MARSHALL, Texas -- A northeast Texas teenager who accepted a ride with confessed killer Henry Lee Lucas apparently was shot to death because Lucas was 'just mean and sorry,' a prosecutor said.
Lucas was indicted for murder Monday by a Harrison County grand jury in the Nov. 1, 1977, slaying of Lillie Pearl Darty, 18, of Marshall. The teenager apparently accepted a ride with Lucas at a gas station and later was sexually assaulted and shot in the head.
Her decomposing body was found three weeks later in a wooded area north of Marshall.
Lucas has been charged in 11 slayings in Texas, including two for which he already has pleaded guilty or been convicted. Another Texas murder charge recently was dropped.
'I don't know why he killed any of them,' District Attorney Sam Baxter said when asked for a motive in Ms. Darty's death. 'He's just mean and sorry.'
Lucas also implicated Ottis Elwood Toole, a convicted arsonist, in the slaying, Baxter said. But investigators have not questioned the Florida prison inmate about Ms. Darty's death. Lucas has said he and Toole killed 150 to 200 people as they traveled across the country.
In Texarkana, Ark., police are investigating a confession from Lucas that he stabbed to death teenagers Gordon and Karen Alexander in 1981.
A police spokesman said Monday, however, that authorities need more evidence before charging him.
'We are not sure he is involved it in right now. He is a suspect, I can tell you that,' said police Capt. Bob Harrison.
Authorities say the two teenagers were attacked in their home during the early hours of April 8, 1981. Their father, Weldon Alexander, returned home from his job at about 6:30 a.m. CST that day to find his son Gordon, 13, dead. His daughter, Karen, 14, was alive, but she had a stab wound in her head and died four days later at a Texarkana hospital.
Police found a bent, bloody table knife near the murder scene.
Lucas also is charged with killing a college student in northeast Louisiana, and a first-degree murder warrant has been issued for him in the strangulation of a 49-year-old Maryland man.
