In high school I did a report on serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. This guy was an absolutely fascinating case — at one point he confessed to 600 murders. Then, he recanted all except for one of them.
Police from around the country brought in their unsolved cases and Lucas confessed to them after being bribed by the police (he was the only prisoner in his jail to have a TV in his cell). Lucas confessed not only to murders that were physically impossible (ie. two different states at the same time), but he confessed to cases that were made up.
After all was said and done, Lucas was linked to 11 murders, including his mother’s. He’s had a number of stays of execution, which is rare in Texas, the state with the most inmates on death row. There are also a number of police that are under fire for having manipulated Lucas in the ways they did, to shut cases that should have never been shut. But Lucas, the uneducated son of a prostitute and a quadruple-amputee, managed to not only use the police once he had been captured, but he utterly confused them at the same time.
For more on Henry Lee Lucas, watch Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, or check out the ODP list. -ram
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