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Would you be surprised to learn that serial killers hunting in pairs is very common? Would you cringe to know that children are fair game in the minds of two of the sickest individuals ever to wander America?  Can you bear to expose yourself to Henry Lucas and Ottis Toole? You're about to find out....

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Henry Lee Lucas was born August 23, 1936, in Virginia, to a prostitute name Viola.  He was one of nine children.  Some of his siblings were sent off to foster homes, institutions, or relatives.  His father, Anderson, had lost both of his legs in an accident.

Viola was an abusive woman, who once beat Henry so badly, he was on the floor drifting in and out on consciousness for 36 hours, until his mother's pimp took him to a doctor, saying that he had fallen off a ladder. 

Henry's mother killed any pet he tried to bring home, and sent him to school dressed as a girl.

In a childhood accident, Henry was injured in the eye, yet Viola would not send him to a doctor for several days, and he ended up with a glass eye.

Viola sent Henry into the world with a few more traumas as well: when he was small, Henry would often be forced to watch his mother having sex with her clients, and once witnessed Viola shoot a man in the leg.  Henry's father, unable to bear it anymore, pulled himself outside into the snow, and later died of pneumonia.

By age 13, young Henry was having sex with his older half-brother, who also introduced him to beastiality and animal cruelty.  The two who would kill small animals and have sex with the corpses. 

Henry committed his first murder at age 14, when a girl refused his sexual advances.

When he was 24, he killed his mother during a fight, stabbing her in the chest.  Lucas was sentenced to 40 years in jail for second degree murder.  After 10 years, he was paroled against his wishes.

After a year and a half, he was imprisoned again, this time for molesting two teenage girls.  Lucas was released in 1975.

Shortly after leaving prison, Lucas met Ottis Toole.   Toole shared Lucas's interest in necrophilia, but also had a passion for pyromania and cannibalism.  Lucas considered human flesh too "gamey", and at one point stated that he did not join Toole in cannibalizing victims because he "[didnt] like Tooles barbeque sauce."  Toole also differed from his new companion in that he was allegedly a part time transsexual.

When Ottis's mother and sister died within one month, Lucas and Toole "sprung" Toole's niece and nephew from the juvenile home in which they had been placed.

Toole's young nephew's name was Frank, and his preadolescent, and slightly mentally handicapped, niece's name was Frieda, but she called herself Becky.

The two youths traveled with the pair, and Becky became Lucas's lover.  It was not unheard of for Becky and Frank to be present when either of the two men were killing.

    When Ottis decided to leave the partnership, he took Frank to Florida with him.  Henry and Becky went to Texas together.  When Becky complained that she was homesick, Lucas said hed take her back to her hometown, and two began hitchhiking.  Somewhere along the way, the couple got into a fight, and

Becky hit Henry in the face.  Much in the same way that he had ended his mother's life, Henry killed his young lover.

Picked up for a weapons charge in 1985, Lucas confessed to a jailor.  His original confessions were to over 600 murders, which he said included stabbings, strangulations, and even crucifixions.  Though he later recanted, 214 cases, many in Texas, were closed.

At the time of Henry's confession, Ottis was in jail on an arson charge, and when confronted, also confessed.  Toole's confession contained one case that would gain national attention.  Toole claimed to have murdered 6-year-old Adam Walsh.  Lucas confirmed the story.  "Toole killed Adam, then showed me the remains of the boy in a shallow grave.  I got sick about it.  I said 'lets get out of here'."  Adam's father, John Walsh, unhappy with the way his son's case was handled, went on to start and host the television show "America's Most Wanted".

Toole later retracted his confession.

Both men were sentenced to death. 

For his eleven convictions, Lucas received one death sentence, six life terms, two seventy-five year sentences, and one sixty-year sentence.  The governor of Texas at the time, George W. Bush, granted Lucas a pardon so that he would not be executed.  Toole also managed to dodge his death sentence, and served life without the possibility of parole.

Lucas became a born-again Christian in 1984, and denied the murders he was doing time for, only admitting to killing his mother.  "I dont remember killing Mama, I just remember hitting her, but they said I did, so Ill go along with that one.  All these others, they just wanted their unsolved cases cleared.  They knew those confessions werent any good to start with.  Nobody wants me to be honest about it."

Lucas claimed to have been drugged with Thorazine at the time of his confessions, and said that his cell was so cold, he was desperate enough to say anything that might get him moved.  "I made up some of the worst details youve ever heard, like how to mutilate a human being."

At one point, Lucas claimed that some of the murders committed were done so by order of a Satanic cult called "Hand of Death".  Lucas claimed that Toole requested that he join.

On September 15, 1996, Ottis Toole died of cirrhosis of the liver.

Frank had to be placed in a mental institution to recover from the things he had witnessed.

On March 15, 2001, Henry Lee Lucas died of heart failure and was buried in Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery, in Huntsville, Texas.

On his fame, Lucas said lightheartedly "I dont want people to think of me as a serial killer.  Im just an old man."