Wild Crime


The intro of this series is quite deceptive. It makes you expect a sort of COPS in the wilderness. But, in fact, the two seasons do a thorough examination of two separate cases. Both cases are interesting in their own right, I think the second season has wider societal implications. That's because a potential serial killer named Henry Lee Lucas is involved. We know for a fact that Henry Lee Lucas murdered three people. His mother, an underage girl he was associated with, and her guardian. And the problem was when he was arrested for the second and third of these murders, he started confessing to many murders. This was in retrospect a pretty obvious attempt to get benefits for himself and avoid the death penalty as long as he could. But it also stems from the fact that there may have been a misunderstanding when he was booked with a crime. The judge said do you understand that you are being charged with murder, and he said yes sir, I have hundreds of them. The courtroom went wild because everybody assumed that he was claiming to have murdered hundreds of people. But I think it's possible he misunderstood the question, or he wasn't paying attention to the question. He may just have had hundreds of charges against him and that's what he meant, which is more realistic. Serial killers aren't as bright as people think that they are, but even by these not very high standards, Henry Lee Lucas just seemed not intelligent enough to commit these crimes. People later went back and debunked the possibility that he committed many of the murders and in fact some of the investigators invented murders and crimes and Henry confess to those as well. So in the second season, the case is one which Henry confessed to. But there's very little evidence that he had anything to do with it, and in fact his confession probably helped misdirect the investigation away from the people who were involved. I think there is a reputation that police and the United States don't solve as many crimes as they used to and while that may be true I think there's or there should be an understanding that some of the cases that were solved in the past were solved in such a sloppy manner that the real culprits never were brought to justice.


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