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- Harry Townes was born and died in Huntsville, Alabama, where he served as an ordained Episcopal priest. Aside from Huntsville and the priesthood, he had a distinguished, prolific, and quite long career as a character actor in movies and on television. He attended the University of Alabama in the 1930s, but moved to New York, before finishing, in order to study acting. He found his niche at Columbia University where he also received his undergraduate degree. From there, it was on to roles on stage -- his first in 1936 playing Captain Tim in "Tobacco Road". A two-year run in the part of a leprechaun in "Finian's Rainbow" came next -- a role that also took him to London. After a spattering of roles in the movies, Townes found his greatest presence on television, amassing a very large portfolio of roles for his handbag of characters. Studio One (1948), Playhouse 90 (1956) and Ponds Theater (1953) all enjoyed his contributions. The more popular Gunsmoke (1955), Perry Mason (1957), Star Trek (1966), Rawhide (1959) and Bonanza (1959) also benefited from Townes' acting skills. Though he continued to perform occasionally into old age, he quit his Beverly Hills home and lifestyle, entered the priesthood, and settled back into his hometown of Huntsville in the 1970s.
- Allene Roberts was born on 1 September 1928 in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. She was an actress, known for The Red House (1947), Union Station (1950) and The Sign of the Ram (1948). She was married to Ralph Cochran. She died on 9 May 2019 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
- Bob Penny was born on 29 June 1935 in Anniston, Alabama, USA. He was an actor, known for Mississippi Burning (1988), Forrest Gump (1994) and My Cousin Vinny (1992). He died on 25 December 2022 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
- An unwanted child born to a destitute family in Blacksburg, Virginia, Henry Lee Lucas' mother, 41-year-old Viola, turned tricks in their dirt floor cabin in front of the family. She hated her new son from the time he was born and continually abused him. Her husband Anderson, who had lost his legs in a railroad accident, was also constantly subjected to Viola's violence, but Henry, being a child, got the worst of it. Anderson eventually committed suicide by sleeping outside in the snow when he could no longer bear it, Viola entertaining another trick in his home; he contracted pneumonia and shuffled off this mortal coil. Henry, thus, bore the full focus of Viola's wrath after his pappy's unseasonable demise.
When Henry entered school in 1943, Viola in her meanness deliberately dressed him as a girl, even going so far to coif his hair into sausage curls, then sent him off to the schoolhouse, all dolled up, albeit barefoot. Not only forced to face the antagonism of his boy schoolmates as he attended to his education in such unlikely duds, he also had to face Viola's wrath when a teacher, pitying the lad, bought young Lucas a pair of shoes. Viola beat her son for accepting charity. This charmless woman killed any animals that her son tried to keep as a pet, and denied him medical attention when he cut his eye with a knife, leading to its surgical removal.
Viola once beat Henry with a a piece of lumber that put him in a coma, off and on, for three days. Viola's live-in lover, familiarly known as "Uncle Bernie," eventually took the Lucas lad to the hospital. In the demerit column, Uncle Bernie introduced Lucas to the joys of bestiality, teaching the boy how to kill hapless and unhappy animals after they had been tortured and sexually abused.
In March 1951, the 15-year-old Henry Lee Lucas picked up a 17-year old girl near Lynchburg, Virginia, propositioned her, then strangled her when she resisted the advances of this loathsome Lothario. He buried the corpse in the woods near Harrisburg, Virginia. (Lucas confessed to the murder in 1983.) Three years later, he was sent to prison for six years, convicted of the crime of burglary. Lucas escaped from prison twice in 1957, but was caught each time.
On September 2, 1959, he was released from prison and moved in with his sister in Tecumseh, Michigan, but his now-elderly mother demanded that he return with her to Blacksburg. It was there, on the night of January 11, 1960, that an intoxicated Viola struck her likewise intoxicated son with a broom and was stabbed to death for her transgression against his person. After his arrest, Lucas confessed that he had sexually assaulted his mother's corpse, though he soon recanted, a pattern of behavior that was a harbinger of things to come.
Henry Lee Lucas was sentenced to 20-40 years in prison for the killing of Viola and was clapped in the hoosegow in March 1960. He was soon transferred to the state hospital for the criminally insane, where he remained for six years. Paroled on June 3, 1970, he moved in with his relatives in Tecumseh. However, he ran afoul of the law in December 1971, charged with molesting two teenage girls, a charge later reduced to simple kidnapping. Sent to the state penitentiary, he was paroled in August 1975, over his own objections. Employed by a Pennsylvania mushroom farm, he married his cousin's widow in December of that year. They moved to Maryland, but they broke up, his wife eventually divorcing him in the summer of 1977, claiming that he had molested her daughters by a previous marriage.
Cast out, Henry Lee Lucas became a drifter, roaming throughout the South, allegedly killing female hitch-hikers as he moseyed along Interstate 35 in the Lonestar state of Texas. Fatefully, the 40-year old, one-eyed bisexual met the 29-year-old homosexual drifter Ottis Toole in a Florida soup kitchen in late 1976.
They hit it off immediately, becoming lovers and boon traveling companions; whether they actually were serial killers together is still clouded in mystery, though it likely is true.
In 1978, Toole and Lucas moved in with Toole's mother and sister in Jacksonville. Lucas fell in love with Toole's 10-year old female cousin, Frieda "Becky" Powell, whom he eventually adopted and lived with as husband and wife. But that lay in the future. Toole and Lucas went to work for a local roofing company, but they often missed work as they frequently went back on the road, two men born to ramble, spreading their version of hell along the highways and by-ways of America.
In 1981, Toole's mother and sister died within a few months of each other, and Becky and Frank were placed in juvenile homes. Returning to Jacksonville, Lucas helped obtain their release, and Becky and her brother Frank were taken on the road by the Henry Lee and Uncle Ottis, where they were exposed to the depravity of their murderous traveling show. It was at this time that Becky, Ottis Toole's niece, became the common-law wife of Lucas, who was over 30 years her senior. When child welfare authorities launched a search for Becky and Frank in January 1982, Becky fled to California with Lucas. Her brother Frank eventually wound up in a psychiatric facility in 1983 after bearing witness to the the brutality of his uncle and "brother-in-law."
From California, Lucas and Becky made it to Texas, winding up in the All People's House of Prayer, a religious commune outside of Stoneburg, Texas. But Becky was homesick, and in August 1982, this odd couple, husband and wife, were on the road again, hitchhiking, returning to Florida. On the night of August 23rd, in Denton County, Texas, the unlikely pair of lovers had an argument, and Becky slapped Lucas. As he had done 22 years earlier, Henry Lee reacted with a knife. He stabbed his young common-law bride to death. He then dismembered her corpse before returning to Stoneburg,
Lucas' story about Becky's disappearance was that she had vamoosed with a passing truck driver. Three weeks later, Lucas turned up missing the day after the disappearance of a local, Kate "Granny" Rich, an octogenarian. Lucas' car was found abandoned in Needles, California, less than a week later, on September 21st, then Lucas showed up again in Stonesburg on October 18th, the day after Rich's home was destroyed by a mysterious fire. The police arrested Lucas on a fugitive warrant from Maryland, but he was soon released.
Eventually, Lucas was jailed after returning to Stoneburg on June 11, 1983, arrested as he was an ex-convict who possessed a handgun. Lucas was remorseful for his murder of Becky, and had returned to the field where he had scattered her body parts to commune with the soul of his beloved. On the night of June 15th, Lucas summoned the jailer and offered a confession to expiate his sins: "I've done some bad things," he began.
Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the murder of Granny Rich, commenting that "he had killed at least a hundred more." For a year and a half, Lucas confessed to multiple murders.
At first, Lucas estimated he had killed 75 to 100 people, then he boosted the body-count to between 150 and 360, eventually reaching the 500 to 600 range when he factored in killings by his friends. Lucas implicated his erstwhile pal Ottis Toole in many of the murders, furthermore claiming that he and Toole had committed many murders as a hit-squad directed by a Satanic cult, "The Hand of Death," that Toole had introduced him to. A cannibal, Toole sometimes ate the flesh of their victims, although Lucas didn't join him in his insalubrious repast.
Toole, who was serving time on a Florida arson charge, didn't mind being implicated in mass murder by his former lover. In fact, he offered confessions of his own. By October 1983, police were sure that Toole and Lucas had committed at least 69 killings, which they announced at a press conference. The number was increased to 81 at a January 1984 press conference, and by March 1985, 90 murders had been attributed to Lucas in 20 states, and he and Toole were credited with a further 108 killings. Police would eventually claim over 200 murders were solved due to Lucas' confessions, as Lucas was taken to various states and had his memory prodded about unsolved killings.
At his trial, Lucas took responsibility for over 600 murders. He even claimed to have supplied People's Temple stalwart Jim Jones with the cyanide to effect the Guyana massacre. Ottis Toole, now on Florida's Death Row for murder, corroborated much of Lucas' confession, including his claims to have committed hundreds of murders, singly and as a duo.
Henry Lee Lucas eventually recanted his confessions, claiming that he was only trying to improve his living conditions in jail. He eventually claimed he only killed one person, his mother. Because of significant doubt as to Lucas' guilt, his death sentences were commuted to life in prison by Governor George W. Bush; it was the sole death sentence ever vacated by the then-governor, and allowed Henry Lee Lucas to die a peaceful death in prison. There were too many contradictions in Lucas' confessions which may have led to the re-opening of cases, so he could not be executed. - David Harris was born on 19 October 1960 in Jefferson County, Texas, USA. He died on 30 June 2004 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Kenneth McDuff has the dubious distinction as being the only man in Texas history to be sentenced to death for murder, paroled, arrested and convicted of murder, and re-sent to death row. While it is confirmed he killed 9 people, he may have killed as many as 14.
Born and raised in Rosebud, Texas, his parents, John and Addie, owned and operated a concrete company. Rosebud residents Wanda Fischer and Glen Stock recalled young McDuff as a bully with a hair-trigger temper who was coddled by his mother, known around town as "the pistol-packing Mama" as she carried a pistol in her purse. He was already known to Charlie Butts, one of the Tarrant County District Attorneys assigned with prosecuting McDuff and Roy Dale Green for the August 6, 1966 murders of Richard Brand - son of Louise Brand and brother of Fran Brown - his girlfriend, Edna Sullivan, and his cousin, Mark Dunnam. McDuff was dubbed "The Broomstick Killer" because he used a broomstick to snap Edna's neck after raping her repeatedly. Found guilty, Green was sentenced to 31 years in prison; McDuff to death. When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all death penalty statutes in 1972, McDuff's sentence was commuted to life with the possibility of parole. In 1981, he offered members of the parole board $10,000, and was promptly convicted of bribery. In October 1989, he made parole thanks to a federal judge's order to release 150 prisoners a day to ease overcrowding.
A run-in with a group of black teens in July 1990 should have sent McDuff, a vehement racist, back to prison, but he fell through the cracks; likewise, the disappearances of three prostitutes - Sarafia Parker, Valencia Joshua, and Regenia Moore - in the months after he was paroled. But authorities could not ignore the disappearances of accountant Colleen Reed, sister of Lori Bible, and convenience store clerk Melissa Northrup, daughter of Brenda Solomon and step-daughter of Richard Solomon. A nationwide manhunt instigated by Deputy U.S. Marshals Mike McNamara and Parnell McNamara, and a profile on "America's Most Wanted" led to McDuff's capture in Kansas City, Missouri on May 4, 1992.
His court-appointed attorney Dwight Goains did what he could, but the evidence was overwhelming, and McDuff was sentenced to death twice by two different juries for the murder of Melissa Northrup, and the murder of Colleen Reed. He never confessed to any of the murders until the weeks leading to his execution. The maps he drew led investigators to the remains of Sarafia, Valencia, and Regenia. But he would not give up Colleen Reed. After he was assured that he would not lose his commissary privileges, McDuff was taken out of prison on a "clandestine high security move" so he could direct investigators to the location of her remains.
He never expressed any remorse; his last words were: "I am ready to be released. Release me". Neither Addie or any of his four sisters claimed his body. McDuff was also survived by a daughter he fathered when he raped her mother in 1964. - Diane Linklater was born on 15 August 1937 in Monterey, California, USA. Diane was married to Chuck Linklater. Diane died on 8 June 2017 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Robert Fratta was born on 22 February 1957 in Westbury, New York, USA. He was married to Farah Fratta. He died on 10 January 2023 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
James Carroll was born on 20 December 1955 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Death to Smoochy (2002), Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987) and Tracker (2001). He died on 27 April 2016 in Huntsville, Ontario, Canada.- Tommy Lynn Sells was born on 28 June 1964 in Oakland, California, USA. He was married to Nora Price. He died on 3 April 2014 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Special Effects
- Make-Up Department
- Production Designer
John Harris was born on 27 July 1964 in Fort Benning, Georgia, USA [now Fort Moore, Georgia, USA]. John was a production designer, known for Zombieland: Double Tap (2019), Wrong Place (2022) and Black Water (2018). John was married to Alyce O'Sullivan. John died on 6 January 2024 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.- Michael Perry was born on 9 April 1982 in Houston, Texas, USA. He died on 1 July 2010 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Anthony Shore was born on 25 June 1962 in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA. He was married to Amy Lynch and Gina Lynn Worley. He died on 18 January 2018 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Brooks Atkinson was born on 28 November 1894 in Melrose, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Play of the Week (1959), The Iceman Cometh (1960) and On Stage! (1949). He was married to Oriana MacIlveen. He died on 14 January 1984 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
- Ángel Maturino Reséndiz was born on 1 August 1959 in Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla, Mexico. He died on 27 June 2006 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Hoffman Birney was born on 1 April 1891 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer, known for The Glory Guys (1965). He died on 2 June 1958 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
- Sound Department
Sam Houston is an American soldier and politician. An important leader of the Texas Revolution, Houston served as the first and third president of the Republic of Texas, and was one of the first two individuals to represent Texas in the United States Senate. He also served as the sixth governor of Tennessee and the seventh governor of Texas, the only American to be elected governor of two different states in the United States.
Born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, Houston and his family migrated to Maryville, Tennessee when Houston was a teenager. Houston later ran away from home and spent time with the Cherokee, becoming known as Raven. He served under General Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. With the support of Jackson and others, Houston won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1823. He strongly supported Jackson's presidential candidacies, and in 1827, Houston was elected as the governor of Tennessee. In 1829, Houston resigned from office, and joined his Cherokee friends in Arkansas Territory.
Sam Houston settled in Texas in 1832. After the Battle of Gonzales, Houston helped organize Texas's provisional government and was selected as the top-ranking official in the Texian Army. He led the Texian Army to victory at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive battle in Texas's war for independence against Mexico. After the war, Houston won election in the 1836 Texas presidential election. He left office due to term limits in 1838, but won election to another term in the 1841 Texas presidential election.
He was an unsuccessful candidate for the presidential nomination of the American Party in the 1856 presidential election and the Constitutional Union Party in the 1860 presidential election. In 1859, Houston won election as the governor of Texas. He was forced out of office in 1861 and died in 1863. Houston's name has been honored in numerous ways, and he is the eponym of the city of Houston, the fourth most populous city in the United States.- Producer
- Production Manager
- Director
Harold Orton was born in February 1913 in Edmonton, Middlesex, England, UK. He was a producer and production manager, known for Wreck Raisers (1972), 4D Special Agents (1981) and Chimpmates (1976). He died on 4 September 1998 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.- Kosoul Chanthakoummane was born on 10 October 1980 in Rock Island, Illinois, USA. He died on 17 August 2022 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Johnny Frank Garrett was born on 24 December 1963 in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, USA. He died on 11 February 1992 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Karla Faye Tucker was born on 18 November 1959 in Houston, Texas, USA. She was married to Dana Brown. She died on 3 February 1998 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- Thomas Nelson "Sonny" Reynolds, had a long and illustrious career in radio and television broadcasting. He worked at Channel 9 in Chattanooga for many years before returning to Huntsville where he was employed at Channel 19 as the creative commercial director until his retirement. He will probably best be remembered as "Dr. Shock". He was a 32nd degree Mason. He was preceded in death by his son, Thomas Nelson Reynolds, Jr. and granddaughter, Lorraine Anne Merriman. He was an inspiration to his family and known by his friends as a "real character". Survivors include daughters, Diane Heap and husband, Richard, of Spanish Fork, Utah and Debi Heath and husband, Ken, of Salt Lake City, Utah; ex-wife and friend, Mary Reynolds of Spanish Fork, Utah; five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
- Soundtrack
Dean Daughtry was born on 8 September 1946 in Kinston, Alabama, USA. Dean was married to Donna Daughtry. Dean died on 26 January 2023 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.- Daniel Lee Corwin was born on 13 September 1958 in Garden Grove, California, USA. He died on 7 December 1998 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.
- George Angel Rivas Jr. was born on 6 May 1970 in El Paso, Texas, USA. He died on 29 February 2012 in Huntsville, Texas, USA.