The Disturbing Crimes Of Henry Lee Lucas And Ottis Toole
Public DomainHenry Lee Lucas (left) and Ottis Toole (right) killed anywhere from three to over 100 victims together in the 1970s and ’80s.
Henry Lucas and Ottis Toole are among America’s most prolific serial killer couples. In a crime spree that spanned nearly half the country, the pair traveled around murdering, raping, burning, and sometimes eating anyone who crossed their path.
When Lucas was arrested at the end of the pair’s massacre, he admitted to hundreds of murders, but it’s still unclear how many he and Toole actually killed.
Lucas and Toole both suffered horrific childhoods filled with physical and sexual abuse from their own family members. When the two men met at a soup kitchen in 1976, the kindred spirits hit it off.
Shortly after meeting, the pair took off on their killing spree, which covered 26 states. Anyone they came across — male or female, young or old — was fair game. The couple attacked hitchhikers, sex workers, and migrants, often raping and torturing them before murdering them in cold blood. Toole’s most famous victim was six-year-old Adam Walsh, the son of America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh.
Public DomainAdam Walsh in 1981, the year he was kidnapped and murdered — purportedly by Ottis Toole.
Toole also claimed to have cannibalized some of the bodies of their victims. In one conversation between the couple recorded on a prison phone, Toole nostalgically recalled to his lover: “Remember how I liked to pour some blood out of them?… Some tastes like real meat when it’s got barbecue sauce on it.”
Lucas was arrested for unrelated crimes in 1983, and while he was behind bars, he started bragging about the murders he’d committed. From there, the truth — or something like it — came out, and both men died in prison, Toole in 1996 and Lucas in 2001.
