# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asesinos en serie Capitulo 12: "Henry Lee Lucas y Ottis Toole"

# data[].attributes.body
In 1976, Toole met Henry Lee Lucas at a Jacksonville soup kitchen,[1] and they soon developed a sexual relationship.[4] Toole later claimed to have accompanied Lucas in 1008 murders, sometimes at the behest of a cult called "The Hands of Death". Police, however, discounted the uncorroborated claim of the cult's existence.[1]

On January 4, 1982, Toole barricaded 64-year-old George Sonnenberg in a boarding house where he was living in Jacksonville and set the house on fire. Sonnenberg died a week later of injuries he sustained in the fire. In April 1983, Toole was arrested for an unrelated arson incident in Jacksonville. For that crime, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.[5] While in custody, Toole confessed to killing George Sonnenberg.[6] Toole signed a confession stating that he and Sonnenberg had begun a sexual relationship and, after the two had an argument, Toole set Sonnenberg's home on fire.[7]

Two months later in June, his accomplice Henry Lee Lucas was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm. It was then Lucas began boasting about the murderous rampage orchestrated by the two. At first, Toole had denied involvement but later began backing up Lucas's confessions. Lucas also backed Toole's confession to the murder of Adam Walsh. Journalist Hugh Aynesworth and others investigated for articles that appeared in The Dallas Times Herald. It was calculated that Lucas would have had to use his 13-year-old Ford station wagon to cover 11,000 miles (18,000 km) in one month i.e., around 370 miles (600 km) per day, to have committed the crimes police attributed to him. Lucas became widely regarded as a compliant interviewee who was used by police to clear up unsolved murders that he had not been involved in, aided by Toole giving false statements in collaboration.[8]

During Toole's trial for murdering George Sonnenberg, Toole claimed that he did not light the home on fire and only signed the confession so he would be extradited back to Jacksonville.[7] On April 28, 1984, a jury found Toole guilty of first degree murder and sentenced him to death.[5][6] Later that year, Toole was found guilty of the February 1983 strangulation murder of a 19-year-old Tallahassee, Florida woman, and received a second death sentence; on appeal, however, both sentences were later commuted to life in prison.[citation needed]

After his incarceration, Toole pleaded guilty to four more Jacksonville murders in 1991 and received four more life sentences.

# data[].attributes.body
Powell was put in a state shelter by the authorities after her mother and grandmother died in 1982. Lucas convinced her to abscond and they lived on the road, eventually traveling to California, where an employer's wife asked them to work for her infirm mother, 82-year-old Kate Rich, of Ringgold, Texas. Rich's family turned Lucas and Powell out, accusing them of failing to do their jobs and writing checks on her account. While hitchhiking they were picked up by the minister of a Stoneburg, Texas religious commune called "The House of Prayer". Believing Lucas and the 15-year-old Powell were a married couple, he found Lucas a job as a roofer while allowing the couple to stay in a small apartment on the commune. Powell had become argumentative and homesick for Florida, and Lucas said she left at a truck stop in Bowie, Texas. According to some of his later accounts Lucas murdered Powell and then Rich.[10] In addition to confessing, Lucas led the police to remains said to be Powell and Rich, although forensic evidence alone was inconclusive and the coroner stopped short of positively identifying either set of remains. As with most of his alleged crimes, Lucas later denied involvement, but the consensus is he did murder Powell and Rich.

# data[].attributes.body
He was born on August 23, 1936, in Blacksburg, Virginia. Lucas lost an eye at age 10 after it became infected due to a fight.[1] A friend later described him as a child who would often get attention by frighteningly strange behavior.[2] Aside from this, Lucas' mother was a prostitute who would force him to watch her have sex with clients and cross dress in public.[1][3]

In December 1949, Lucas' father, Anderson, whose legs had been severed in a railroad accident, died of hypothermia after going home drunk and collapsing outside during a blizzard. Shortly thereafter, while in the sixth grade, Lucas dropped out of school and ran away from home, drifting around Virginia. Lucas claimed to have committed his first murder in 1951, when he strangled 17-year-old Laura Burnsley, who had refused his sexual advances. As with most of his confessions, he later retracted this claim. On June 10, 1954, Lucas was convicted on over a dozen counts of burglary in and around Richmond, Virginia, and was sentenced to four years in prison. He escaped in 1957, was recaptured three days later, and was subsequently released on September 2, 1959.[4][5]

In late 1959, Lucas traveled to Tecumseh, Michigan to live with his half-sister, Opal. Around that time, Lucas was engaged to marry a pen pal with whom he had corresponded while incarcerated. When his mother visited him for Christmas, she disapproved of her son's fiancée and insisted he move back to Blacksburg. He refused, after which they argued repeatedly during the visit about his upcoming nuptials.

# data[].attributes.body
Ottis Toole was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. Toole's father was an alcoholic who abandoned him, while his abusive mother would, according to Toole, dress him in girls' clothing and call him Susan.[1] Toole claimed that, as a young child, he was a victim of sexual assault and incest at the hands of many close relatives and acquaintances, including his older sister and a next door neighbor. He also claimed that his maternal grandmother was a Satanist who exposed him to various Satanic practices and rituals in his youth, including self-mutilation and graverobbing, and dubbed him "Devil's Child."[2] Toole claimed this abuse began when he came out as gay to his family.[1]

Toole was often designated as suffering from mild mental retardation, with an I.Q. of 75.[1] He also suffered from epilepsy, which resulted in frequent grand mal seizures. Throughout Toole's childhood, he frequently ran away from home and often slept in abandoned houses. He was a serial arsonist from a young age and was sexually aroused by fire.[3]

In the documentary Death Diploma, Toole claimed he was forced to have sex with a friend of his father's when he was five years old. He felt he knew he was gay when he was 10, and claimed to have had a sexual relationship with a neighborhood boy when he was 12. Toole dropped out of school in the ninth grade and began visiting gay bars. He also claimed to have been a male prostitute as a teenager, and became obsessed with gay pornography.[1] Toole claimed to have committed his first murder at the age of 14, when after being propositioned for sex by a traveling salesman, Toole ran over the salesman with his own car.[1] Toole was first arrested at the age of 17 in August 1964 for loitering.

Much information on Toole between 1966 and 1973 is unclear, but authorities believe that he began drifting around the Southwestern United Statesand that he supported himself by prostitution and panhandling. While living in Nebraska, Toole was one of the prime suspects in the 1974 murder of 24-year-old Patricia Webb. Shortly after, he left Nebraska and briefly settled in Boulder, Colorado. One month later, he became a prime suspect in the homicide of 31-year-old Ellen Holman, who was murdered on October 14, 1974. With many accusations against him, Toole left Boulder and headed back to Jacksonville.

In early 1975, Toole returned to Jacksonville after drifting and hitch-hiking through the American South. On January 14, 1976, he married a woman 25 years his senior. She left him after three days, after discovering his homosexuality. Toole said during an interview his marriage was a tactic meant to conceal his true sexuality.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
HENRY LEE LUCAS - CONFESSIONS OF A SERIAL KILLER PART ONE (1993)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Interview with serial killer Ottis Toole (1993)

# data[].attributes.body
Ottis Elwood Toole (March 5, 1947 – September 15, 1996) was an American drifterand serial killer who was convicted of six counts of murder. Like his companion Henry Lee Lucas, Toole made confessions he then later recanted, which resulted in murder convictions. The discrediting of the case against Lucas for crimes Toole had offered corroborating statements created doubts as to whether either was a genuine serial killer or, as Hugh Aynesworth suggested, both were merely compliant interviewees whom police used to clear unsolved murders from the books. Toole received two death sentences, but on appeal they were commuted to life imprisonment. He died in his cell from cirrhosis, aged 49. Police attributed the murder of Adam Walsh to Toole on the basis of recanted statements. Lucas had backed Toole's confession to the Walsh murder, claiming he had been in possession of the victim's severed head.

# data[].attributes.headline
Henry Lee Lucas (August 23, 1936 – March 12, 2001) was an American serial killer. Lucas was arrested in Texas and on the basis of his confessions to Texas Rangers, hundreds of unsolved murders were attributed to him and officially classified as cleared up. Lucas was convicted of murdering 11 people and condemned to death for a single case with an unidentified victim. A newspaper exposed the improbable logistics of the confessions made by Lucas, when they were taken as a whole, and a study by the Attorney General of Texas concluded he had falsely confessed. Lucas's death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998. In some cases, law enforcement thought that Lucas had demonstrated knowledge of facts that only a perpetrator could have known.

# data[].attributes.subject
Henry Lee Lucas (August 23, 1936 – March 12, 2001) was an American serial killer. Lucas was arrested in Texas and on the basis of his confessions to Texas Rangers, hundreds of unsolved murders were attributed to him and officially classified as cleared up. Lucas was convicted of murdering 11 people and condemned to death for a single case with an unidentified victim. A newspaper exposed the improbable logistics of the confessions made by Lucas, when they were taken as a whole, and a study by the Attorney General of Texas concluded he had falsely confessed. Lucas's death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998. In some cases, law enforcement thought that Lucas had demonstrated knowledge of facts that only a perpetrator could have known.