Original subtitles

Now, as we take a serial murderer,

what does he look like?

He looks like anyone else.

Look at Henry.

He's pleasant,

he's non-threatening,

and yet, a serial murderer.

Has no morals.

He's callous,

he's cruel,

and actually a killing machine.

Henry,

there's hope that we'll learn from you to anticipate

what these characteristics are

so that we can help prevent

some Henry Lucases in the future.

Do you understand?

- I understand. - Right.

Henry was a chameleon.

He was a different person

each time he interacted with a new individual.

He was figuring out what he needed to get through the moment,

and he would become what was needed.

Have a seat. Have a seat.

Every psychologist and psychiatrist he talked to,

he became the...

the kind of clinical study they needed.

They're very learned in their profession, and you're very learned in yours.

You are gonna be our teacher.

With an IQ of 87, he was able to convince

a thousand law enforcement officers

that he was guilty of 200, or whatever it was, crimes.

Every case has a tie.

You can take a look at the way the body has been killed.

You can look at the way the body has been done after death.

I'll give you one incident.

I have deliberately left socks on my victims.

Deliberately done it.

So, in other words, if we looked at two or three states and found...

victims with socks on...

Yeah. They would be completely nude,

except for their socks.

I wonder if any of us will ever find out

the answer to this mystery about what Henry did

and how all of this happened.

But most shocking,

how all these other killers stayed free.

When we received the Salazar case in 2008,

the first thing that we did was take a look at everything

that... that we had in the old file.

Investigators had preserved the evidence,

including Rita Salazar's underwear taken from the crime scene.

DNA had been stored on a database called CODIS

that was periodically tested against other inmates

in the Texas penitentiary system.

2008, a hit came back.

Benny Tijerina Jr.

was a contributor of DNA found inside of Rita Salazar's underwear.

This guy had been...

literally getting away with murder for 30 years.

We tracked him down in the Dallas area.

We made him believe he was coming to talk to his parole officer,

so we knew we would probably only have one shot with him in an interview.

Come on in.

Benny, would you mind sitting over here, please?

Sure, sure.

Very cramped quarters in here.

Too small. Yeah, a little bit, ain't it?

You're not under arrest.

You're free to leave here anytime you want.

- But I-I-I think what I've... - Well, I'm here, so.

What I've got to talk to you about, you're probably gonna be very interested in.

You know, when... when you go in prison and they swab your mouth?

- Yes, I know. - Nowadays?

- DNA, yeah. - Yeah. They did that, and, uh...

they got a possible hit on a... on a case.

So that's why we came up today, we wanted to talk to you,

see if you'd let us swab you again

- to get another sample to confirm that. - Sure, I don't have a problem with that.

Just open your mouth and I'll rub each one of these

on each side of your mouth and put them on here.

This is the point where we do the buccal swabs

just to confirm the DNA that was found

on Rita Salazar's panties.

At this point, he really doesn't...

know exactly what we're there to interview him about.

Back in, uh, November...

1978,

there was two, uh, young kids,

a boy and a girl, they went to Austin.

They were coming back.

Uh, they didn't come home that night.

- That's what this is about? - Yeah.

- Oh, Lord. - And, uh...

We've got some, uh, very good evidence that... that links you to that.

And... that's why we came up.

I would never do nothing like that in all my life.

I'm not that kind of person.

And I realize that a lot of time's gone by since 1978,

but I think if you were involved in something that serious,

you'd remember it.

Yeah, I would. It would be on my conscience very much still.

You know?

She was sexually assaulted.

And your DNA comes back to that.

Or at least that your... your semen wound up on her panties. So, now...

You understand what I mean by that?

No, that's... No, that's wrong.

We're not here to bullshit you because this is a very serious matter...

Very serious.

...for you, for the families of these people that are dead.

Exactly.

They've been dead for over 30 years and their...

Her mama still doesn't know what happened to her.

Oh, man.

He's obviously very upset and very nervous.

His gears are going. He's trying to figure out a way out of it.

Now we want to hear what you know about it.

I don't know nothing about it.

How would your semen have gotten on her panties?

I don't know how that happened either.

How would it get on her panties if I wasn't even there?

Right. That's why... That's why we're here, to find out.

We did our homework on him.

We found that he was becoming...

uh...

religious.

And I used that to my advantage to talk to him.

- You believe in God? - Yes, sir, I do.

- I'm a very religious person. - So am I.

- Okay. - I can tell you that.

I can look at your eyes right now

- and tell something's eating you alive. - I know. I know that.

- It's eating you alive. - It is.

Well, talk to me.

For this many years, for something to be eating you alive,

it's time to ventilate on this thing.

There's no doubt in my mind...

I was seeing a psychiatrist. That's what he was talking about.

This young girl's mama's still alive, Benny. She...

- Yeah, I bet it was hard on her. - To this day...

To this day, she doesn't... doesn't know what happened to her daughter.

- We're here all night, brother. - I know.

We're not here... We just want to hear...

hear your side of it.

And just talk.

This is it tonight.

From that point on, he started talking about the case

as if he was there instead of not being there at all.

All this is in my head.

It's come back to haunt me now.

Oh, man.

Oh, shit.

DNA leads to an arrest in a 32-year-old cold case

in Williamson County.

Today, 51-year-old Benny Tijerina

pleaded guilty to being involved

in the shooting deaths of Kevin Key

and Rita Salazar.

His DNA, a match to evidence at the crime scenes.

I'm still angry that somebody killed my sister Rita and Kevin.

And it's never gonna go away.

But at least I know who did it.

I... At least I know that Benny Tijerina killed my sister.

The Williamson County District Attorney...

I saw it on the news.

I realized, "Oh, my God, that's Ninfa's sister.

That's her case."

I... It changed everything.

It changed everything for me,

because what I'd been believing for all these years

was Henry did it.

Years ago, Ninfa and I formed a group.

We called it VOLT,

"Victims Of Lucas Tragedies."

We wanted Lucas to remain on death row.

When I first got transcripts of Lucas's confessions,

there are very specific things that he knew about my mom's case.

My mom wore a wig.

He mentioned that.

Another thing that he knew about was that the seat belt

had been cut out of my mom's car.

It was used to restrain her to a tree.

Then he said he raped her.

There was no doubt in my mind, um,

that... that he killed my mom.

I hated him. I hated him.

When it came to light that someone else murdered Rita Salazar,

I pulled everything back out again,

and I was reading it with a different set of eyes.

I just saw so many inconsistencies.

Henry said that my mom

was wearing a watch bracelet.

That was something that, uh, my dad and I

told the police about in the very beginning.

Much later, we found the watch in her jewelry box. She...

That day, she didn't wear the watch.

So Henry Lee Lucas,

he had never seen this watch.

And then I saw him on video,

being interviewed about my mother's case.

This is the victim right here.

Clayton Smith was very cautious to not...

feed information to Lucas that...

he could use.

However, you have to... you have to give some information.

Henry, I've got a map here.

Henry was handed a map.

Her body and, uh...

car

were found back out in that area there. Did you ever...

Do you remember anything, leaving anything in...

in that particular area, around in there?

He was handed a map.

Months later,

he's being interviewed by the Alabama detectives.

Do you think you could draw us a diagram of the area the best you remember

and where... where you left the body of Miss Salazar?

I believe I can.

He drew where my mom's car was left,

where her body would be found.

That would seal the deal if I were a detective.

He, uh, was like a...

encyclopedia of maps.

He had recall that one of the psychiatrists

determined as, or...

uh, had hypermnesia,

which is an antonym of amnesia.

He might not be correct about the homicide,

but he... he was normally correct on that.

It just seems clear to me that Henry Lee Lucas

was fed information in my mom's case.

I want to know the truth.

I was a young, uh, police chief. I was about 27 years old.

I got this communication that came across my desk

that two FBI agents were coming to teach for three days

on this new concept...

of, uh, criminal profiling.

And, uh, I can remember, uh, like it was just this morning,

coming out of that training after three days and...

having one of those "ah-ha" experiences.

This is what I'm supposed to do. This will be my mission in life.

Eventually, I attended the FBI Academy

and was selected for the Behavioral Science Unit

and became an FBI criminal profiler.

With respect to his victims, not only do they vary in age, but they...

they vary in sex.

Male, female, children.

Uh, we just don't find that among serial killers.

The Cold Case Foundation works with law enforcement agencies

and victims' families around the country.

We voluntarily give time, and resources, and experience

to try and solve those cases.

There are certain characteristics between many serial killers

that are consistent,

but there are also some very unique characteristics

that are tailored to that individual.

Ted Bundy selected mostly...

The look is young co-ed type.

Uh, there was a consistency in... in victimology.

That's Gary Ridgway. He's known as the Green River Killer.

And you can see the pattern of victims

up and down the thoroughfare there.

And that's not to say that a guy can't commit a crime in Florida

and then also go to California,

but we're looking for clusters especially.

Now we'll look at Lucas.

All types of victims:

hitchhikers, children, burglary victims, stranded motorists.

He was continuing, supposedly, to kill all over the country.

- There's no consistency. - No consistency.

The only pattern that exists here is that there's no pattern, at any level.

Near as we can tell, there's about 38 different types of weapons,

uh, used:

uh, tire tools,

forks,

electrical cord, scarf,

nylon cord,

uh, feet.

Uh, he used his own feet.

Uh, he used pantyhose for strangulation.

Used his vehicle to run over, uh, victims.

Used a brick to beat his victim.

A man's tie,

a telephone receiver,

a mop handle,

handguns,

used a necklace,

a two-by-four wooden board, and also even a ballpoint pen.

We've never come across a serial killer that uses all of those.

That's not to say it's not possible.

But from a probability perspective,

it's, uh, fictional.

They found her car.

Uh, there were some key items, as I understand it, in that vehicle.

Things she just never let go of, you know, her cigarettes being one of 'em.

So that really raised the alarm.

So then there was some suspicion that...

Is it possible that Henry Lee Lucas could be involved in this?

My mom went to a bar,

and she left sometime that evening.

But we don't know where she went.

It was as if she'd just fallen off the end of the Earth,

and we didn't know where to look.

Seven months later,

the remains were found

buried in a shallow grave.

Not long after that,

I got news that Henry Lee Lucas

had killed her.

We got a missing person report

that she'd been seen in the bar that night.

Uh, she was drinking with a man in there that...

that fit Henry Lee Lucas', uh, description.

Yeah, a matter of fact, the sheriff and I went to, uh, Texas together

to talk to Henry Lee Lucas, and...

And, of course, people were in line to talk to him, you know.

People from agencies all over the United States

had to come in to talk to him, and so...

Were you limited on the amount of time you were given as well?

Yeah. They gave us... They gave us 20 minutes to talk to him.

Twenty minutes?

We had so many people waiting to get in, 20 minutes for the interview.

He admitted to it. He said to, uh, Sheriff Garnett,

"Yeah, I did that one."

And, of course, he was having a good day. He was a... He was a superstar.

He was a... you know, a movie star.

He was something special, and...

It's kind of morbid because he said that he liked to... to behead 'em,

because he didn't like to have sex with a woman with a head,

so he'd take the head off

- and have sex with the head gone. - Yeah.

- He said he does all his victims that way. - Hmm.

Peculiar.

It generally takes, on average, several hours to get a confession

from an individual that has committed a heinous crime

and, uh, who is going to suffer the consequences of that.

Do you recall any other suspects that were looked at?

There wasn't anybody else that we knew of who was a suspect.

Other than Henry Lee Lucas, and that was it?

Yeah, we... we both had the same feeling on it, that, uh...

That, you know, about 80% sure we thought he'd done it.

He says that he picked her up hitchhiking.

She didn't need to be hitchhiking, she had a car.

He said that she was wearing pigtails.

Mom was not wearing pigtails.

A lot of these individuals

will take responsibility for crimes they've never committed.

Why? Because it... it...

fills them up with acknowledgment.

For the first time in their life, they've been recognized.

And it's better to be known for a crime

than to be known for nothing at all.

From the moment she went missing,

they should have gotten more answers from interviewing witnesses,

questioning her boyfriend that she'd just broken up with,

who had tried to strangle her.

I don't know if they just don't care

or if someone has something to hide.

I can tell you my experiences with the... with the cold case.

This is gonna be the first one on it.

I know... I know that they're out there, and I know what I've seen on TV,

but this, being 35 years ago,

I think will really show that the Sheriff's Office in Quay County

is serious about their job and serious about their citizens.

At the time, Joel Garnett was the sheriff who...

Have you ever talked with him about this case?

Uh, very briefly. He's kind of hard to get a hold of.

Is he?

From what I understand, there was a flood in the basement,

and it wiped out some records.

There is not one shred of evidence

to show that Lucas

could have even been in San Jon

when my mother was killed.

But Lucas said he did it,

and law enforcement chose to take him at his word.

Sergeant Prince says it is not the task force's job

to investigate the murders,

only to help other police agencies around the country

with their own investigations.

The task force wasn't an investigative task force

that you might think of

as a normal homicide task force.

We were not set up to solve them.

We were set up to...

uh, facilitate the interviews.

You tied her hands?

Yeah, her hands were tied.

And you would use electrical cord or something like that?

Did you ever use...

First thing you'd learn when you'd learn how to interview is...

stop talking, let them talk.

From the confessions that I've watched, every one of them...

led him.

"Is this what happened? Is this... Tell us about this. Tell us about..."

You don't do that. If they're confessing, they're gonna tell you everything.

Did you stab her from the front

or were you behind her when you stabbed her?

No, I stabbed her from behind, too, I think.

Henry had an ability to read...

what it was that a person was asking him to give back.

Was she trying to fight you on the way out?

She did fight me on the way out.

Law enforcement officials

had unwittingly given him all the information he needed

to make a... a confession.

Did you turn the body over,

or did you move the body in any way after you stabbed her?

Yeah, I think I rolled her over on her back, if I remember correctly.

Well, he knew if he guessed one way and they acted funny,

he'd go the other way.

Do you remember anything about a baby?

A baby?

Well, I didn't know anything about a baby, you know. I said, "Baby?"

You know? So I made up a story about the baby.

I can remember seeing one in the...

in the house, but the baby wasn't hurt, I don't think.

Showing the pictures of the victim.

For shock value, that's okay, to show the dead body.

But you don't show him the crime scene, because then...

he got the whole story just out of the photograph.

You see there's a bridge that goes over the interstate.

Uh, these officers...

Many of them had never covered anything more than a...

traffic violation or a fistfight at the football game.

And suddenly,

you get to meet all these Rangers,

you get to travel there and talk with Henry and...

he solves your crime.

I mean, that's... that's big stuff.

Well, I cut the woman's head off so it wouldn't leave no evidence.

So I drive all the way to Arizona.

Forgot all about the head being in the car then.

They got conned by a con.

And they wanted to believe.

They wanted to believe him.

I still don't believe Henry's memory. That...

He's amazed me so many times today that I just...

It's unbelievable.

He's something else. I really dig this guy.

The police work was less than competent.

They didn't ask the right questions, they didn't pursue other leads.

If you want it badly enough to close out an old case,

it's never gonna be solved anyway.

This guy wants it, let's give it to him and get it off our...

off our books.

Have you told us the truth?

- Yes. - Okay.

So, lunch break?

Okay.

The task force were quick to say, "We never closed a case.

It was them, it wasn't us.

It was them. It was the guy in Minnesota, it was the guy in Virginia.

That policeman closed the case, not us"

But they were the facilitators.

They were becoming famous.

Given all kind of accolades.

They were heroes.

They were heroes to the families,

they were heroes to the local police

that they were calling and saying, "Guess what? We found your killer."

It was May 12th, 1983,

when 23-year-old Scotty Scott faced a Little Rock jury

for the 1981 shooting death of convenience store clerk Betty Thornton.

Thornton was found face down behind the counter,

shot three times, the cash drawer empty.

I was the deputy prosecutor

in charge of trying Scotty Scott

for the murder of Betty Thornton.

Scotty Scott's dad had been a police officer

with the Arkansas State Police

and was well-known and well-liked.

I said, "Son, did you ever go into that store?"

He looked me right back and he said, "Dad, I never lied to you in my life

and I'm not lying now.

I've never been in that store in my life."

It was hard to try the state trooper's son,

but we had direct evidence that he was in the place when Betty was shot.

We, the jury, find the defendant Scotty Scott

guilty of murder in the first degree...

and fix his punishment to the term of 25 years in the penitentiary.

When you have a jury that has seen all the evidence

and is absolutely sure that... that he was guilty,

th-that was justice.

When Henry Lucas came to Little Rock,

Scotty Scott's case was on appeal at the Arkansas Superior Court.

And Henry Lucas said that he killed Betty Thornton,

Do you swear to tell...

But there wasn't anything other than his statement.

Lucas testified that he killed a Little Rock convenience store clerk

in 1981,

a crime for which Scotty Scott was convicted.

I sat and picked that, uh, station out that I had robbed,

and I described the victim to 'em,

what she, uh, looked like,

and, uh, how she was shot.

There wasn't a bit of truth to anything he said.

We could prove both by evidence and by eye-witness testimony

that Henry Lee Lucas was in Jacksonville, Florida

on the day that Betty Lee Thornton was killed in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The evidence most damaging to Lucas' credibility

is an insurance form signed by Lucas and dated November 6th, 1981,

the day of the murder.

Let me ask you. This is your signature on this?

That is my signature, yes.

He was a thousand miles away once again.

It's so obvious this was a fraud.

When Henry Lucas eventually fessed up to me,

he started to tell me the truth about Betty Thornton's homicide.

How did you hear about this case?

I, uh, was up in the sheriff's office one day and, uh...

So he put me on the phone with the lieutenant

at the state police barracks.

He said, "Well, uh, I have a...

a police officer's son that's in prison

for a crime that, uh, we don't think he did.

That if you could, would you help us out?"

The conviction of Scotty Scott was set aside

just because they get old Henry to say he did it.

Henry Lucas was the product of some manipulation that...

really, uh, hurt our law enforcement here in Little Rock and our society.

Lucas's confession freed Scotty Scott.

It just comes back again and again and again

to someone else...

got away with murder.

I was a pretty sick person back then, you know? I, uh...

I didn't have any hopes of proving myself innocent of nothing, you know?

And, uh, I just made up my mind,

if law enforcement wanted phony confessions,

I'd give it to 'em, so I did.

I hate this dead man, but then the people that...

created it,

I hate them more.

These are the people that you trust to find...

the killer, bring them to justice, and...

that wasn't done.

Back in 1985,

the task force was getting Lucas to confess to crimes,

and on the other hand, they had evidence he couldn't have committed those crimes.

And they decided they needed to pick out one big case

and prove that Lucas really was the mass murderer that they said he was.

Maria Apodaca was killed.

She was a elderly, uh, lady

whose home was burglarized,

and she was brutally murdered.

I got a couple hangers out of the closet,

and I said, "Well, what the heck? I might as well have sex."

So I go back and have sex with her.

To defend Lucas, I realized that I had to...

prove that Lucas lied in El Paso,

just like he lied on all these other cases.

I had to dismantle Lucas's confessions

case by case,

by case.

I brought in witness after witness

to prove that Lucas could not have committed those murders

that he confessed to.

At first, the judge thought, like everybody,

that Lucas was a bad guy, a-a murderer,

but steam started coming out the judge's ears

because he realized he'd been lied to for months.

We went through 76 cases.

In all 76 cases, it was pretty well proven

that he could not have done it.

By the end of the case,

I proved that Lucas did not commit the Apodaca murder.

The judge tossed the confession,

then the DA dismissed the case.

I don't think this thing started off the way it ended.

I think the Rangers honestly felt

that they were doing the right thing.

What happened to them,

Henry knows that if he confesses,

they're gonna keep him alive.

So he con... he confesses to everything

and this becomes an obsession with the Rangers.

And then, as you look at each case that comes up,

you begin to see a pattern

of a state agency

making a serial killer

out of a person that may not have killed anybody.

And they turned it into the biggest hoax

that this country and this state has ever seen.

Attorney General Jim Mattox handed out a year-long study

blistering law officers for alleged shoddy investigation of Lucas.

Lucas was able to perpetrate

a hoax on the, uh, criminal justice system.

The Mattox report comes out

and it is a detailed accounting of Lucas's presence around the country

at the time of each and every murder that he had confessed to.

We can prove unequivocally

that he was assisted in making confessions.

Uh, some law enforcement officials

purposely cleared cases that they should not have cleared.

Even with the ruling of the judge in El Paso,

and the Mattox report,

no one really paid any attention to it.

And the Texas Rangers themselves

continued to defend their actions.

I wrote the news release

when the Public Safety Commission and the Texas Rangers

did an investigation of the Lucas Task Force

and found no culpability on the part of the Texas Rangers.

And certainly no violations of the law.

There was certainly nothing that was found improper

uh, by the task force,

by the Rangers, or by Bob Prince.

They believed Henry was a serial killer.

Their reputations were wrapped up in it,

and they were determined to do the...

the kind of job they could be proud of.

Bob Prince still feels like he accomplished that.

I don't know of anything more we could have done on the task force.

If we had to do it over again today,

I guess we'd do it the... the same way.

From the hundreds of Lucas confessions,

we know only three cases

that you can actually link Henry Lee Lucas to.

In the case of his mother's death, he was sent to prison for that.

And in the cases of Kate Rich and Becky Powell,

he took police to where he buried their bodies

and there was actually physical evidence.

I trained myself, uh...

and was trained

never to leave evidence.

You didn't leave fingerprints?

I didn't leave fingerprints, I didn't leave footprints,

I didn't leave nothing.

No. Henry Lee Lucas was not a mastermind.

He couldn't have created any of those crimes

without leaving evidence.

Most of the other people leave evidence. I don't.

There's not a fingerprint. There's not a hair.

There's not an eyewitness.

There's nothing, nothing, nothing,

except Henry's confessions, to put him in any of those murders.

Back when all this was going on with Henry Lucas,

DNA was just in its inception.

But now there... there's no excuse.

Get back in there and look at it.

DNA is the assault rifle for law enforcement now,

because you can't change it, you can't alter it,

you can't hide from it.

New DNA technology helps close one of the oldest cold cases in Colorado.

Henry Lee Lucas,

the serial killer, originally confessed to that murder.

The DNA match now points to 52-year-old Ricky Lee Harnish

in Holly's slaying.

This guy had been walking on the streets for 32 years.

He... He ain't been caught until yesterday.

And it was cleared with a little cotton swab.

Now, cases are being solved.

The real killers are being found, and it's not Henry Lucas.

Joyce and Bob Lemons have questioned

who killed their daughter, Deborah Sue Williamson.

I don't know who it was.

I have never known who it was and never had any idea who it was.

For so many years now,

Lubbock PD has not actively worked my sister's case.

So, I said in March of '17,

"I'm gonna start the journey again."

The detectives in Lubbock were not doing anything.

They just told me they didn't have the manpower,

so I took that to heart and told them I would find them the help.

So, on August 24th, 1975...

That's when I found the Cold Case Foundation.

They agreed to take Debbie's case.

The victim is stabbed between 15 and 17 times.

The... The initial attack takes place at the vehicle door.

She is then dragged approximately 20 feet to the back door,

um, and then the body appears to be posed,

but there doesn't appear to be any, uh, sexual assault.

The way he leaves her.

That's a message, and that should give us some idea

of the possible relationship between the victim and the offender.

The probability is that it's somebody that she knows

and certainly knows her.

And we're looking at Debbie's husband,

Doug's groomsman, the husband's brother,

Debbie's cousin, and also Debbie's brother.

The Cold Case Foundation felt it was

possibly a family member that killed my sister.

I hope that's not what the real answer is.

But we've hurt so much, and we've been through so much,

I don't see that hurting worse...

than what we've already been through.

We submitted to the Lubbock Police Department

a 23-page report of Deborah's case

identifying those people of interest

that we thought had merit in the case,

and, uh, gave some investigative recommendations to follow up on.

And we've not really heard back from them since.

We're just now pulling up.

That's the home right there across the street.

Lubbock PD had confirmed

not only are they not working her case currently,

they have no plans on working her case ever.

I've never been this close.

Debbie's murder scene was so compromised.

The Lubbock police had skin under her nails,

they had tissue, they had blood,

they had hair,

they had complete handprints, they had thumbprints,

they had footprints.

The Lubbock police lost a lot of her evidence

and have no answers for it.

Hmm.

I just, you know...

All we have ever asked for,

all we ever wanted,

was for them to reconsider,

to take another look,

to-to-to-to do their job. That's all we ever wanted.

My dad died of a heart attack in his sleep.

He would have done anything humanly possible

to find who killed her.

After the Cold Case Foundation had been there,

we were finally on our way to a good investigation.

Sheriff Shafer...

...appeared to be very interested

and so accommodating,

and it gave the whole family a lot of hope

that we would finally...

get some answers about what happened to Mom.

Since then, there was a news article

and Sheriff Shafer

is quoted that, in his sole opinion,

Lucas was in fact the likely perpetrator.

Local law enforcement had access to the information

if they cared to know.

But they just don't seem to have cared to know.

They would rather have a murder off their books

than to actually tell me what happened to my mom.

There's a resistance to wanting to reopen the cases.

Law enforcement doesn't like to make law enforcement look bad.

I can understand the reluctance of law enforcement

to open a case back up,

because it could expose their predecessors in an unfavorable light,

but the test is, did we get the right person?

As well-intentioned as law enforcement is most of the time,

mistakes can be made,

and we need to figure out what those are and what caused them

and try to change the way we go about our business

so they don't happen again.

Well, it's... it's definitely a learning curve for law enforcement.

If you conduct your cases and your business like you're supposed to,

you... you shouldn't be... shouldn't be afraid of the light.

It's not easy to reopen a case

that's been cleared for a couple reasons.

One, it causes us to go down the road

of what we could've missed along the way.

Two, it's somewhat embarrassing.

But if it means that we need to kind of back up

and... and reverse course a little bit

and readjust and go in a different direction,

then that's... that's what it takes.

The Linda Sue Adkins case went unsolved

until Henry Lee Lucas had confessed to it,

saying that he had been in California at around that time.

The case was closed without an arrest

because he was in custody in Texas.

Initially, it seemed Henry Lee Lucas actually was responsible for this murder.

And then, at the end of 2016,

I was contacted by the film crew

who brought to our attention

just how many crimes Lucas had falsely confessed to.

I reviewed the case and looked at the confession

and realized that we didn't have any forensic evidence

to link him to the crime

and that there was overwhelming evidence

that Lucas wasn't in Bakersfield around that time.

So there was nightclubs to the back of the motels.

The riverbank where she was found runs right there.

Investigation at the time was that

Linda had left the club

and was either lured, carried, uh, taken,

and ended up in this area,

um, that we're looking at now.

Ultimately, we want public trust.

There's the older traditional thinking of,

"We don't make mistakes, and we don't talk about mistakes,"

or there's the transparency side

where we show the mistakes, and we show that we're human,

and we show that...

things don't always go the way that we wanted them,

regardless of intention.

- Hi, Deby, how are you? - Good.

There's a certain level of discomfort, to say the least,

going back and talking to the victim's family.

In this case, uh, Linda's family was...

was very happy and supportive of the decision to...

seek the truth.

The more we look into it, the... you know, the likelihood

of him being responsible is, uh, less and less.

Over the years, we've heard that, you know,

some of the confessions were false,

and we just didn't feel that that pertained to us.

Right.

My greatest hope is that we will be able to find who did do it.

Unfortunately, there's a chance that taking the seal off of this case,

we may never be able to seal it again...

...but it's the right thing to do

in reopening it and re-examining what, uh...

what we have.

Linda was my best friend.

Excuse me.

I...

I just wonder how life would've been different

had she lived.

Now we're right back to square one.

We just need to drop off some flyers, if you wouldn't mind putting them up.

The most horrifying thought that goes through my head

is that...

the person who killed her

got away with it.

And because this case was not properly investigated,

other people have been hurt.

Other families are going through what I've been through.

We cannot let that happen again.

A family that loses a family member to a homicidal violence

is never going to forget.

If they can get that closure,

I don't care if it's five years, ten years, 30 years,

it eases that a little bit.

It does.

It really does.

Love you, Debbie.

This really is a story about human nature.

About how all of us saw in Henry what we wanted to see.

And maybe we did lose sight of the truth.

It is a must for all

to identify,

control,

stop a Henry Lucas

before they become a violence to society.

Thank you very much.

♪ If these lies don't make it right ♪

♪ Can we pretend enough is true? ♪

♪ And if a highway calls at night ♪

♪ Well, these bars still make me blue ♪

♪ Can a lie told enough ♪

♪ Become true? ♪

♪ Can a lie told enough ♪

♪ Become enough for you? ♪