They point to the fact that he had had been making false confessions since his very first arrests and that lawmakers would be reluctant to admit that they had been tricked into believing these initial confessions. In the beginning the police were sure he was a serial killer and simply thought he was exaggerating, but some experts have since questioned whether this was true and have suggested that the number of victims may be several, as opposed to hundreds or thousands. He is often referred to as the Confession Killer simply because he seemed to confess to everything and anything. As Henry tells it, he had already killed by this point and would go on to kill 3,000 people (a number that started at 60, progressed to 100 and then jumped straight to 3,000). We also know that he was later arrested and imprisoned again for the attempted abduction of three schoolgirls.Īfter that, it gets a little hazy. What we do know is that he killed his mother and spent 10 years in prison, before being released due to overcrowding. The only person who really knows how many people Henry Lee Lucas killed, is Henry himself, and even then we can’t be sure. He was later killed by one of his accomplices, who would confess their crimes to the police. He earned the nickname “Candy Man” because his family ran a candy factory and he would give free candy to kids in order to win their trust. At the time the murders were known as the Houston Mass Murders and were considered to be the worst known case of serial murder in the United States, primarily because this was before the crimes of killers like Gary Ridgway, Ted Bundy and clown killer John Wayne Gacy came to light. The three men abducted, raped and then murdered a number of young boys from the city. He didn’t act alone and had two other men alongside him, David Brookes and Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. Killed with Elmer Wayne Henley and David BrookesĪ moniker like “The Candy Man” is enough to send a chill through anyone’s bones, mainly because it was the name of an eponymous serial killer from classic series of horror films that borrowed from many myths and true stories, combining everything from the Bloody Mary urban legend to the story of Dean Corll, who is said to have murdered 29 people in Houston in the 1970s. There is a lot to cover, so to begin with let’s look at the worst killers in Texas history-the ones with the biggest body counts and the sickest rapsheets. In this guide we will take a look at those than serial killers. Not quite as much as Europe, but at times it has been equally bloody and as well as being home to several of the country’s worst spree killers, it has also borne some of the worst US serial killers that have ever lived. Known as the Lone Star Stare, Texas is the largest state in the contiguous United States, a mammoth that covers nearly 270,000 square miles, which makes it bigger than the entire continent of Europe.

Family pictures of serial killers