Interview With Co-directors of THE CONFESSION KILLER, Taki Oldham & Robert Kenner

I was able to chat with the co-directors Taki Oldham & Robert Kenner of one of Netflix’s newest docuseries The Confession Killer. A story that is wild in its shocks and unveiling, but remains incredibly fascinating and hard to stop watching. It follows the story of Henry Lee Lucas, one of America’s most prolific serial killers. Or was he?

We chatted about how they maneuvered this challenging and complex story, their process of research, and what they’re hoping will come from this story finally being told.

My name is Kristy Strouse with Film Inquiry. I wanted to say that I really enjoyed the series, it was very compelling. Terrific work and congratulations!

Both: Thank You!

I didn’t know much about this story and I consider myself fairly well versed in true crime. Why do you think it has remained fairly unknown to people and how did each of you first hear of it?

Taki Oldham: Well I think it remains unknown to people because it became such a… it’s so confusing that so many invested interest in the truth never really coming out. I think that when I first came across this documentary about this is in the early 2000’s that I saw in 2014. They present a question at the end they ask “If Lucas didn’t kill all those people, are there over two hundred killers walking free?”

At the time it really was an unanswerable question, so by the time I looked at it in 2014, many years had passed, and DNA had come to be used, so I did a quick Google search of “Henry Lee Lucas DNA” and sure enough there were already, immediately, 3 or 4 results on the first page where other killers that they’d found and a couple of cases where they’ve gone on to kill again. And in those cases, Lucas was found to be responsible, or at least his DNA was not match to any of the cases.

That trend continued until I came up with about a dozen cases and at that point I knew that there was a new chapter that could be written in this story and I did a bunch of research, it took me like a year and a half to read thousands of pages of court transcripts and materials, basically coming to see that it was a huge case. As you said on that was largely unknown and unreported, at least in the 2000’s. So, that’s where I was and after about a year and a half, I took it to Robbie who I had worked with on previous projects.

There is a lot of footage and I am sure it was quite the process, a lot of work. Can you talk about how long it took and how much you had to go through as far as interviews and footage… just the process itself?

Robert Kenner: It really took years, Taki worked for a few years before bringing it to this office and then we spent another few years, so it was really four or five years of intense investigation and searching for all this lost footage. What was interesting is that this was such an amazing moment in so many of our character’s lives that people tend to just save everything, which was kind of extraordinary and interesting, so everyone in their closet had videotapes.

And then Taki found somebody who had all the interrogations, and that old obscure Japanese footage that had never been shown in the United States of Henry in jail in 1983 came to us, and that had never been seen before. So, it was an amazing investigation. Then another challenge was getting people to want to talk, and that wasn’t necessarily easy, we were very grateful that the Rangers agreed to talk to us.

Sister Clemmie was hesitant but then agreed to talk to us, Linda Erwin, The detective out of Dallas, who felt that it was wrong from the get go and had that false case presented that Lucas had confessed to it. She knew it was wrong and she was very upset with law enforcement and she comes from a family in law enforcement and didn’t want to talk ill about law enforcement but eventually she agreed to talk. Vic Feazell agreed to talk and Hugh Aynesworth. That was a big challenge, getting people to go on camera and to match what this amazing footage said.

I can imagine that would be challenging, especially given this story. Was there a lot of footage that you didn’t use, and was it difficult sorting through what to include?

Robert Kenner: There were hundreds and hundreds of hours, so it was amazing to go through it all, but the challenge again was how to reduce it to its essence, we left out many amazing pieces.

And were you met with any resistance or push back? As far as investigating it, given this was a mess of the justice system?

Robert Kenner: One thing that was interesting is that I think that the rangers felt they did everything right at the time, or Bob Prince does. I think he was very proud to come on camera and talk, eventually he felt like we weren’t treating him right. Though we always maintained a conversational approach, we always stayed in touch, but yet he has always felt taken advantage of by the media. But yet he still wanted to talk because I think he is very proud of their involvement in this case and we saw things differently the more we looked into it and we asked him questions. It was tough for him and it was tough for us at that point, but we still tried to be cordial in our disagreements.

Taki Oldham: Me and my wife, who was leading the charge to reach out. There were certainly some instances where the agencies began by being quite receptive about inquiring about a particular case. And then when it became clear that it was the Lucas case…there were certain times when the doors would close on us, and then other times when the police agencies were happy to work with us.

With so many cases and so many jurisdictions, there was not one particular type of response. Many people we heard from, from law enforcement felt that their fears had been us telling a story that represented law enforcement in a bad way. But they have all been very positive with how they felt about the story. That being said, there are certain agencies we reached out to where there was certain hesitation that we might make them look bad.

There are a lot of shocking developments over the course of the series. As you were in the discovery phase, was there anything in particular that surprised you or caught you off guard more than anything else?

Robert Kenner: For me, as more and more of this DNA was coming out and showing Lucas didn’t do these crimes, one thing that surprised me is that Bob Prince from the rangers was unaware that this was happening but still at the same time felt they did everything right and didn’t question their role in the investigation at the time. I was surprised at the Lubbock police, with the Lemons’ case, was not at all flexible or interested in dealing with this situation even though more information was coming out showing Lucas wasn’t the killer and the lack of flexibility in certain cases was very, very disappointing.

I agree. There’s lots of denial. When you’re watching the series it’s infuriating because you’re watching and seeing these things that aren’t making any sense but it is still going on. Obviously, there are people that challenge it, but for the most part it seems like people just go along with it. It’s a strange phenomenon, especially on this type of scale.

Taki Oldham: The scale of it is what makes it possible, it is a strange contradiction, sometimes when a lie is so big people think there is no way that it could not be true. And I think part of what happened here is once you had the Texas Rangers lending their reputation to the case that a lot of agencies who wanted the truth to be that Lucas was their killer… did not necessarily do a thorough investigation. I think the fact that it was so big is what made it actually possible.

Robert Kenner: Kristy, what was interesting to us as we proceed was that ultimately, as we began to look at the story, it becomes not only about Henry, but all these people who see in Henry what they needed. They began to believe everything they needed, and at a certain point Sheriff Boutwell started to disregard the facts. We don’t think it started out as a conspiracy, we think it started out with them looking to solve these crimes that happened on I-35 and Henry seemed like the guy. And Henry is certainly is a confusing, difficult character to assess and he was more than willing to confess, and he and Boutwell had that very special relationship, but at a certain point the Rangers stopped doubting and Sister Clemmie was getting what she needed. She was a Christian looking to convert this man to God and to help the families, Henry fit the bill. At a certain point Vic Feazell was looking to go after the rangers and Henry fit the bill, Henry became what people needed which makes it an even more fascinating story.

I agree. And Henry is very adaptable, for sure.

Robert Kenner: Yeah, I use the term confabulator, because not only is he adaptable but he believes everything he is saying which made it all even more confusing to people and one has a little bit of sympathy, but yet when the facts start to become clear that it wasn’t true, people didn’t revert to the facts.

Yeah and he is a very interesting character, this in a sense is early profiling of serial killers, so in a lot of ways many of these cases there is no consistency with murder weapons, victims or locations or how he does it, it is just all over.

Robert Kenner: One of the things that was interesting along those lines is that Taki was investigating to begin with all these cases start to develop after Henry died that were saying “Oh we made a mistake on this, it wasn’t Henry Lee Lucas,” but yet people weren’t putting it together and saying “Wait a sec, maybe he didn’t do so many of these.” There are 200 cases that the Rangers listed as cleared cases, but they were really 600 cases that ceased to be investigated, and the idea of looking at the patterns didn’t really occur. They aren’t just coincidences that Henry didn’t do it, there is a bigger pattern that should be studied.

Absolutely.

Robert Kenner: One amazing that happened, Kristy, just last night a case was cleared, and a killer was found that had been on the Rangers list of cleared cases.

That’s great! I was actually just going to ask you if you’ve seen an influx of cases due to raising awareness with this documentary coming out. Have more cases been reopened since?

Robert Kenner: In the last month there have been three cases and we are not going to take any credit for them because it takes time to do these things. Hopefully there will be more and more coming, but there were three additional cases. One which was reopened in Provo, Utah. One in Norfolk, Virginia where they found the killer, and one last night in Colorado. These were all listed as cleared cases where Henry was the killer. This was using DNA and Genealogy websites.

So, it’s certainly more and more murderers being found where it proves it wasn’t Lucas. And we hope this series can help open up others, maybe Henry did them and maybe he didn’t, but we think people deserve to know. If there is anything that moved us it was the victim’s family members that ultimately just want closure and they want to know who killed their loved one, and I think they have that right and that motivated us as much as anything making this series.

That’s definitely a powerful thing and they deserve those answers. Do you have any interest in maybe adding to this, depending on how things go? Investigating or continuing in any way?

Taki Oldham: I certainly think there’s a lot to the story that still needs to be told, as far as the historical point of view I feel like we have pretty much told that story, but I would love to see more on these individual cases, and see them investigated. Maybe a potential Season two, if there was such a thing, would certainly follow some individual cases, see how justice is being done today. But beyond that, the series was always ever intended to be an entrée to getting these cases reopened and having the real work begin. With that being said, regardless if anything comes from the series we are delighted to see cases reopened and justice being done.

Robert Kenner: We are getting letters to our website saying “Hey, my loved one was murdered, and it wasn’t Henry, and we couldn’t get any action.” So, people are starting write and thanking us and hoping they get action on their cases.

That’s Great. Henry mentioned something about the truth coming out, even if its “Beyond the grave” I know it is so big, so many cases involved but do you think we will ever get to the full truth of this?

Robert Kenner: We are starting to get to “A Truth” but will we get 600 truths? There’s certainly a pattern, as opposed to a lack of pattern, of not one case belonging to Henry, so there is a certain level of the truth that has come out and at the same time- not to say that Henry is innocent or he is a good guy because he did kill and we believe he killed three people,  and maybe he killed more. Put it this way, the public and the families deserve to know if he did! We are finding out and every case so far that he hasn’t.

Maybe your documentary was what he was eluding to without even knowing it.

Robert Kenner: You could look at it that way.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me, I really enjoyed it! Congratulations on the series again, really amazing work!

We want to thank Taki Oldham & Robert Kenner for speaking with Film Inquiry.

The Confession Killer can currently be streamed on Netflix.