he spent five years in prison: 1954 to 1959. In January of 1960, he got into a fight with his mother and stabbed her to death. He went to prison for another ten years and was released in 1970 as the prison was overcrowded. He drifted around the southern states working menial jobs and met Ottis Toole in 1976. They formed what they called the ‘homosexual crime team,’ and began a cross-country murder bender which left at least 108 people dead in their wake.
Arrest
Ottis Toole was arrested in April, 1983 in Jacksonville, for burning down a church, and given a fifteen-year sentence. Two months later, in June, his partner in crime, Henry Lee Lucas, was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm. It was then that Lucas began boasting about the murderous storm orchestrated by the two of them. Initially, Toole denied any involvement, but later began backing up Lucas's confessions.
A task force was established in June of 1983 called ‘The Lucas Task Force.’ Police had to verify scores of killings that Lucas had admitted to committing which had been previously thought to be unconnected. In one case, a woman had even been denied a large insurance settlement after her husband’s death had been ruled a suicide, but once Lucas admitted to the killing of her husband – and could prove it – the insurance company paid her a settlement. The task force, including the Texas Rangers, was shocked at the number of names and files that were being collected and investigated. Lucas knew details in the files that only the killer would know. In another prison, Toole was spilling the same details, and more of his own individual crimes. In 1985, Toole and Lucas enjoyed a more laidback imprisonment, living in virtual comfort, purportedly receiving private meals and special accommodations in their prison cells because they were helping authorities close hundreds of cold cases. The police took them to various states, visiting the old crime scenes and burial sites of their many victims, all while enjoying a bit of sight-seeing, being outside their cells.
Sentencing and Death
Toole was sentenced to six life sentences and he died on September 15, 1996, at the age of forty-nine in his prison cell from liver failure. Nobody claimed his body and he was buried in a prison cemetery. Lucas also was sentenced to life so that authorities could try to gain more information about past crimes. Lucas died in prison from heart failure at age sixty-four on March 13, 2001.
Case Closed? Not quite.
Adam Walsh
Young Adam Walsh was only six years old, an innocent little boy, when taken from this world by a monster on July 27, 1981. It would be twenty-seven years before his mom and dad would know who killed him. On December 16, 2008, police announced that Ottis Toole killed little Adam. Because of his son’s murder, John Walsh became a campaigner for victim’s rights and assisted in forming the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Mr. Walsh became host of the FOX-TV program, America’s Most Wanted. On July 25, 2006, President George W. Bush signed into law the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. This act instituted a national database of convicted child molesters and sex offenders, and increased stiffer penalties for violence against children. In Adam’s memory, a program is in place for lost children in department stores known as, Code Adam.
Adam Walsh
The U.S. Department of Education reported that, in 1997, nearly 6,300 students were expelled from American schools for carrying firearms. As evidenced by many of the recent reports about school violence, several students chose to express their anger in caustic ways.
Many schools have responded to the threat of increasing violence by tightening security, installing spiked fences, motorized gates, bulletproof metal-covered doors, metal detectors, and security guards who search student desks and lockers. Some students and even faculty complain that this only makes prisons out of the schools. Most schools have hired more counselors and violence prevention coordinators.
Besides prescription drugs, few preventative efforts are being made to help students with the various psychological and emotional needs they may have before they erupt into a crisis. Teens see no alternative but violence to solve their escalating internal and, sometimes, external problems.
Revenge seems to be a common thread that runs through all of these massacres. Retribution is rooted in a sense of real or perceived injustice towards the perpetrator of the shooting. Many school shootings are generated by a desire for revenge against society, fed by a simmering anger over being denied a perceived entitlement to respect or personal recognition.
All of the teenage school shooters have been deeply influenced by mass media, usually in the form of video games and movies. Both media forms tend to be very vivid, intense, and increasingly violent. Teenagers growing up in the late 20 century and early 21 are immersed in an extremely hostile environment for the mind. This mental environment is especially hazardous for the young mind that is not fully developed, lacking the experience needed for balance and proportional decision-making.
When kids suffer abuse at home from parents and siblings, they often then go to school and suffer bullying from peers and an endless series of dictates from teachers. They begin to feel trapped as they can’t avoid abuse no matter where they are. In addition, when they see that the authority at home is part of the problem, and authority at school is either unconcerned or useless at helping them, they gradually realize that authority is fundamentally two-faced as it is not based on kind guidance as officially stated, but instead is based on controlling and exploiting the less powerful.
Consequently, these kids begin to perceive that the world is towering over them and abusing the weak. Feeling trapped and powerless, they naturally search for a way out. The easiest and most effective way to acquire power is to get a gun. Kids easily believe that using a gun is an effective method for resolving their problems. Every movie, video game, and television show they watch depicts the world through this foolish one-dimensional lens of power expression and problem resolution via deadly violence. These kids believe that it is acceptable to mimic these performances at a school shooting as that is what other students have done before.
The following are ten of the worst school/college/university shootings and massacres the world has ever seen.
Virginia Tech Massacre
Perpetrator - Seung-Hui Cho 23, English major
