Serial Killer Lee Dies

By Stephen M. Silverman

09/12/1997 at 12:00 AM EDT

Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, 84, the one-eyed drifter who confessed to hundreds of murders across the nation but later recanted, died in prison on Monday of an apparent heart attack, said a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Lucas was condemned to death for the slaying of an unidentified woman whose body was found in 1979 in a ditch. The victim was dubbed "Orange Socks," because that was all she was wearing. Lucas was the only man spared from a Texas death sentence by then-Gov. George W. Bush.