European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 29, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse Insanity plea gives Justice a bad name Andy Rooney Tribune Media we i i ways used to Call them we said they were Quot nuts Quot but the words have gone out of style. Like so Many other direct Clear descriptive words they were too cruel. Now people have mental disorders. People Are dysfunctional psychotic or paranoid. I still think of them in the privacy of my own brain As crazy. I just done to use the word in Public. Every time someone is tried for murder and claims insanity As a defense i resent it. I resent murderers giving insanity a bad name by claiming it for themselves. There is no illness unite so sad fur the friends and relatives of the person who has it As mental 111ik is to 11 h i Mit 111.11 in it. Ill in i11 u i id i in to Midei someone go log ethic makes the would a harder place Lor my talk unstable people to live. The idea of a nut on the Loose makes a Good movie but the suggestion that All nuts Aie potential murderers is to mils i Hev Huc enough problems without being inn denied with any popular notion that they Teall stalking the sane. Aside from questions of language. Disunity ought not be allowed As a defense. We re All a Little from time to time and it s no excuse. When anyone allows himself the la Xix of losing control and commits murder he or she ought to be locked up for roughly the same Lime the Clun will be dead. Anyone who deliberately kills another human being is crazy. It May be a Long term mental disorder or it May be some Brief Cloud like anger that passes through the brain but it is not rational. No one in his right mind would do it. I no longer understand any of our Laws about murder. How do you give someone eight years Tor murder or 20 years i heard a to newsman report that a murderer somewhere in the South was sentenced to 16 years in prison and wont be eligible for parole for four years. Judges try to scare potential criminals by announcing Long sentences for those who have been caught and convicted but if the sentences done to mean anything the criminals will be the first to understand. They know 16 years Means Only four. I understand the parole system and 1 approve of it even though there a no parole for the dead. Hut i disapprove of sentences that Are announced. For their effect As longer than everyone the crazed bloody world of Henry Lee Lucas by Mike Cochran the associated press branded by some As Quot americans most notorious serial murderer a Henry Lee Lucas was also one of history a least concerned and utterly remorseless killers. He was the subject of John Mcnaughton a controversial film Henry portrait of a serial killer which was released last year with an x rating because of its violence. Now Lueas is the subject of a new Book by Mike Cox the confessions of Henry Lee Lueas. Less monstrous than moronic Lucas a on eyed drifter killed his Mother his teen age wife an old woman who befriended him and perhaps another 100 or so innocent victims. No one knows for sure although Cox a Book suggests that Lucas killed More than Many believe and less than he claims. In the paperback original from pocket books the author offers a new dimension to the bloody misadventures of Lucas and his equally disordered and deranged travelling companion Ottis Toole. Cox who was a reporter for the Austin Ameri can statesman when he first encountered Lucas provides a chilling account of the Homicidal Odd couples quest for sex Money and blood and their random Choice of targets usually women in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not surprisingly Lucas has been sentenced to death in Texas. Toole is in prison in Florida and likewise bound Tor execution. Both men readily admitted crime and killing sprees conducted jointly and separately and confused investigators by confessing to misdeeds he apparently did not commit. In addition to talking to i Ucas. Cox went Back to the mountains of Virginia to examine i Ucas depression Era childhood As the son of a legless Drunken father and a Boozy Mother who sexually sold herself for 50 cents a session. She charged considerably More for a pint of her own Moonshine whiskey. One of violas retarded bed mates. Humic dowdy who May have been Henry s real lather. Cox says introduced Young Lucas to the Joys of perverse sex first w Ith a calf whose Throat he Cut with a pocket knife. Quot afterwards Quot Cox wrote Quot the Young boy could hardly believe How Good it had made him icel i hat May partly explain Why Lucas later preferred sex w Ith his victims after he killed them although some he assaulted before As Well As after. On Jan. 11, 1%0, Lucas graduated from killing animals to people and his Mother was the first to die. He slapped her around choked her and plunged his pocketknife into her neck. Lucas then 24, was convicted and spent half his 10-year prison term in a Michigan psychiatric Hospital after two halfhearted suicide attempts. Once freed he resumed his animal antics bungled two attempts to Kidnap a Young Giris married a Henry Lee Nifcas woman named Betty sexually abused her daughters fled in the night and wound up at a Mission near skid Row in Jacksonville Fla. By a cruel twist of Fate Lucas stumbled into Toole whom he d met once in a Pennsylvania bar. Toole is a psychopath and a homosexual. Unlike , who mostly killed women. Toole s victims usually were men. Toole introduced his one eyed drinking buddy to his 12-year-old Niece Becky whom i Ucas found sex Ualle irresistible. They ran off and later wed. Lucas swears he loved Becky even though he butchered her. Crisscrossing the country. Lucas surfaced in the Early 19n s North of the Dallas fort Worth area. Where he killed no year old Kate Rich. In i in com t k now a 11 k x will a 111 a in in and what m the would is in Sci m the my Oihi debt cd Quot a is the pc son who w As killed am less dead when the Muul i is called second do Gicca do give of what in some , it is on inst do give Midei when the victim is a Poluck Man. What s that All about a k the do give of the i Ime wisc when the pet son mid Cid is a cop a All the emphasis m a in Sci Case is on the murderer and not on the mid Cid i Don t know the name of a single pc son jul lick Phr Sci is accused of nun Del my we saw that one. Pathetic Voung i inn who to cd to escape Danio s i Asp and tailed m the Mph Tamaie Epi soc when his pleas Ucic ignored in Milwaukee police. The Othni victims us Anonymous. Non persons. When Dahmeei s Lawvey save m Erml. Quot my ill ent is mentally incompetent to know Light from wrong Quot the judge should sax. Quot the Volt accepts that statement and orders the trial to when the charges arc found to be True Anil the trial is Over and Jeffrey Dahmer is pronounced guilty As he almost certainly will be. The judge should then decide what punishment is proper. Ii the jury thinks the mass murderer was mentally incompetent when he did it. The judge should put him in a mental institution not a prison a but he should put him there for life. We Don t need Dahmer out Here. This year next year or 50 years from now. Murderers give the word crazy a bad reputation. Andy Rooney is .1 Lom it or St us and stapes reporter a a firm Vivi that was in ias2. A year a cloth Lucas and then Toole began confessing to most of America s unsolved mysteries. Law enforcement officers in 40 states and an Ada tumbled Over one another in an Llort to talk with Lucas about then unsolved homicides. To accommodate them the Lexas department of Public safety created a task Loice to coordinate the Exchange of information among v Ai ions Law enforcement agencies. However Noble the intention the end avoid doomed from the Start. What happened is that every Law Anlo Cement Agency with an Embair inns my. Unsolved slaying on its books used Lucas As an escape unite. A it was definitely in Llic Best interests of the Law enforcement agencies to solve these Cimics. Many of which had been on the books lot cais. Points out of now a Public information Oll Icci for the Dps. Lucas was eager to accept the blame lie enjoyed travelling around the country Conics Sig but one such confession earned him a death sentence. With scant evidence a san Angelo in was jury convicted sol Civ on ins statement that he killed tin unidentified woman whom authorities called Orange jocks. During the trial prosecutors Alto Ducco a videotape in which Lucas claimed to have killed 360 persons in some 22 states. Jurors did not see and hear All the tape but reporters did. Quot there s no was possible that anybody in the country could do what me and Ottis have done Quot Lueas said. He bragged that he and his murderous crony Quot killed Mem most every Way there is except Poison. Shooting them hanging them running them Down with cars. We be beat them to death. There a crucifixion filleting people like fish people have been Burnt shot in their cars. A hut outside the courtroom. Lucas denied kill ing Orange socks. One who believed him was Hugh Aynesworth. Then a reporter for the Dallas times Herald. Aynesworth wrote a front Page Story showing much of the Lucas affair to be a Sham. Nobody including Lucas can prove or disprove All his claims or denials. Hut w i its of. One reputable investigator w Illiamson Oumi sheriff Jim Boutwell. Believes i Mas prob Abl killed Between Luis and 2uu people self Jet my r z1 l Quot a a in be 1
