Introducing: American Criminal

Hey, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and I host a show called American Criminal.

And I might be biased, but I think you're gonna love it.

There, I said it.

Every season, we explore some of the biggest, most devious history-making crime stories America has ever seen.

And we're not just sticking our toes in for one episode covering the basics.

No, no, no, no, no.

We dive deep into these cases over a number of weeks to bring you the whole story.

From start to finish, we're looking at everything from the motivations of the criminals to how the investigation unfolded and the way the media reacted.

Today, your favorite show has been kind enough to allow us to dip into their feed and show you what we mean.

We're bringing you a chapter from our most recent season, which covers the twisted, violent lives of Henry Lee Lucas and Audis Toole, a pair of serial killers who between them confessed to get ready hundreds of murders in the 1980s.

Then they took it all back, then confessed again.

It got to the stage where no one knew what was the truth and what was fiction.

Law enforcement agencies squared off to fight about it.

The media published exposés, and the courts couldn't work out what to do.

It was a mess.

But that's not the full picture.

This season also looks at the murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh, who was abducted from a department store in 1981.

Adam's story, the way his parents and community mobilized to search for him, and how the country as a whole reacted literally changed the way America responds to missing children.

But how does Adam Walsh figure into the story of Lucas and Toole?

Well, you'll just have to tune in to find out.

Search for American Criminal wherever you listen to podcasts or find us at AmericanCriminal.com.

In the meantime, here's a bit of episode two: The Head in the Canal.

This episode contains descriptions and details that some listeners might find disturbing.

Listener discretion is advised.

It's the afternoon of August 10th, 1981 in central Florida.

A pair of citrus farm laborers are walking alongside a drainage canal just off the Florida turnpike.

They've been fishing and are headed home with their catch.

They're talking about nothing, really, the weather, the fish, people at work, when one of them falters.

His steps slow and he falls silent.

He points at the canal where he can see something floating on the surface.

The sun's bouncing off the water so it's hard to make out.

But when he squints, he thinks it looks like a head.

At first, the guys laugh it off.

What a strange thing to see in a canal.

The head off some mannequin or kid's doll.

But the laughs don't last.

The closer they get to the object, the clearer they can see it.

This isn't a piece of plastic bobbing in the the water.

It's the head of a person.

A child.

The men aren't sure what to do, but eventually they agree that one of them will stay here while the other will go find a phone and call 911.

Within the hour, investigators are on the scene, stringing up police tape and taking photographs.

The men who found the head are interviewed separately about what happened.

It's hard to stay focused, though.

There are police divers in the water just a couple dozen feet away, retrieving the remains and searching for anything else hidden beneath the surface.

Under any circumstances, this would be a hard day for anyone.

Knowing that you found the remains of a child is traumatic enough.

But alongside those feelings is a morbid kind of curiosity.

The longer they stand there talking to investigators, the men who spotted the remains start to wonder who this child is.

During a break in the interviews, one of them asked the other if it couldn't be the boy who went missing last month.

Little Adam Walsh vanished from a department store in Hollywood, Florida on July 27th.

That's about 100 miles from here.

It seems like everyone in the country knows about Adam and has been looking for him.

No one's had any luck finding him, though.

But maybe they haven't found him because he's been here in this canal where no one would ever think to look.

And if this is Adam, then the search for a missing child is about to become the hunt for a killer.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

in 1979?

Two men with extensive criminal records and plenty of prison time under their belts met outside a homeless shelter in Jacksonville, Florida.

It was the beginning of an enduring friendship.

We know that much.

From there, though, the story gets fuzzier.

Later, both Henry Lee Lucas and Audis Toole would claim that what came next was a cross-country murder spree.

Driving across state lines, never worrying that they'd get caught, Henry and Atis killed all kinds of people in just about every way imaginable.

At least...

That's what they said.

Verifying that story is difficult.

Because even though Henry and Otis seemed to know a lot about plenty of murders that happened around the country, finding solid evidence that linked them to those crimes was another matter.

So when you get to that stage, things become a matter of trust.

And when you're talking about two men like Henry and Otis, who are convicted killers and known liars, how much can you really take their word for it?

The problem then becomes, if Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole didn't commit all of the murders they copped to,

who did?

This is episode two in our four-part series on Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole, the head in the canal.

It's early 1979 in the Springfield neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, two years before the murder of Adam Walsh.

Otis Toole leads Henry Lee Lucas through the darkening streets towards the Toole family home.

Audis, now 32, sometimes picks up men at the local homeless shelter, guys who'll trade a few bucks or a six-pack for a fumble in a dark alley.

But tonight's score is better.

A friendly face who's happy to listen to Audis talk.

Someone who actually wants to spend time with him.

Audis rambles about his life to his new friend as they walk.

He tells Henry how he lives with his mother, Sarah, talks about his job working as a cleaner for a local roofing company.

It doesn't pay a lot, but since he doesn't pay rent, he's usually got enough for beer.

Ottis says that if Henry's sticking around Jacksonville, he'll put in a good word for him at work and try and get him a job.

When they arrive at Otis' family home, Otis introduces Henry to his mother and stepfather and his sister's kids.

Frida, who everyone calls Becky, is 12, with long dark hair, and she seems kind of shy.

Frank's younger, but he doesn't catch Henry's attention like Becky does.

No one else in the house that night knows him, but Henry Lee Lucas has a history of sexually abusing young girls, and Becky is just his type.

After Otis brings Henry home with him that night, the two men settle into an easy friendship.

Just as he promised, Ottis helps Henry get work at the roof and company.

And although it's not a lot of money, it's enough to keep them both in booze and cigarettes, and buy gas for Henry's new car.

How he got it isn't clear, but whether he stole it, traded for it, or bought it, the car is the men's gateway to the freedom of the open road.

So when they're not working, Henry and Otis drive around Jacksonville.

Usually, young Becky and Frank are with them.

For the kids, it's fun to be included, and Sarah doesn't mind them getting out of the house.

She's the legal guardian for her two grandchildren, but she's 60 and is more than happy to get some time to herself.

If she knows everything that her son and his new friend are doing while they're out on the road, she doesn't say anything.

Then again, maybe Ottis lies to her about where they go when Henry gets behind the wheel.

Sometimes, it's harmless stuff, driving just to be on the road.

On other occasions, the car's is a getaway vehicle for when there's something they want but can't afford.

The rest of the time, well, according to Henry and Otis, that's when things get really interesting.

It's just after midnight on October 3, 1979 in Texas.

34-year-old Sandra Mae Dubbs is on I-35 not far from Austin when she feels her car start to slow down.

Confused, Sandra pushes down harder on the gas, willing her Dodge diplomat to keep going.

But she knows it's no good.

She can hear that the engine's completely cut out.

Frustrated, Sandra pulls off to the side of the road, letting the car roll to a stop.

She rests her head on the steering wheel and takes a deep breath.

She's so close to the end of her trip.

San Antonio is only about 80 miles away.

Just last month, Sandra made a snap decision to move to Texas from her hometown of St.

Louis, Missouri.

She's going to stay with her aunt until she finds her own place and gets on her feet.

She's already got a job interview lined up for later this week and is excited for this to be a fresh start.

That's the plan, at least, once she figures out what's wrong with the car.

The Dodge is brand new, so it doesn't make sense for it to just break down on her like this.

Still, Sandra knows that sitting here in the dark won't get her to San Antonio any faster, so she pops the hood, grabs a flashlight from the glove compartment, and gets out of the car.

At just 4'10, Sandra has to lean precariously on her high heels to see all the way into the engine.

The car already broke down outside of Oklahoma City earlier in the day, but a mechanic fixed it in about two minutes.

Sandra's hoping that there will be something obviously wrong and easily fixable right there for her to see.

No such luck.

Trying to stay calm, Sandra tucks her wavy blonde hair behind her ears and looks around.

Given the hour, the interstate's pretty quiet.

That's made it great for driving in the last hour or so, but now it means there are far fewer people passing by for her to flag down.

And she's too far outside of town to make walking to find a payphone an option.

Sandra sits back down in the driver's seat and is just thinking about locking her doors and staying foot until morning when headlights flood her rearview mirror.

She leans her head out the window and smiles.

Someone's stopping to help her.

She's saved.

It's October 8th, less than a week after her car broke down outside of Austin, when the body of Sandra Mae Dubbs is discovered in a field in the south of the city.

Her remains are badly decomposed after being left in the last of the Texas summer heat.

But it doesn't take long for investigators to work out the cause of death.

Sandra was sexually assaulted and then stabbed.

Whoever killed her left her naked in the grass, some of her clothes and jewelry scattered around her.

The one valuable Sandra's family says is missing is a $4,500 diamond and ruby ring she never takes off.

It's a lead for investigators to follow in their search for the killer, but there's no sign of the ring in any pawn shops in the area.

And with no foreign prints inside Sandra's abandoned car, the trail goes cold as rapidly as the weather.

Unfortunately, the murder of Sandra Mae Dubbs isn't the only mystery that catches the attention of Texans that month.

On the evening of October 23, 1979, a customer walks into a combined book and liquor store in Austin.

It's quiet, which is unusual.

The owners are usually quick to offer a friendly greeting to whoever pops by.

When the customer approaches the register, though, everything makes horrifying sense.

Molly and Harry Schlesinger are lying in spreading pools of blood, both of them shot in the head.

Miraculously, they're still alive when they're found, but both Molly and Harry die of their wounds later that that night.

In the aftermath, people in the community speculate about what happened in the store that night.

The business had been robbed several times over the last couple of years, and Harry had been heard vowing not to give in to any criminals who showed their face when he was working.

Now it seems like he stood his ground and paid the price.

People who live in the semi-rural area are left shaken by the slayings, especially considering considering that the store is on the corner of Breaker Lane and I-35, only around three miles away from where police found Sandra's body just a couple of weeks ago.

Whether anyone makes the explicit connection between the two crimes, their close proximity and both distance and time is chilling.

Either I-35 is a magnet for senseless murder, or there's a particularly cunning killer, or pair of killers, working the interstate.

Search for American Criminal wherever you listen to podcasts or find us at AmericanCriminal.com.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details.

And while in some cases we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Mohamed Shassi.

Sound design by Matthew Phillips.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan, managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson, and Lindsey Grant.