August 23, 1936 - Henry Lee Lucas
His case became less a story of crimes committed than of a criminal justice system willing to accept them. Lucas confessed to hundreds of murders across the United States, providing investigators with enough detail to close cold cases in multiple states — until scrutiny revealed that many of those confessions were impossible to verify and, in numerous instances, flatly contradicted by evidence. The resulting scandal exposed how readily law enforcement agencies had accepted unsubstantiated confessions, raising serious questions about the cases closed in his name.
From Wikipedia
Henry Lee Lucas (August 23, 1936 – March 12, 2001), also known as The Confession Killer, was an American convicted murderer. Lucas was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. He rose to infamy as a claimed serial killer while incarcerated for these crimes when he falsely confessed to approximately 600 other murders to Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions and the murders officially attributed to Lucas. He was convicted of murdering 11 people and condemned to death for a single case with a then-unidentified victim, later identified as Debra Jackson.
An investigation by the Dallas Times-Herald showed that it was impossible for Lucas to have committed many of the murders he confessed to. While the Rangers defended their work, a follow-up investigation by the Attorney General of Texas concluded Lucas was a fabulist who had falsely confessed. Lucas' death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998.
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