Soon, Lucas fell in with another drifter, Ottis Toole. After meeting in Jacksonville, Florida, the pair became friends and lovers. Some believe they even killed together while wandering across the United States. Eventually, Lucas meet Toole’s nice, Frieda Powell. Frieda and Lucas also became lovers, then eventually common law spouses. Lucas was 30 years older than his new girlfriend.

In 1982, the couple traveled to Ringgold, Texas where they worked as hired hands for Kate Rich. However, Rich soon accused her new employees of cashing bad checks, so the two relocated to a religious commune in Stoneburg, TX called “The House of Prayer.” Powell longed to return to Florida, and the couple reportedly fought over what their next step should be.

It’s believed that at this point in their travels, Lucas brutally killed his much-younger girlfriend, taking her out to an isolated field where he murdered and dismembered her. Powell’s remains have yet to be found. He then returned to Ringgold, where he convinced Rich to come with him under the pretense of searching for Powell. He slaughtered his former employer and concealed her body in a drainage pipe. Although Lucas would retract his confession of these crimes, the murders of Powell, Rich, and Lucas’s mother are the three deaths he can be concretely linked to.

Lucas remained living in Texas and, in 1983, was taken into custody on an illegal weapons charge. While in custody, the floodgates opened, and Lucas confessed to hundreds and hundreds of murders. Based on Lucas’s onslaught of confessions, authorities cleared over 1,000 unsolved crimes.

Henry Lee Lucas: The Confession Killer

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