Lucas in Court
The Lucas Grand Jury
Lucas not only went to trial that November but also testified on his own behalf, and seemed to hope to be convicted. His attorney was Tom Whitlock, who argued that Lucas had not intended to kill Becky. On the stand, a tearful Lucas admitted to Becky's murder but said he didn't know quite how it had happened and he was full of remorse over it. Then after he was convicted and received a life sentence, he congratulated the prosecutor with, "You did a good job." Lucas then issued a statement to the effect that he had not tried to win because he didn't want to. (Previously he had bragged to police that he was smart and could get out of anything if he wanted to.) His next trial would be for Orange Socks, but this time it would be a capital crime, where the death penalty was a possibility.
Before that occurred, Lucas got back in touch with an old friend and traveling partner, Ottis Toole. If not for Ottis, he'd never have met Becky.
Ottis
Ottis Elwood Toole
Ottis Toole, younger
Book cover: The Encyclo-
pedia of Serial Killers
pedia of Serial Killers
Meeting of Deviant Minds
When Toole met Lucas at the soup kitchen, they went home together to have sex and soon became regular lovers. Apparently they recognized the kindred soul in each other, so they traveled the country from 1978 until 1982. Lucas gave an interview in which he said that he had to re-educate Toole in the art of murder (which became the basis for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer). Having studied prison records of how men were caught, he wanted to be certain the Toole could follow directions and avoid detection. "He was doing his crimes all one way," Lucas said. "I started to correct him in his ways, in doing the crime where he wouldn't leave information."Toole & Lucas
During that time, Toole is mentioned in some accounts as having introduced Lucas to the "Hand of Death" cult, telling him how they killed children for sacrifice to Satan. Max Call describes what they did in service to this cult, supposedly learning to use rape as a tool of punishment and murder as part of the cult's overall plan. They trained people like Ottis and Henry to become killing machines. However, there was no corroboration of this story, so law enforcement dismissed it as the imagination of a loser trying to seem more special than he was.
In 1977, Toole married a woman 24 years his senior and insisted that she share him with Lucas. According to interviews she later gave, he told her he could not perform with a woman unless he also knew he could get a man, so the following year they separated.
Lucas's story is equally sordid and it bears some odd similarities.
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