Hello, and welcome.
A quick note about my personal life; my sister and I are starting a podcast! Hopefully, we will be recording our first episode next week, and if you like what you are reading here, stay tuned. We will be talking about a bunch of strange things, from conspiracies to ghosts. I'm so excited!
(Vegan-loaded fries from our first day planning the podcast) (We still don't have a name-help.)
Today I have a true crime story for you, so get ready this one is messed up.
This is the story of Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas.
I think it's best to start by discussing their childhoods. Many serial killers have some messed up childhood or suffered a head injury that caused them to turn out the way they did. I am not excusing them of their actions, but I feel like that is essential to note.
If they had normal upbringings, would they still murder people? Were their actions inevitable?
Let's start with Toole since it appears he brought Lucas into the life.
(Source: Biography)
Ottis Toole was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on March 5, 1947. Toole had a horrible childhood being a victim of incest and sexual assault for years. His mother was cruel, and his absent father, an alcoholic. He had an extremely religious upbringing, and Toole even said that the reason he was abused was that he was gay.
His mother would make him wear dresses and called him Susan. His grandmother referred to him as the 'Devil's Child.' She was also a Satanists and encouraged self-mutilation and graverobbing.
It should come as no surprise that Toole's first murder was when he was 14. A traveling salesman raped him; some sources say the man attempted to, but still. Toole killed him by hitting him with his car. Can you really blame him?
Other notes on Tooles' childhood, as I mentioned above, he was a victim to incest, and that was at the hands of his sister. Literally, no one in his family actually cared about him. Also, with an IQ of 75, epilepsy, and being an outsider, Toole didn't have friends.
He discovered sexual arousal from setting things on fire and made a hobby out of it.
By 9th grade, Toole had dropped out of high school and run away from home to be a sex worker. He drifted for several years after that, when people grew suspicious, he moved on.
He attracted attention in Nebraska in 1974 for the disappearance of Patricia Webb. Later that year, on October 14, he murdered Ellen Holman in Boulder, Colorado. The townspeople grew suspicious, and Toole fled.
On January 14, 1976, Toole married an older woman to hide that he was gay. Three days into their marriage, the wife figures out he's gay and leaves. I'm sorry, but how didn't she know? Did they just meet or what?
Anyway, he would meet the love of his life, Henry Lee Lucas, in line at a soup kitchen in Florida in 1976. Their relationship flourished as they murdered and ate hundreds of people nation-wide.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Now for a little background on Lucas. He was from a low-income family and grew up in a single bedroom house with his mother, Viola, father, and Viola's pimp/ the stepfather, Bernie; I'm not quite sure about that one, but regardless, shitty living quarters. Viola was a sex worker and an alcoholic. His father? Also an alcoholic. His father passed out on some train tracks, and a freight train went by, cutting off both of his legs. After that, he sold pencils and bootleg whiskey on the corner until he passed out during a blizzard and died of hypothermia.
Viola and Bernie would beat the shit out of Lucas.
He suffered several head injuries as a child. Viola once hit him in the head with a board until he passed out. Ends up, he went into a coma, and they left him there, on the floor for hours. Bernie became paranoid that they would be discovered and begged Viola to take him to a hospital. At the hospital, they said that Lucas had fallen from a ladder, in fear for his life, he agreed.
When Lucas was old enough to attend school, Viola would put him in dresses and curl his hair. A concerned teacher, noticing Lucas, was malnourished and filthy, gave him pants and a shirt to wear.
Lucas would eventually kill his mother in 1960.
In his teens, Lucas was stabbed in the eye, and it had to be removed. He later would get a glass eye.
Other than that, the beatings continued throughout his childhood. The blows were so hard that they caused him to hear voices and have seizures.
Lucas tried to kill himself countless times. He once sliced open both of his wrists and stomach. Later, he was sent to a mental hospital and received shock therapy. This didn't work. Lucas became more violent in response to the treatment.
I warned you that this was going to be a rough story and, we have barely talked about the duos murders.
Toole and Lucas shared a passion for murder and the acquired taste for human flesh. Gross, but it goes to show that even serial killers find their match. They called the murders tribute to "The Hand of Death" and that they were part of a cult.
There weren't any other members of this cult. Can you have a cult with only two people?
Anyway, the couple murdered and ate hundreds of people; only a handful was confirmed. I would be here for days if I went through all of them, but I feel like we must remember all of the victims. The majority of their victims were young women and children. Though I can't go through everything, I do want to touch on their most notable victim, Adam Walsh.
Adam Walsh was a 6-year-old blond-haired boy who was kidnapped from a Sears in Florida in 1981. Toole apparently tempted Walsh with candy and toys, louring him to the couple's van. Of course, they had a van!
Brace yourself for this next bit.
Shortly after Walsh was abducted, Toole beat him over the head and moments later, decapitated Walsh with a machete. The couple took Walsh's body home and ate it; it still hasn't been found to this day. Walsh's head, on the other hand, rolled around the back of their van for several days. They forgot it was back there and eventually threw it into a canal.
What the hell?!
How do you kill a child? Does the fact that Walsh was unconscious when he died to mean anything? Did Toole and Lucas knock out all of their victims before murdering them?
I have questions.
Also, how do you forget about a HEAD rolling around the back of your van? I don't understand. This is also coming from someone who can't even kill a bug-won't kill a bug. I just think that all life is sacred, and murdering anything is wrong.
Okay, one more.
One more quick murder by this couple was on January 4, 1982. Toole murdered George Sonnenberg. Sonnenberg was an older man, and Toole didn't like him. Serial killers aren't known for sorting out their actions in a civil manner, so Toole instead locked Sonnenberg in his house and caught it on fire. Sonnenberg made it out but would die within the week from smoke inhalation.
I promise; justice was served- sort of.
Toole and Lucas were arrested months apart for different crimes in 1983 and were sentenced to life.
Toole would die of cirrhosis in Flordia State Prison on September 15, 1996. If you are curious, cirrhosis is when the liver doesn't function right because of some long term damage-like alcohol.
On his deathbed, Toole confessed to the murder of Walsh but recanted the story immediately after. The Walsh family, like so many others, never found closure.
Lucus would die of heart failure on March 12, 2001. During his time in prison, he made up countless lies about where his victims were located. He basically sent police running around in circles; those families looking for their loved ones never got closure.
And that is the jist of Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas. There is obviously a lot more to this story; I might do an update, later on, tell about a few more of their victims because people need to know. Adam Walsh is the victim that everyone talks about; he was seen as the 'American boy,' and it hit hard on people, but we can't forget the hundreds left undiscovered.
-Tye
Always Cite Those Sources:
“Henry Lee Lucas.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Feb. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lee_Lucas.
“Ottis Toole.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Feb. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottis_Toole.
Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 16 Apr. 2019, www.biography.com/crime-figure/ottis-toole.
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