BENTON, La. -- Confessed mass killer Henry Lee Lucas was indicted Tuesday in the strangulation of a northwest Louisiana woman and the stabbing death of an unidentified female hitchhiker.
A Bosier Parish grand jury indicted Lucas, 48, shortly after hearing evidence from interviews with the condemned killer last week. Lucas confessed to the slayings and confirmed information investigators had gathered in the crimes, said Bossier-Webster District Attorney Henry Brown.
Lucas was indicted for first-degree murder in the 1978 death of Dolly Dement, 48, of Coushatta, La. He picked up the woman in a Bossier City, La., bar and later stabbed her 11 times, strangled and sexually assaulted her, then dumped her body near railroad tracks.
He also was indicted for first-degree murder in the 1981 death of a hitchhiker, whose decomposed body was found by a hunter along a highway near Bellevue, La. She had been stabbed numerous times, and a kitchen knife was found embedded in the ground near her body.
Lucas could not identify the woman, but told authorities she had a southern accent and he believed he picked her up while she was hitchhiking near Dallas, Brown said.
Lucas claims to have killed 360 people while drifting around the country. He has been sentenced to death and prison terms of 75 years and life for slayings in Texas, and has been charged with slayings in several other states.
Brown said he would try to have Lucas brought to Louisiana for trial.
'I don't think we'll get him until they get through in Texas, and there are some other states who want him,' Brown said. 'We will eventually get him back here for trial, it just may be a little while.'
Lucas and his traveling partner, Ottis Elwood Toole, also are charged in Louisiana with the slaying of a Northeast Louisiana University coed. Toole, who is jailed in Florida, also is accused of killing a Swartz teenager and an Iowa, La., woman.
