Tired: Is it okay to think Ted Bundy was hot? Wired: Did Henry Lee Lucas really murder all those people? Netflix has released a trailer for The Confession Killer, the platform’s next true crime docuseries, which re-examines the case of Henry Lee Lucas. Like Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and our good pal Ed Kemper, Lucas was fond of chatting about the murders he committed. But unlike his fellow heavy-hitters, Lucas may not have committed nearly as many murders as he claimed. Back in the ’80s, Lucas confessed to murdering hundreds of women, many of whom he could sketch from memory (similar to the more recent case of Samuel Little). The authorities were largely convinced until advances in DNA testing began to tell a different story.
Hopefully The Confession Killer, which debuts December 6, is a bit more compelling than Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, which felt far too rudimentary and tedious—particularly coming from documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger. The Lucas docuseries is directed by Robert Kenner (Food, Inc.) and Taki Oldham, and is described as follows:
During the early ’80s, Henry Lee Lucas confessed to hundreds of murders, bringing closure to unsolved cases and grieving families. Even with no direct evidence linking Lucas to the crime scenes, he stunned authorities with his ability to sketch victims’ portraits while citing brutal details of each attack. Yet journalists and attorneys found impossibilities in Lucas’ timeline, and DNA testing started to contradict his internationally-reported claims. THE CONFESSION KILLER, a riveting five-part docuseries, explores how the man once called America’s most prolific serial killer was really a complex figure entangled with a flawed justice system.