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http://www.konformist.com/2000/henry.htm
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Henry - Portrait of an MK-ULTRA Assassin?
By David McGowan
June 2000
On June 30th of 1998, Henry Lee Lucas, arguably the most prolific and
certainly one of the most sadistic serial killers in the annals of crime was
scheduled for execution by the state of Texas. Given the advocacy of the
death penalty by Governor George W. Bush, things clearly weren't looking good
for Henry at that time.
Bush had not granted clemency to any condemned man in his tenure as governor.
In fact, no governor of any state in the entire history of the country has
carried out more judicial executions than has Governor George. At last count,
the state of Texas had dispatched 130 inmates on Bush's watch.
So Texas was definitely not the place to be for a man in Henry's position.
And considering the nature of Henry's crimes, it seemed a certainty that
nothing would stand in the way of Henry's scheduled execution. There weren't
likely to be any high-profile supporters, AKA Karla Faye Tucker (though even
personal appeals to Bush from the likes of Pat Robertson failed to dissuade
the governor from proceeding on schedule with Miss Tucker's execution).
Not likely because Henry's crimes were of a particularly brutal nature,
involving torture, mutilation, rape, dismemberment, necrophilia, cannibalism,
and pedophilia, with the number of victims running as high as 300-600 by some
accounts - including Henry's own, at times - though this figure is likely
inflated.
By all accounts though, Lucas, frequently working with partner Ottis Toole -
a self described arsonist and cannibal - savagely murdered literally scores
of victims of all ages, races, and genders. All indications were then that
this was pretty much of a no-brainer for America's premier hanging governor.
But then a most remarkable thing happened. On June 18, just twelve days
before Henry's scheduled demise, Governor Bush asked the State Board of
Pardons and Paroles, whose members are appointed by Bush himself, to review
Henry's case. Strangely enough, eight days later the Board
uncharacteristically recommended that Henry's execution not take place.
The very next day, just three days short of Henry's scheduled exit from this
world, Lucas became the first, and to date only, recipient of Governor Bush's
compassionate conservatism. The official rationale for this act of mercy was,
apparently, that the evidence on which Lucas was sentenced did not support
his conviction.
There was a possibility that Henry was in fact innocent of the crime for
which he was convicted. Never mind that many of the 130 death row inmates who
did not get special gubernatorial attention prior to their executions had
credible claims of innocence that were met with by nothing but scorn and
mockery.
Suddenly Little George had developed a keen interest in not executing
innocent convicts. Never mind as well that some of those who have been
executed despite claims of innocence were, other than the crime for which
they were being executed, law-abiding citizens. Whereas Henry was by all
accounts a serial rapist, kidnapper, torturer and murderer.
Never mind as well that once Henry was spared, Bush promptly lost this
passing interest and began once again rubber stamping every execution order
that crossed his desk, including that of a great-grandmother in her sixties
who was convicted of killing her chronically abusive husband (Betty Lou
Beets, in February 2000).
And never mind that Bush has made no effort in the two years since Henry's
commutation to seek a new trial for Henry on one of the dozens of murders for
which there is conclusive evidence of Lucas' guilt. Neither has he made any
effort to extradite Henry to any of the numerous other states in which Henry
is wanted for various murders.
It seems to me that the last time I checked, there was no statute of
limitations for the crime of murder. Why is Law-and-Order George not seeking
a new death sentence for Lucas? And why is it that Henry was granted full
clemency, rather than a temporary stay during which his case could have been
reviewed?
This is exactly what Bush has just done in the case of convicted murderer
Ricky Nolen McGinn. Tellingly, the proliferation of press reports on the
McGinn case, apparently meant to soften Bush's image somewhat, have made
virtually no reference to the governor's earlier actions on behalf of Lucas.
Coverage by both the New York Times (supposedly a pillar of the 'liberal'
mainstream media) and The Nation (allegedly the most respected of the
'progressive' media publications) failed to mention Henry at all, setting the
parameters of discussion for the media at large.
Reporting on the McGinn case has avoided the mention of Lucas in one of two
ways: by noting that this is the first capital case for which Bush has issued
a stay (which is true but deliberately deceptive), or by claiming outright
that this is the first death penalty case in which Bush has intervened (which
is an outright and absolutely shameless lie).
Clearly, there was something more at work then in the Lucas case than simply
a question of guilt. There had to be another reason why Bush would take such
extraordinary steps to spare the life of a man who had led a life of such
brutality. And this was certainly not the first time that the criminal
justice system had shown such extraordinary lenience towards Lucas.
The first big break for Henry came around 1970, when he was released early
from a sentence he was then serving following his first murder conviction.
Sentenced to 20-40 years, Henry was released after serving just ten. This
occurred just after Henry appeared before the parole board and explained to
them that he wasn't ready to return to society and would surely kill again if
released.
Nevertheless, the board decided that ten years was an adequate amount of time
to serve for the crime of killing one's mother and then violating the corpse.
Fair enough. Within a year, of course, Henry found himself back in prison,
this time for attempting to abduct a girl. Despite his prior record, which
began long before killing his mother, Lucas served just four years and was
again released early, this time in August of 1975.
For the next seven years, Henry and his new friend Ottis would commit an
untold number of lurid murders. Henry would finally be arrested in October of
1982, only to be promptly released. He was arrested again in December of 1982
and has been imprisoned ever since.
After his final arrest, Henry was taken on tour, so to speak, by various law
enforcement officials around the country, during which time he confessed to
some 600 murders in 26 states. There were various charges made at the time
that Henry was being used by his escorts to clear troublesome unsolved
murders in places he had never even been.
This quite likely was the case. Henry seemed to have a very chummy
relationship with his captors, particularly the Texas Rangers, and provided a
valuable service for them by taking the rap for an amazing array of murders.
This alone, however, does not explain the personal attention given to Henry's
case by Governor Bush.
For that, we need to look at some of the more infrequently noted details of
Henry's life history, many of them provided by Lucas himself. Henry, as it
turns out, has some interesting stories to tell. In 1985, just a couple years
into his incarceration, he attempted to tell his story in a book, written for
him by a sympathetic author.
The book, titled The Hand of Death: The Henry Lee Lucas Story, tells of
Henry's indoctrination into a nationwide Satanic cult. Lucas claimed that he
was trained by the cult in a mobile paramilitary camp in the Florida
Everglades in the fine art of killing, up close and personal.
He further claimed that leaders of the camp were so impressed with Henry's
handling of a knife that he was allowed to serve as an instructor. Following
his training, Henry then claimed to have served the cult in various ways,
including as a contract killer and as an abductor of children, who were then
taken just over the border to a ranch in Mexico near Juarez.
Henry claimed that this cult operated out of Texas and from ranches in
northern Mexico, trafficking in children and drugs, among other nefarious
pursuits. In essence, Henry claimed that what appeared to be the random work
of a serial killer was in fact a planned series of crimes often committed for
specific purposes.
Some of the murders were political hits, according to Henry, including
occasional hits on foreign dignitaries. This was not true for all of Henry's
crimes. Some he did just because that's what he liked to do. And it was the
one thing that he was really good at.
The beauty of this arrangement was that it allowed Henry to conceal the true
motive for many of his crimes. Those performed as contract hits looked like
all of Henry's murders - senseless and random acts of violence.
In Henry's version of events, it was Toole who was responsible for Henry's
recruitment and training by the cult and many of the pair's exploits
thereafter. Interestingly, in all the standard biographies of the pair, Toole
is said to have been Henry's severely retarded follower.
It is quite clear from reading an interview granted by Toole to a journalist
(of sorts) that he was not by any means retarded. Uneducated, no doubt, but
definitely not severely retarded. Toole was in fact able to express himself
quite clearly, though perversely, and displayed a substantial level of
knowledge about the practices of Satanism.
In fact, Toole - prior to his death in 1996 - was able to give detailed
accounts that corroborated Henry's stories about the cult. But beyond the
stories told by these two notorious liars, is there any reason to believe
Henry's bizarre tale?
And what of Henry's other stories, including the one about being a close
friend of Jim Jones of the People's Temple? Henry has claimed on numerous
occasions that it was he who personally delivered the cyanide to Jones that
was used in the infamous Jonestown massacre.
What are we to make of such stories? Could Henry have been telling the truth
about being a contract killer? And if so, did the contracts he was receiving
have some kind of government connection? Though Henry never broaches the
subject in his book, the training camp as he describes it clearly has
military connections. Could this be the reason for the actions taken by
Governor Bush in June of 1998?
"A U.S. Navy psychologist, who claims that the Office of Naval Intelligence
had taken convicted murderers from military prisons, used behavior
modification techniques
on them, and then relocated them in American embassies throughout the world
... The Navy psychologist was Lt. Commander Thomas Narut of the U.S. Regional
Medical
Center in Naples, Italy. The information was divulged at an Oslo NATO
conference of 120 psychologists from the eleven nation alliance ... The Navy
provided all the funding necessary, according to Narut.
"Dr. Narut, in a question and answer session with reporters from many
nations, revealed how the Navy was secretly programming large numbers of
assassins. He said
that the men he had worked with for the Navy were being prepared for
commando-type operations, as well as covert operations in U.S. embassies
worldwide. He
described the men who went through his program as 'hit men and assassins' who
could kill on command.
"Careful screening of the subjects was accomplished by Navy psychologists
through the military records ... and many were convicted murderers serving
military prison sentences." (Harry V. Martin and David Caul "Mind Control,"
Napa Valley Sentinel, August-November 1991.)
Anyone familiar with the intelligence community's long-standing obsession
with the concept of mind control will immediately recognize what Dr. Narut
was describing as an MK-ULTRA project. The existence of this particular
manifestation of the project was first reported by British journalist Peter
Watson of the Sunday Times, who attended the conference and interviewed Dr.
Narut. Narut told him that they looked for candidates who had shown a
proclivity for violence.
This was at a time when numerous pseudo investigations of the intelligence
community were underway, including the Rockefeller, Pike, and Church
Committees. Narut told Watson that he was revealing this highly classified
information only because he assumed it was about to surface anyway.
Of course, Narut was mistaken about the interest of the various committees in
divulging anything even remotely resembling the truth. Narut promptly
disappeared from public view, reappearing only briefly to lamely attempt to
retract his prior statements. But it was a little too late.
Watson went on to expand upon this initial research to produce a book, War on
the Mind, one of the better books from the late 1970's on the subject of mind
control research by the intelligence community. Walter Bowart referenced
Watson's work as well, in his nearly impossible to find Operation Mind
Control.
So this cat, once let out of the bag, proved rather difficult to stuff back
inside. The intelligence community, it seemed, was recruiting from prisons to
make use of the natural talents of convicted killers to produce the fabled
'Manchurian Candidates.'
This operation involved killers drawn from military prisons, though there is
no reason not to suspect that parallel programs were being conducted in
civilian prisons as well. Prisons have, after all, provided fertile ground
for any number of MK-ULTRA sub projects for decades.
As the Napa Valley Sentinel article previously cited noted: "Mind control
experiments ... permeate mental institutions and prisons." This was
particularly true in the 1960's and 1970's. The NATO conference at which Dr.
Narut dropped his bombshell was held in July of 1975. Strangely enough, the
very next month Henry would be released to begin his reign of terror.
Clearly of relevance here is the fact that Lucas, during his prior ten year
prison stay, spent four and a half of those years in a mental ward. During
this time, he received intensive drug and electroshock treatments. Also
during this time, he complained chronically about hearing voices in his head,
taunting him day and night (ostensibly the reason for his confinement in the
mental ward, though it could well have been the result of his confinement and
treatment).
Was Henry programmed while in prison to be used later by the so-called Hand
of Death cult? The possibility clearly is there. He certainly had shown a
voracious appetite for violence, enough so to make him a very attractive
candidate. Indeed, Henry is just the kind of man to be considered a valuable
asset by the intelligence community.
For anyone who doubts that the CIA (or any other of the numerous intelligence
agencies) would recruit such a man, you must remember that we are talking
about the same agencies that recruited some of the most bloodthirsty butchers
of the Third Reich. Men such as Klaus Barbie, Joseph Mengele, Adolf Eichmann,
Otto Skorzeny, and Reinhard Gehlen.
Henry's depravity pales in the shadows of men such as these. Henry probably
couldn't even hold his own against some of the organized crime figures, such
as Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, who were likewise recruited by the CIA. Or
against the numerous thugs that the spooks have propped up around the world,
men such as Somoza, Pinochet, Duvalier, Pahlavi, etc., etc.
In the company of men such as these, Henry would be just one of the boys. No
less valuable an asset than, say, Dan Mitrione, the CIA torture aficionado
who was a boyhood friend of Jim Jones. This man, known for having homeless
persons kidnapped for the purpose of giving torture demonstrations to South
American security forces in his soundproof underground chamber of horrors,
was hailed as a hero and martyr when he himself was tortured and killed.
Hell, Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis flew into his home town and performed a
benefit show to raise money for the widow of this great American. So in the
world of spooks, Henry would be in good company. And speaking of Jim Jones,
what of Lucas' self-professed connections to the People's Temple?
It has been documented by numerous investigators that the Jonestown massacre
was not by any means a case of mass suicide, as was reported by the U.S.
press. It was in fact a case of mass murder. The Guyanese coroner, Dr. C.
Leslie Mootoo, concluded that only three of the 913 victims at Jonestown died
by means of suicide on that fateful day.
All of the rest were executed, some by lethal injection, some by
strangulation, and some simply shot through the head. It is apparent then
that if Lucas was in fact at Jonestown at the time of the mass murder, he was
quite likely doing considerably more than just serving as a delivery boy. A
man of Henry's talents would bean invaluable asset in a clean-up operation of
this type.
And what was being cleaned up was, of course, yet another MK-ULTRA project,
complete with vast stockpiles of drugs, sensory deprivation equipment, and a
band of zombie-like assassins who gunned down Congressman Leo Ryan's
entourage just prior to the massacre (thus necessitating the clean-up
operation.)
Strange that Henry would claim a connection to a man whose operation was
notable primarily for being a breeding ground for mind control and mass
murder. Of course Henry, being uneducated and illiterate, would not likely
have had access to this information.
Even if Henry was literate, he would not have known the story that Maury
Terry was to later tell in his book, The Ultimate Evil. Told therein is a
tale that chillingly parallels that of Henry and Ottis. What Terry revealed
was that the murders attributed to the Son of Sam, the Manson Family, and
numerous other interconnected killings (including possibly the Zodiac
murders) were not what they appeared to be.
While these killings appeared to be the random work of serial/mass murderers,
they actually were contract hits carried out for specific purposes by an
interlocking network of Satanic cults (this book has, by the way, recently
been reprinted by Barnes & Noble - go figure - and is highly recommended.)
In other words, these were professional hits orchestrated and disguised to
look like the work of yet another 'lone nut.' Which is, of course, exactly
what Henry claimed his crimes to be, several years before investigative
journalist Terry published his convincingly documented work.
Lucas' story then, as bizarre as it may appear to be, is certainly not
without precedent. Other events that have transpired since Henry first began
telling his tales of The Hand of Death lend further credence to various
aspects of his story. For example, there is the issue of the cult-run ranches
just south of the border.
While this may have sounded rather far-fetched back in the early 1980's, it
certainly doesn't today. In 1990, just such a ranch was excavated in
Matamoros, Mexico, yielding the remains of over a dozen ritual sacrifice
victims. While Ottis Toole, still alive at the time, noted that this was not
the specific ranch with which he and Henry were associated, he also mentioned
that there were numerous such operations in the area.
And a decade later, yet another excavation was begun, this time at a ranch
near Juarez, Mexico, which is indeed where Henry claimed it to be. This story
made a brief appearance in the American press in December of 1999, until U.S.
officials moved in to take over the investigation, after which coverage
promptly ceased.
Of course, it could just have been lucky guesses by Henry about the cult-run
ranches and the networks of Satanic cults running murder-for-hire operations.
And it could just be a coincidence that Toole, who was convicted in the state
of Florida, shared with Henry the fate of being spared the death penalty.
Florida is, of course, a state that is also overly zealous in its application
of the death penalty. Not zealous enough to execute the likes of Ottis Toole,
however. In any event, it's interesting that both of these men had their
lives spared in a state that is run by a member of the Bush family (though
brother Jeb was not yet governing when Toole was spared.)
Its interesting also to take note of the case of the man known as the
Railroad Killer, Rafael Resendez-Ramirez. On July 13, 1999, Ramirez was
reported to have walked across a bridge from (where else?) Juarez, Mexico
into El Paso, Texas and turned himself in. At the time he was wanted for a
string of alleged serial killings.
Mirroring the circumstances surrounding Henry's final arrest, Ramirez had
been taken into custody just six weeks prior by the U.S. Border Patrol, only
to be promptly released despite his presence on FBI most-wanted lists and the
issuing of alerts to the immigration service.
Before his surrender the next month, four more victims would be felled by
Ramirez. Apparently he still had a little work left to complete. Having done
so, Ramirez then made the incomprehensible decision to surrender to Texas
authorities.
Crossing the border into Texas, Ramirez left a country with no death penalty
and entered the execution capital of the western world. The Los Angeles
Times, in reporting on his surrender, noted that he was "adamant he wanted to
surrender to a Texas Ranger," and that "he had not requested an attorney and
was cooperating with detectives."
In the same article, it is noted that authorities say Ramirez is "strikingly
intelligent." Strikingly intelligent? Not based on his actions taken on July
13th of last year. But then again, perhaps Ramirez knows something about the
Texas criminal justice system that the rest of us do not.
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