"Lion Cub" by Henry Lee Lucas

"Lion Cub"
by Henry Lee Lucas
8.5"x11" unframed
graphite on paper
Includes COA &
letter of provenance

Henry Lee Lucas (1936 - 2001) was an American criminal, convicted of murder and once listed as America's most prolific serial killer. However, he later recanted his confessions. Lucas confessed to involvement in about 3,000 murders, an average of about one murder per day between his release from prison in mid-1975 to his arrest in mid-1983. A more widely circulated total of about 350 murders committed by Lucas is based on confessions deemed "believable" by a Texas-based "Lucas Task Force."

Lucas claimed to have first murdered in 1951, when he strangled a girl who refused his sexual advances. On January 12, 1960, Lucas killed his mother, stabbing her with a knife. He served fifteen years and was released on August 22, 1975. He then drifted around the American South and met up with Ottis Toole for an alleged murder and crime spree.

Lucas was arrested in June 1983 and charged with killing 82-year-old Kate Rich in Ringgold, Texas, and the earlier murder of Becky Powell. Ultimately, Lucas was convicted of eleven homicides. He was sentenced to death for the murder of an unidentified woman, dubbed "Orange Socks" after her only clothing, who was discovered in Williamson County, Texas, on Halloween 1979. Lucas's sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998 by then-Governor George W. Bush, and Lucas died in prison of natural causes.