Last Update on the Left - Episode 14 - Henry Lee Lucas Revisited - Part II

Summary

LAST PODCAST ON THE LEFT
Last Update on the Left – Episode 14 – Henry Lee Lucas Revisited, Part II
Date: May 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode completes the hosts’ deep dive into the legacy, mythology, and far-reaching impact of supposed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas—primarily focusing on the aftermath of his notorious confessions, the law enforcement culture that molded his legend, and the eventual collapse of the “most prolific killer” narrative through DNA evidence. The hosts—Marcus Parks, Ben Kissel, and Henry Zebrowski (with guest Ed Larson)—navigate fact, fiction, and the surreal world of Texas justice, all while maintaining their signature dark humor and banter.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Legend and Myth-Building of Henry Lee Lucas

• Smells and Persona:
  The hosts open with a comedic riff on the foul odors of Lucas and Ottis Toole, speculating that cigarette smoke was preferable to their actual “essence.”

  • “The smoke was like a tool. A tool by Oddis Tool.”—Ben Kissel (00:51)
  • “Do you really want to experience essence of Odis?”—Marcus Parks (00:59)

• Serial Killer Conspiracy Theories:
  The conversation pivots to the persistent conspiracy that Lucas and others were CIA-trained assassins, spurred by books like Hand of Death and Program to Kill.

  • “A big part of the ‘black-pilled’ world…fully believes that serial killers are trained by CIA…to use their magical powers to fuel their reptilian overlords.”—Ben Kissel (02:51)
  • “I just don’t think they need the training. They seem to kind of be self starters.”—Ben Kissel (05:23)

Law Enforcement's Investment and the Machine of False Confessions (07:06–16:00)

• Law Enforcement Buy-In:
  The public and police enthusiasm for Lucas’s confessions is detailed, especially in Texas, where his “confessions” helped close hundreds of cold cases.

  • The hosts highlight the Dallas PD’s caution, referencing the detective’s 94% clearance rate—earned genuinely rather than through coerced confessions.
    • “94%—was fucking killing it.”—Henry Zebrowski (07:43)

• The Lucas Task Force "Factory":

  • The Texas Rangers assembled a parade of police across the nation to Georgetown, TX, for Lucas to “confess” to their cold cases:
    • “They were having so many police departments coming down…they had a line, and they would give each police department 20 minutes with Henry Lee Lucas.”—Marcus Parks (10:41)
  • The hosts lampoon this as a clearance scam and question the motivations/ethics.
    • “Don’t you, as a hardcore investigator…want to solve the crime for real?”—Ben Kissel (11:52)

Texas Rangers, Corruption, and the Vic Fiesel Saga (14:48–31:16)

• The Rangers’ Role and Arrogance:
  The Rangers emerge as a corrupt, arrogant force with a history of racism and injustice but with “great hats and belts” (14:40).

• Vic Fiesel: Lone Dissenter:
  DA Vic Fiesel of Waco is introduced as a truth-seeker who exposed Lucas’s false confessions at enormous personal risk.

  • “He decided that Henry Lee Lucas was going to be what he made his name on. But…he had to go against the Texas Rangers.”—Marcus Parks (20:41)
  • The Rangers, led by a former Deputy FBI Director involved in COINTELPRO, retaliate by destroying Fiesel’s life—false charges, house raids, even killing his dog.
    • “He, like…killed his dog.”—Marcus Parks (22:28)

• Vindication:
  Fiesel is eventually exonerated, wins a record libel settlement ($58 million), and exposes Texas Rangers’ collusion with local media to destroy his reputation.

  • “He wins the largest libel settlement in history. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records…58 million.”—Marcus Parks (28:42)

Confabulation, Media, and the Anatomy of a Lie (31:27–39:00)

• The “Becky Powell” Saga:

  • At one point, a woman claimed to be a primary victim, Becky Powell, leading to a nearly farcical media circus before being exposed as a fraud by Fiesel’s wife.
    • “She finds a big stack of letters from Henry Lee Lucas…now, who's the real detective here?”—Ben Kissel (33:07)

• Lucas’s Mental State:

  • Discussions of confabulation—Lucas had significant gaps in memory, filled by inventing stories that pleased interrogators, which made him highly convincing.
    • “There’s a concept called confabulation…his rate was off the charts.”—Marcus Parks (34:23)

DNA Evidence Shatters the Legend (40:02–47:58)

• The Demise of Henry Lee Lucas, “Most Prolific Serial Killer”:

  • The introduction of DNA forensics in the 1990s–2000s dismantled the Lucas legend—most murders he confessed to were definitively perpetrated by others.
  • George W. Bush’s commutation of Lucas’s death sentence was prompted by lack of evidence on the “Orange Socks” killing.
    • “Because there was not a single bit of forensic evidence to tie him to any murder…all they had was his confession, and that was it.”—Marcus Parks (41:02)

• Victims’ Families and Painful Revelations:

  • Families who had built closure around Lucas’s confessions were forced to confront the reality that the true killers were still unknown.
    • “There were literally people…who had appointments to watch him die.”—Henry Zebrowski (44:50)
    • “So these people…had to be told, hey, yeah, it wasn’t Henry Lucas. It was actually this other guy, but we caught this other guy.”—Marcus Parks (45:14)

• A Grim Statistical Perspective:

  • Only about 20 Lucas-confessed cases have since been solved via DNA—most will never be revisited.
    • “So far have found 20 cases that Henry Lee Lucas confessed to that have now been linked to other people through DNA.”—Marcus Parks (51:32)
  • This highlights how most murders are not the work of shadowy masterminds, but of “300 people killing one person each”—a more disturbing, decentralized reality.
    • “It wasn’t one man killing 300 people. It was 300 people killing one person each.”—Ben Kissel (47:07)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the prison perks of being a confession machine:
  “He has a very easy up and down game about why he is confessing…it’s because he got to sit in a place where they gave him cigarettes and milkshakes.”—Ben Kissel (16:07)

• Henry Lee Lucas & Ottis Toole’s “relationship”: “You know what? Love’s never horrible…I have to remember that if there’s love there…”—Ben Kissel (37:25) “When you see videos…talking, the way they look at each other…they’re the only [ones].”—Marcus Parks (38:07)

• On the psychology of false confessions:
  “They fill in the gaps with stories…especially if they’re wanting to please someone.”—Marcus Parks (34:25)

• On law enforcement culture:
  “If there’s one word I would use to describe…Texas Rangers…arrogant would be the word that I’d use. Very, very arrogant. Very full of themselves, very much full of purpose…”—Marcus Parks (14:58)

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Major Segment Timestamps

• 00:02 – 04:20: The smell and persona of Lucas and Toole; introduction to serial killer conspiracy theories
• 07:06 – 14:48: Law enforcement’s obsession with closing cases; Texas Rangers’ Lucas “confession” conveyor belt; Dallas PD’s skepticism
• 14:48 – 31:16: Texas Rangers background, Vic Fiesel’s opposition, retaliation, and ultimate vindication
• 31:27 – 39:00: The “Becky Powell” segment, Lucas’s mental state, confabulation
• 40:02 – 47:58: DNA evidence, Lucas’s death sentence commuted, families’ reactions, murder statistics
• 51:32 – 52:12: Only 20 Lucas confessions conclusively solved; grim persistence of unsolved cases

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Tone & Language

The hosts maintain their characteristic irreverent, darkly comedic style, punctuating grim historical and criminal subject matter with banter, pop-cultural tangents, and biting satire. They avoid glamorizing violence, instead emphasizing the systemic failures, media complicity, and the human cost in both law enforcement and victim communities. Their approach renders a dense, tragic, and complex topic both accessible and thought-provoking.

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For Further Listening (Related Material Mentioned)

• Netflix’s "The Confession Killer" – Cited as a crucial resource on the Lucas case and the broader false confessions phenomenon
• Books:
  • Hand of Death (direct source of “Lucas legend” and CIA conspiracy claims)
  • Program to Kill by Dave McGowan (expanded on government training serial killers conspiracies)
• Previous LPOTL Henry Lee Lucas Episodes – For fuller background on Lucas’s early life and crimes

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This episode stands as a definitive, skeptical, and often hilarious examination of how one deeply troubled man and a culture desperate for easy answers created an enduring—and dangerous—myth about American evil.

Transcript

[Ben Kissel]

That's when the cannibalism started. Last update on the left. You know what I'm realizing now is that for so long, I always kind of thought that the smells associated with Henry Lee Lucas and Odys Tool, like one of the worst smells would be the habitual cigarettes. Cigarette smoke. Now I'm starting to understand. I just recently was like watching footage of Ottis Tool talking alone to a reporter in a room. Chain smoking.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And then there I started to understand in my brain. I was like, oh, no, the smoke is good compared to them.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. It covers up the body odor. The smell of oddest tool. I think that the scent of Henry

[Ben Kissel]

Lee Lucas, the smoke was like a tool. A tool by oddestool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Just sort of almost incred. Ingratiate him to people in a way.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Do you really want to experience essence of Odis?

[Ben Kissel]

No. Because if you experience essence of Odis, you end up as a fucking child with no head.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The only time Odis washed himself is when the police hit him with a hose.

[Ben Kissel]

Thank you.

[Marcus Parks]

Last update on the left, everyone. My name's Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabowski.

[Ben Kissel]

No, you're not. You're here with Otis, too. And I'm the most rounded, tallest, oldest man you've ever seen. Who's also yet a boy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah. Enjoying your time in prison?

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, yeah. If they knew how good of a time I'd have, they let me out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You had any conjugal visits from. Yeah, I hear you're quite the ladies man.

[Ben Kissel]

I push him on people sometimes. People find out we're about to have one.

[Marcus Parks]

And of course, Ed Larson.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hi, how you doing? What's going on? And I'm rooting for. I'm here despite the fact that the Dolphins are playing today.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. Tennessee Titans 3, Dolphin 0.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Figured as much.

[Ben Kissel]

Good. Really.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, the game started like, seconds ago.

[Ben Kissel]

Will say, if there was one episode where it's appropriate to follow the Dolphins as we record, it's today.

[Marcus Parks]

What's incredible is that it's actually the second quarter, the second the show started, the Titans scored. And we'll be giving Ed updates on how the Dolphins are doing throughout the episode. But the reason why we're talking about odest tool is because we are returning to Henry Lee Lucas because we as we talked about him quite a bit in the last update, but there was a lot of information that we didn't get to. A lot of stuff that we didn't talk about in our first go round with Henry Lee Lucas because I believe our Only sources back then were a trashy supermarket true crime paperback and the book Hand of Death. Yes, that was co written by the Christian lady who visited Otis Tool in prison.

[Ben Kissel]

And it gave a birth to a world of conspiracy theory that now we're still dealing with. Yeah, it's still very much in the present conversation because Program to Kill was by David McGowan which is a big part of the sort of, I would say the black pilled world that does fully believe that serial killers are trained by CIA and that the CIA then uses the serial killers to kill and procure children in order to use their magical powers to fuel their reptilian overlords that are the actual US government.

[Marcus Parks]

Come on. The reptilian stuff is that.

[Ben Kissel]

That's.

[Marcus Parks]

That's a bridge too far.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He did spend a lot of time in Florida. Yeah, lots of reptiles down there. Now here's.

[Ben Kissel]

I'm gonna.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm gonna admit something that's gonna make me sound ignorant. I don't know, the pill thing, the black pill, the red pill, it means nothing.

[Ben Kissel]

Don't worry about it, Eddie.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What pill am I. What pill did I take, dude?

[Ben Kissel]

Green pill Forge.

[Henry Zebrowski]

When I smoke my goddamn pills.

[Ben Kissel]

Stop with the pills, man. It's so hard to smoke, man. The case makes my lungs hurt, dude.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But I'll do it if it gets me fucking ripped in the.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean there is a large contingent of people that believe that Henry Lee Lucas along with a fair amount of other serial killers were trained by either the CIA or even some sort of organization that might even be above the CIA.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh yes, we loosely talked, stepped on this.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I mean and there was a whole. But that's the thing is there was this book. We were actually going to go into this maybe for the live show that we're touring right now. We decided to go a different direction, which I enjoy quite a bit more. But we were thinking about going in a program to Kill. But we realized that Program to Kill is mostly informed by Hand of Death, which was the book that Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Tool, I guess you could say they kind of dictated it. And they also, they yes, anded just any wacky shit that anyone said to them. They were like, oh, yep, I did that. And then also I took the little girl's guts and I put them into my pants. And the government said that that's what they wanted me to do.

[Ben Kissel]

Hey, listen, we don't. I don't know what half the forms of my taxes mean. So I don't know, maybe that's why I was Running up all these issues for all these years is that I never once fucked a child's intestines. But he also program to kill. Also mentions Mark Dua.

[Marcus Parks]

That's a different story altogether.

[Ben Kissel]

But those are the things he sort of loosely ties together. But I, you know, this is sort of a hint that we might. One of those little subjects I'd love to do as Dave McGowan. I'd love to go into his life. His life was actually very interesting. Yeah. But that idea of the US being involved in the training of serial killers is. I just don't think they need the training. They seem to kind of be self starters.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if they, if they were over in like other countries, if there was American serial killing in other places, then I'd be like, oh maybe.

[Ben Kissel]

Well maybe that's where they go to vacation.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It makes no sense. Why would they want to kill just, you know, random girls all the time?

[Ben Kissel]

Because they're upset, they're angry at it.

[Marcus Parks]

They say, well, the end game is to create a fear state in America and allow us to be ruled by the CIA. And ruled by.

[Ben Kissel]

And it wraps up government. That's what it's for. Yeah. Yes. Anything else? But they would ra Sh. But that's what the CIA is trying to do. They're wrapping up loose ends. They're procuring children for various blackmailing problems and blackmailing. Like they use kids to blackmail other politicians and get them to do what they want them to do. And then also just cuz they like it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay. And that's black pill.

[Ben Kissel]

Black pill just means you're sad all the time. And you, you think black pill means you're on Reddit and you think you know better because you don't go anywhere.

[Marcus Parks]

But the hand of death stuff like it's not only is it like ridiculous, but we also know it's not true just because of how much Henry Lee Lucas lied. And that's kind of where we left off. The last episode was all of Henry Lee Lucas's false confessions and the aftermath of those false confessions. And what happened when he finally said, actually no, I didn't kill no one but my mother. It was this guy. His name was Vic Fiesel. We didn't really talk about this during our series.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I love this guy.

[Ben Kissel]

Vic Fiesel sounds like Vin Diesel trying to make up a fake name in a hotel.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, this guy's an actual hero.

[Marcus Parks]

Vic Fiesel was a DA in Waco and he like everybody else in Texas, he had Henry Lee Lucas fever yeah, he did. Everyone did, because Henry Lee Lucas was closing cases left and right. The cops in Dallas, though, like, they were. I really got to give it to the Dallas PD because we're, you know, we're getting a lot of this stuff from the Netflix series the Confession Killer. And they talked to a woman who was a cold case detective, had, like, a really high clearance rate.

[Henry Zebrowski]

94%.

[Marcus Parks]

94% was fucking killing it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And, you know, and sometimes when someone has a clearance rate that high, especially a homicide detective, we've actually. We've seen this. I think we saw New York City. I think there was actually one here as well, where they had these detectives with these super high clearance rates, and it turns out that they were just forcing people into false confessions, and that's how they got their really high clearance rates.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, it makes sense, because then that's how you get them.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, but this woman was not doing that. She was actually solving cases because she went down to Georgetown. They had Henry Lucas down in Georgetown.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Freaky little jail.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's the tiniest little. Like, you easily could have. I mean, Killdozer would've had no problem with this little jail.

[Ben Kissel]

I actually feel like.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I think a Dodge Ram could have taken out this jail.

[Ben Kissel]

I think he would have tried to drive the jail.

[Marcus Parks]

And so this woman goes down to talk to Henry Lee Lucas and gives him a couple of, like, three Dallas cases. And he's like, oh, yeah, I did that. And, yeah, I did that and do that. Yeah, I did that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yep.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, yep, I was there. I remember her screaming.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yep, that one.

[Ben Kissel]

I got ice cream after I did that.

[Marcus Parks]

And that was always his big ones.

[Ben Kissel]

I did that.

[Marcus Parks]

I did that. But, you know, she's a damn good detective. She knows when someone's lying. She knows when someone's bullshitting. So she goes back to Dallas, and her cops are like, all right, well, here's what you do. Like, put together a bogus case file. Like, put together bullshit photos, a bullshit report, bullshit everything. Take it back down to him, see what he says. And she did that. She did for three cases. And thing is that she's having to go against the Texas Rangers at this point, because at this point, the Texas Rangers are the Have Henry Lee Lucas in their care. They're the ones. They're in charge of the Henry Lucas Task Force. Because what the Texas Rangers were doing is they were getting a real big fucking hard on bringing every police department from around the country to come down to this tiny little jail in Texas and talk to Henry Lee Lucas and Put their cold cases in front.

[Ben Kissel]

Come on, now. Get your cases cleared. Just this week, you know, Rick, Henry Lee Lucas is live, and he says yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Were you made to look like an idiot by another idiot?

[Ben Kissel]

Yes, that and two shirts are being made very soon. And that and Talk is actually the number one podcast currently where he's on there talking to all your favorite Kardashians, saying yes to their crimes as well.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Do you have the parents of dead children banging down your door if you

[Ben Kissel]

want to get rid of them today? And the worst part, man, is they don't stop until justice is served. So come on down, get a hot pipe and plate of justice.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Make sure you grab them Pal Malls, y'.

[Ben Kissel]

All.

[Marcus Parks]

And a strawberry milkshake.

[Ben Kissel]

Damn.

[Marcus Parks]

But they were having so many police departments coming down to bring their cold cases to Henry Lucas. They had a line, and they would give each other police department 20 minutes with Henry Lee Lucas.

[Ben Kissel]

I just feel like it's like naked Gun. You have, like, one is like, you know, the head of police from Ghana, and he's got, like, a crazy hat on and a spear, and then the other guy's fucking, like, from China launching a big hat, you know, like all the big, long, flowing robes.

[Marcus Parks]

And every single person that came in, every single cop that came in with their case, they'd show them the photos and, oh, yeah, I did that. Yeah, I did that and, too.

[Ben Kissel]

And you just got that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, Like a woman dead next to her. Like a woman washing machine. He'd be like, killed her by the washing machine. Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

He knew that she killed her by the washing machine. Only the killer would know such a thing.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, can I ask. Honestly, now, this is probably one of those questions. So I'm asking here with the poet and the comedian, which is now these big men, these big, strong Texas Rangers.

[Marcus Parks]

Texas Rangers.

[Ben Kissel]

No, my question is, is that yes, they. It does clear their clearance rate, right?

[Marcus Parks]

It's not even there, but they're not even their cases.

[Ben Kissel]

They're doing. But. But on some level, don't you, as like a hardcore investigator or whatever, don't you, like, want to solve the crime for real?

[Marcus Parks]

I think that some of these people. It's kind of like what you joked about earlier, Ed. It's like, do you have parents of dead children knocking down your door?

[Ben Kissel]

Seriously? Or is it like looking to. Going to a psychic and trying to get questions? It almost kind of almost feels like that, where it's like you're looking to go talk to.

[Marcus Parks]

I think they just want the wife.

[Ben Kissel]

That's it.

[Marcus Parks]

They want The w. They can sleep at night knowing that that case is all is done. The family can have a little bit of peace knowing that that's done. And I think they figures, like, well, even if it doesn't all make total sense, like, well, maybe he's remembering something wrong. You know, you could. They can justify anything, but. Yeah, it's just. It's just getting. It's turning the red to black and that's it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And it also just seems like, this is my own opinion, that they were, like, just doing it to, I don't know, escape the actual work they were supposed to be doing, you know, because they're just hanging out with Henry Lucas all goddamn day.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, the thing is about a lot of these murders is, you know, these are a lot of these murders, like, they're not coming from Milwaukee, you know, or. Or Detroit or anywhere where murder is like a daily occurrence. Like, they're coming from small towns all over Texas where a woman shows up with their fucking head chopped off and they're like, what do we do? Yeah, like they've never investigated a murder in their lives. Yeah, no, I.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cops in the town, they don'. No.

[Marcus Parks]

Hell, in my town, there was one, and he was also the school janitor.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. So he needed his time really spent on grooming those kids.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I can't be in the street when there's all this poo poo to arrest.

[Ben Kissel]

Give me smaller cuffs.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, Greg was all right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We.

[Marcus Parks]

We had our. We had our differences, but he was all right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm mopping up this crime.

[Ben Kissel]

You know, it is a crime to pee on the toilet seat, Little Jimmy. You know, I could take you to the station and put cuffs on you and sit you with rapist running. You want.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You remember him?

[Ben Kissel]

He used to teach gym.

[Marcus Parks]

So, yeah, these Texas Rangers, they're running the sass. And they think that they're helping, but they're also very much enjoying being the people who are helping these cases to be solved. Their chests are puffed up. And the Texas Rangers is a complicated organization.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, I bet.

[Marcus Parks]

It's known to be highly racist. Extraordinarily so. It's known to be corrupt. It's known to have fucked up many things throughout the years. It's done a lot of good.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Baseball team.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. I mean, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

They used to be owned by a war criminal.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. But Texas Rangers, they got gray hats.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Great hats.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Stetson's. Love their hats. Yeah. Two belts.

[Ben Kissel]

Love their belts.

[Marcus Parks]

They wear two belts, but I don't. One for their pants, one for the gun.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The badge sewn onto the shirt.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I don't like that.

[Ben Kissel]

Come on, you know, Texas Rangers, I like it. Texas Rangers. We also, we might have some Texas dates coming up soon, but just remember that.

[Marcus Parks]

But if there's one, if there's one word I would use to describe a lot of the Texas, especially the Texas Rangers they interviewed in the documentary series, arrogant would be the word that I'd use. Very, very arrogant. Very full of themselves, very much full of purpose and they don't really give a shit if they know what's what. They know what's what and they're going to tell you what's what. And you know, you ain't going to argue with me because I know, man, when he looks me in the eye, I know when he's telling the truth. Henry Lucas, he was telling me the truth.

[Ben Kissel]

I know he's telling me the truth. Because the devil can't lie to an angel. I honestly think, though, I, that it's a funny joke, but I do think that there is a concept here of so Henry Lee Lucas. I feel like a lot of media and even just life in general, you see how far someone's willing to go if they see the role they're meant to take. Yeah, right. So like Henry Lucas, while he wasn't a savvy man, he did understand 7 IQ 87. Yeah. He was, he was legally stupid. And so he went to understand he's getting good things out of this. Right. So he has a very easy up and down game about why he is confessing to all these things which we basically have considered. It's because he got to sit in a place where they gave him cigarettes and milkshakes. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And he got to stay off death row.

[Ben Kissel]

And he got to stay off death row and I think that's important.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And he went on field trips all the fucking time.

[Marcus Parks]

But then remember from the last episode, my dad saw him on one of the field trips?

[Ben Kissel]

Yes. But then when he took the role of the world's worst serial killers, it's very important for the police to back up the role. Because then what they then do is see this all fosters just how powerful and wise our justice system is. Not only have we effectively caught one of the worst monsters to ever live, and he's now spilling his guts because we've hacked him open and he's here and this shows you what justice does. Like this is. And so they're feeding into a fantasy as well that puffs them up and it makes them want to work. That makes them like, act big.

[Marcus Parks]

And it also helps to. I think it really, for a lot of them, helped to alleviate, you know, the chaos of the 70s.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Just how horrible, you know, the murder rates were and how horrible the crime rates were in the 70s. I say it again and again, but we can't imagine how bad it really was in America during the 1970s. And I think with them taking Henry Lee Lucas and having him say, like, I did this murder and that murder and that murder, and him saying, like, I did over 300 murders, like, they could rest a little easier. No one's like, okay, one of the, like, super bad guys. There's one guy. There's one guy out there that's responsible for all of this chaos. It's not like it's 360 guys that are responsible for all this chaos. It's. It's one guy. It's just one bad apple. So that way they can also feel a little. They can feel a little bit better about America. They can feel a little bit better about society, you know, if it's just one guy instead of, you know, 300.

[Ben Kissel]

And that's why I think with the 300, I actually think a lot of the program to kill stuff got it shows the power of be careful who you pretend to be, because we are who we pretend to be. Because Henry Lucas, his series of confessions made somebody like Dave McGowan say, there's no way that idiot could have done all of this in one way. So now he's now definitely sure that he was trained by the fucking government to kill. Because how else could that kill that many people for such a long period of time and such a scattered sense of mos. It makes him feel more correct. So in the end, it's just like idiots being idiots being idiots going all the way down the road.

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly. But that also. But being an idiot. I mean, remember, famously, Gary Ridgeway's IQ is lower. I think his is 82.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, he was special, all right. And he was born just good at it. He was a prodigy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He was like Babe Ruth, you know, same iq.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, Babe Ruth used to drink scotch and eat hot dogs for breakfast, and people were like, what a badass. And I was like, I think he just thought it was brown water, and

[Henry Zebrowski]

that's what you ate.

[Marcus Parks]

But Gary Ridgeway made sense. You know, he killed every one of his victims in one corridor in the Pacific Northwest. Henry Lucas didn't make any sense, you know, all the different ways that he, you know, killed people or supposedly killed people, confessed to killing people. And he had. You know, there were 20 different victim types. That doesn't happen either. You know, just nothing about Henry Lucas made sense back to, like, way back to this cop that's coming out from Dallas. She goes down and she shows him all these bogus case files. And he. Of course, every single one of them, he's like, yep, yep, yep. And they're like, this guy's full of shit. And so the DA from Waco brings Henry Lee Lucas up, and he's starting to see the same thing. Like, he's asking questions of Henry Lee Lucas, and he's also seeing, okay, this guy is absolutely full of shit. But this da, Vic Fiesel, he is ambitious. Like, this is a guy who's, you know, DA is the first stepping stone. Like, he's got ambitions possibly for, you know, governor. You know, they said this guy could have been president. They said, like, one guy said he was Bill Clinton before Bill Clinton. Like, he could have got there. So he's looking for the photo op and President Fiesel. I don't know. Yeah, President Fiesel.

[Ben Kissel]

I don't know if I like the names. Rhymes with weasel.

[Marcus Parks]

The Weasel. That's done.

[Ben Kissel]

He's not done.

[Marcus Parks]

He's not even making it to governor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What if he was an artist, he could have been Fiesel the easel.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, guess what? But he's not. He's fucking not. He didn't choose that. That would have happened. He chose this. He got help.

[Marcus Parks]

But, yeah, he decided that Henry Lee Lucas was going to be what he made his name on. But that's the thing is, in order to do that, he had to go against the Texas Rangers.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And the problem with going against the Texas Rangers is that at the time, the head of the Texas Rangers, the job that man had. Had. I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but the job he had before that was Deputy FBI Director under J. Edgar Hoover. Cointelpro had been one of his big things.

[Ben Kissel]

I feel that he might not be a super reasonable man. He might have a strong sense of self.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he's that. Well, he's definitely not a man that you cross. No, he's definitely not a man that you cross. But, no, this was the guy who was. You know, the programs that he was a part of, you know, all the harassment of Martin Luther King. Harassment of, like, John Lennon.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, yeah. No, it's bad.

[Marcus Parks]

All the break ins, rfk. Like, all of the blackmail, all the horrible shit.

[Ben Kissel]

And so he retired to being the head of the Texas Rangers?

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. He. He went from. Because I think he got. If I remember correctly, he like went. When Congress found out about cointelpro and they're like, this is bad. You shouldn't be doing this. He's like, like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'mma go down to Texas.

[Ben Kissel]

I don't need the heat here in dc. I gotta go down where it's easy and breezy. Central Texas?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No, if. If Florida is where, you know, horrible people go, where no one cares, Texas is where horrible people go and people are really into it. So. Yeah, this is. This guy's the Texas. Yeah. He was the head of Texas Rangers at the time. And so he basically destroyed Vic Fiesel's life.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, he. He, like, what did he do? Like, he killed his dog.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

They poisoned his fucking dog and then went through his whole house. Right. Didn't he just like, see? They threw a bunch of bullshit charges on him. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And then they just like tore his house apart.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Fucking. They. They went through his. Like, he said his. Everything in his freezer they opened up and threw on the floor.

[Ben Kissel]

Because his essential job was that he would become Henry Lucas lawyer. Lawyer, right. Isn't the idea.

[Marcus Parks]

Eventually he becomes Henry Lee Lucas's lawyer

[Ben Kissel]

and the goal really was to prove that he was full of.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, the goal was to prove that Henry Lucas was full of shit.

[Ben Kissel]

That's so funny to go into because. Let me remind me, because Henry Lee Lucas, as he was going through, he ended up copping to the fact that he didn't maybe know. Right.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Towards the end of his life, where the Henry Lee Lucas was, he was saying, like, I don't know if I did that next.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that's the thing, is that when Vic Fiesel brought him to Waco, it's like 84, 85. He said then that, I didn't kill nobody. He's like, I killed my mother. And that's it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And then Fiesel was trying to hide him from the Rangers.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Who were using him. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Rangers were using him so. Well, that's what the Texas Rangers say. Is that like. Yeah. You put him in front of the Texas Rangers, he's going to want to please the Texas Rangers. You put him in front of a DA who said that he doesn't want him to be a murderer and he's going to try to please him, so he's going to say he didn't do it.

[Ben Kissel]

I actually think that they're not necessarily wrong. I think he's just Saying, whatever, as long as someone's smiling at him and not going like, Henry, get out of that dumpster. Seems to just be like, he's my friend also.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Anything to stay off a death row.

[Marcus Parks]

But that's the thing, is that when the Texas Rangers took Henry Lucas back, he kept saying like, no, I didn't do it. I lied about all that stuff.

[Ben Kissel]

Y' all just didn't do that at all. Not that that wouldn't. Me in the out of school shows up. It was me

[Marcus Parks]

who.

[Ben Kissel]

Then I guess he just absolved everything. He just threw everything to Henry.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No, and Henry Lucas, he actually from that point forward would say like, yeah, I didn't, I didn't do any of these. I, I did. He said, he said I killed my mother. And that was it. But that was the weird thing about it is that he would say he killed his mother and that was it. But what kicked all this off, of course, was that he was able to take police to his. Remember his, you know, his little hitchhiker Becky.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Ottis duel's cousin. The 11 year old girl that came along with him is that he was able to take police directly to Becky's body.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, he, he definitely did, definitely.

[Marcus Parks]

But, but that was the weird thing, is that after he talked to Vic Fiesel and came back from that, he's like, I only killed my mother. I never killed Becky. And that was one of the incredible fucking parts of the story later on. So, like after, like Vic Fiesel, he went through hell. I mean, they hit him with a bunch of bogus charges and, you know,

[Henry Zebrowski]

it turned out taking bribes.

[Marcus Parks]

City was taking bribes for dwi, like lighter DWI sentences, put him under racketeering, all that, everything. And so he went to trial for it. Like fully went.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, he went all. And he exonerated himself.

[Marcus Parks]

He. Well, he got, he was found not guilty. And then he decided to have a libel case, like file a libel case against the television station that had run like a big eight part investigative report about him.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And through like a bunch of FOIA requests and subpoenas and all kinds of shit, he found out that the government had gone to a bunch of local lawyers in Waco and it pressured them into testifying that Vic Fiesel had, had taken bribes from them. Like, they brought dudes from the IRS into the room and be like, so you give money to Vic Fiesel? They're like, no, I don't know about. They're like, this guy here at the IRS really wants to know if you Took money from Vic Fiesel. And these guys ended up testifying like, yeah, I took money from Vic Fiesel or I gave money to Vic Diesel, you know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, to get their clients off.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, to get their clients off.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And then they got caught. Caught.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And they got. They got caught. And it was also discovered that the Texas Rangers were working in conjunction with the news channel, where the news channel had showed up and taken care. Like the news channel had met the Texas Rangers at a hotel. And the Texas Rangers had given them all these bogus files on Vic Fiesel and said like, go after him. And they ran this big 11 part series.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Like once a week they would do like a special on the news about something evil that Vic Fiesel was doing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And then after that, once the charges were brought up, like the grand jury, the only evidence the grand jury was shown to indict Vic Fiesel for bribery and racketeering was the fucking 11 part news report that was done on him.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, man.

[Marcus Parks]

And so five months they were there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's the only thing they really showed him.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Five months older.

[Ben Kissel]

Help. Henry Lee Lucas. That's the problem, Vic. That's the problem, buddy. You should have used that for anybody else.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I don't know if he was wanting to help. Like it was. I think it was a publicity. Honestly, I think it was a publicity stunt that got out of hand. Oh, it sounds like he wanted the photo op and he wanted the. He wanted to be able to say like, I'm going up against corruption.

[Ben Kissel]

I beat the. The Rangers.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I'm going up against corruption in Texas. I'm rooting out corruption in Texas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And he, you know, he stumbled onto something crazy. But he's also 32 years old at the time.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, like he's just.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's a baby.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, man.

[Ben Kissel]

He doesn't know what the 32 year old bab. I know how that is. I'm just a 40 year old child myself playing with my wiener, pissing my pants.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Imagine taking on the FBI and the Texas Rangers at 32, 10 years ago.

[Marcus Parks]

Where were you 10 years ago?

[Ben Kissel]

Just imagine, I could see me doing that like on like taking on both, like from a 7 11, you know what I mean? Like being chained to a Slurpee machine.

[Marcus Parks]

And so Vic Fiesel, of course, he wins the libel suit and wins the largest libel settlement in history. It's in the Guinness Book of World Records.

[Ben Kissel]

That's crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

What is it, 58 million?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, 58 million. But that's from the News channel and the news reporter, he wasn't allowed. You're not allowed to sue the Rangers or the FBI.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, good for them.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they have a governmental immunity.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, that's good for them.

[Marcus Parks]

They could totally destroy your life and. And can't do anything about it.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, that's why we're big fans here of the Texas Rangers. And just so you know, you get 10% off your speeding ticket at the Texas Rangers website if you can put in the code last pod90.

[Marcus Parks]

And so Vic Fiesel, after he goes through all of this, like, he resigns from the DA's office, like, I think he did.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Like, especially after you get that paycheck. Why am I putting myself through this?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, my God.

[Ben Kissel]

He made himself an injury law firm.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

He literally said, fuck this. I'm just gonna go back to broken legs and fucking getting your vagina burnt.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, he decided that he was gonna represent Henry Lee Lucas for a little while. Like, I didn't think he did it pro bono. I mean, of course. Because, I mean, what's he gonna get paid in stories?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Milkshakes? Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, man.

[Marcus Parks]

By the time Big Diesel came around, he only had three or four of them left.

[Ben Kissel]

He's like, yeah, honestly, if we could just keep it to the soup, that would be pretty good. Can we stop by?

[Marcus Parks]

Helen, that's the amazing thing about Henry Lucas. When he got to be an old man, he looked like. You know how some old men look like massive babies?

[Ben Kissel]

He does.

[Marcus Parks]

He looks like a huge, toothless baby.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He looks like a shaved Care Bear.

[Ben Kissel]

It really is gross. He's Winnie the Ooh. That's what he looks like. He is gross. And it's hard because, I mean, honestly, even in. I think in jail, they get you dentures.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, it's the middle of Texas. I don't know what they give you.

[Ben Kissel]

What is it about some people just.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, you went to Huntsville right after that.

[Ben Kissel]

Can I ask? Side stories. Side stories. Lpotl.com. why do some people just choose not to get dentures?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And just go full on mouth bone to mouth bone.

[Marcus Parks]

They could be very uncomfortable.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And, you know, maybe if they weren't so lazy, they'd still have teeth. That's true.

[Ben Kissel]

I don't think. Yeah. Unless you've lost your teeth due to, like, some form of accident poisoning.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

I guess. Drug use. But if they're just popping out, man, that's not good.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He was concerned with.

[Ben Kissel]

No, he was not. No, no, he wasn't neither. Because you know who didn't complain? Yeah. Oh, Odis just knew that teeth were just getting the way of Dick. That's why he was a proper man.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, my God. Well, that's the thing, is that Vic Fiesel, he got to be Henry Lee Lucas's defense attorney. And they were eventually contacted by a woman who claimed to be Becky Powell, supposedly the little girl that Henry Lee Lucas murdered all those years before. And since Henry Lee Lucas had, you know, been proven a liar on so many of his confessions, it seemed like, well, maybe he lied about killing Becky as well. So let's check this woman out. They go down. You know, Vic Fiesel interviews this woman. She's very convincing. She knows all these, you know, details about Henry Lee Lucas's childhood. And she knows all these details about, you know, Becky Powell's childhood, about her relatives, her house, everything. And then they bring her to Texas, and there's this massive, like, they bring CNN in to talk to this woman and saying, like, they bring her in because she does a lie detector test test. And the guy who runs the test is like, this is Becky Powell.

[Ben Kissel]

100.

[Marcus Parks]

They bring CNN. Huge deal. Massive deal. And so Vic Fiesel figures, I'm gonna make another run at the Texas Rangers. Like, I'm gonna make them look like idiots with this woman. And then the Texas Rangers say, like, all right, let's put her under oath. See what she says. And when he said, when he heard put her under oath, he's like, let's double check.

[Ben Kissel]

Let's think about this for a second. Are we really going to make this official? Don't we just like planning? Yeah, we just like the meetings. That's really why I even email, so I could talk to you, Sheriff Anderson.

[Marcus Parks]

So he sits Becky down for, quote, unquote, Becky down for a real serious conversation. And while he's talking to Becky, trying to get her to tell the truth. Truth, his wife goes through Becky's luggage and finds a big stack of letters from Henry Lee Lucas.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, who's the real detective here? Seems like that's real detective work. They show that's how you find out. Because it's hard. We. We keep threatening it, but we. I've just really kind of booked it up. Like, the idea of professional liars, like, people who lie even if it hurts. You are so fascinating to me. Like, the people that do it, just straight up for essentially attention.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Like, I don't know why. Like, just stick yourself into the story. Like, there's something about. Maybe it's because, like, maybe you look at Henry Lee Lucas, maybe It's like you think he reminds you of grandpa or he reminds you of something. There's just something about him that you want him. You think he's cute?

[Marcus Parks]

Nah. When he was confessing, he didn't look like grandpa. He. He looked like Uncle. Oh yeah, he looked like Uncle. Uncle Henry, but not in a good way.

[Ben Kissel]

He had Kevin Klein hair for a while. You see him?

[Marcus Parks]

Very wavy.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, he had very wavy hair. He had kind of a Chris Kristoffer smelling depth mouth. He did.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, there was a really interesting part of that documentary that was. It talked about his, like, what psychiatrists said about him and what they found out about Henry Lucas mentally and like, what his mental illnesses were. And he said that there's a concept called confabulation where people, some people that, you know, suffer from this have gaps in their memory, like massive gaps in their memory. Can't do anything about it, can't see anything. Like, they just have these massive gaps. And what they do is they fill in the gaps with stories. They fill in gaps with, you know, fantasy that comes from themselves. They'll fill in the gaps, like, especially, like, if they're wanting to please someone. If someone like, is telling them a story, they'll fill in the gaps to please the person that they're talking to, of course, because that makes that other person happy. And they said, like, Henry. Henry Lee Lucas's like, rate of confabulation was off the charts. They said it was like just. They'd said they'd never seen anything like, seen a person like that where they just, you know, they just pop in the details. And that's why he was so convincing for so long for these people. And that's the thing is, it's that he had that convincing aura about him. But the Texas Rangers, like, they. I don't think they. The men. I think the men that were really involved in this and the sheriff, there was text strangers. There was also sheriffs. There was one sheriff sheriff that, you know, had five murders in his county that were just sitting there on his conscience that, you know, couldn't. Couldn't do anything about him at all. Just five murders in a place where, like, murders did not happen.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, yeah. What do you do?

[Marcus Parks]

And so Henry Lee Lucas became like, they became friends because Henry Lee Lucas would conf. He confessed to all of these murders, you know, and it came out that one of the murders was not a murder at all. The woman had a seizure while she was driving.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So that doesn't count. She had a seizure while she was driving and she drove her car into a fucking quarry or something like that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Because they found her body in the. In the water.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they found her body in the water and they found the necklace that she was wearing. And that was the things that. That's how they knew that the cops were feeding him. Information is. And I mean, this is just one example out of, you know, a dozen, you know, them catching cops feeding him information is that this woman, you know, had a seizure while she was driving and drove into a lake. And Henry Lee Lucas was able to describe the necklace that she was wearing that day, which there was.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Would have been completely impossible.

[Marcus Parks]

Completely impossible for. For him to. To know what that woman was wearing when she had a seizure and drove into a fucking quarry. Like, there's no. And that happened happen again and again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And he was probably on the other side of the country at that point.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I think he was in Tallahassee.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And it's just like, I feel all this time where he's like claiming where he's doing murders and he doesn't remember what he did on those days. He's probably just on the side of the road drinking without his tools.

[Ben Kissel]

He literally was just getting cornholed, man. He was just getting turned over and over again by that horrible, horrible man. And the two of them together. You know what? Love's never horrible. And I have to remind. I have to remember that if there's love there and there's so much violence.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

That we celebrate. Marcus celebrates.

[Marcus Parks]

Not celebrated the fact that love can't celebrate it.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. This is the thing. But the fact that we don't like.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because this.

[Ben Kissel]

That's what this should all be about. This entire series should be about Odis Tool finding Henry Lee Lucas and what that was like for him.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, when you see videos of the two of them together talking, the way they look at each other, they're the only.

[Ben Kissel]

The. It's almost like the Eiffel Tower dead girl next to each other.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what I mean?

[Ben Kissel]

It's the only way that bond comes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah. It's like two bus boys who get too close. You're like, we're going have to fire one of these guys.

[Ben Kissel]

They're plotting. Now Seattle's Tool. What I also like. I was watching a bunch of interviews of him. He sits like Mag. Like Dame Maggie Grace. Like, he sits like. What's her name? Maggie.

[Marcus Parks]

Maggie Smith.

[Ben Kissel]

She's dead.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, but he sits like her. Yeah, she's dead. You know. Who is that?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Henry Lucas.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, he Came back from the dead. His. Kill her.

[Marcus Parks]

Killed Kris Kristofferson. Killed the guy from Beverly Hills Cop. That just.

[Ben Kissel]

Taggart killed Tagg. He killed Tagger.

[Marcus Parks]

He killed Tagger.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Pete Rose. Pete Rose died? Yeah. Without. Without his final vindication about how cheating is. Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Speaking of Sports, Tennessee Titans 6, Miami Dolphins 3. Boring game, two minutes left in the second. Wow. Two minutes left in the second quarter, and it's six to three between a team that's 03 and a team that's one and two.

[Henry Zebrowski]

God damn. What a hard Monday Night Football. What is. What does it come to? You kind of look like Taggart, Rob.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, you. You do look a little bit like Tag.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Like a young Taggart.

[Ben Kissel]

I don't know if this is a compliment.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It is a Family Hills Cop one. Taggart.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm telling you, we get you a tan suit.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. We should dress him up like a little police detective.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, if we ever need to pretend like someone's a police detective, it's going to be you.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Judge Reinhold.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Hey, I'm Eddie Murphy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's right.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, the big thing that came out of all of this, as far as, like, Henry Lee Lucas goes, is that really, like, the. The nail in the coffin for Henry Lee Lucas being the most prolific serial killer of all time was the advent of DNA testing.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, sure. You mean proof. Yes, proof and evidence. Yeah, sure.

[Marcus Parks]

Because there was not a single bit of forensic evidence to tie him to any murder. Because another thing, going Back to Dave McGowan for a bit, and the program to kill people, the only person whose death sentence he commuted while he was governor was Henry Lee Lucas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, and Osama bin Laden.

[Ben Kissel]

Hey, we just trained him and paid him and gave him stuff and taught him how to be really good at what he did. That's all we did. That's all we did. That's all we did. Sort of let him do it. And provided incredible aviation schools in Florida for his team. Honestly, it's huge.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But the reason why George W. Bush commuted his sentence, he actually held a press conference, was because the evidence against Henry Lee Lucas for the crime that he was convicted for, the Orange Socks killing, the one that. That was the one that he was sent to death row for, the evidence was not there. All they had was his confession, and that was it. And it was actually provable that he was in Florida at the time of the Orange Sox killing. There was like a. I. I think that with that one, I think it was. It might have been a paycheck or Something like that.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes. That was the one with the paycheck. That. That pretty much showed that he could not have physically been where the murder happened. Yeah, yeah. So. So he did sort of.

[Marcus Parks]

But that.

[Ben Kissel]

But he did it, I guess.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Right?

[Ben Kissel]

I mean, you know, of all the people. But, you know, Henry Lucas, again, he's just sitting there just, you know, just

[Henry Zebrowski]

running for president at the time. He wants to look like a good guy.

[Marcus Parks]

He was just about.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Someone tipped him off.

[Ben Kissel]

Of all the people that look like a good guy, there's so many other people.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Carla Fay. You could have pardoned Carla Fay. Talking.

[Ben Kissel]

We talked about this.

[Marcus Parks]

But. But the black pilled folk, the Dave McGowan folk, the program to kill folk say that the reason why George W. Bush commuted his sentence was because Henry Lee Lucas worked for the government.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. He was CIA. But guess what? If they wanted to help Henry Lee Lucas, you know what they would have done? They would have shot him in the back of the head 30 years ago. That's what they would have done. They would have shot him in the back of the head. Because guess what? If there's one thing that that man said, says, I love a strawberry milkshake, but it doesn't make you a good assassin. I feel like there's something about him being probably one of the most flippable people that ever. He's like Trump, where you go, you. Every movement, every. He believes the last thing anybody says to him. Yes. Out of school. He thought out of school was the sexiest man in the world. That's who you want to work for. You. You looked at Otta's Tool and he was like, yes, please. I want two slices of it. Come in my mouth.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is Honest Tool still alive?

[Marcus Parks]

No, he died early. He died in six.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, he died at 49 of cirrhosis. And he died. Man, it is fun. He just is such a fancy Southern mentally handicapped woman. I've never seen. He looks like if. What's her name from Gone with the Wind. Like, the big hat and stuff. She was. If she was special needs. Like, that's how he sits. Like he's got like a big, like, lacy. What's it, Umbrella. What do they call Parasol?

[Marcus Parks]

Parasol.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes, I do declare. I will kiss a snake. Yes. I knew I was gay when I was an embryo. I slid out my mama's pussy and I said, ew,

[Marcus Parks]

Henry Lee Lucas. Eventually they started testing all of these DNA samples that they found, you know, all these DNA samples that have been around for, you know, 30 years. And they started testing Them against prisoner databases in Texas and various other states. And they just started getting hits, just hit after hit after hit, you know, and really famous cases, too, like, big ones that people made a really big deal about. When Henry Lee Lucas's sentence was commuted, there was a. A group, they called themselves Volt, like, victims of Lucas tragedies. Oh, wow. And they were like, very much like they were pissed off at George W. Bush for commuting his sentence, like, this guy needs to die. He killed my sister, he killed my mother, so on and so forth.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, we've already propped up this whole thing that he's, quote, unquote, murdered hundreds and hundreds of people. Now you're saying, sorry, yeah, there were

[Henry Zebrowski]

literally people like family members who had appointments to watch him die.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, of course. Yes, very much so.

[Ben Kissel]

So that it's so hard. They never rebook. So hard. Covid pushed so many executions. They're still. They're still making them up. It's so hard. 30% recidivism.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Bring these back outdoors.

[Marcus Parks]

So these people, like these, These poor people, like, they had to be told, like, hey, so, yeah, it wasn't Henry Lucas. It was actually this other guy, but we caught this other guy. Sometimes they would catch them. Not every time, but that, but. But they would have to say, like, no, it wasn't Henry Lucas. And then when one woman, like her sister, when it was said, like, no, it wasn't Henry Lucas, like, the other people started looking into their own family members cases, and they started seeing, like, this one woman saw it, like it was kind of like with the necklace. She started reading through Henry Lee Lucas's confession, and she saw that he said that. That the woman, her mother had a watch bracelet on when he killed her. And then she remembered. No, we told the police that she was wearing the watch bracelet when she left that day, but they had actually found the watch bracelet in a jewelry box, like, a couple years later.

[Ben Kissel]

So it shows. It's a part of the reason why we talk about a lot on last podcast, that serial murder is extremely difficult. Difficult to prosecute and put together a case. Yes, because it shows the gap and how hard it is to figure out a quote, unquote, motiveless crime. Because 95% of homicides are done for direct, specific, practical reasons, and they're done by people that know you. It is such a small percentage of people that get murdered by somebody that they don't know. And it's an even smaller percentage that it was done by a CIA trained assassin with four teeth. Like, it's Legitimately, like, it's extremely small. So it's funny in that way. They were trying to. It actually speaks just much forward. It was. Because it wasn't one man killing 300 people. It was 300 people killing one person each.

[Marcus Parks]

Much worse.

[Ben Kissel]

And it's much. It's much more difficult to do. It also just shows how many times, you know, we. How many times does somebody kill somebody badly and, like, get it out of their system? How many times that happened. How many times is, like, they don't become a serial killer. They're like. Eddie Kemper talked about when he first killed. He was so disturbed at first at how difficult it was that it challenged him. It challenged his urges. And so, like, you kind of wonder how many people are straight up just serial killers wannabes, and they walk around and they kill somebody and they mutilate their corpse. And at the end of it, they're like, like. And this isn't either. You know what I mean? They literally, like, God, I thought it was going to be golfing. I thought it was going to be mandalas, but it's not. And it's not this either.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I mean, like.

[Ben Kissel]

And then they just leave and they leave town. They're just some drifter. All the trucker killers. All the.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, there was actually one of those guys. It was exactly what you're talking about, that they found him through DNA. They found, you know, it was semen in the panties. And they tested his DNA and there was a hit on the. Yeah, I don't know why, like, you're trying so hard to not laugh right now.

[Ben Kissel]

It was just something about semen in the panties.

[Marcus Parks]

I also.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, I know it's something.

[Ben Kissel]

It just came out smoothly. I don't know.

[Marcus Parks]

So it's me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't know.

[Marcus Parks]

I heard it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I was. I was. I was.

[Ben Kissel]

I laughed in my head.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Henry sniffled.

[Ben Kissel]

You don't look him to be father. Don't put the semen in the panty.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's what it is, I think. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

When the semen in the panty, you

[Henry Zebrowski]

know, you gotta do the Bill Cosby accent.

[Ben Kissel]

I know.

[Marcus Parks]

There's just no other way. There's no.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

There's just no other way to say it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Underwear.

[Marcus Parks]

Underwear.

[Ben Kissel]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's the. It's the word panties. It just. It shouldn't be

[Marcus Parks]

documentary. And that's just. That's what they said over and over again.

[Ben Kissel]

Se in the panties. Seing in the panties. Semen in the panties.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I can't wait for that. Someone to clip that out and make it an EDM song.

[Marcus Parks]

So through that evidence.

[Ben Kissel]

Evidence,

[Marcus Parks]

they were able to find a guy who had gone to prison for something else. And, you know, in Texas, when you go to prison, you know, they do the swab and they put you in the database. And they brought him in saying, like, hey, you need to do a meeting with your parole officer. And turns out, hey, here's a couple kids of cops. And so they start talking to him about it. And the guy is, like, visibly starting to get. Like, once he knows what he's there for, he's, like, visibly upset because what the crime had been that he. These kids had run out of gas, girl or boyfriend. And they were walking down the road. This guy picks them up, he drives them down the road. The kid tries running. He shoots the boy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And then six times in the head.

[Marcus Parks]

Head, six times in the head. And then he rapes and shoots the girl. And this guy was just mortified. Like, he was. It was like, weighing on him. It was the only time he'd done it. He's the only. It was in. It was 30 years before. It was like 1978 or something. It was 30 years before.

[Ben Kissel]

And he was like. He probably fantasized about it for so long, and then it would, quote, unquote, fell in his lap, and then he did it. And then he was like. Like, oh, no, I'm not.

[Marcus Parks]

This isn't.

[Ben Kissel]

Actually isn't me.

[Marcus Parks]

This is a very bad thing to do. This. This feels really bad. I don't. I don't like this.

[Ben Kissel]

But that's not good. That's good.

[Marcus Parks]

That's good.

[Ben Kissel]

But you got to stop. You gotta think about that before you

[Henry Zebrowski]

kill the two children.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, I'd say yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You got to go ahead, though.

[Ben Kissel]

I. I think about stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

You just got to go ahead and decide, like, okay, I. I know. Like, you're not gonna. Let's not roll the dice on whether or not it's going to feel.

[Ben Kissel]

Play Buck Hunter. Like, that'll get it out of your system maybe. I think that that's, like, one of those things that could help.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I wonder how many people are alive because of Buck Hunter today.

[Ben Kissel]

I mean, just ask me, you know, how many people that I haven't killed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The detail about disturbed me about that

[Ben Kissel]

story or the semen in the panties was the.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Was the fact that her father drove by the two of them walking on the highway. Yeah. And then he. He didn't think anything of it because he didn't recognize it as his daughter. But later on, he realized that he did drive by step.

[Ben Kissel]

Extremely sad, Eddie.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ben Kissel]

And a great way to end.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I will. I'll end it on maybe a better note.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, I don't know if this is a better note, but it's. They so far have found 20 cases that Henry Lee Lucas confessed to that have now been linked to other people through DNA.

[Ben Kissel]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

So it's.

[Ben Kissel]

That's good news.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's 20 out of 200.

[Marcus Parks]

20 out of. Yeah, between 2 and 300 I think is how many cases they actually closed.

[Ben Kissel]

But in terms of closure rates, it's not too bad.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

20? Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

20%, 10%.

[Marcus Parks]

But it's just. Yeah, but that's just murders, you know, like they just. That's just hits that they fucking did. But the vast majority of the Henry Lee Lucas cases have not been reopened and never will be. You know that they never will be.

[Ben Kissel]

In 2022, the average clearance rate for homicides and police departments across the country is 52.3.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep. Wow.

[Ben Kissel]

Straight up half. Half get solved. So 20%. I mean especially for something that from fucking 40 years ago based off the lies of a buck toothed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But that's the thing.

[Marcus Parks]

They're just running DNA.

[Ben Kissel]

Yep, that's it.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not even there. They wasn't even investigating.

[Ben Kissel]

And wait to Chimera DNA. If we find out if we actually have only one set of DNA or not, we'll find that out soon. Probably at some point.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's so exciting.

[Ben Kissel]

Patreon.com lastpodcast on the left. I don't know if that serves you you here but then you go to Tik Tok at Instagram. Got LP on the left you see your. We got this is now available all over the world.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, yes. Welcome.

[Ben Kissel]

Check it out. Go see. Hello Istanbul. Hello Japan. Hello North Korea. Yes, we're now doing North Korea.

[Marcus Parks]

Seven listeners in North Korea.

[Ben Kissel]

It's been huge. Man one's named Kim. It's actually pretty amazing. And go to lastpodcastleft.com to check out our live shows. Watch us live. We're funny. Or even there.

[Marcus Parks]

You can go to lastpodcastleft.com for all of our dates. We got Los Angeles, Brooklyn, London and Iceland coming up. Come on out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Check us out and listen to the brighter side when you get a chance. My other show in the last podcast network with the great Amber Nelson.

[Ben Kissel]

He's working. He's working and twerking. Listening to no Doubt.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, Lone Dogs in space. Hell yeah, brother.

[Ben Kissel]

No dog.

[Marcus Parks]

We're working hard on the new series. They have part one coming out real soon.

[Henry Zebrowski]

In space, no one can hear you howl.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, because most dogs die up there. They burn up in the atmosphere.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they all did. Like as a very sad story.

[Ben Kissel]

Hell, Satan.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hail Kris Kristofferson.

[Ben Kissel]

Thank you for enjoying the last update on the left. You can find other shows that you'll enjoy from the last podcast network on lastpodcastontheleft. Com. See you there.