fair than might otherwise have done so; instead of
eleven million visitors, the exposition drew only a lit-
tle more than seven million, two-thirds of them from
Louisiana. As a result, the organizers had to declare
bankruptcy even before the fair closed on Novem-
ber 11. They lost approximately $50 million, and the
State of Louisiana, which had backed the project
heavily, lost $25 million.
Impact Although in the short run the Louisiana
World Exposition was a financial failure and had
little immediate effect on tourism in New Orleans,
the event’s long-term impact was positive. The in-
creased inventory of hotel rooms allowed the city to
become one of the country’s major destinations for
national conventions, and renovations in the ware-
house district turned that area into a mecca for art-
ists, small businesses, and museums, natural destina-
tions for the increased number of tourists that began
flocking to New Orleans within a decade after the
fair closed.
Further Reading
Dimanche, Frédéric. “Special Events Legacy: The
1984 Louisiana World’s Fair in New Orleans.” In
Quality Management in Urban Tourism, edited by
Peter E. Murphy. New York: Wiley, 1997.
Glazer, Susan Herzfeld. “A World’s Fair to Remem-
ber.”New Orleans Magazine38, no. 2 (November,
2003): D4-5.
Laurence W. Mazzeno
See also Business and the economy in the United
States; Knoxville World’s Fair; Vancouver Expo ’86.
Lucas, Henry Lee
Identification Serial killer
Born August 23, 1936; Blacksburg, Virginia
Lucas’s case shed light on both serial murder and the risks
of false confessions.
Henry Lee Lucas was arrested in October, 1982, and
charged with killing Kate Rich, an elderly woman.
Lucas was also questioned about the disappearance
of a teen, Frieda “Becky” Powell, with whom he had
had an affair. In mid-1983, he confessed to murder-
ing both women, as well as many others. Lucas said
that his family had abused him, and it was discovered
that he had exhibited early warning signs, such as
killing pets, before he began to commit homicides.
He was convicted of the 1960 murder of his mother.
Lucas seemed to be a textbook example of a serial
killer. Indeed, he ultimately confessed to killing or
helping kill three thousand people with Ottis Toole,
Powell’s uncle. These crimes were ostensibly com-
mitted throughout the United States, in Texas,
Florida, California, Georgia, Maryland, and Michi-
gan, among other states. Lucas claimed to be part of
a cult, the Hands of Death, that worshiped Satan and
sacrificed people to him. In late 1983, the Henry Lee
Lucas Task Force invited Texas law officers to ques-
tion Lucas in order to close unsolved cases.
Some of Lucas’s confessions were demonstrably
false.The Lucas Report, a 1986 study from the Texas
Attorney General’s Office, shows that Lucas often
was elsewhere at the time of one of his supposed kill-
ings. Some of his statements contradicted other facts
as well. Some experts estimated that he had actually
committed around 350 murders. In April, 1984,
Lucas retracted his confessions, claiming that he
had never killed anyone but his mother and that her
death had been an accident. Still, Lucas was con-
victed of eleven homicides and sentenced to death.
Probably, the truth lies somewhere between Lucas’s
extreme confessions and his most limited statement.
The question remains as to why Lucas falsely con-
fessed to so many murders, and the possible answers
are manifold. He was mildly mentally retarded and
mentally ill, hearing voices in prison. His initial con-
fession may have been coerced, and police officers
probably fed Lucas many of the details that “proved”
his guilt. The police and jail personnel also offered
Lucas better treatment in exchange for his confes-
sions.Impact More people saw the news coverage of
Lucas’s confessions than saw the follow-ups, adding
to a national concern with serial killers that had
been kindled by Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz
(Son of Sam) in the mid- to late 1970’s. Lucas’s pur-
ported crimes supported the view that, because se-
rial killers sometimes committed crimes in several
states, local police forces were helpless to catch them
and thus the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
was required. These views of serial killers and the FBI
would become stronger in the 1990’s. Lucas’s story
also demonstrates the problem of false confessions
and the ease with which an interviewer can unknow-
ingly lead the interviewee to false testimony, a sub-The Eighties in America Lucas, Henry Lee 603