Henry Lee’s early life reads like a twisted origin story—and with all that’s contested about his life, perhaps it could be just that: a story. Here are the facts: Henry Lee was born in 1936 to a poor family living eight miles out of Blacksburg in a shack on Craig Creek, a quiet road on Brush Mountain. According to a Montgomery News Messenger article, the Lucas family was one of the poorest families in Montgomery County, and many took pity at the site of the children, who seemed to always look “dirty.”

His mother, Viola Lucas, was a harsh, abrasive woman, and his father, Anderson Lucas, was an unemployed double amputee known as “No Legs” Lucas around town. Around the time Henry Lee was in fifth grade, his brother stabbed him in the left eye while the two were supposedly playfighting. Later, Henry Lee would get a glass eye which he would take out and show his classmates. “I will never forget him taking that glass eye out and rolling around in his hand,” said former elementary school classmate Gilbert Hale in a Montgomery News Messenger story from 1984.

From there, it’s the stuff of legend—some of it reported by Henry Lee himself, some contested by those who knew “Little Henry” and his family at the time.

Some reports claimed that Anderson would roll down Brush Mountain in a small wagon into Blacksburg to sell pencils or beg for money. This spectacle quickly garnered him a reputation with locals. Some liked to cruelly joke that “No Legs” had intentionally sat on the train tracks and let a passing train sever his limbs so that he could collect disability money.

Viola had another sort of reputation around Blacksburg. According to multiple reports and Henry Lee himself, Viola, as the breadwinner, prostituted herself—right on the floor of their shack, in front of Henry Lee and Anderson. Given the nature of Viola’s supposed work, there is some speculation that Henry Lee may have been a bastard child; the majority of sources, however, agree that Anderson was, indeed, the father of Henry Lee.

In a 1985 book, Hand of Death: The Henry Lee Lucas Story, Max Call recounts the story of Henry Lee after recording over 40 hours of audio interviews with him in addition to doing interviews with the law enforcement involved with Henry Lee’s cases. What follows are many of the stories told by Henry Lee which made their way into Call’s book; they are corroborated by news reports wherever possible and otherwise left to stand on their own.

According to Call, Viola gave her pimp—a man who supposedly stayed in residence with the Lucas family more often than not—free reign to beat her husband and children. Call also writes that for a long time, Viola forced Henry Lee to wear women’s clothes before sending him to school because she one day hoped that he could be prostituted to men and women alike. However, after complaints from Henry Lee’s schoolteachers, a Montgomery County Court order soon put an end to Henry Lee’s forced crossdressing.

Viola’s other forms of emotional and physical abuse took stranger forms. One day she killed Henry Lee’s pet mule out of spite. This much has been corroborated by multiple news outlets, including a 1997 article from The Roanoke Times. She also beat her husband and children with blocks of wood—once knocking Henry Lee into a coma—and sent her children out without socks or shoes.

In Hand of Death, Call details the story of how a Blacksburg resident once bought shoes and socks for Henry Lee and one of his brothers. Henry Lee showed off his new shoes to his mother when he returned home. In turn, Viola beat him and his brother for not asking for the cash equivalent.