US man Henry Lee Lucas was convicted of the murder of his teenage common-law wife on November 9, 1983.
Lucas had professed that he did not mean to kill her, but the jury was unconvinced.
He had declared his innocence in that case, but over the 1980s he confessed to have committed a serial murder spree that involved as many as 600 victims.
Henry Lee Lucas confessed to hundreds of murders he didn’t commit. (Netflix)
At the time, Lucas was viewed as the most prolific serial killer of all time, confessing to the deaths of hundreds of women across the United States.
For years, homicide detectives would employ tactics to win over their suspects in exchange for a confession.
They would offer food and drink and access to perks in prison while the suspect was cooperating with them.
Texas Rangers would take Lucas to cafes and restaurants where he would talk about his murder spree.
And for many investigators in the Texas Ranger Division, it did not occur to them that Lucas was lying about crimes he didn’t commit in exchange for a strawberry milkshake or access to television.
Henry Lee Lucas pretended to be the worst serial killer ever. (Netflix)
Police departments from all over the country would send their cold case files to the Texas Rangers to see if Lucas committed them.
Lucas would look at the files, learn details he had read from them, and confess to an oblivious investigator the next day.
And police were all too happy to pin the blame on this serial killer and close the case.
It was reporters from the Dallas Times Herald who did the calculations on Lucas’ murder spree.
In order to commit all the killings he had confessed to, he would have needed to drive 17,000km in a month.
All the while, he would have needed to find time to find and kill the random victims he had supposedly targeted.
Lucas would eventually be convicted of 11 murders, including his own mother.
But DNA evidence has later ruled him out as a suspect.
Lucas’ lawyer, Ron Ponton, was able to clear him of 80 cases simply by proving he wasn’t there at the time of the murders.
“He talked about killing Jimmy Hoffa, ludicrous stuff, to see if anybody would choke when he told some big lie –– and nobody would choke,” Ponton said.
Henry Lee Lucas died in prison soon after his death sentence was commuted. (Nine Archives)
Most of his confessions have since been shown to be false, and most of the cases were reopened.
In some instances, other suspects have since been charged.
Because so many of his crimes were shrouded in doubt, Governor George W Bush commuted his death sentence to life in jail.
It was the only death sentence Bush commuted while governor.
Lucas died of heart failure in prison in 2001, when he was 64.
Only three of his supposed murders were confirmed.
Rod Ponton became famous for an amusing Zoom glitch. (Zoom)
Ponton would later find internet fame during a Zoom court hearing in 2021 due to an amusing mistake.
Ponton had accidentally signed into the court procedure with a filter that turned him into a talking cat.