again.

Ottis even comforted his former lover, telling him that if God had wanted Becky alive, he wouldn't have had Henry killer.

By the time of their brief, supervised reunion, Henry had already wrapped Ottis into some of his confessions, weaving his companion into twisted stories of brutal kidnappings, rapes and murders.

Ottis didn't have a problem with this and got in on the act too.

The pair egged each other on in a way, eventually leading to headlines declaring Henry the most prolific killer America had ever seen, with Ottis as his gleeful henchman.

The problem with that narrative was that there was nothing to back it up, but few investigators looked into Henry or Ottis' claims properly.

Instead, they accepted what the two men said at face value.

When Henry's lies were eventually exposed, it left law enforcement agencies embarrassed, and had the families of victims wondering whether they'd ever get the answers to the mysteries that haunted them.

And as the dust settled, it became clear that the full story about what happened might never be known.

because when all was said and done, who in this entire story could be trusted to tell the truth?

This is episode four in our four-part series on Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.

Bring out your dead.

It's Christmas Eve, 1983, two months after Florida authorities first announced Ottis Toole as the prime suspect in the Adam Walsh case.

A thousand miles away in Texas, Clementine Schroeder is handing out Bibles in the Williamson County Jail.

It's nothing new for Clemmie.

She's a regular visitor to the jail, always eager to share her religion with the men incarcerated here.

It's getting late, though.

Clemmie's husband is waiting at home with dinner, and she really should be getting back to him so they can start celebrating the holiday together.

But she's got one Bible left.

Looking at the book in her hand, Clemmie feels herself pulled to a corner of the jail she hasn't visited in some time.

At the end of the hallway, there's a heavy metal door with a small slot in the middle.

Ordinarily, prisoners receive meals through the small opening.

But today, Clemmie opens the hatch to speak to the man inside.

She shows him the Bible and says that she'll give it to him if he promises not to destroy it.

Henry Lee Lucas meets Clemmie's wide-eyed gaze and tells her he'll treasure the gift.

She pushes the Bible through the slot into Henry's outstretched hands.

It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

In the middle of January 1984, a law enforcement conference is held in Monroe, Louisiana.

A hundred and seven officers from eighteen states show up.

It's not a meeting to discuss investigation techniques or trends in crime, but a debrief on the subject of Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.

By this stage, the task force supervising Henry's confessions has cleared dozens of crimes from the books.

There are now twenty-three attributed to Henry, thirteen to Ottis, and a further thirty-six committed by them as a pair.

But it's not just police officers who are talking about Henry and Ottis' crimes.

Henry in particular draws a lot of media attention, and around the country, grieving families start to wonder whether he might have killed their loved ones.

So many of these people start writing to Henry, asking him that question directly.

Plenty of them include appeals to Henry's widely publicized newfound faith.

They want to give their sister, wife, daughter a proper Christian burial, they say, and beg for his help.

And Henry, with the encouragement of the good-natured Clemmie Schroeder, believes it's his duty to ease their burden.

With every crime he confesses to, he claims that it's what God wants of him.

But it's also what Henry wants.

All this attention is going to his head.

Since the creation of the task force in November of 83, Henry had his time blocked out in chunks, during which cops from around the country visit to speak with him about cases on their books.

But these investigators don't just show up with photos of crime scenes and a lot of unanswered questions.

Sheriff Jim Boutwell and Bob Prince, the Texas Ranger in charge of the task force, instruct the visiting officers to bring Henry Cartons of his favorite cigarettes, like they're making an offering to some kind of God.

And while Henry Lee Lucas isn't a deity, he's certainly living the kind of luxury that he hasn't experienced for a long time, perhaps ever.

See, the cigarettes are just an opening gambit.

For every murder that Henry admits to, Jim buys him a strawberry milkshake.

He's also treated to fast food meals and gets to spend long stretches of time in the relative comfort of the task force office.

It's still inside the county jail, but it's roomier and homeier than Henry's cell.

The office also features a proud display of Henry and the task force's accomplishments.

On the wall is a large map of the United States, and every time Henry tells someone that he's responsible for another murder, a pin is placed in the map.

As early 1984 rolls on, the map starts to fill up with little markers.

But it seems that no one stops to pay attention to the logistics of what Henry is saying.

The time and distance between the murders Henry's confessing to don't seem important, even when there are only a few hours between crimes, but hundreds of miles for Henry to travel.

It seems that the only thing that matters to police is closing the book on as many unsolved murders as possible.

Not everyone believes Henry's is prolific a killer, as he's saying, though.

His lawyer, for one, isn't convinced, and with good reason.

In late 1983, Henry confessed to killing Deborah Louise Jackson, a then unidentified murder victim known only as Orange Sox.

That killing was a pet case of Jim Boutwell's, and solving it was a point of pride for him.

Now though, when Henry speaks to his lawyer about the murder, he admits that he didn't kill Deborah.

In fact, he confides in the court-appointed attorney that he hasn't committed any of the crimes he's confessed to since his arrest.

At first, he was just showboating for people.

Then, once Jim Boutwell entered the picture, Henry found it hard to say no when files were put in front of him.

Henry looks at Jim like a kind of father and doesn't want to disappoint him.

Shocked by the admission, but certain they can clear things up, the lawyer arranges for a meeting between himself, Henry and Jim.

Henry can come clean to the sheriff and they'll get this whole thing straightened out before it gets even more out of hand.

The lawyer figures it'll be obvious that Henry's telling the truth now.

After all, investigators haven't found physical evidence linking Henry to any of the murders he's confessed to.

Things don't go as planned, though.

When Henry sits down with Jim, he follows through and tells the sheriff what he told his lawyer.

Then he says he can't keep confessing to murders he didn't commit.

Jim Boutwell doesn't like hearing that.

He genuinely believes that Henry's the most prolific serial killer America has ever seen.

He staked his reputation on it, in fact, and he can't just let Henry ruin all that.

So, leaning into his role of Henry's surrogate father, he tells the 47-year-old that he's very disappointed and that he just doesn't believe these new claims of innocence.

It happens in just a minute or two.

As Jim's eyes bore into him, Henry takes it all back.

He agrees to keep confessing to murders, even ones that never happened.

18 months before Jim Boutwell talks Henry into continuing his confessions, 19-year-old Carolyn Cervinca went missing in Williamson County.

That night, in June 1982, Carolyn had been at an accounting class and stopped at a payphone to call her mother.

She told her she'd be home around 10 p.m.

But that was the last time anyone heard from Carolyn.

Except, it seems, for Henry Lee Lucas.

During one of his many confession sessions, Henry talks about abducting a young woman and forcing her to drive him to California.

Somewhere along the way, he says he killed this woman, then abandoned her body and her car.

The more Henry talks about the case, the more elaborate the crime and his memories of it become.

Eventually, he's telling Jim Boutwell that he dismembered his victim, scattering the pieces of her as he continued driving across the country.

And when he accurately describes Carolyn's car and a necklace she was wearing, it clenches it.

The truth about what happened to Carolyn Servenka has finally been revealed.

Except it's not, and won't be for some time.

But we'll circle back to that later.

For now, Carolyn's death is chalked up as another notch in Henry's belt, and the country's most notorious killer turns his attention to his latest murder trial, the most important one yet.

Since he confessed to killing Deborah Louise Jackson, the specter of the ensuing trial has loomed large over everything.

The case, still known as Orange Socks, is a death penalty one, so there's been this ticking clock in the background for a few months now.

And as the April 1984 trial date gets closer, things kick in to high gear.

Remember Henry's court-appointed attorney, the one Henry confided in that he'd been lying about all the murders?

Well, he discovers that Henry is scheming to make sure that he gets executed for the Orange Socks case.

It's a twisted suicide attempt, which, he explains, is a way for him to reunite with the love of his life, the 15-year-old niece of Ottis Toole, Becky Powell, who Henry himself murdered.

Despite Henry's desire to complete suicide by trial, his lawyer is duty bound to defend Henry in court as best he can.

Countering the prosecution shouldn't be hard to do.

After all, the state has no physical evidence linking Henry to this crime, just the confession he made after being shown photos of the victim and crime scene.

But various video and audio tapes of Henry's different confessions are played for the jury, and they're pretty damning.

Part of what makes it all so bad, though, is how the tapes are presented.

The prosecutors have edited the tapes in such a way that Henry seems confident in his statements, clear-headed and sure of himself.

But afterwards, the defense plays different edits of the tapes that include moments that were cut from the state's case.

In these versions, Henry makes multiple mistakes in identifying where Deborah's body was, what road it was near, and even which city was closest.

In all the tapes, Sheriff Jim Boutwell is right next to Henry, quick to offer corrections or say that Henry's confused.

Whenever Jim opens his mouth, Henry defers to him, dancing like a puppet on a string.

But Henry's attorney isn't content to let the unedited videos be the only defense.

So he presents the court with records showing that Henry was at work in Florida on the day of Deborah Jackson's murder in October of 1979.

He even brings in people who worked with Henry at the roofing company.

The one Ottis Toole also worked at.

His supervisors confirm that Henry was in Jacksonville on the day when he's alleged to have been over a thousand miles away in Texas.

Taking the evidence into account at this point, it might seem obvious that Henry is innocent.

But the prosecutors allege that his former coworkers are being paid to lie for him.

Though they never specify who might be footing that bill, as Henry has never had any money.

Still, at the end of the day, his confession sounds convincing enough for most people.

Members of the jury just can't understand why a man who didn't commit a crime would say that he did.

So, Henry's found guilty of the murder.

It's his third murder conviction in less than a year, and fourth overall.

But it's the first one that earns him the death penalty.

And, as he's led out of the courthouse, Henry's all smiles.

He didn't do it, but he got what he wanted.

Henry Lee Lucas is going to die.

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It's May 10th, 1984, on the east side of Galveston Bay, Texas, about 50 miles from Houston.

Henry Lee Lucas is in handcuffs, which makes getting out of the backseat of a squad car difficult.

But one of the deputies he's with gives him a hand, helping Henry pick his way over the slightly rocky ground.

It's been about a month since Henry was sentenced to death for murdering Deborah Louise Jackson.

Now he's on something of a national tour, visiting cities to talk to police about the hundreds of murders he claims to have committed.

Today, he's led two members of the Chambers County PD to a desolate spot by the water.

Looking at the sandy terrain, Henry points out three different spots.

Here, here, and here.

That's where he's buried them.

Two women in 79 and 80, and a man in 81.

All young hitchhikers, all murdered in the summer, all dead by Henry's hand.

It's a lot for the two deputies to take in.

They know Henry Lee Lucas by reputation, but to be in the presence of a serial killer is chilling.

And to hear him talk so casually about his victims is the stuff of nightmares.

Now, they have to dig up the bodies.

But the next day, after hours of searching, the police don't find any evidence of human remains.

There's no time for Henry to return to the site and try again, though.

He's on a tight schedule.

In just about every town Henry visits on his strange summer road trip, he takes credit for at least one murder, and he has a hell of a time doing it, enjoying the kind of celebrity status he never get in prison, eating fast food all the time and getting to fly from place to place, a novelty he never experienced before he was arrested.

When he's asked to travel to California, Henry says the only way he'll go is if he's given a TV for his cell every night.

And police are happy to oblige because by the end of August of 1984, the Texas Rangers Task Force in charge of tracking Henry's confessions has attributed 156 murders to him.

One of those cold cases is from almost a decade ago.

In August 1975, 18-year-old Debbie Williamson was found stabbed to death in her driveway in Lubbock, Texas.

Her family had dropped her at home after dinner, and it was her husband who found her hours later.

In the nine years since then, there have been no leads for investigators to follow.

But when Henry shone the crime scene photos, he readily admits to killing Debbie.

Lubbock police bring him to the house to go over the scene, and he points out the door he entered to wait for Debbie.

The Lubbock PD excitedly announced they've solved the crime at last and charge Henry with capital murder.

Debbie's parents, Joyce and Bob Lemmons, are relieved to have an answer to the mystery.

But only for a little while.

Then, they get a copy of Henry's confession, and right away, they know that he's lying.

One of the details that tips them off is the door Henry claims he entered the house through wasn't one that Debbie and her husband ever used.

They had a heavy wooden cabinet pushed up against it, effectively sealing it shut.

And Henry's confession is full of other details that strike Joyce and Bob as wrong, things that don't match up with what they know about Debbie's murder and how the crime scene was found.

Confused, the Lemons raise their issues with the investigators in charge of Debbie's case.

But they're shut out.

As far as the Lubbock PD are concerned, Henry Lee Lucas is their man.

So they're done thinking about Debbie Williamson.

It's a slap in the face to the Lemons, who've been waiting almost a decade for answers.

So, they turn to the press for help.

First, they speak to local papers.

Then national media pick up the story.

But still, the authorities refuse to reconsider Henry's confession.

So Joyce and Bob start their own investigation into the case, determined to prove one way or another if Henry Lee Lucas really killed their daughter.

Without access to physical evidence from the crime scene, the Lemons decide to start by seeing if they can place Henry anywhere near Lubbock the night of Debbie's murder, which happened on August 24th, 1975.

After just a little digging, they find out that Henry had only just been released from prison two days earlier.

And from there, he went to stay with his sister in Maryland right away.

So there was no way he could have been in Lubbock late in the evening of the 24th.

It just didn't happen.

Next, they decide to look into more of Henry's confessions and trace his movements for the past decade.

They soon find compelling evidence showing that Henry couldn't possibly have committed every murder he's confessed to.

It's so obvious that he's lying.

What's frustrating is that although the Lemons find plenty of people who can account for Henry's whereabouts at the time of various murders, not a single person they speak to has been contacted by investigators.

It seems that no police department thought it worthwhile to look any deeper into Henry's claims, to try and corroborate his stories.

By this stage, however, the Lemons aren't the only ones who've noticed that Henry isn't telling the truth.

In April 1985, the Dallas Times Herald publishes a five-page expose on Henry's lies written by investigative reporter Hugh Ainsworth and Jim Henderson.

Not only does the piece raise doubts that Henry's the killer he claims, it also suggests that the Texas Rangers have actively ignored information that could exonerate Henry.

The article includes a map showing the ridiculous 11,000-mile route investigators suggest Henry drove in one month in 1978.

There's also a detailed timeline of the 210 murders Henry's claim responsibility for.

Alongside each are notes showing exactly where Henry was on those dates, and it's usually nowhere near the crime scenes.

In some cases, investigators even accepted Henry's confession to a murder that took place while he was in jail in a different state.

Henry's quoted in the article, admitting that the whole thing has been a hoax that he's milked to stay in the relative comfort of the Williamson County Jail.

Once, when he told Texas Ranger Bob Prince and Sheriff Jim Boutwell that he was done confessing, they threatened to send him right to Death Road to await execution.

So Henry kept talking.

After a while, it became kind of a game for him.

He told Hugh, I'm gonna show him.

They think I'm stupid, but before all this is over, everyone will know who's really stupid.

To say that The Times Herald's story is a bombshell might be underselling it.

Almost immediately, the district attorney for Waco, Vic Feazell, convenes a grand jury.

He wants to look in to the three murders that Henry's taken credit for in Waco.

And to make sure Henry can't be influenced by the comfort or familiar faces he's used to in Williamson County, Vic gets a warrant to have Henry brought to Waco for the duration of the investigation.

The Texas Rangers, who've been coordinating and publicizing Henry's confessions this whole time, do not appreciate Vic's actions.

In the wake of The Times Herald piece, the Rangers are like a cornered animal, lashing out at anyone who pokes them.

And while the Rangers are trying to defend what they've done, their pet serial killer is on the stand in Waco, telling a grand jury that he's been lying this whole time.

Without a scrap of physical evidence or eyewitness testimony to link him to any crimes in Waco, the grand jury decline to indict Henry for the murders he confessed to.

After that, other jurisdictions around the country start quietly opening up cases that they'd close based on Henry's confessions.

Suddenly, some detectives aren't quite so convinced that Henry's their guy after all.

And the more people learn about the story, the clearer it becomes that Henry's confessions didn't happen in a vacuum.

For at least some of the cases, it seems like he was fed information.

Take the case of Carolyn Servenka.

She's the 19-year-old who left her accounting class in June of 1982, called her mom to say she'd be home soon, and then vanished.

Henry took responsibility for her disappearance, saying that he'd abducted, murdered, and dismembered Carolyn.

But after the Times Herald article, Carolyn's body turns up at the bottom of a Texas lake, still inside the car Henry claimed he abandoned in California.

After an examination, the authorities believe that Carolyn experienced a seizure while driving, lost control of her vehicle, and drowned, trapped inside.

So no, Henry Lee Lucas didn't kill Carolyn Servenka.

But when he confessed, he seemed so believable.

He even described a beloved necklace Carolyn regularly wore.

How did that happen?

Well, when investigators spoke to Henry about the case, someone must have fed him the information, deliberately or otherwise.

As for the necklace itself, it's still around Carolyn's neck.

In short, the whole thing is a giant mess.

What was once the terrifying story of a man who killed with impunity for years is turning into a farcical exposé of law enforcement incompetence.

The stunning tale of hundreds of investigators, fooled by a man with an IQ of around 70.

Waco DA.

Vic Feazell feels vindicated, but then he speaks with the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The DPS is in charge of the Texas Rangers, so it has ultimate responsibility for the Task Force coordinating Henry's confessions.

And it has no intention of recommending that a single case be reopened.

Instead, the head of the DPS says that he'll be opening an investigation into Vic.

The very fact that he questioned the work of law enforcement makes him untrustworthy.

After that, a series of stories appear in the local news, accusing Vic of corruption.

In response, a federal prosecutor convenes a grand jury to investigate Vic further.

As proof, the prosecutor only has videotapes of the news stories, but apparently that's enough to indict Vic for corruption.

It doesn't look good for the DA.

As Vic fights to clear his name, Henry's sabbatical in Waco comes to an abrupt end.

The Texas Rangers bring him back to Williamson County.

But this time, Henry holds his ground.

He says he can't confess to any more murders, he just can't.

So Sheriff Jim Boutwell shrugs and has Henry transferred to Death Row.

For a while, it seems that that might be the end of the story.

But about nine years later, in September of 1994, Vic Fasel's in his Waco office.

By this stage, Vic's no longer the district attorney.

He's cleared his name, proving that the stories about him were all bogus and winning massive damages in the aftermath.

But he's not left the Henry Lee Lucas case behind.

In fact, he's more involved in it than ever.

Now, he's working as Henry's defense attorney.

After everything that went down with the Rangers, Vic doesn't trust them anymore, and he's trying to stop Henry's execution for the murder of Deborah Louise Jackson.

But overturning convictions is hard.

The courts just don't like reversing decisions, not without the kind of evidence that completely changes the narrative.

On that score, though, today might just be Vic's lucky day.

Vic's phone rings, right on schedule.

It's his regular check-in with Henry.

Usually Vic updates Henry on whatever progress he's made in the case or any setbacks.

But today, Henry's the one with the news.

He tells Vic that he's had a letter from a woman in Missouri, a woman named Becky Powell.

Vic almost drops the phone.

Henry explains that Becky had run off with a trucker, just like Henry had told people back in 1982.

She was tired of being broke and hungry all the time, so she decided to leave.

In the years after that, she married the truck driver and settled down to start a family.

It wasn't until she saw Henry's face on the cover of a book a couple of years ago that she even knew he'd been convicted of her murder.

Concerned, she wrote to Henry and is eager to help clear his name.

Vic is gobsmacked.

He's had his doubts that Henry was guilty of killing Deborah Jackson, but to know that he might be innocent of another murder is more than he ever expected.

So Vic flies Becky to Texas to take a polygraph, which she passes with flying colors.

As soon as he has the results, Vic goes public with the news.

Becky Powell is alive and well.

What's more, she's Henry's alibi for the Orange Sox murder.

She says that Henry was in Jacksonville that night, trick-or-treating with her and her younger brother Frank.

So it couldn't have been Henry.

But when investigators in Montague County hear this, they want to make certain that Becky Powell is who she claims she is.

So they ask Vic to bring Becky in to make a sworn statement under oath.

And that, well, that brings the whole thing crumbling down.

The reality is that Becky is actually Phyllis Wilcox, a woman with a history of writing to and falling for convicted serial killers.

Her past pen pals have included John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson.

Henry is just the latest.

It was Phyllis' idea to pretend to be Becky and clear his name.

Once the pair decided to go through with it, Henry fed her every detail of Becky's life she'd need to know to convince people she was the real deal.

After Phyllis is unmasked, Vic Fezeal's done.

He's embarrassed that he was fooled by Henry, just like the cops, and he resigns as his attorney.

Vic was Henry's last and probably only great champion.

And with him gone, Henry's fate seems sealed.

All his lies have earned him a date with the Texas death chamber.

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It's just before Christmas 1995 at the Florida State Prison.

Sarah Patterson is in the visiting room, sitting on an uncomfortable chair behind a bare table.

Both are bolted to the ground.

Around Sarah, groups of people sit from inmates, some of them holding hands with their loved ones, others going over stacks of documents.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah sees a door open and turns to watch her uncle Ottis shuffle into the echoey room.

She's taken aback by his appearance because, frankly, Ottis looks awful.

Prison lighting doesn't make anyone look great, but today is especially bad.

She's heard her uncle was sick, but he looks like he's dying.

His skin's taken on a slight yellow tinge and he's lost weight.

When he sits across from her, Sarah can see that even his eyes look different.

Like his skin, there's a bit of yellow that wasn't there before, even the last time she visited him just a couple months back.

That's why Sarah's here today.

If her uncle is as sick as he looks, he doesn't have much time left, and Sarah's got something she wants to ask him.

First, she stalls for a few minutes, asking Ottis how he's being treated, how he's feeling, the usual stuff.

Then, when she runs out of things to say, Sarah brings him up, the little boy who was murdered back in the 80s.

She looks Ottis right in the eyes and asks if he really killed Adam Walsh.

Ottis doesn't drop his gaze.

He just nods his head and tells his niece the truth.

That was him, all right.

Sarah waits for her uncle to grin, for him to start laughing.

That's always been the sign that he's lying.

But Ottis is as solemn as Sarah's ever seen it.

That's how she knows he's being honest.

Sarah Patterson is one of the last people Ottis Toole will confess to.

He'll also make a deathbed admission to a prison staff member shortly before he dies of cirrhosis of the liver on September 15, 1996.

He's 49 years old.

Florida police never interviewed him about Adams' murder in his final years, even after his new confessions.

The detective in charge of the case just never believed Ottis was the guy.

So with Ottis, die what seems to be the last hopes of getting answers.

No other suspect has emerged in the decade and a half since the crime, and now the man who knew things about the case that no one else did is gone forever.

A thousand miles away in a Texas prison, Henry Lee Lucas' time is running out too.

Less than two years after Ottis' death in the spring of 1998, Henry's execution date is approaching.

As the June date gets nearer, all eyes turn to Texas Governor George W.

Bush.

People are wondering whether there's any chance of a last minute reprieve.

Though interest in the case has dulled over the last decade, questions still linger about Henry's guilt, at least in the case he's to be executed over, the murder of Deborah Louise Jackson.

In the weeks leading up to the scheduled execution, relatives of Henry's supposed victims come together to advocate for him to be put to death.

Many of them remain convinced that Henry's confessions were true, and they cling to the peace of mind that belief brings them.

To them, the only way for justice to be served is for Henry to die.

But then, on June 26, 1998, Governor Bush makes his decision.

Henry Lee Lucas will not be executed.

There are just too many doubts about this one case.

Of course, that doesn't mean Henry's going free.

He's still got another six life sentences and 210 years to serve for other convictions.

He'll be behind bars for the rest of his days, however long that is.

Henry can't cheat death forever, though.

In fact, he can't even manage three years.

In March of 2001, he dies of natural causes at the age of 64.

But diminished and pathetic as he was by the end of his life, Henry's story still casts ripples.

Even today, some in law enforcement remain convinced that Henry Lee Lucas was the worst serial killer America has ever seen.

Others maintain that he killed just three people, his mother Viola, Becky Powell and Kate Rich.

The murders tied to Henry through actual physical evidence.

As for the rest of the cases left in limbo by the questionable confessions of Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, it's a mixed bag.

Eventually, Adam Walsh's parents ask a former detective and friend to look into their son's murder one more time, to go through everything he can get his hands on and find an answer.

The investigator discovers to his horror that much of the physical evidence in Adam's case was never properly examined, including blood samples linking Adam to the Cadillac Ottis was driving on the day of the murder, and the unmistakable outline of a bloody face left on the floor mats of the car.

Once he unearths those overlooked details, everyone's finally on board.

In 2006, the Hollywood PD in Florida declare Ottis Toole the killer of Adam Walsh, and officially close the case.

It's not a happy ending by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it gives Adam's family a sense of closure.

Not everyone gets that.

That's because in the decades since the deaths of Henry and Ottis, various jurisdictions have responded to their legacy in different ways, leaving some families without the answers they thought they had, and others questioning the facts they've been given.

Williamson County, where Jim Boutwell was sheriff and surrogate father figure to Henry, tasks an investigator with looking into three of Henry's confessions.

DNA samples collected in each of the cases prove to not match Henry, and they're officially removed from his ledger.

They're just a drop in the bucket, though.

Still, even today, updates are trickling in.

In 2023, Debbie Williamson's remaining family members convinced Lubbock authorities to exhume Debbie's remains to test them for any lingering DNA samples.

Now, as recently as May of 2024, there's renewed hope of finding Debbie's real killer, thanks to the unmasking of the culprit behind a similar crime that occurred right around the time of Debbie's murder.

Most of the other cases Henry Lee Lucas confessed to, though, haven't been reopened.

And the more time goes by, the smaller the chances that answers will be found.

Witnesses will die, evidence will deteriorate, and victims will be forgotten.

It's possible that Henry Lee Lucas was responsible for some of the murders he confessed to.

He was guilty of three in his lifetime.

Of that, at least, we can be sure.

And his partner in crime, Ottis Toole, was likewise certainly a killer, responsible for a crime that altered the way American parents thought about child safety.

But the chances that these men managed to commit so many murders are low.

And while some remain convinced the pair will go down in history as two of the worst serial killers the world has ever known, their real legacy is much more frightening.

because thanks to Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, dozens, maybe even hundreds, of real killers have continued to walk free.

From Airship, this is episode four in our series on Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.

On the next episode, I'll be speaking with an expert about the psychology of false confessions and their impact on the justice system.

We use many different sources while preparing this episode.

A few we can recommend are Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford and Joe Matthews, The Confessions of Henry Lee Lucas by Mike Cox, and the documentary series, The Confession Killer.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details.

And while in some cases, we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Mohammed Shazi.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson, and Lindsey Graham for Airship.