Tehama County Sheriff
After 14-year-old Rashell Ward was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and shot dead while walking to her Seventh Day Adventist school in 1983, a notorious serial killer named Henry Lee Lucas took responsibility.
Lucas, however, was as mendacious as he was violent, and detectives quickly found inconsistencies in his statement and determined that his confession was one of hundreds of false claims he would make through the years.
At another point in the investigation, rumors that the sheriff was the culprit ran rampant through Red Bluff, California, a small city in the Sacramento River Valley that was rocked by Rashell’s abduction and slaying.